Where does the annual $3.3 billion we give the United Nations go? Some of it finances a UN-affiliated group that’s telling the United States it must spend countless billions more — providing “reparations” to black Americans for slavery and “racial terrorism.”
As the Washington Post reports:
This conclusion was part of a study by the United Nations’ Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a body that reports to the international organization’s High Commissioner on Human Rights. The group of experts, which includes leading human rights lawyers from around the world, presented its findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday, pointing to the continuing link between present injustices and the dark chapters of American history.
“In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report stated. “Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.”
Apparently aiming to bat 1000 at batting zero, the report also states that the “dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion amongst the US population.” Of course, “white supremacy” ideology is almost as rare as the white whale; a phenomenon of true one-percenters (if that), it’s only prominent in leftists’ minds.
What do harm American cohesion are the race-hustler lies characterizing the UN report. For example, its authors complain about “mass incarceration” of blacks, as if they’re arbitrarily rounded up. In reality, blacks commit crime at rates far greater than their 13-percent share of the population would suggest, committing more than half of all murders nationwide, for instance. Discussing why this is so is one thing; pretending it reflects Bull Connor discrimination is destructively divisive.
As for police shootings, not only are more white suspects shot every year, but studies have shown that police are more likely to shoot whites relative to the races’ different homicide rates and the rates at which they feloniously kill police, and that cops are actually more willing to shoot whites. Moreover, approximately 93 percent of black homicide victims are murdered by other blacks, and many of the rest are killed by Hispanics. Incidents of (non-Hispanic) white-on-black homicide are rare.
Now we come to the issue, slavery. Interestingly, we should wonder how much the UN focuses on contemporary slavery in, for instance, the Mideast and Africa, much if not most of which is practiced by Muslims and against blacks. (Note: As Muslim writer Nesrine Malik admitted in 2008, speaking of her Sudanese culture, “The word ‘abd, although strictly meaning ‘slave’ or ‘servant’, became synonymous with negritude [with dark skin].”)
But there’s no percentage in such focus. It doesn’t fit the hate-the-West-first narrative, and, hey, the United States is where the money is.
Lost here, however, is a simple fact. Slavery was once the accepted norm anywhere and everywhere. Yet while the West might not have been the first to practice it, this is undeniable: The West was the first to eliminate it.
The West also birthed our modern concept of human rights, which, ironically, is now used to condemn the West. Well, sooner or later you must pay for every good deed, they say.
Of course, who isn’t owed slavery reparations? Must the Egyptians pay off the Jews? Should descendants of the Spartans compensate those of the Helots? Rome took slaves from all over Europe, including the lands of some of my ancestors. Will I be getting a check?
“But, c’mon,” critics may exclaim, “Rome was ages ago!” Oh? Since antebellum trespasses are fair game, what is the statute of limitations here? An exact number, please.
Some may also point out that “Rome” (Italy) comprises very different people today than two millennia ago, as it had been invaded physically and genetically. Well, the same is true of the United States.
It’s not just that only 25 percent of Southern whites owned slaves. It’s not just that we don’t punish children for their parents’ crimes, as once was done centuries ago. It’s that it’s more than just time (many dead generations) separating victims and victimizers here. Note that many Americans’ ancestors weren’t even in the United States in the antebellum age and were of groups (Germans, Poles, and Russians in my case) never involved in the African slave trade. How are they in any way responsible for 19th-century American slavery?
There’s only one reason an onus is put on them: They have the same skin color as those antebellum American slavers. Racist much?
Note also that hundreds of years ago the aforementioned ethnic groups didn’t consider themselves “one people,” but often fought wars with each other — just as did African tribes. Yet the Left lumps all whites together (just as the white supremacists do, hmm) into one ever-guilty victimizer group.
Add to this that more than 20 percent of the United States is now Hispanic and Asian — groups immune to “white guilt” and which would be enraged at seeing their tax dollars finance reparations — and it’s clear why the idea is a political non-starter.
Some leftists will counter that it’s not “the people” responsible for reparations, but the government. Well, then talk to the Confederate States of America — which I’m sure can render payment in Confederate money.
In reality, past slavery should today be bemoaned no more than the Roman conquests of European lands. After all, were it not for slavery, American blacks (insofar as they’d even exist) would be in Africa, likely suffering privation. As late boxer Muhammad Ali put it after returning from Zaire and being asked what he thought about the continent, “Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat!”
As for the UN, it’s in no position to preach. Its Human Rights Council (formerly its “Commission on Human Rights”) has had states on it such as Cuba, Qatar, Angola, Libya, China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. But the United States is the problem? Well, yeah, because that’s where the money is.
Speaking of which, I’ll willingly offer reparations — under one condition: Since everything is being defined and gauged racially today, I’ll pay for whites’ past sins as long as I’m paid royalties for whites’ past triumphs, i.e., all the inventions, innovations, and philosophical and political advances, which have created the whole modern world.
Why not? I’m equally responsible for both.
Photo: Clipart.com
