Well, the reparations movement is gaining momentum. Of course, it's being retitled "restitution" because, of course, the African American community wants an easier sell.

I have a whole crudload of problems with restitution. The fact is, virtually all of us have ancestors who were oppressed, and would have just as valid a case for such "restitution". The descendants of indentured servants, of Irish immigrants in the 19th century, of Chinese railroad workers...the list goes on.

One of the most fallacious arguments of the "restitution" crowd is that they want the cotton pickers from the plantations to receive a portion of the money from the companies that profitted off of the plantations. The idea is that the slaves would receive the money they would have otherwise been able to make and pass onto their offspring.

Excuse me? I don't know of many WHITE cotton pickers that made a fortune at that trade. Unskilled labor is unskilled labor, and rarely is there a substantial fiduciary legacy to pass on.

But the thing that concerns me about reparations, restitution, whatever you want to call it, is that the United States Government has ALREADY GIVEN African Americans far more financially than they would get through any courts. The bill is MORE than paid in full...and we didn't even have the benefit of due process.

African Americans are given priority access to jobs and education in this country due solely to the color of their skin. This sets them up on a MORE than equal footing with their white counterparts, as they can attend better schools, receive more scholarship and grant money, and fast track into the job market and up the corporate ladder due to what is nothing more than an accident of birth. And not ONE African American living in this country today was born a slave within the borders of the United States of America.

If the US government caves to the pressure to offer restitution to the descendants of slaves, then they will have started down a slippery slope that could well mean the end of the free market as we know it. Women were oppressed for FAR longer historically than blacks, and just about all of us have in our genealogies some racial or ethnic minority that experienced oppression. Then there's the added fact that all it would take is a few generations of a "restitution" minded society before whites had equal claim to sums of money from the same blacks that had extorted money from them. It's the same "eye for an eye" mentality that makes the whole world blind that many in the restitution fold like to quote frequently.

I believe strongly that we should work to have a society where equal opportunity is the standard for all Americans. And I believe we've come pretty close to that point already. A look in the boardrooms of major US corporations shows a mix of races and of gender and culture. The fact that that is not enough is more than enough evidence that the factions that press for reparations don't want EQUALITY, they want SUPERIORITY. And that's a road we've already been down and failed; we don't want to continue down it.