Have Calls For Racial Compensation Gone Too Far?

There’s no question about it, whether you fall to the left or the right on the political spectrum, you’d call slavery one of the dark chapters of American history.

But, while the left points to that as if it was happening today, rather than having been abolished in 1865, the right looks back at the Civil War with pride, as it demonstrated the resolve of the United States at large to do away with this blight.

The truth of the matter is that the United States was one of the first countries in the world to abolish slavery, although not first. A few European countries, namely Spain, France and England beat us to it, but not by a wide margin. Sadly, there are still countries in the world today where slavery is allowed.

Likewise, the blight of European colonization of Africa can be seen as a form of slavery, although one that took nearly a century after the end of slavery in the United States to end. But ending the “official” colonization of Africa, compared to the political and economic control of African countries by their Euro-Anglo citizens are two different things.

Even though apartheid ended in South Africa in 1991, most of the arable farmland in South Africa is still owned by the white minority.

Today, 22 years after the official end of apartheid, whites still own 73 percent of the active farmland in South Africa. The figures are similar in nearby Zimbabwe, where whites own 70 percent of the farmland.

This may not seem like a big deal to us in the “modern” west, but to the tribal people of Africa, like our own ancestors of the pioneering days of America, land ownership is an important part of being a citizen.

We can understand this a bit better, if we look back in our own history. A little known fact of American political history is that in the beginning only landowners held a franchise to vote. You could be an American citizen, born and raised in this country, but still not allowed to vote, because of being so poor as to not own any land.

This hearkens back to our European roots. At the time, the vast majority of land in Europe wasn’t owned by the farmers and craftsmen who lived on the land, but rather by the nobility.

There were a few “freemen” who were not attached to any lord and had a “freeholding” of land, either granted to them by a lord who gave it to them in gratitude for service or bought with booty won in foreign combat. In either case, the number of those who fell into this category was a very small percentage of society.

This idea of land ownership being connected to the franchise to vote helped fuel the westward expansion of the United States, as the government was giving a quarter section of land to anyone who proved up a homestead. What that meant was setting on the land, building a house, clearing land and planting crops.

Families by the thousands, many of them European immigrants who didn’t own land or have the franchise to vote in the countries that they came from, jumped at this opportunity.

For clarity, a quarter section was one-fourth of a square mile. Since a square mile is 640 acres, a quarter section was 160 acres. While that is a very small amount of land by modern farming standards, in that time, it was rare that a family farm could cultivate more than 40 acres. The rest of the land was used for cutting timber for fuel and hay for feeding their livestock.

To the black population in Africa, their lack of land ownership relegates them to being second-class citizens in their own countries. This is easy to understand, when we see it in the broader picture of how land ownership has helped identify one’s position in society, throughout history and around the world.

What’s Being Done About This?

In 1991, when Nelson Mandela was voted in as president of South Africa and apartheid came to an end, 85% of active farmland was in the hands of white owners. Today, 22 years later, only 12 percent of farmland has been transferred to black ownership. This has caused considerable consternation on the part of the majority-black population.

Reactions have been mixed, but mostly negative; in some cases, even violent. Many African politicians have used the issue of farmland as an effective part of their campaigns, especially amongst the poorer parts of the population. Calls for expropriation of white-owned farmland and redistribution to blacks have increased, with some governments taking action on it.

I think it’s important here to keep in mind that racism works both ways. I live in an area of the country where whites are by far the minority and I see racism against whites, commonly referred to as “reverse racism” all the time.

In the majority of Africa, whites are the minority, even though they have had considerably sway over their countries politics and economy due to the lingering effects of the colonization period.

So the call to expropriate this land clearly has a racial overtone to it, whether it is justified or not. To the black majority, this land has been stolen from them by the whites, or to put it more correctly, the white ancestors of those who own it today.

Sadly , this racism is strong in parts of Africa, just as it is strong in parts of the United States. Just a few short years ago, in 2015, calls for land expropriation were mere political rhetoric. President Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe since their independence in 1980, was one of the first, threatening to take land from white farmers and white animal sanctuaries by force if necessary.

That threat turned real the next year, as farmland was forcibly taken from white farmers, driving them out of their homes and even killing them. the land grabs were poorly organized, often leading to people invading white homes and land, committing crimes against the inhabitants in the process of taking their homes.

Sadly, there have been very few cases where the new owners of the land were properly prepared to manage it. This has resulted in many of these farms failing, reducing the country’s overall farm output and hurting the very people that the land grab was intended to help.

South Africa has jumped on the expropriation bandwagon as well, with their legislature approving a bill in 2016 to seize white-owned land, compensating the owners. Of course, the value of that land is to be determined by a government adjudicator.

Somehow, I doubt that those fine government employees will be caring a whole lot about the hardship they cause for the white owners. I would be surprised if the value they determine the land is worth is close to the value on the open market.

Land seized under this program will be redistributed to the disposed majority of South Africans. In other words, to poor blacks. According to President Zuma’s statement at the time this law was passed, land distribution will have to take place in accordance with the law; not following the violent land grabs that have happened in neighboring Zimbabwe.

