12220: Re: 12218: Reparations; Simidor responds to Wilson (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Racine125@aol.com

<<  Is Mr. Wilson opposed to German payments to Israel as compensation for
the Holocaust, or to the Jews' return to the "Holy Land" after 2000 years of
dispossession and exile?  Why is it that the descendants of slave owners can
still enjoy the wealth accumulated during slavery, but that the descendants
of the slaves cannot reclaim some of the unpaid labor of their fore parent! >>

I think there is a difference in the two cases.  Jews held in concentration
camps and forced to work as slaves can name the companies they worked for.,
and those companies are still in business.  The money trail is traceable.  If
African-Americans, or African-Haitians, can name the companies their
foreparents worked for, if they can trace that specific wealth, then FINE!
Go for it, I will be there with bells on.  Unfortunately, the Dutch East
India Company is defunct, other businesses that used slave labor or sold
slaves are defunct.

Too often reparations for descendants of Africans degenerates into a sort of
implacable grudge against at ALL whites, and a perpetual excuse for failing
to exert oneself.  Then we hear assertions that the US government should pay,
the congregations of white majority churches should pay, and so on.
Contemporary whites, many of whom are the descendants of immigrants who came
to the USA after the end of slavery, are justifiably offended by this, since
neither they nor their foreparents had anything to do with it!

My own paternal grandmother arrived in the USA from Germany.  She was raped
on the ship on the way over, because the ship didn't have adequate security
systems in place.  On arrival, she was forced to work for below-poverty
wages, she lived in the notorious "Hell's Kitchen" area of New York City.
Her husband, my paternal grandfather, worked building hugely tall industrial
chimneys for a company that did not, at the time, use appropriate safety
equipment.  The OSHA laws hadn't been written yet!  He fell and was crippled
for life.  Is my grandmother entitled to reparations?  From whom?  How much?
She has passed on, God rest her soul, but the companies that she and her
husband worked for are still in business, the Cunard shipping lines are still
in business.  Am I entitled to reparations from them?  How much?

You know what my family did about it?  They formed the irreversible intention
to get out of poverty!  My father went to college at night for eight long
years, while working full time during the day, to get his degree.  My uncle
started his own business, and sixteen hours was a short work day.  He ended
his career a millionaire - Clark lifts, those forklifts you see in factories
and warehouses, are named after my uncle's mother-in-law, Mrs. Clark.

The result is that I and my brother enjoyed a comfortable standard of living,
we had good medical and dental care, we went to good schools.  We both
started working informally very young, and by age fourteen, the youngest we
could be and have a work permit, we entered the work force.  My first job was
cleaning rooms in a hotel.  I worked all the way through high school, and
then I put myself through the University of Massachusetts up to the level of
a Master's degree.  That was the way to succeed - not sitting around wailing
that the abuse visited on my grandparents condemned me to a life of
deprivation and misery!

Opportunities are more limited in Haiti, but they are not non-existant.  My
nearest neighbor in Jacmel was born into the same poverty as the majority of
Haitians, but he decided very young that he was going to win at the game of
life.  You know what he did?  He bought a dozen baby chicks and a measure of
cornmeal.  They chickens grew, they made more chicks, they grew too.  His
flock multiplied, until he sold them all and bought a mother goat.  She had
kids, the kids had kids, until he sold them all and bought two mother pigs.
They had piglets, and so on, until he sold most of them and bought a cow.
That one cow and her first two female calves gave him a dozen cows!  It
wasn't easy - until now this man works from four in the morning until eight
at night, and then goes out at midnight to check on his animals, since
thieves have stolen quite a few of them over the years.  Just this past week
his biggest sow pig was stolen.  He's tired of raising animals for other
people to steal, so the next thing he is doing is going into partnership with
me!  We have bought a motorcycle to learn the taxi business, we are soon to
buy about five more when he sells a few cows.  I will match his investment
50-50, and he will be responsible for choosing the drivers, locking up the
motorcycles at night and putting them out again in the morning.  Motorcyle
taxis rent for 200 gourdes a day in Jacmel.  Do the math - five times 200
gourds is one thousand gourdes a day, times six days a week makes six
thousand gourdes a week, which at the present rate of exchange is $230 US a
week!  And all of this from a dozen baby chicks and a lot of sweat.  At that
rate we can buy another motorcycle every month (they go for about $1000 US),
until we have ten - and then twenty!  Then we will expand to Cayes Jacmel,
then Peridot.  Why not?  That is the way to succeed, that is the way to
redeem oneself out of poverty.

Here in the USA anyone who wants to go to college, and has the brains, can do
so.  You might have to borrow money, you might work like an ox in yoke, but
it is not impossible for anyone with the motivation.  Likewise starting a
business - I remember one Haitian man who passed through Krome Detention
Center, came out with about 25 cents in his pocket, and started to work
picking oranges.  He realized that the labor contractor, that is, the man or
woman driving the bus around in the morning picking up workers and delivering
them to the orange groves, made more money than he did.  So he saved his
pennies, kept his nose clean, and finally made a down payment on a used van,
which he used to bring his fellow orange pickers to work.  He didn't sit in
the shade like other contractors, either, he picked right alongside his
workers, just like he did before he bought the van.  He built up his bank
account.  He got credit, he bought another van.  His income increased, and so
on and so on.  Within one year, this man was pulling down forty thousand
dollars a year.  That was the way for him to succeed!

Of course, despite his economic success, if he were able to show that his
particular ancestors were enslaved by a particular company, if he could trace
that wealth, of course he would be entitled to sue for it!  But all this
focus on "reparations" ignores the fact that opportunities for economic
development exist right now, and should be used if people want to improve
their living standards.

Peace and love,

Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen

"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
     Haitian Proverb

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