They want "Reparations"? Give them Repatriation!

I have yet to understand the continued popularity of the so-called “slave reparations” movement, in the news yet again:

CHICAGO - Lawyers for slave descendants asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to revive a landmark reparations case that demands 17 of the nation’s insurers and banks publicize and pay for their roles in the country’s slave trade.

The case, which names Wall Street behemoths JP Morgan Chase & Co., Aetna Inc., Bank of America, Lehman Brothers and others, says the companies’ predecessors issued loans to slave owners and, in some cases, owned, insured and transported slaves — all at a financial profit that helped ensure their success today.

“We were left in poverty. My family’s hardship and free labor was not in vain,” said Antoinette Harrell, a genealogist from Kentwood, La. who clutched raw cotton as she spoke inside federal court Wednesday.

(Note: Bank of America, while it may have acquired older banks who were involved in the slave trade, was founded long after the abolition of slavery, by A.P. Gianinni, an Italian immigrant! J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers and the Chase Manhattan Bank created their financial empires long after slavery as well; perhaps they acquired failed Southern banks, but they can hardly be said to have been involved in the slave trade.)

(and how much of that slavery profit was destroyed by the Civil War? Has dear Ms. Harrell ever heard of Sherman's March? Of course not....)

Actually, I take that back. I DO understand the whole reparation movement. It's a way for the America-haters and the moral equivalency crowd (the leftist people who when presented with evidence of the Soviet gulags and mass executions, would reply "and in America, you lynch Negroes") to get their fifteen minutes of fame again.

Meanwhile, over at Jeff Goldstein's all around awesome Protein Wisdom site, Darleen Click points out how her ancestors, along with many thousands of other whites, where "indentured servants", which esentially meant slaves for their lifetimes, which were often just as Hobbes put it, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

You are lucky to be here, Darleen. I believe indentured bond servants had lower survival rates than regular slaves. People have a tendency to treat permanent property better than rental property.

David Horowitz also has a very good list of reasons why reparations are a bad idea.

The problem with Mr. Horowitz's reasoning is that it is just that, a reasoned argument to miserable people who cannot be reasoned with. They demand viscerally "gimmie gimmie gimmie", to which I would reply, just as viscerally, "OK, if you hate it here so much, go back to Africa. If it were up to me, I'd have you deported. How do you like that?"

Yes, I would pay Antoinette Harrell and her ilk. Not “reparation” money, but REPATRIATION money. We could haggle over the price, I like $40,000 myself, plus a one way ticket to Cape Town. ("Forty Acres And A Mule” becomes “Forty Thousand And An Airplane Ride.” It would buy a lot of South African rand, too).

In return, I expect Antoinette Harrell and her ilk to leave this country, and never come back, ever.

I pick South Africa because I think Ms. Harrell would like the new regime there quite well, it is industrialized, mostly English speaking, and above all, it is as far away from these United States as she can go.

Remember Liberia? South Africa is more modern and even further away.

If they hate America so much and were “stolen from Mother Africa”, send them back!

(I know, a misnomer, since their ancestors were *not* stolen, they were *traded*, from other black Africans or Arab Muslims, for gold, guns, liquor or other trinkets.)

Of course, the mealy-mouthed liberal Demunist Commiecrats will call this response “racist”, but hearing that charge coming from / about Farrakhanesque people (or fellow travelers like Randall Robinson), who ooze anti-Asian, anti-Semitic, and anti-White hatred, just makes me laugh.