<-The Twenty-One Point Scale |Main|Dean's Cup Picnic->

Of Evil and Reparations

September 28, 2006 9:07 PM

ow, I have always maintained that, in the world, good and evil are real, objective things. Sometimes, it's hard to defend that position because the real world makes it hard to apply the categories "good" and "bad" sometimes. However, there are several instances in which those categories can be applied fairly easily. The clearest available examples fall into the category of "evil." For example, the Holocaust was evil. I was recently reminded of that fact when two siblings were reunited after being separated by the Holocaust 65 years ago. I'm an only child, but I see the bond that exists between my mom and her sister, and I can't imagine what it must be like to assume that your sibling is dead, only to discover that they're alive and you've missed 65 years of their life. I think the fact that we live in a world where this kind of stuff happens is proof-positive that there is evil in our world.

Further proof can be found in the fact that forced female circumcision exists. That concept repulses me so much I won't dwell on it.

The third undeniable example of evil that I can think of is slavery. I don't know what the people of the American 17th Century were thinking, but I can see no possible way to justify enslaving an entire race, and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.

Acknowledging that slavery is evil and was a horrible, real thing that happened right here in our country is one thing. Demanding reparations 140 years after the practice was officially ended is another. Aside from the various legal obstacles to these plaintiffs' recovery (e.g., lack of standing, statute of limitations), the fact of the matter is that no living American has ever been a slave. It is simply asinine to ask to be compensated for a harm that you have never suffered.

Yes, these plaintiffs' ancestors were slaves. And, yes, that's an evil thing. But the people alive in America today cannot be held responsible for the damage that their great-great-grandparents inflicted. At least, I thought that's how things worked.

What's worse is that these plaintiffs aren't even trying to recover from individuals or the government. They're trying to recover from corporations that existed at the time and contributed in some way to the perpetuation of slavery. I just don't see how this claim can possibly be upheld. It's absurd to argue that a present-day corporation should be held responsible for something it (or its corporate ancestor) did over 150 years ago. If a corporation can be held responsible today for the actions of its officials hundreds of years ago, how could any corporation that's been around for any significant period of time possibly go on?

Look, the Zildjian cymbal company is one of the oldest continuously operated companies in the world, having been founded in the early 1600s in Istanbul. I am sure that in the intervening 400 years, it has engaged in at least some intentional, or at least negligent, wrongdoing. Does that mean that if I can prove that I'm a descendant of one of the victims of that wrongdoing I should be able to sue today for inflation-adjusted money? Fuck no.

The plaintiffs' basic assertion - that black people are still suffering the after-effects of slavery today - may or may not be valid. But such a general, speculative, contentious assertion is hardly enough to warrant legal liability on the part of these corporations, the government, or anyone else. More importantly, it's not enough to build a case that these defendants are in any way "morally liable."

To believe otherwise is to say that I should go to jail if my mom killed someone. And that's just stupid.



8 Comments


tRJ said:

I don't know what the people of the American 17th Century were thinking, but I can see no possible way to justify enslaving an entire race...

To be fair, it should read "I don't know what the whole world, including Africa, was thinking." America didn't invent slavery. Arabs were feeding the slave trade before we even had a colonial settlement.

And it's not like the White Man rode down and rounded up Africans. There were actual Africans—their own people—forcing them into slavery. And we were the end user.

And I think it's to our tremendous credit that in a very short amount of time—less than 150 years—we abolished slavery. We bought into an existing system and ultimately decided that system was wrong.

That said, I agree with you.

September 29, 2006 8:21 AM



Lauren said:

Just to clarify: the Arabs didn't invent slavery either. It goes back much further than that, at least to the Egyptians, if not further.

That said, I also agree with him and you.

September 29, 2006 10:15 AM



TheExpat said:

I am an post-egyptian-arab-crackerasscracker-half-alien-half-man whose ancestors fucked the monkey and enslaved their progeny millenia before any of us were born. From my perspective, demanding reparations is not only ludicrous, but darn-near impossible.

That said, I agree with you, him, and her.

September 29, 2006 10:37 AM



Ismael Tapia II said:

tRJ, Lauren, TheExpat,
My point was merely that, whatever the history of slavery in general, the Americans in the 17th Century, for all their talk of freedom and whatnot, still signed on to the notion that we could enslave a whole race. I didn't mean to imply that the Americans had invented the idea.

September 29, 2006 12:29 PM



jbob said:

Your mom killed someone?

October 2, 2006 7:00 AM



Digger said:

Hats off to whoever wrote this up and potsed it.

July 10, 2011 7:36 AM









Leave a comment


Type the characters you see in the picture above.