A tax preparer was sentenced to 13 years in prison and his daughter received over three years in prison for defrauding the IRS of more than $500,000 which they justified taking because they claimed were moneys owed to them by the US government as reparations for slavery.
Robert L. Foster prepared returns for several people claiming more than $3.6 million in reparations.
"Black people are not treated as humans, but as things by the U.S. government," he said. "We were used as resources to enrich this country and we get no inheritance from the wealth we brought."
Well that is a true statement.
Blacks were treated as less than human and they were used as slave labor to build this country and enslaved Africans were never compensated for that labor, but there in lies the problem.
The enslaved Africans that were denied basic human rights and were exploited as free labor for over 200 years in this country are all dead.
Barring any that might have worked for Walt Disney. When in that case they are probably on ice somewhere.
If anyone deserves to be compensated it's the guy that actually worked till sun up to sun down, 6 days a week from the age that he could bend over and pick cotton till he couldn't anymore, not descendents 150 years removed.
Imagine if someone came up to Mr. Foster and told him that he owed an additional $26,000 a year in property tax because the property that his house is sitting on used to belong to the Chickahominy Indian tribe and Pocahontas's great great great great great grand daughter wants a new Lexus.
See that is the problem with these reparation arguments, there isn't ever a point where it's over.
I am all for paying reparations to the person that has been fucked over but not to his great great great great grandson.
My first African ancestor to this country didn't even come here as a slave but as a free woman. She was from Madagascar.
If you told me tomorrow that Madagascar fucked someone over 200 years ago and you want me to apologize and pay out cash to make it all better I wouldn't even dignify it with a response.
Who can't argue that they've been fucked over by someone especially if we are allowed to go back 150 - 350 years to find it?
Why not go back and sue the 3 rd world African nations for selling us to the European slave traders in the first place?
How about the people that cut down the trees to make the boats that brought us across the middle passage? Why let them off the hook?
They don't seem to get that you can't change the past.
No matter how much money you get it could never be enough to will wipe away 200 years of slavery.
Money can't even make it better.
Just like there isn't enough money in the world that Germany could give the Jews to make them say, "Ok, now we're even."
When my ancestors walked off of that plantation in 1865 they hadn't had their optimism smashed into the rocks by the harsh realities of a brutally unapologetically racist society that awaited them. They (as naive as it seems now), thought that they were not just being freed from the literal bondage of slavery but would be given the opportunity to prove themselves just like everybody else.
They thought that they were walking away from that cotton field a free man and free woman and all that freedom entitled them to.
The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness filled their hearts and minds.
That is what they wanted.
That is what I have.
What they got was lynched.
I take pride in knowing that I am living the life that my ancestors that worked those cotton fields with their mangled hands and feet left by untreated sores, broken bones and whip scarred backs would've killed to have had.
I honor them by living it, not squandering it away high on drugs or irresponsibly pursuing of an abundance of shit I don't need.
There is nothing more disrespectful than to waste what you have to the person that has nothing.
I honor my ancestors by being the descendent of an ensalved African that votes, is educated and who is pursuing his dreams.
His daughter, Crystal Foster collapsed to the floor after she was sentenced, screaming and crying for her children.
A little too late for that don't you think?
"I just want to be at home with my two children," Crystal Foster told U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams, breaking down as she recounted how her second son had been born in the back of a police van following her arrest. "It's not fair, the government sent me this check," she said.
Fair? They might have sent it to you but bitch you spent it.
They sent it to you because you claimed to have over paid on your capital gains tax for a company that didn't exist.
Reparations in the form of a check being mailed out to someone is legitimate as soon as you find a slave running around somewhere, like they find Japanese soldiers still fighting WWII on some remote island in the south pacific every once in a while.
If the government ever wants to pay reparations to descendents of enslaved Africans the biggest mistake in the world would be to cut anyone a check.
They should put those funds in a program to help subsidize education or housing or job training.
And yeah, I understand the damage from slavery didn't just stop with the slaves themselves, its not like slaves walked right off the plantation to a color blind society eager to allow them the opportunity to whatever life for themselves that their own hard work could provide.
The reality is that were denied every right that was given every European immigrant the second they stepped off Ellis Island .
We can talk about reparations but this is not the way to go about it.
This is an example of a common thief trying to attach a sore-spot issue to his crime in order to try to gain support for himself.
I mean what did he do with his reparations? Did he help build a community center for the other less fortunate descendents of enslaved Africans or did he go out and buy a new home in the suburbs and a flat screen plasma television so he could watch Roots on DVD in surround sound with his white wife.
The more emotional you are about an issue the harder it is for people to step back and take into account who is spreading the message.
Let's hope this isn't the case.