I Deserve Reparations, Too

All of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors. 

― Damon Knight

The current unrest has sparked renewed talk of cash reparations to slaves' descendants.

Gallup, not surprisingly, reports that, while three of four Black Americans support cash reparations, two of three White Americans do not.

I'm one of the minority of White Americans who support cash reparations―with a proviso. It goes as follows: Should the federal government award cash reparations to slaves' descendants, it must also award them to wage-slaves' descendants.

Of course, Americans descended from immigrants who arrived on these shores after 1940―when wage-slavery ended―will object; and so will descendants of builders, bankers, farmers, merchants and industrialists.

Tough rocks.

I justify my the proviso as follows:

• Activists favoring cash reparations grant special status to slaves, as opposed to wage-slaves; but history shows that any differences between the two kinds of servitude were trivial. History in fact shows that wage-slaves suffered privations, injustices and outrages just as heinous as those inflicted on slaves.
  
  
• Cash reparations, activists say, are meant to redress slavery, not race; so in fairness they should be paid to all descendants of slaves―including wage-slaves―regardless of race.

At this point, the activist would cry, Wait, cash reparations aren't meant to redress slavery so much as present-day inequities that can be traced to trauma―400 years of it. Trauma due to slavery and trauma due to injustice (segregation, discrimination, redlining, lynching, police brutality, etc.).

If that's the activist's argument―and it is―then cash reparations aren't meant to compensate only for slavery, but for systemic racism. But if that's true, doesn't every Black American deserve cash reparations, even one, say, fresh off the boat from Cameroon? To deny that individual payments is in effect to say, "cash reparations are only for slaves' descendants; no other Blacks need apply."

Which loops us back to the simpler claim, that cash reparations are meant to redress an historical event, slavery. And I would insist we add wage-slavery.

So who were these 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century wage-slaves I mention? 

Largely my forebears, the Irish.

Irishmen, working for slave-wages, built America's infrastructure. We owe their descendants cash reparations.

It's as clear as day, as these three examples will tell you:

• From 1828 to 1850, Irishmen dug the C&O Canal, a 200-mile waterway between Washington, DC, and Cumberland, Maryland. Equipped with nothing more than shovels and picks, they spent 15 hours a day moving dirt, while mired waist-deep in cold, muddy water. Hunger, disease, maiming and death shadowed them, and employers routinely shorted their wages―or paid none at all.
  
  
• From 1850 to 1856, Irishmen laid the 700-mile Illinois Central Railroad. They dug out the roadbed, built up the ballast, put down the cross-ties, and laid, bolted and spiked the iron rails―every mile of the way―by hand. If injury or cholera didn't kill them, the same men continued for 30 more years to lay track through the adjoining states of Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado.

• From 1919 to 1927, Irishmen dug the Holland Tunnel, the one an a half-mile underwater tube connecting New York and Jersey City. Thousands of them cut rock for long hours in dark, pressurized chambers built on the bed of the Hudson River. Over 500 men got the bends and 13 perished from overwork, one of my ancestors among them.

If, as activists claim, America's wealth was built on the backs of Black slaves, its infrastructure was built on the backs of the Irish.

I rest my case―and eagerly await my first check.

Postscript: If your forebears were German, Swedish, Polish, Italian or Chinese laborers here in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, you deserve cash reparations as well. But you'll have to stand in line behind me.

Murder Most Foul

It is what it is and it’s murder most foul.

― Bob Dylan

I'm listening to Bob Dylan's new album and remembering the trauma that gripped most Boomers and their parents when JFK was assassinated.

Placed alongside successors, JFK was incomparable. Reagan, Clinton and Obama came close, but none was as influential as JFK.

JFK was young and lithesome; a wounded combat veteran and war hero; a dashing, thoughtful, cultured, funny and articulate politico; someone you could idolize.

The week after the president died, I recall, my dyed-in-the-wool Democrat father bought a life-size bust of JFK and put it on the mantel in our living room, where it sat for 30 years.

JFK not only steered us safely through near-Armageddon, but taught American men important lessons by example, such as why they should speed-read (they'll be better informed); why they should go hatless (they'll stand out from the crowd); how to look chic while sitting (sit in a rocking chair); who's the best contemporary fictional character (James Bond); and how to love your country (volunteer for pubic service).

And then there was Jackie. 

She taught American women by example, too. Jackie taught them to wear suits and pillbox hats; to decorate their homes with antiques; to learn foreign languages and attend concerts and plays; to devote themselves to their children's education and―most memorably of all―to conduct oneself with dignity and aplomb, no matter how foul the deck.

Yoda Wasn't Woke

The public wants work which flatters its illusions.

― Gustave Flaubert 

While local governments assist, privileged Whites around the country are helping angry Blacks destroy and deface public sculptures.

A kid endorsing the desecration commented on my Facebook stream, "Time to write our own history."

The youth in me agrees; the codger cringes. 

"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance," Camus said. "Good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."

I'm noticing a lot of ignorance.

For example, in San Francisco this week, protesters toppled statues of Francis Scott Key and Ulysses Grant. 

History tells us Key held slaves; Grant did not. In fact, Grant played a part in slaves' emancipation; a bit part, anyway.

At this rate, the next statues in San Francisco to come down will be those of Lincoln, Gandhi, Cervantes, Beethoven, Tony Bennett and Harvey Milk. And, oh―lest we forget―Yoda. 

It seems Yoda wasn't woke.

On the East Coast this week, in Washington, DC, protesters toppled the statue of Albert Pike and attempted to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson (until police pepper-sprayed them).

While disquieting, these acts make sense.

Pike―although an advocate for Native American rights―was a racist Know-Nothing and unreconstructed Confederate. Jackson was a slaveholder and advocate for the expulsion of Native Americans.