But that was 2016. Things are different now in 2018. Those who stand behind the land grabs in South Africa were not satisfied with driving white land owners out of their homes and off their lands, paying them for it. Rather, many were calling for land grabs without compensation.

As of this writing, it is highly likely that a change to the South African Constitution will pass, which will allow the government to grab farmlands owned by whites, without compensating them for it in any way.

The major political figure behind this change is Julius Malema, a radical Marxist opposition leader. In a recent statement, he said that “The time for reconciliation is over. Now is the time for Justice” by which he means outright confiscation, without compensation.

Malema calls the white land owners “criminals who stole our land.” This is an unfair statement. At the absolute worse, they are descendents of those who stole the land. None of them were alive when that happened, nor are there any blacks alive today, who were alive when the colonial governments took over those lands.

But it appears that Malema may not be satisfied with just stealing farmland from those who currently own it, regardless of how they came to that point. He has left a threat hanging in the air, saying recently that he “was not calling for the slaughter of white people… at least for now.”

I’m sure there are many people right now, who are wondering how long “now” is going to last. Threats like that can’t be taken lightly, especially when they come from those who are already getting their way.

Apparently the Marxist rage in South Africa isn’t going to be satisfied by merely stealing everything that white farmers own, it’s going to take blood to satisfy it.

This is causing some to start talking seriously about offering sanctuary to South Africa’s white farmers, who are already in danger, as I talked about a few weeks ago. They may very well need that sanctuary, if the violence that’s already happening increases. Looking at what has already happened in Zimbabwe, I’d say that chances are, it will.

So, What Does this Mean for Us, here in the United States?

There’s an incredible amount of parallel between the anti-white political rhetoric that’s going on in Africa and what’s going on here in the United States. While the black population of our country is only 12.3%, according to the US Census Bureau, some parts of that population are very outspoken.

We’ve already seen the amount of violence that Black Lives Matter and other similar groups have brought to our country.

All told, minorities make up less than 40% of our total population. So if all you look at is the numbers, it would seem that these minorities can’t do anything close to what is happening in Africa. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

There are some very large and very violent groups amongst black and other minority populations, such as Antifa, Black Lives Matter and La Raza. Taken together, these groups could cause major damage to our society.

But that’s not all. The Democrat Party and pretty much everyone else on the political left has thrown their support behind these violent radical groups.

Former President Obama was unequivocal in his support of Black Lives Matter, publically declaring his appreciation of the work they were doing. His justice department pushed for greater leniency for black criminals, citing the high percentage of blacks in our penal system as being indicative of racial bias in the courts.

Black Lives Matter has already called for whites to give their homes and other property to blacks, to pay off the racial and cultural crime of slavery. Racist agitators, like Barack Obama and Al Sharpton have added their voices to this cry.

Although there is not a single black alive in the United States who was ever a slave, nor is there a single white who was a slave owner, their stand is that all whites are guilty of slavery and therefore owe all blacks some sort of reparations for it.

While this idea is absurd on its face, there are those who are pushing things in this direction, and not only people of Afro-American descent. A large number of Democrat lawmakers agree that whites need to be punished for their “white privilege” and racial crimes, even if they have never committed a single crime on the books.

In the political correctness of today, being white is a crime. Worse than that is being a white male. Those of us who used to be called WASPs are supposedly the worst of the worst, guilty of intentionally oppressing everyone around us. In this system of guilt-driven politics, it is supposedly only right that we give blacks what we have worked hard to get for ourselves.

Fortunately we have a president in office that stands up against political correctness. If Hillary Clinton had won the election, we would have found Obama’s policies continued. This would have meant a continuation of the fascism of political correctness and the continuing attempt to silence the voice of the American people, especially those who can be classified as being “white.”

Personally, I am opposed to racism of all sorts. As with many other conservatives, I only see one race, the human race. Some of us are darker and others are lighter, but we all bleed the same color. The identity politics that the Democrat Party is pushing is only serving to split us apart.

As long as identity politics continues, we are only a few short years away from the same sorts of things happening here at home, as we are seeing happening in South Africa today. At any time, we are only a few short years away from the types of land grabs that are happening in South Africa. We are at an even shorter amount of time away from racial civil war, especially in the larger cities.

Black Lives Matter has called repeatedly for out-and-out war against the whites in our population. Clearly, those who are calling for such a war aren’t thinking clearly, as there are many more white gun owners in this country, than there are black ones.

Such a war would be disastrous for the black minority, unless it became so politicized that every white who tried to defend themselves from a crime were automatically sentenced to prison for their “hate crime.”

That could actually happen. It’s actually amazing that the Democrats didn’t take better advantage of the first two years that Obama was in office, when they had control of both houses of Congress.

Should they ever gain that advantage again, while having a Democrat in the Oval Office, it could be disastrous for the country. Our rights would be trampled, especially the rights of the white conservative majority.