Reparations for African-Americans

To black leaders such as Daniels drumming the issue of reparations, I have to say that this door you’re opening is the lid on Pandora’s box, from which great evil will arise. Does every white American bear the guilt for enslaving blacks? We must, since we are all going to have to pay.

And if so, we have established the principle of racial guilt. I as a white man am guilty of wrongs--not even crimes, for slavery was legal and had existed for all of human history before we in the Western world decided it was wrong and put a stop to it. But I am guilty of these deeds now perceived to be wrong, committed more than a century ago by people with whom I am associated only by skin color, not, and I emphasize, by descent--for my ancestors were not in this country 100 years ago.

But if I am guilty because of my skin color, we have established a principle of jurisprudence of racial guilt, and we had all better think carefully if we want to abandon the principle of individual responsibility in favor of collective guilt.

I think it is apparent from this formula that what is being proposed is nothing less than a recipe for increased strife between the races, which will only benefit those who gain power by stoking the fires of hatred, bitterness and resentment.

MICHAEL McINTYRE, Los Angeles