Henry Louis Gates Kills the Argument For Slavery Reparations

The last time we saw Henry Louis Gates he was being arrested by Cambridge, MA cops who mistook him for a burglar as he broke into his own house. The ensuing flap became quite a mess when Obama accused the cops of "acting stupidly", and that resulted in the now famous "beer summit" at the White House.

Gates has also been seen lately as a commentator on the History Channel series "America, A Story of Us".

I didn't care much for Mr. Gates' race-card antics after his arrest. I though it was dishonest and disreputable to portray the actions of the cops in that situation as racist. That whole thing has long since blown over, but Mr. Gates is about to be thrust into a new controversy of his own making - he's coming out with a book that debunks the idea that whites are solely responsible for slavery and that as a result reparations are due to African-Americans.

From Pajamas Media:

Gates’ book — Tradition and the Black Atlantic – was also previewed in the New York Times. The review hit like passed gas in the middle of a hot Sunday Baptist church service to those who have made careers out of racial complaints.

Gates says that everybody is familiar with the role played in slavery by the United States and the colonial powers of Britain, France, Holland, Portugal, and Spain. But he adds that there has been “little discussion of the role Africans themselves played.”

Can the church say amen?

Gates argues that the role Africans played was “considerable” and included the very kingdoms in western and central Africa that are praised as examples of Africa’s historical greatness every February during “Black History Month” celebrations.

How did this African involvement in the slave trade work?

Gates references the historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University — who estimate that 90 percent of the slaves shipped to the New World were captured and enslaved by Africans before being sold to European traders and commercial agents.

In essence, the slave trade would have been impossible on the scale it occurred without African business partners.

Scolding advocates for reparations — like Congressman John Conyers and Randall Robinson — ignore these inconvenient truths. But as my friend Larry Elder likes to say:

Facts to a liberal is like Kryptonite to Superman.

But facts are persistent things, and Gates points out that the belief that Europeans alone are responsible is a fantasy. This view is a romanticized version promoting the notion that Africans were somehow just “kidnapped” by evil white men — the version promoted in the old television series Roots. The truth is, however, that slavery was a highly lucrative business for European traders and African sellers alike.

Though it may be new to reparation advocates, none of this information is new to anyone who’s honestly examined slavery.

There's a lot more at the link.

The book is due out in August and I've included a link for anyone who wants to pre-order it. I'm guessing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton won't be first in line to get their copies.