Reparations Nonsense

kw: political correctness, reparations, slavery, underground railroad

The news in the Philadelphia area is all about "slavery in the background". It seems some folks I decline to name want businesses to delve into their pasts and reveal anything related to slavery about the way their business was run, I guess prior to 1865. Well, considering that the fraternity of companies aged 140+ numbers about five, this can be seen as rather discriminatory in itself.

Further, the notion of paying reparations to the descendants of slaves is coupled in. I wonder just how many U.S. Citizens aren't descended from slaves, somewhere along the line? I am, though the connection is rather tenuous. It seems someone named Turner was manumitted in the mid-1700s and found his way into my family tree. Of course, when the name Turner was discovered by my very prejudiced great aunt from Missouri, while carrying on her genealogical hobby, she stopped looking along that line.

But there are other places in her records where an ancestral line stops in an odd place. The name Barraclough comes to mind. It arose as a French transliteration of the name Bear Claw. An Iroquois who learned English, then French, liked the sound of Bear Claw better than Griffe-d'Ours. So, though I have significant ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower, I also have one or two who were there to see it arrive.

Yet, I am about as white as one can get with mainly Western European ancestors. About half Scot (both Celt and Anglo-Saxon), perhaps a quarter German, lesser amounts of English (Anglo-Saxon) and Irish (Celt), plus the aforementioned African and Amerind threads.

Let's look at the Germanic peoples here, the Anglo-Saxon and homeland German folks that make up more than half of my family tree. 1200 years ago, they and an amalgam of former Roman peoples were united politically, and spent a few centuries intermarrying. From the First to the Fifth Century, the various Roman subjects had also intermarried pretty freely, including quite a number of Africans, both light (Egyptian) and dark (Ethiopian and Libyan) skinned. As a result of that and the later intermarrying after Charlemagne (also an ancestor of mine), I've been told that the average "European" today is about 1/8 African, somewhat lower in Northern and Eastern Europe, somewhat more to the South and West.

So, based on my known genealogy, I have a small fraction of a percent of African blood of more recent vintage. Based on broader historical indicators, there is probably another 6-8-10% Africa in there, so well mixed in that I "look white."

So, if more reparations get mandated, we'll really have a case of those who don't look that African (though they are, at least a little) making reparations to those who seem to be more so.

Another thread. On my Father's side, my ancestors in the 1700s and later were Methodists (as I was raised). On my Mother's side, from the 1500s to about 1900 they were Quaker, then later Methodist. Members of both sides of my family carried on Underground Railroad activities, mainly from the 1780s onward. Do the offspring of abolitionists need to pay reparations to the offspring of slaves they helped set free?

Plain fact: More Euro-American alive today are descended from anti-slave than pro-slave families. The real thing people want reparations for—this isn't mentioned out loud—is the century of Jim Crow laws. But we know pretty well who carried that on...the parents and grandparents of many of the same folks who are the loudest (white) proponents of reparations today.

Guilty conscience for lunch, anyone?

Just how far will this silliness go?