Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

Over at the black-oriented web site, The Root, Terence Samuel seems to think that it’s “about damn time” that the US Senate “comes clean and seeks reconciliation” for slavery and Jim Crow. Following the US Senate’s “unanimous consent” to a resolution which “apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws”, my reaction is “don’t apologize for me!”

Even rabid apology-demanders like Mr. Samuel would probably concede that immigrants who arrived in 1850 or later were not a cause of slavery in America. In fact, throughout our early our immigration history, foreign-born Europeans rarely settled in the South and many joined the Union army. In 1850, only 2.2 million of the country’s 23 million people were foreign-born. By 1900, we had over 10 million foreign-born citizens out of a population of 76 million. Their descendants, probably representing about 15% of today’s US population, have nothing to apologize for.

About forty percent of Americans today (including me) have an ancestor who arrived in the United States at Ellis Island which operated between 1892 and 1954, obviously far after the end of slavery. Ellis Island processed an estimated 71% of immigrants into the US during its operation. So, adding immigrants who arrived during that same time period but did not come through Ellis Island, about 55% of Americans’ ancestors arrived during that 60 year period and thus had absolutely nothing to do with slavery. Furthermore, since foreign-born Europeans rarely settled in the South, those immigrants and their descendants were exceptionally unlikely to have anything to do with Jim Crow laws either.

Then there are the millions of Americans who arrived, or whose parents or grandparents arrived after Ellis Island closed – another several percent of the population. And a report by MIT from 2007 notes that about another 12 million American citizens today, or 4% of the population, are foreign-born.

In total, at least ¾ of the American population does not have any family history in the United States going back to the days of slavery and, I repeat, immigrants and their descendants were less likely to settle in the South than elsewhere and cannot be held responsible for Jim Crow laws.

Let’s say that ¼ of the American population has roots at or before the Civil War. At the time of the Civil War, the slave-holding states had in total about 31% of the US population, but only 61% of their population was free. Therefore, the South had less than 22% of the white population at the time. But less than 20% of the Southern population owned slaves, so we’re at about 4% of the population at the time of the war being slave owners. If ¼ of Americans can trace ancestry to that time (or earlier), then 1% of Americans have an ancestor who owned slaves – and even that number is probably too high.

So, Senator Apologist, don’t apologize for me. I had nothing to do with the historical wrongs to American blacks, and neither did most of the rest of us. I realize, Senator Apologist, that you don’t have the courage to point out that almost no living American has anything to apologize for when it comes to slavery and not many more are responsible for Jim Crow. Don’t pander to the race-baiting industry capitalized upon by America’s real racists like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan.

Mr. Samuel also buys into the ignorant anti-White – and to some degree anti-American – tripe that the Constitution is an inherently pro-slavery document. The Founders had two choices: Create a document which recognized the existence of the repugnant institution of slavery but which phased it out over time, or fail to create a nation and thus allow slavery to continue on for much longer. Apologists look particularly at the “three-fifths” clause in the Constitution, in which each slave was counted as three-fifths of a person, as demonstrative that blacks were considered sub-human. But the truth is that because the count was used to determine a state’s representation in Congress, it was the slave owners – who may have indeed held that view – who wanted slaves counted as whole people and anti-slavery Northerners who wanted slaves counted as zero. Counting slaves as less than whole people was a clever and sensible step toward eliminating slavery, not a method of prolonging it.

In the meantime, as most of the nation moves steadily toward color-blindness in nearly all aspects of life, it’s primarily race hustlers and politicians (and, sadly, their Supreme Court nominees) who believe the nation still has substantial racist tendencies or owes some great apology. The nation expressed their unjustified “white guilt” by electing as our president a man who would barely have gotten a second look if he were white since he, by his own admission, didn’t have enough experience to run for the office. We’re already suffering for that decision, but maybe Mr. Samuel thinks that bankrupting our children is still not a high enough price to pay for the sins of other people’s ancestors.

I would note that the Senate resolution’s statement that there is “enormous damage” remaining from slavery and Jim Crow gives people like Jackson, Sharpton, and Farrakhan ammunition to claim that any problem any American black might have is somebody else’s fault and somebody else’s responsibility. Yes, our history had, and may still have to a much smaller degree, a negative impact on the ability of American blacks to succeed. But the last thing the black community needs is people telling them not to strive for their own betterment because they’re owed something or because society is structured to prevent their improving their lives and the lives of their children. Refusing to a try is a guarantee of failure.

I suggest that American blacks should take a hard look at their devotion to the Democratic Party. It is the Republicans who fight hard in two major areas in particular which would be of tremendous benefit to lower-income blacks (and other minorities) and of little benefit to upper-middle class whites: First is school choice. If there is anything keeping blacks down in America it is the public school system. Yet, due to their utter fealty to teachers’ unions, the Democratic Party attacks school choice and competition at every turn, including sneaking a provision into the stimulus bill which killed Washington, D.C.’s school voucher program which was making a real difference for 1,700 low-income families – almost all black.

And second, although we haven’t heard much about it lately, is Social Security reform, including personal accounts. President Bush and the Republican Party did a terrible job of explaining why it’s important, but the bottom line is that Social Security taxes in large part keep poor people poor. It’s the largest tax that lower-income earners pay. It’s not inheritable, so when someone dies, the money just goes back to the government instead of a personal account which could be left to one’s children. (A spouse could take a deceased person’s Social Security benefits, but only if she gives up hers, so either way the government wins.) But because the Democrats’ main goal is to keep as much money flowing through government as possible, they demonize personal accounts to the detriment of the black population which continues to support Democrats no matter how little they actually do to improve the lives of American blacks.

If there’s any apology needed to American blacks, it’s by Democratic politicians, not by the vast majority of the rest of us. So let me be very clear: When the Senate, and soon the House, pass their resolution apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow, they’re not speaking for me.