Robbing Peter to Pay Paul Reparations

 

Sunny Hostin: Black Like Me?

Sunny Hostin, who has loudly called for reparations for slavery, discovered on air that her ancestors were Spanish slaveowners. 

So were those of Kamala Harris in Jamaica.

This illustrates the illogic of reparations. The likelihood is that most “African-Americans” are ethnically mixed, and descended from slaveowners as well as from slaves. It is not likely, after all, given human nature, that slaveowners back then denied themselves sex with female slaves. 

By contrast, few living “white” Americans will have descended from slaveowners. Most probably trace their ancestry through Ellis Island in more recent years. Even most who don’t will have ancestors who lived in the non-slave North, with four times the population at the time. Their ancestors fought to end slavery. And even those whose ancestors came to the US South, will probably bear no blood guilt. Only 1.4 percent of the white American population owned slaves.

All those Scots-Irish rednecks and hillbillies, the stereotypical white Southerner? Their own ancestors were probably slaves, at least temporary slaves, brought over, often against their will, as indentured servants. That was the common fate for Irish, Scottish, or Acadians (Cajuns).

So “African-Americans” are more likely to be descended from slaveholders than “white” Americans.

Who should pay reparations to whom?

The concept is nonsensical, obviously unjust, and patently ahistorical.