NBC published a long report on Monday that revealed that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has an ancestral connection to slavery. Two of his great-great-grandfathers owned slaves, according to historical documents.
The Kentucky Republican responded by pointing to reports that former President Barack Obama’s ancestors had also owned slaves. And soon after that, Sen. Kamala Harris, the California Democrat, was also implicated, as her ancestors owned slaves.
It’s rather amusing that NBC’s reporters went to so much trouble to dig into McConnell’s ancestry, yet couldn’t be bothered for years to check on how Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, put on record a spurious claim of Native American ancestry in order to advance her legal career.
Surely, the disparity in coverage between McConnell — his Democratic opponent just happened to announce her candidacy the very moment NBC published this slavery story — and an actual presidential candidate has nothing to do with journalistic partisanship.
But either way, the excuse for reporting this so-called news story in the first place is the newly resurrected debate over reparations for slavery. In their efforts to seize the mantle as the most “woke” of them all, most Democratic presidential candidates have now endorsed reparations for descendants of slaves. Meanwhile, symbols (real, perceived, and even just made up) of the institution of slavery continue to be identified and torn down. No statue, flag, or Nike sneaker is safe. And now, citizens are being blamed for the offenses of their distant ancestors.
McConnell, who rightly opposes reparations, represents the fifth generation after his great-great grandfathers. Even North Korea’s Kim Jong Un’s regime only punishes four generations for crimes against the state. Even the Old Testament prescribes only four generations of punishment for the most grievous sins in one’s family tree. How, then, is it reasonable to claim that Gen Xers, millennials, and Generation Z, all far too young to have experienced Jim Crow, let alone slavery, deserve recompense for it or else should be forced to pay for it? It happened seven or eight generations ago, and only in some families. Should payments be extracted from descendants of those who died fighting to end slavery?
Slavery was both a sin and a national crime. In its wake, the federal government considered making reparations to the people newly released from bondage. Although Gen. William T. Sherman issued a military order setting aside land as compensation, Congress never followed through. The moment was lost.
It cannot be regained 150 years later, when not only the victims and perpetrators of this crime but also all of their grandchildren are long dead.
It’s impossible to put a price tag on what today’s white or nonwhite Americans gained from slavery. Nor is that easily measured against what they or their ancestors did to end it. The matter certainly cannot be settled based on skin color. Many white workers, both in the North and South, were put at a great disadvantage by both the stolen labor of slavery and the terrorism and violent suppression of free speech that made the institution possible. Those whose ancestors migrated to America after abolition, or who fought to preserve the Union, might also claim their hands are clean. Even the proven descendants of slave owners whose families benefited directly — were it not unlawful to impute to them the criminal or civil liabilities of ancestors long dead — could be penniless today, unable to pay the debts of multiple generations ago.
McConnell, Obama, and Harris are not responsible for the sins of their fathers. In fact, each has worked to rectify the imbalances created by Jim Crow. McConnell, it should be known, put more on the line than most of today’s self-styled social justice warriors. He was active in civil rights causes in college at Louisville, where he wrote and spoke out against segregation. He served as an intern for a Kentucky Republican senator who helped break Southern Democrats’ filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He attended Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous rally and speech on the National Mall.
Opponents of civil rights once argued, wrongly, that discussions of slavery merely reopened old wounds. Today, no one wants to cover up those wounds. It is a good and positive thing for today’s politicians to study, discuss, and learn from national atrocities such as slavery and Jim Crow. But this is not the same as asserting a new legal doctrine of collective guilt, imputing crimes to the innocent. It would be both a lie and a cause of new discord to hold today’s generation accountable for crimes they had neither a part in committing nor any opportunity to prevent.
