I hear a lot lately about racism. That word figures prominently in what passes for analysis of the current political scene. Racism. Everybody who stands in certain positions relative to politics right now is accused of racism, and everybody who stands in certain other positions is presumed to be entitled to be angry about racial insults dating back to the era of slavery in the US.
Well, my question is this: if it is reasonable to say that the black people in the US today have every right to be outraged over the history of slavery and that they should be compensated and accommodated because their ancestors were for a time slaves, then where does it stop? My question is, since Angles, the ancestors of the English-speaking people who colonized the New World in the seventeenth century, were enslaved for generations by Roman citizens, isn’t it reasonable to say that the white people in this country who can be verified to be descendants of slaves have a right to be angry and outraged by that history? Is it not reasonable to say that anybody who can prove he or she is descended from a slave ought to have the right to be outraged by just about anything anyone else says? Shouldn’t all the people in the US get to work tracing their ancestry to find out if they have the right to outrage, compensation and accommodation due to slavery or perhaps some other horror we have not yet identified?
I think so. I really believe that we have not yet done enough to raise the consciousness of people about the way they have been demeaned and debased and oppressed and wounded by history. We must do more. I think it is high time that we raised the consciousness of the white people of this country to uncover all the terrible wrongs done to them by the Romans in the past and by their own countrymen/countrywomen (let’s keep the politicalspeak gender conscious) in merry old England and so forth. There have been a lot of wrongs done to a lot of people, and we are all descended from some of those people. Let’s get out all that dirty laundry and air it right now. It is time to drag out the truth of racism and slavery and bad language and disrespect and get it all out where we can view it non-stop.
While we are at it, let’s determine which countries in the UN we ought to charge with high crimes because of these outrages. Never mind that they happened anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years ago. A wrong is a wrong, and it must be paid for. The passage of time only deepens the insult and the wounds. Let’s go to the UN with our list of demands and start applying pressure to obtain reparations from the descendants of the oppressors to the descendants of the oppressed. I already know that Italy will owe us huge amounts of money due to all those Angle slaves, and there are countries in Africa who may be bankrupt after they pay reparations to the descendants of people they enslaved, many of which slaves they then sold without a moment’s thought to Portuguese slave traders for eventual sale in the US.
If we get started right now, we should be able to build a list of victims in the US whose ancestors were enslaved by somebody at some time within just a few months. If we do a really good job, we might be able to find slave ancestors for just about everyone. Then we could simply tell the UN that as a matter of justice and fairness to all, we will simply withhold the amount of US contributions to the UN up to the amount of reparations our people are due, and that should put an end to our UN contributions for at least a hundred years. That act, all by itself, ought to help world peace.
Don’t you think so?
