LET'S just get one thing straight: I am not fighting for the East Coast, I am not anti-West Coast. I have not joined some bi-coastal war. California just aggravates me like no other state in America. Actually, maybe it's just the state's politics that I find so maddening. For instance, some of their school districts did away with the Valedictorian and Salutatorian honors because competition just isn't nice. Then, Citrus College allowed a professor to stay on board after she forced her English students to write opposition leaders of the War on Iraq and failed those who refused. And now, in possibly their greatest show of stupidity, the Los Angles City Council has unanimously voted to draft an ordinance that would force companies that conduct business with the city to disclose whether they have ever profited off of slavery. The ordinance is one of so little merit, and so much idiocy and lunacy that it never should have even been brought up in chambers.
Quite frankly, what is such an ordinance going to do? According to Los Angeles councilman Nate Holden the "information will help when reparations seekers head down the road toward financial restitution, whether directly to descendants of slaves or to the black community in general ("L.A. Law One More Tool for Slavery Reparations," May 31, foxnews.com)" Obviously I missed when City Councils' jobs changed from actually running a city to assisting in not-yet-formed frivolous lawsuits.
That is all reparations really are -- a frivolous lawsuit. Yes, slavery was awful. Yes, slavery was a crime against humanity that never should have happened. However, our country has taken care of that. Slavery is dead and gone, civil rights have been intact for almost 50 years now. No, that's not a long time. Mistakes were made, but they have now been corrected and an African-American person in America can do whatever they want. But a couple lousy bucks to a man in 2003 certainly do not soothe the pain of a slave of 1853.
Some might argue that the ramifications of slavery still resonate in America today -- that institutional slavery and prejudice is common place. Thus the need for reparations. Take a good look around. Africans-Americans are making positive impacts in every facet of American life. In fact, two of the most powerful people in the country -- Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell -- are African-American. Our wealthiest entertainer, Oprah Winfrey, is black. African-Americans grace the cover of magazines, control board rooms, and write best sellers. That doesn't sound like slavery and repression, does it?
More shocking though than the Council's actual approach to helping with the poorly planned reparations is perhaps one councilman's assertion that the money go to "descendants or to the black community in general." The black community in general? He is actually suggesting that we take hard-earned tax money and give it to people simply for the color of their skin. The idea of reparations in general is tough to swallow -- but this is just ludicrous. Our government should be, and for the most part is, color-blind. Awarding a certain group of people simply because of their ethnicity builds more color barriers and does absolutely nothing to help race relations in our great country. Race relations our never helped by racism.
Furthermore, why is it only the black community who should be given monetary compensation for atrocities of the past? Let's give all those with a little Irish running through their veins money for the anti-Irish laws and hiring practices of the early 1990's. Anyone who's truly a native Hawaiian deserves a little cash -- their whole country was taken from them and turned into just another American state. Not to mention the Native Americans -- the first settlers took their land, moved their people and now they have nothing but a few scattered reservations. Why don't these ethnic groups deserve reparations? If the Los Angeles City Council wants to be fair, and not discriminatory, they will make their city companies disclose who ever took land from Indians, who refused to hire Irishmen, and so on.
They aren't doing that, and instead are simply calling on companies to reveal truths about one specific act. This is blatant discrimination disguised as progress. Also, look at all those that such disclosures and possible reparations hurt. Taxpayers will suffer -- and not just those whose great-great-great-great grandfathers owned slaves. No, new immigrants will suffer for actions that occurred while their families were still farmers in Asia, businessmen in the Middle East, or politicians in South America. The son should never suffer for the sins of the father, and especially not for a father they never had.
It's sad that this is what the Los Angeles City Council thinks it can do to improve the welfare of the black community. Maybe if they took a little less time with worthless issues and focused on, gee, I don't know -- the educational system and the city's crime rate -- they would actually be making a difference in the lives of African-Americans. Then again, I have never known the California government to get anything right the first time around.
(Maggie Bowden is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at mbowden@cavalierdaily.com.)
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