Reparations

6/29/26 Tilting at Windmills discusses the current demands by Africa for slave reparations from Europe and America. The transatlantic slave trade is "the greatest crime against humanity" unlike the longer and larger transondian slave trade.

As most of you know, slaves were usually sold by Africans to Arabs and Europeans. This had severe bad effects on Africa. Largely agricultural societies were militarized to take prisoners of war for sale.  Much of this wealth was spent on repeating the process and buying alcohol, tools, and cloth. At the end, African slave traders exported several generations of workers in prime working years and failed to sensibly invest the capital. 

In England, some of the wealth from the slave trade was sensibly invested. Thomas Sowell says the role this had in capitalizing the Indistrial Revolution had been greatly exaggerated.  Over the years, I have seen many docum5 about Georgian building by slave owners that absurd vanity project:  capital wasted. It made England no better off.

In America, much of the wealth was sensibly invested. Lots of that invested capital was destroyed during the Civil War. Is that unfortunate? Yes but that wealth that Africa wants is just as gone as that which the slave traders wasted.

Stop whining and ask why a continent awash in natural resources remains poor today.

The Suit Writes Itself

12/16/25 ABC 7:

"SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Reparations for Black San Franciscans are back on the table after the Board of Supervisors gave final approval Tuesday of an ordinance to create a fund aimed at addressing harms caused by past discriminatory city policies.

"The measure does not allocate any initial city dollars, a move that may have helped secure support from the board's moderates after repeated years of city budget shortfalls. Instead, the ordinance establishes a framework to receive future contributions - whether through city appropriations or private donations."

How quintessentially progressive.   A program with no funding yet.  I suppose if the progressive billionaires want to fund it, there is no equal protection violation on the revenue side but there is on the administration side.

Remember: slavery was never lawful in San Francisco or California.   San Francisco is also remarkable in having an 1850s civil suits by a black woman for discrimination on a streetcar which she won.

I Went Hunting for This as I Was Preparing for Spring Semester

 There is a famous quote from Samuel Johnson deriding Revolutionary whining about being treated like slaves: "how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"  There were Revolutionaries who saw the logic and freed their slaves.  After the war, northern states start to abolish slavery.  There is also a curious indirect way in which the Revolution frees many slaves.

Lord Dunmore was Virginia's last royal governor.  As he realized that the Patriots had him greatly outnumbered, he retreated to a Royal Navy warship and declared that slaves who fought for Britain would be freed:

On November 7, 1775, Dunmore issued a proclamation that established martial law and offered freedom to slaves who would leave patriotic owners and join the British army: "I do hereby farther declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining his Majesty’s troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this colony to a proper sense of their duty, to his Majesty’s crown and dignity."

Within a month 300 black men had signed up with Dunmore’s "Royal Ethiopian Regiment." While the regiment grew to only 800 men, his proclamation inspired thousands of enslaved people to seek freedom behind British lines throughout the Revolutionary War.

In addition, many masters sent their slaves to fight in the Revolutionary militaries with the promise of freedom.  Some failed to keep their promise so Virginia fixed that.  11 Hening 308 (1783)

America's "Racist" Constitution

Every properly woke person knows that our Constitution is racist.  They did not abolish slavery.  Indeed while the word slave appears nowhere in it until the 13th Amendment abolished it. Art. 4 Sec. 2, cl. 3 provides for extradition of persons "bound to service," a term that applied to apprentices, indentured servants and slaves.  Art. I, sec. 2 treats non-free persons as 3/5 of a person for purposes of taxation and representation.   In both cases, this means slaves.

So why did the Framers so carefully avoid the word slave?  A number of Framers including some slaveholders (such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) regarded slavery as an evil that needed to go away at some point.  Breen's Tobacco Culture examines how tobaccos reliance on slave labor eventually led Washington to switch from tobacco to wheat.  Many other delegates were active abolitionists such as Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton.   

Even supporters of slavery from states profoundly tied to the system recognized the immorality of it, or at least getting high and mighty about it.  When C.C. Pinckney returned from Philadelphia and had to justify why the new Constitution had no Bill of Rights, he explained: One was that bills of rights generally begin by declaring that all men are by nature born free. The reporter's summary of his observation concluded, "Now, we should make that declaration with a very bad grace, when a large part of our property consists in men who are actually born slaves."^[18]

So what did the new Constitution do about slavery, a contentious issue that risked losing South Carolina and Georgia from the United States?  It did something no other government of the time had the moral character to do: it set a deadline for abolition of the international slave trade in 1808.  Yes Britain did likewise in 1807 but the U.S. Constitution stated the goal in 1788.  This was well before William Wilberforce's successful persuasion of Parliament.

Abolition of the Atlantic slave trade other than by America and Britain was a byproduct of the treaties signed as part of the Congress of Vienna (1815).

For all that America's founders missed the boat on slavery they were still ahead of the rest of the world.  Remind your local antiracist of this.

Slavery Reparations

 3/1/21 Daily Signal:

My ancestors were slaves. And my life as a young woman was a mess.

Was my life a mess because my ancestors were slaves? I don’t think so.

