Sunday, May 9, 2010

Not So Fast Professor Gates - by Henry Duncan

Reparations has been debated since the 1800’s. Yet the 40 acres and a mule has never been delivered. For some reason, Professor Henry Louis Gates has taken on this issue in his op-ed article in the New York Times entitled Ending The Slavery Blame Game. In this article, Prof. Gates argues that, since African monarchs sold their slaves to Europeans, that Europe
and Africa share responsibility for slavery. Obviously this claim has sparked much controversy. You can start with the letters in response to the article. Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University, who states that “reparations are unworkable” does refute a point that Gates presents in his article.
In the article, Gates states:
Advocates of reparations for the descendants of those slaves generally ignore this untidy problem of the significant role that Africans played in the trade, choosing to believe the romanticized version that our ancestors were all kidnapped unawares by evil white men, like Kunta Kinte was in “Roots.” The truth, however, is much more complex: slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and African sellers alike.