[cure-news] The GOP's Next (Black) Idea?: Trading slavery reparations for affirmative action

[Ida Hakim]

The GOP's Next (Black) Idea?
By Casey Lartigue, Jr. | TheRoot.com

March 3, 2008--Concerned that Republicans haven't tried hard enough to 
reach out to black voters, Bruce Bartlett, a former advisor to President 
Ronald Reagan and treasury official under President George H. W. Bush, 
suggests a shocker: Republicans should come out in favor of reparations 
for slavery.

Republicans for reparations? Bartlett makes the suggestion in Wrong on 
Race, an expose on the "hidden" racist history of the Democratic Party. 
Bartlett skewers former Democratic presidents such as Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson for bigotry and cowardice on the issue of 
race and assails a number of Democratic senators, representatives and 
governors for their do-or-die defense of slavery and Jim Crow.

Skipping ahead to today, Bartlett writes that black voters are taken for 
granted by Democrats and have been written off by Republicans. He argues 
that blacks would benefit from having the two parties compete for their 
votes.

But Republicans for reparations?

The recommendation has already met resistance?from black commentators. 
Columnist and blogger La Shawn Barber has dismissed the suggestion as 
"race pandering" for votes. Manhattan Institute scholar John McWhorter 
has said that blacks are likely to react "indignantly" to Bartlett's 
"bribe" (reparations would be offered in exchange for ending affirmative 
action). Robert A. George of the New York Post calls Bartlett's idea 
"woefully na?ve."

To some extent, they are all correct. Bartlett's offer of a deal?blacks 
giving up affirmative action in exchange for reparations?smacks of 
political opportunism. But Bartlett, the former party insider, insists 
that Republicans must try something different. Republican outreach, 
search for common ground on issues, highlighting the historical 
accomplishments of the Party of Lincoln and the Radical Republicans, and 
other tactics have yet to yield results. President Bush barely broke 
single digits among black voters in 2004.

Bartlett argues that the "anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party 
has become dominant, thus further pushing Hispanics into the Democratic 
Party." Republicans are going to have to find new voters somewhere?and 
Bartlett says that is overlooked and ignored black voters.

Reparations for slavery may be a good political strategy for 
Republicans. It may even be a good time to remind black Americans that 
it was Republicans who first proposed reparations for freed slaves. But 
are reparations for slavery a good idea for blacks? Juan Williams argues 
persuasively in his book Enough that reparations for slavery are a 
"mirage" and "self-indulgent waste of time" that diverts attention from 
pressing issues of today. TV host Tony Brown has called reparations a "fad."

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson asks in his book Scam, "Instead of reparations, 
how about a free ticket to Africa?" Slavery, which was legal at the 
time, happened so long ago that it makes no sense to compensate blacks 
for injustices committed several generations ago. As a practical matter 
it will be too difficult to determine who really "deserves" reparations 
(will we be back at the "one-drop" rule to determine who is "really" 
black?). Then, there is a problem with expecting people alive today to 
pay for sins committed by people more than 140 years ago.

While I oppose widespread reparations for slavery, I have heard two 
different arguments for forms of reparations that are, at least, 
intriguing. One variation comes from Jonathan Rauch who has argued that 
blacks deserve reparations?but not for slavery. The actual victims of 
Jim Crow would be given reparations. Rauch writes that a black person 
who was forced to attend an all-black school during Jim Crow could make 
the case that government policy had harmed his chances in life.

That has the potential to get messy, as people then must go through the 
steps of documenting which schools they attended 5 or 6 decades ago and 
how they were harmed. Plus, the actual perps?as Bartlett might point 
out, Democratic officials?are either too old or feeble to be punished today.