My life was a mess because I lived a wanton, irresponsible existence, defined by promiscuity, petty crimes, and scamming the nation’s well-meaning but totally confused welfare system to the greatest extent of my ability.

Did I need reparations to turn things around for me? Certainly not. I needed a wake-up call, which, to my great gratitude, I got from a few church-going black Christians who told me the way I was living was unacceptable.

I went to church, took back responsibility for my life, and turned my circumstances around.

If there was any justice, only descendants of slaveholders would be taxed to pay reparations.  "But that's not fair!  I didn't ever hold slaves, and I do not have any of that unearned wealth."  Americans can go from blue collar to blue collar inn three generations.  And from mint juleps to Budweiser in a lot less than that?  So why are all white people today obligated to pay all black people today for evil committed against some of their ancestors?   There were free blacks in 17th century America and even one black legislator, Matthias da Souza, in the Maryland colonial legislature.  I look forward to demands for reparations from Britain, which became wealthy from the slave trade, and did not fight a devastating Civil War over the issue.

Someone in the Oregon Legislature Needs to Take My 14th Amendment Class

 Oregon SB 619:

Be It Enacted by the People of the State of Oregon: 

SECTION 1.(1) The Department of Revenue shall establish a program to pay reparations to Black Oregonians who can demonstrate heritage in slavery and who submit an application to the department no later than December 31, 2022.

 (2) A person is eligible for reparations under this section if the person demonstrates that the person: 

(a) Is descended from an American slave;

 (b) Has identified as African-American on legal documents for at least 10 years before the date of the application;

 (c) Is at least 18 years of age, an emancipated minor or a ward, as defined in ORS 419A.004, whose parents are deceased or for whom parental rights have been terminated and have not been reinstated; and 

(d) Has resided in Oregon for at least two years before the date of the application. 

(3) The department shall pay to each eligible applicant the amount of $123,000 in the form of an annuity payable annually for the life of the applicant.

 (4) Reparations paid under this section and the right of a person to an annuity under this section are exempt from garnishment and all state, county and municipal taxation, except as provided under ORS chapter 118, are not subject to execution, garnishment, attachment or any other process or to the operation of any bankruptcy or insolvency law and are unassignable.

Do you suppose this might violate the "equal protection clause"?  Remember Oregon was never a slave state but did contribute two regiments to fight the Confederacy.

If you wanted to stir racist sentiment against black people what more could you do?  I think it would be fairer to track down every descendant of a slave owner (black or white) and confiscate their wealth.

reparations for slavery

10/8/20 City Journal makes several points that I have repeatedly made about slavery reparation.  

1. Not every black American is descended from slaves.   Some are descended from black slaveowners.  

2. Are descendants of blacks free before the Civil War eligible for the same payments as those freed by the Civil War?

3. Should blacks never held in American slavery (descendants of Jamaicans or recent African immigrants) deserve compensation?

4. Reparations to those interned by Democrat FDR were only to the actual internees, not their descendants. By that standard,  only former slaves deserve reparations.   (Total cost: $0.) 

5. Should Americans whose ancestors arrived after the abolition of slavery have to pay through taxes for reparations when their families never held slaves?

6. Should those of us whose ancestors died in the Civil War on the Union side be compensated for the loss of loved ones?  Yes, my g-g-g-mother received a pension,  but I doubt it matched the loss of his earnings.  He moved up rapidly in wealth from the 1850 to 1860 census.

7. Should descendants of black slaveowners be eligible for reparations?

Questions 1-3 and 7 would yield very complex calculations depending on a black person's ancestors.   The records of slavery are very poor, so figuring out who fits in what category would be impossible. 

Finally, any compensation to individuals based on their race (as opposed to their having been held in slavery) would clearly violate the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

 

As my wife reminded me, there is at least an equally valid claim against the descendants of the West Africans who sold those slaves to Europeans. 

Hat tip to SmallDeadAnimals.

Why Feminists Don't Much Care About ISIS

From Reuiters:

Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when "owners" of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females....


Among the religious rulings are bans on a father and son having sex with the same female slave; and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as "part of a joint ownership."

The United Nations and human rights groups have accused the Islamic State of the systematic abduction and rape of thousands of women and girls as young as 12, especially members of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. Many have been given to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.

Far from trying to conceal the practice, Islamic State has boasted about it and established a department of "war spoils" to manage slavery. Reuters reported on the existence of the department on Monday.


The fatwa starts with a question: "Some of the brothers have committed violations in the matter of the treatment of the female slaves. These violations are not permitted by Sharia law because these rules have not been dealt with in ages. Are there any warnings pertaining to this matter?"

It then lists 15 injunctions, which in some instances go into explicit detail. For example:

"If the owner of a female captive, who has a daughter suitable for intercourse, has sexual relations with the latter, he is not permitted to have intercourse with her mother and she is permanently off limits to him. Should he have intercourse with her mother then he is not permitted to have intercourse with her daughter and she is to be off limits to him."

There was a time when this sort of behavior would have had feminists demanding war.

The 12/29/15 Mirror includes this item:

It is not permissible for the owner of a female captive to have intercourse with her until after she has had menstrual cycle and becomes clean.