There has been a cry for restitution payments to Blacks because neither they nor their ancestors have endured slavery at the hands of white Americans in the distant past, nearly 200 years ago. There are so many problems with this idea it’s hard where to start. First, 200 years is longer than any mortal lifetime. No black has experienced slavery in modern American history. Indeed, no white enslaver or their descendants can be located to pay restitution for their ancestors. If you could provide the link. Suppose you can’t prove all the links between all the blacks and the original enslavers. In that case, white Americans are paying blacks their hard-earned money for no reason. If you think there’s ill will and racism now, imagine the hatred and violence if whites are forced to pay non-working blacks.
To reconcile with the blacks, you must first provide restitution for the 110,100 Union lives lost fighting to free the blacks. Frankly, the whole idea of restitution is a silly political stunt to buy votes. By definition, restoration means restoring something that was lost. Blacks had lost their home and freedom to slavery. Their release has been fixed for 200 years. All that is left is to return them to Africa. Most blacks wouldn’t be alive, much less in this country, if it wasn’t for slavery. They’d still be scratching out the living African plains with no cells, Micky D’s, or TV. How many trillions are donated to African countries yearly to keep their starving alive? At least the enslavers kept their slaves fed, housed, and clothed, which was more than they were guaranteed with African freedom. My point is that today’s blacks are not affected by a two-hundred-year-old inequality. To try to correct ancient immorality is stupid: even if you could identify those deserving payment. Imagine the abuse of this system after all the billions stolen during COVID rescue plans.

This brings me to the restitution I would pay … reimbursement to the women who weren’t paid the same wage as a man doing the same job; I’m all for forcing companies to review their records for females underpaid during their employment.

I’ve written to a sickening degree about how my wife worked as an industrial Engineer for Ford Motor Company for thirty years, eventually reaching the executive level before retiring. I say it so often not only because I’m proud of her, but because I know the male prejudice she battled daily, hourly, against the “boy’s club” of male industrial engineers who were less qualified, certainly less educated than her Master’s degree. Male prejudice against their female counterparts is as deep as racial prejudice. It deserves as much attention when looking at diversity in the workplace. My wife was overlooked for a raise at the Ford Wixom Assembly plant because I, her husband, was working, and she was considered a “DINKS” That’s double income, no kids. The other men had wives and families to support. We’d just married and were saving for a house before kids (the sensible approach for newlyweds just out of college on their first jobs, we figured.) Ford has often been sued for their female attitudes (not by us). I doubt that DINKS practice exists today, but the male attitude prevails. My father, Wayne Booker, became Vice Chairman of Ford before his retirement. He loved and respected his daughter-in-law above his own daughter because he was aware of her difficulties. In contrast, his daughter didn’t work and counted on his monthly allowance to support herself and her husband.
Things have improved over the years, but women are still seventy-five cents to the dollar of their male counterparts or denied promotion into more prestigious positions. What I really want to know. Is: Suppose we figure out a way to make restitution to deserving Blacks. What then? Are we better off? After the eleven-thousand -year old world history of slavery, what difference do we make?