A second idea that gets around that problem was championed by Alan Keyes 
a few years ago when he was running against Barack Obama for the senate. 
Keyes recommended that black Americans should be allowed to live 
tax-free for a generation or two "in order to encourage business 
ownership, create jobs and support the development of strong economic 
foundations for working families." I see a few problems with that, too. 
One, President Bush's latest budget proposal is more than $3 trillion. 
To support it, the government will need more, not fewer, taxpayers. 
Secondly, black Americans -- who are more likely to be supportive of 
tax-and-spend Democrats -- would have even less of a reason to oppose 
proposals for increased government spending if they aren't paying taxes.

I've been saying for years that I cash any and all checks with my name 
on them, but that I could never bring myself to go down to a Federal 
Reparations Office to pick up a slavery reparations check. But being 
able to live tax-free, as suggested by Keyes? If you want to call it 
reparations, that's fine with me. Instead of getting a gift as a result 
of what happened to my ancestors, I could at least argue that the 
government was just letting me keep more of the money I had earned with 
my own labor.

By proposing reparations, Bartlett is harking back to a proud time in 
Republican history and a shameful time for the Democratic Party. After 
all, it was Republicans who, in 1867, put forth legislation putting 
aside forty acres of land for black Americans--legislation that was 
opposed by the Democratic Party. More than 140 years and several 
generations later, it may be that the Republican Party missed its chance 
to give reparations to blacks.

Casey Lartigue, Jr. is an education consultant based in Virginia.
>From hakimida at reparationsthecure.org  Fri Mar  7 13:33:16 2008
From: hakimida at reparationsthecure.org (Ida Hakim)
Date: Fri Mar  7 13:33:21 2008
Subject: [cure-news] U.N. panel calls for U.S. death penalty moratorium
Message-ID: <47D1987C.3000105 at reparationsthecure.org>


U.N. panel calls for U.S. death penalty moratorium
Fri Mar 7, 2008 11:13am EST
By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States should impose a death penalty 
moratorium and stop sentencing young offenders to life in prison until 
it can root out racial bias from its justice system, a United Nations 
panel said on Friday.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also called on 
Washington to end the racial profiling of Americans of Arab, Muslim and 
South Asian descent, and to ensure immigrants and non-nationals in the 
country are not mistreated.

The 18 independent experts expressed concern that racial minorities in 
the United States were more likely to be sentenced to death, or to life 
without parole as juveniles, than whites.

They recommended that the United States "discontinue the use of life 
sentence without parole against persons under the age of 18 at the time 
the offence was committed, and review the situation of persons already 
serving such sentences."

Their report also urged Washington to "adopt all necessary measures, 
including a moratorium, to ensure that the death penalty is not imposed 
as a result of racial bias on the part of prosecutors, judges, juries 
and lawyers."

The United States last month defended its record before the watchdog, 
which monitors compliance with an international treaty that Washington 
ratified in 1994.

The U.S. delegation said that big strides have been made to tackle 
disparities in housing, education, jobs, and health care in the country 
where African-Americans were kept as slaves until the mid-19th century. 
Laws have also been enacted to fight hate crimes in America, the 
delegation said.

U.S. officials have investigated some 800 racially motivated incidents 
against people perceived to be Arab, Muslim, Sikh or South Asian since 
the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

In its conclusions on the United States, the committee said that U.S. 
efforts to prevent new attacks threatened to worsen discrimination.

"Measures taken in the fight against terrorism must not discriminate, in 
purpose or effect, on the grounds of race, color, or national or ethnic 
origin," it said.

Detainees, many of whom are held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military 
base in Cuba, must be accorded basic human rights and legal protections, 
the body said.

"The committee further requests (the United States) to ensure that 
non-citizens detained or arrested in the fight against terrorism are 
effectively protected by domestic law, in compliance with international 
human rights, refugee and humanitarian law," it said.

The U.N. body, whose findings are not legally binding, also asked the 
United States to provide more information on issues such as the status 
of refugees, asylum-seekers, undocumented migrant workers and 
trafficking victims under U.S. law.

It asked Washington to report back in a year on progress made in areas 
of concern including racial profiling and the death penalty.