Friday, August 11, 2006

Reimbursing African-Americans for Slavery Considered

A big debate in the United States of America right now is whether or not the United States government should reimburse all African-Americans for the slavery of their ancestors. How would this be done? Very simply actually anyone who had an ancestor who was a slave would receive money.

Unfortunately in doing as we would find that many African-Americans had multiple ancestors were slaves and if they were pure African American they might have as many as 256 grandparents who were slaves.

This means if they were given $30,000 each with interest we would have to give every African-American $100 million. I do not think the US treasury can afford that. So it obviously cannot be done and how would you determine the percentage of each person who may have had slavery in our ancestry?

And come to think of it I bet I have some Roman ancestry, which may have been slaves, perhaps I also have some ancient Egyptian ancestry. And just think of all the interest I am owed? As a matter of fact you may as well just give me the Pyramids now. With a little extra investment I could make a lot of money on the tourist trade.

It is absolutely ludicrous to consider reimbursing all the African-Americans for slavery. Although philosophically it is an interesting thing to talk about and something to consider when studying American history, it simply cannot be done.

We should however review our past and understand what we went through as to not repeat it in the future. However, reimbursing present period African-Americans for the plight of their ancestors is utterly preposterous.