It has been 140 years since the American Civil War ended slavery. (I know, a lot of you will say the war wasn't about slavery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, for simplicity sake: there was slavery before the war, there wasn't slavery after the war. O.K.?) This entire nation was torn apart. Brother literally killing brother. They sometimes fought and died in support of personal ideals and sometimes because they were caught up in the maelstrom of the great winds of war.
But America has bled and suffered over the issue of slavery. (I use issue here meaning topic as well as progeny.) The course of an entire nation as well the lives and livelihood of it's citizens were forever changed. Family bloodlines ended. Lives were cut short. Widows mourned. But a great social wrong was righted -- a lesson learned.
Now, there is a movement afoot to compensate black Americans for the slavery of their ancestors. I freely admit, I can only imagine the horrors of slavery. But I can also imagine the bloodiest period in our history that sought to correct that wrong. And a society that had to slowly overcome a national, prejudicial mind-set, grow in it's enlightenment and mature in its thinking. With growth there are growing pains. When learning there are mis-steps. With new ideas comes confusion. But eventually we grow past the pain, stand straight, walk with confidence and see things clearly.
America, as a nation, is at that point.
But does the man apologize to his former child for his early stumbling steps? That child no longer exists. The exercise is pointless because as the child learned the man was formed.
And what other wrongs were suffered in the forming of this great nation? Children working in sweat shops for pennies a day; coal miners working under dangerous conditions, living in company housing, and eating company food, only to be told on payday that they owed more than they earned. The dangerous, thankless, back breaking pain of building a transcontinental railroad.
Racial and religious prejudice was not limited to the blacks, either. The Irish and the Poles, the Italians and the Jews, and many others all had times and places in this country where they had no heat in the winter, jobs weren't available to their kind and their meager scraps of food came from either virtual slave labor, charity or theft. And they were forced to watch their loved ones die because they could not afford a doctor or the medicine.
These were the growing pains of a nation born of hardship and deprivations. A nation of people thrown together by fate. A people escaping from old lives and running towards new ones. Religious refugees, adventurers, slaves, prisoners, businessmen, and whores. All in search of the dream of freedom in a place called America.
We have a history that was at moments noble and at others shameful. But it is just that... history. We are who we are today, individually, because we live in a nation of opportunities where anyone can succeed. And our individual failures are just as likely if we can convince ourselves that our mountains are too high and our valleys too deep.
It has been seven generations since the American Civil War. It has only been four generations since my grandfather toiled twelve hours a day in a coal mine in western Pennsylvania, his lungs and sinuses and eyes forever blackened by the dust; his wife scrubbing floors for the boss's wives; his children playing in the cinders along the railroad tracks. Every dime he made he owed back to the company and the only thing that broke the cycle was the failure of the mine. But his children sought other opportunities and their children (my generation) only heard about the mines and the hopelessness of just forty years earlier. My children are college graduates with good careers and my grand children may never hear of that world.
And I believe it is an insult to the rest of America, it is intellectually specious, and culturally demeaning to the blacks of this country to single them out for reparations for past wrongs. America was built on hardship. Some of it voluntary -- most of it wasn't.
I say to those who think they are owed something -- you always will. And to those self-appointed do-gooders who think they are helping -- you aren't. If you want to help, get out of the way and watch America work.
2 comments:
None of my ancestors were in this country when their was any slavery. If my taxes would be used to pay reparations from something that none of my family was a part of then am I due a negro slave as just compensation or do I get a refund of taxes for that portion of taxes? What about the Asians, wasn't their lot the equal of the negro in this country? Yet they seemed to have gotten over it, kept thier culture, language and family together while not only assimilating into the country but also exceling. Do you think that reparation money to one group will elevate that group to a higher level when time has shown that for one reason or another they have not progressed to the level that another oppressed group has? It is much better to judge individuals as individuals and get away from lumping individual successes with group failures.
How right you are Margo about what you said about taking responsibility for yourself and your actions but the lack of popularity of that is not limited to politicians, it seems to affect the majority of people. So much easier to explain away your failures by blaming it on somebody else, that way you do not have to confront your problems and you have a built in excuse as to why you will not try to overcome them.
As for the politicians that are running this country, too many are lawyers with the natural inclination to make things as complicated and confusing as possible in order to perpetuate their field. To often the high ideals and public good and interest seem to be only a mirage that lasts only until the individual is elected.
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