McCain and Obama Make Reparations a Campaign Taboo

By: Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain don’t agree on much. But there’s one thing that they not only agree on, but have made a campaign taboo, and that’s reparations. Obama flatly opposes it, and has repeated his opposition to it every time he’s asked the question about compensation for slavery. McCain doesn’t even bother taking a public position on reparations. In fact, it’s such a foregone conclusion that he would oppose it no one has even bothered to ask him about it on the campaign trail.

The candidates sprint from the issue like the plague for reasons that make good political sense. They both read the opinion polls.

A CNN/USA Today poll taken after blacks filed two well-publicized reparations lawsuits in 2002 found that 75 percent of Americans said that corporations should not pay reparations for slavery, and a whopping 90 percent said the government should not pay reparations.

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Commentary: Reparations for COINTELPRO, Not Slavery

By: Gregory Kane

If you like cheap victories, then you’re probably THRILLED that the U.S. Congress apologized for slavery last week.

Too bad I don’t like cheap victories.

But the “Baltimore Afro-American” thought the event was so significant that it ran a front-page story, “above the fold” as we say in the newspaper business, about the apology.

And what does the apology mean? Why, absolutely nothing, of course.

The black folks who were poor and living in America’s inner cities the day before the apology were still living there the day after. Those going to schools doing more miseducating than educating will likely return to those schools either later this month or in September.

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