And in New York City, the government announced it will remove a statue of Teddy Roosevelt, another disquieting act that makes sense.

The statue depicts Roosevelt on horseback, flanked by two guides, one Native American, the other Black. Although he advocated for Native American rights and owned no slaves―he was four the year the Emancipation Proclamation was issued―Roosevelt indeed was a racist.

As great-grandson Teddy Roosevelt IV eloquently said, “The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice."

But, sorry, I prize many "relics of another age"―even many that trigger. 

I'd no sooner topple Francis, Ulysses, Albert, Andrew or Teddy than I'd topple Lady Liberty―even though she stands for sexism, industrialism, imperialism, anthropocentrism, colonialism and capitalism.

Call me an antiquarian, but I like civilization.

Walking Pickett's Charge

You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality.

— Malcolm X

I think every American should do two things:

• Read Elie Weisel's Night and
  
  
• Walk the route of Pickett's Charge

The site of Pickett's Charge is a solemn, savage, sorrowful space. Nearly 2,000 soldiers perished there, shredded by shrapnel, pierced by Minié balls, stabbed by bayonets or brained by rifle butts; another 4,500 were wounded.

The point of it is: that slavery's perpetrators fought and lost; that history has chosen sides; and that all men are created equal, regardless of race, sex, gender identity, religion, citizenship or criminal history. Period. Done. Finito.

When you walk that green mile between Seminary and Cemetery Ridge, you enter a space where time itself stops or, as William Faulkner observed, "Yesterday today and tomorrow are Is: Indivisible."

My experience of walking Pickett's Charge was one for the books.

The walk took place as the climax of a three-day guided tour of Gettysburg with historian Ed Bearss (pronounced "Barz").

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The sky had turned ominous around noon, as banks of thunderheads and a lashing rain began to sweep from the west across our little corner of Pennsylvania.

When the Greyhound pulled up to Seminary Ridge, Bearss gave us nerdy buffs a choice: we could remain in safety on the bus, or follow him in the downpour, thunder and lightning, and cross the meadow where Pickett's Charge took place.

Only five of us followed. 

Ed Bearss

I'm a veritable chicken when it comes to lightning and feared I'd wind up a "sudden fried" chicken. But after five nights of watching him recently on Ken Burns' "The Civil War," I knew I couldn't miss my chance to walk the Confederates' famous route with Ed Bearss.

Only when you're on foot can you see, from the lay of the land, why Robert E. Lee believed his army had an opportunity to smash the Northern line—and why, in reality, Lee never had a jot of opportunity. The field looks flat and placid from afar, but in fact is rife with obstacles and traps; and the last quarter-mile is straight uphill—the worst kind of position to assault. The Confederate charge was doomed before its start. 

Midway across the field, the gloom turned suddenly to pitch-black and lighting bolts began to crash all around us. While I was wondering whether I'd put on clean underwear, Bearss kept advancing, lecturing nonstop and pointing out the sights with his swagger stick, like we were alone at night in a museum. At one moment, a waterlogged band of cavalry reenactors trotted out of the dark, stopped before us, and merrily saluted Corporal Bearss (a former Marine). 

It was surreal.

In an interview, videotaped in 1986 for his PBS documentary, Ken Burns asked Ed Bearss why anyone should care to visit a battlefield like Gettysburg.

Bearss answered, "Even if a person is a latecomer to the United States, these sights are close to them: they can feel them. Many of the lessons—particularly the crisis of our time over integration—would have been much more serious, if the Civil War had not happened. The Civil War showed the supremacy of a central government."

I wish every flag-toting cracker who's unhinged by the "13 percent's" demand to enjoy the rights afforded by the law of the land would walk the route of Pickett's Charge.

He'd learn without doubt his cause was lost.

NOTE: What better day than Juneteenth to plan your visit to Gettysburg? The park reopens next week.

UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 16, 2020: Ed Bearss passed away at the age of 97 today. RIP.

Apples

The apple never falls far from the tree

— German proverb

Eric kills endangered animals for sport at taxpayers' expense.

Donald, Jr. raises millions for kids with cancer and pockets it.

Barron—regally named—depends on blackmail to avoid disinheritance.

These are our current president's sons.

The sons of another wealthy White House occupant, FDR, took far different paths when the nation entered World War II.

Jimmy enlisted as a captain in the Marine Corps and fought in the Pacific as a commando, earning the Navy Cross and the Silver Star. Newspapers called him the “fighting guy." He also served as a troop instructor and an intelligence officer. He served after the war in the reserves, retiring at the rank of Brigadier General.

Elliott, at first deemed 4-F, wangled a desk job in the Army Air Force, but quickly proved himself capable of flying photographic reconnaissance missions, leading the recon operations before D-Day and during the Battle of the Bulge. He flew over 300 missions during the war, was wounded twice, and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. He left service at the rank of Brigadier General.

Antique cup owned by FDR, Jr.
now in this blogger's collection

Franklin, Jr. served in ROTC at Harvard for four years before entering active duty as a Navy ensign. He participated at-sea in the North Africa campaign and the invasion of Sicily and received a Silver Star and Purple Heart. In March 1944, FDR, Jr. was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and took command of a destroyer escort in the Pacific that fought in the Philippines, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima campaigns. Upon his discharge from the Navy, he entered politics, serving as a US Congressman (and collecting antique porcelain).

John joined the Navy in 1941, applying for sea duty a year later. Hearing of his son’s application, FDR ordered that the request be denied. But John persevered and wound up on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific, where he earned a Bronze star and a promotion to Lieutenant Commander. When he learned of his father’s death in April 1945, John chose to remain at his post, rather than going home for the funeral. After the war, John continued his service in the reserves.

Read more about FDR's sons' warfighting experiences.

"June Apple" by Robert Francis James. Oil on canvas board.