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Aug. 21, 2008 Recently, Barak Obama proposed placing a windfall profits tax on Big Oil and then distributing that tax to the citizenry in the form of a $500.00 rebate per household. Apparently not enough people swooned over that because even more recently he has said he now envisions a gas tax rebate of $1000.00 per household. If that sounds too good to be true, you can be certain it is too good to be the whole truth. (Personally, I think my vote much more precious than even his latest offer but, should you decide to sell your vote to Obama, remember that you are locking yourself into a four- year contract with no escape clause.) The truth is that this giveaway is a smoke screen, a way of distracting Americans from a scheme that will rip the scab off all the racial healing that has taken place in the last sixty or more years. Obama – who, ironically, calls himself “post-racial” and “the one man who can bring the races together” – wants to give everyone $1000.00 to pacify them over an even larger racist giveaway. He calls it reparations and has hinted that he wants to give federal money to Native Americans and African-Americans as a way of absolving the collective guilt of white Americans. Guilt for what? For the Indian wars and for slavery, of course – things for which no one today living should feel the slightest pang of responsibility or guilt and for which no one today living should feel a sense of having been wronged. Let’s take Native Americans first. Yes, whites killed them – by the tens and twenties, only once by the hundreds (Wounded Knee) and never by the thousands. Native Americans killed white settlers and soldiers in the same way: five here, a dozen there and once (Battle of the Wabash) more than 900 soldiers. If we count only killings, it is probably a wash. White Americans also took their land and forced them to live on reservations. This was the most important “crime” against Native Americans, but it was designed to help them become what white Americans were at that time: an agrarian society. That they did not become that society was due to the nation’s first welfare system, a system that – in providing a no-charge level of sustenance – robbed the Native American of initiative. It is both sad and sorry but at that time social engineering was even less perfect than it is today. We’ll come back to the Native American in a moment, but first let’s deal with African-American slavery. Yes, white Americans bought and kidnapped African tribesmen, brought them to America in chains and sold them in slave auctions. Yes, they were made to work in the fields, in blacksmith shops, in cotton gins. They were made to build houses and riverboats and almost everything else that needed building at that time and in that place. The work was hard and the taskmasters often harsh – in large part, the language barrier fueled their frustration – and the slaves lived in hovels. But the American record on slavery is one of the shortest in the world. It existed as a legal institution for less than eighty years after the adoption of the Constitution and the importation of new slaves was made illegal long before that. It is the easy answer (although heart-breakingly true) that reparations were made long ago at Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh and a hundred other battlefields but there is more to the story. When slaves were freed, the going was hard at first: no longer was there a “massa” to feed them, to give them rags for clothing and a shack for living. But before long something wonderful was realized: black men could plow straight furrows and could harvest crops at the proper time; they could build brick walls that were plumb and tight; they could make horseshoes and pewter plates; could frame windows and doors; could drive a team of horses or a team of mules; could build a by-God railroad even if they had to drill and blast a way through a mountain. And black women could care for white babies, take in washing and ironing, cook meals for two or for a dozen, keep fine houses spic and span. All were skills learned while they were slaves and it is a shame no one taught such skills to Native Americans. And though the jobs of these former slaves are considered menial by the standards of today, they were the first giant steps toward self-reliance. Now, play a mental game with me. Suppose the Louisiana Purchase never happened and white settlement stopped at the Mississippi. Further suppose that Native Americans were never molested and that there was no contact or interaction with white America. That vast land between the river and the Pacific would today be the untrammeled home of people still living in the stone age. The gold, silver and other minerals would still be hidden in the mountains; the growth of great forests checked only by fires burning out of control. The people would still subsist only on nuts, berries and wild game for no plow ever broke the land and the “breadbasket of the world” never happened. Nor would there be oil wells or casinos on Indian land. All roads and railroads would stop at the Mississippi and airplanes would fly no further west than Memphis. Likewise, all power lines would stop at the river and while Native Americans might stand on the western bank and wonder at the myriad lights that appear after dark, the best they could do toward understanding would be to weave a myth or a fable. And they’d be knee-deep in buffalo dung. For the African-American who feels he has personally been wronged by slavery, he should consider what life in America would be like had not his ancestors been brought here in chains. No Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson or Michael Jordan. No domination of the music and sports industries. No magazines or TV channels devoted to his race. No Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry or Tyler Perry. No Colin Powell or Condaleeza Rice or Martin Luther King… In short, no descendants of slaves could reach the high peaks of the American Dream because they would not be here. Nor would they enjoy such status in Africa because the opportunities of America do not exist there. Instead of striving to get to the top of their professions they would be striving (most days) to simply stay alive. How often have we all seen TV scenes of modern-day Africa, with old men and women crippled by disease? How often have we seen small children, bellies bloated by starvation and flies buzzing around the sores on their faces? How often have we heard reports of genocide, of children impressed into killer gangs, of famine and drought? And how often do African-Americans see and hear these things and wish they were there? (Sadly, Barack Obama would be here, because his ancestors did not come as slaves.) The bottom line is this: Native Americans and African-Americans fare well today because of the sins of the past and giving “reparations” to any group based on ethnicity or color will do more to fracture race relations than Wounded Knee or Custer’s last stand; more than seats in the back of the bus or separate water fountains or midnight lynching. And we’ll have Barack Obama, the “Great Healer”, the closet racist, to thank for the fracture. As much I dislike Obama and his politics I must admit that he is a fellow American and, as such, is a man to whom I should reach out. Therefore, I’m going to offer him an escape clause from his hare-brained reparations scheme. Poll every Native American, on or off reservations, until you find those who have lost a near relative (NOT an ancestor) to the crush of white settlement. Make reparations only to them. Likewise, poll white American settlers to find those who have lost a near relative – NOT an ancestor – to Indian depredations and reduce the Native American windfall by an amount sufficient to make reparations to the whites. Problem solved and everyone is happy. Next problem. Impose a windfall profits tax on every American currently involved in the slave trade – buyers, sellers, and auctioneers. Make reparations to every living African –American who was brought to this country in chains or who, within his lifetime, has been bought or sold or forced to labor in slavery. By all means, make reparations to every one of them. Once the cost of determining eligibility is subtracted, the entire reparations program will cost each American family 42 cents – the price of mailing a letter to tell Obama he is out of his freaking mind. ------------ About the author: Erv Bobo is a free-lance author. His current books THE VELVET BRAND, THE CHEYENNE BRAND and WESTERN STAR are currently available at Lulu.com. Email: Dasher1945@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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