Your Other Left: Reparations Accounting

Race mythology is big news these days.  I am a member of the human race.  Genetic difference between people with different skin tone is like that of people with different hair color.  We are all African in fact.  This is what Black Lives Matter does not know.  Now we have to talk about this bullshit.

I would like to know which of my Irish, Swiss and Italian ancestors ever owned slaves and if any did how that makes me or any other descendent of immigrants culpable for the slavery which so many Americans shed blood to end.  There is only one race.  Human solidarity.  Fuck identity politics.

Let's not include the body count preceding the the existence of the United States by African slavers and European merchants since that would be ridiculous.  You can take that up with the British, French, Turks and whichever African tribe still stands related to those barbaric villains.

Beginning in 1776: Jefferson (who married one of his slaves, who was his sister in law) tried to include abolition in the declaration, Paine and Franklin started the anti slavery society and Paine repeatedly tried to get the early presidents to fight the South Carolina delegations on slavery, from there we have 60 to 70 years of slavery in the United States before the civil war and during which time there were abolitionists, politicians, and journalists involved in fighting and breaking the law to free slaves.  In 1860 we begin a war to preserve the union over the issue of slavery and more Americans died fighting this war than in all wars combined before or since.  The war began with the election of an anti-slavery president and the idea that no new slave states could be added to the union.

I'm a major advocate for civil equality (as well as a lover of black people and culture in this country) but that is a separate issue.  The issue of reparations affects the tens of millions of immigrants and descendants to arrive in this country since 1865. It would have to include an accounting of who is related to slaves and slave owners.  It would run the risk of penalizing people who are not related to slave owners and rewarding people for nothing other than the color of their skin.  I'm not about to sit down while anybody is treated to any institutional benefits or prejudice based on anything as asinine as skin color.  You and I are the same race.  Every human being has common ancestors from Africa.  We are lucky enough to live in the most free nation on earth at a time where global poverty is 70% lower than it was in 1970.  Let's talk about something we haven't already figured out.  We are beyond this bullshit of skin color.  Now maybe we can free the slaves in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Africa.  Once we have freed the slaves I will have a Coke.