I saw something earlier today that made me ponder something and I admit it got a little under my skin. It seems that someone with very little else to do has researched the family history of some members of Congress to see if their family has a past history of owning slaves. Now, before I go any further, I personally feel that the idea of one person “owning” another person is reprehensible, to say the least. I know there are some readers who may not like what I am going to say here. To those people, I would say, “I understand you have your thoughts and opinions and I respect that. I have my thoughts and opinions and a column in which I have the ability to express those thoughts and opinions. You are free to write a “letter to the Editor” in which you can express your own thoughts and opinions.”
Considering it’s been well over a century and a half since the practice of slavery was abolished, I can’t help but wonder, “When will, or why can’t, we get over this obsession?” I’ve heard about the State of California considering paying people hundreds of billions of dollars in the name of reparations for slavery. Here’s what I think about that issue. If there is anyone alive today who was a former slave (I’m not talking about great-great grandfathers, I mean actual former slaves) and they never got paid for the work they were forced to do; I would be in favor of paying them $15 an hour for every hour they worked. Considering that person would have to be around 175 years old, I don’t think there would be many who might qualify for that. Honestly, I would think that the blood of 600,000 dead white kids would be reparation enough, but that’s just me.
As my name might suggest, I am of Irish heritage. I don’t know all the details, but I do know that in times way past, Irish people were sometimes treated rather poorly. However, I don’t feel I have personally been treated poorly due to my Irish heritage. I don’t feel that the King of England owes me anything because Irish people may have been mistreated by England in the past.
Bad things happened in the past. Hopefully, we are better people today than some people were in the past. I can’t help but think if a person has a chip on their shoulder due to something that happened close to two hundred years before they were born, that chip is only going to weigh that person down. It certainly is not going to help them. As much as we might wish it to be, life is not always a level playing field. Some people are born with advantages another person may not have. That just means some people just have to work harder than some others in order to “get ahead.” That hard work can bring its own advantages.
That’s the way I see it, over here on the “Sunny Side.”