The Second Worst Idea Ever

“In Botswana, you become color blind.” – David Newman, Botswana’s Ambassador to the U.S.

There is a place in the world where I want to live. The country sits above unhappy memory of apartheid in South Africa. The place I desire is for lovers of racial harmony. All praise to the dominant Tswana tribe and their Golden Rule: everyone is connected to the larger community as if it were an extended family. The place is Botswana.

What is the opposite of perceiving others as part of an extended family?

The opposite would be ancestral revenge and grudge holding. In a world of racial disharmony, we all become avatars for the sins of our ancestors, going back five or even nine generations. One inherits the status of a slave owner if one is a white church or the status of a slave if one is a black community. Distant descendants of white and black ancestors are stripped of agency and humanity.

Encouraging people to think about the slave trade from 1714 to 1739 is mentally unhealthy. The recent call for the Church Commissioners for England to commit $1 billion in a reparations fund is a social contagion, a hyper focus on miniscule effects of slavery from centuries ago.

Let me be clear in this essay. I believe the first worst idea in world history is slavery itself. You may beg to differ but the scourge of slavery erased the humanity of men and women. The very opposite of the Golden Rule.

However, the second worst idea ever is reparations for slavery. On March 4, 2024, the Oversight Group Recommendations to the Board of Governors claimed healing, repair and justice for past slavery was needed today to the tune of $1 billion. It is almost a mental disease. There is no better way to divide people into different groups and not treat people as individuals. Take wealth from one group and give said wealth to another group. See examples from Zimbabwe, the Kulaks and the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cambodia and South Africa.

Yugoslavia plunged into darkness when group mandates were installed. The State solidified ethnic divisions by allocating positions on all levels of government along ethnic lines to supposedly maintain a balance between Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Catholic Croats. The same vision of ethnic divisions runs rife throughout the reparations report.

Peel back the slogan words of Healing, Repair and Justice and what does one find? One finds a world of racial spoils for Blacks only. I do not exaggerate. Consider these allocations of positions on all levels of the $1 billion Reparations Fund:

• Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice will be Black-led

• Racial equity mainstreaming

• Funding should be channeled through Black Leaders, Black Communities and Black Organizations

• Annual analysis of racial representation within the fund’s management

• The voice of Black communities

• Direct investment should be to Black-led organizations (i.e., at least 50% Black-owned)

• We propose that the fund should invest in Black fund managers, including general partners

• Engage a Black-led PR agency to assist in communications

Who of sound mind would support a Yugoslav world of racial and ethnic spoils?

On March 18, 2024, a black Anglican Minister Yemi Adedeji pounded the table for reparations.

What were his arguments?

Minister Adedeji asserted that the outcome of slavery was racism. As is too often the case, there was no concrete, specific evidence or examples offered. Viewers were to take the minister’s word for it. Conclusions are not arguments. Was the outcome of African enslavement of African slaves racism? Try harder, minister Adedeji.

Minister Adedeji’s next argument was that slavery was dehumanizing. But what does dehumanizing mean? Many questions occurred to me. Suppose a family member held another family member as a slave? Was that dehumanizing? Suppose one was enslaved by the Creek Indian Nation? Were those slaves dehumanized by fellow people of color? Shouldn’t we recognize there was a wide spectrum of human conditions during American slavery? Obviously, field slaves working in rice and cotton fields were dehumanized but were house slaves working as cooks or barbers or tailors equally dehumanized? What about slaves running businesses and stores on plantations? What about slaves who hired themselves out for side jobs and saved enough to buy their freedom? Were these slaves equally dehumanized or not? Does the presence of agency mitigate the dehumanization? Adedji paints with a broad brush and doesn’t offer nuance and complexity.

Minister Adedeji supports the $1 billion amount recommended by the independent black oversight committee. But why stop there? Why not $10 billion? $100 billion? $1 trillion? What is the concrete, specific quantifiable basis for this figure? What is the underlying calculation? Are there benefits and gains for descendants of the Slave Trade who live in the West? Are these factors taken into account? What is the causation, either actual or proximate, between the Church of England’s investment in the slave trade from 1714 to 1739 and a concrete, specific wound in a particular descendant of the slave trade today? Neither Adedeji nor the Oversight Group to the Church of England answers this $1 billion question.

“Such gestures suggest favouritism, generating resentment” - Stephen Evans, Chief executive of the National Secular Society

Surely, the Irish were dehumanized throughout English history. Were the Jews dehumanized in the British past? Did the Vikings dehumanize the English people shackled into slavery?

Why the hyper focus on the plight of black people alone?

In a last assertion, Minister Adedji remarked to a panelist that “you are reading too much history.” What a fool response. One can never read too much history to understand our past.

Adedeji should read more history. The Church of England should not consider reparations for the slave trade. All slaves were not black. All slave owners were not white.

Removing wealth from one group for the benefit of another group may well be the second worst idea ever. We need common humanity, not division. See one another as individuals. We need to see one another as part of an extended family going forward.

We need the wisdom of Botswana in our lives.

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Winkfield Twyman, Jr. is the co-author of Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America. He is a writer, commentator, and former law professor. He has written for the Chicago Tribune, the San Diego Union Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Richmond Times Dispatch, and several other publications. He can be reached at twyman.substack.

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