Reparations

As a black American, I was outraged by Randall Robinson's Feb. 6 commentary. Robinson's article promulgates the kind of misguided thinking that is generally espoused by those in favor of reparations for America's black people. He begins with a picture of black Americans that is (ironically) replete with those stereotypes one usually associates with the media--the predatory black youth, the beleaguered black mother and the emotionally emasculated black father. There is no mention of the burgeoning black middle class that has taken a firm hold in this country for the past 20 years.

The red-haired man who stepped onto the Olvera Street bandstand looked vaguely familiar, but it was his words that got my attention. John Whitaker, a 52-year-old Santa Clarita resident, was addressing a rally to raise awareness of cartel violence in Mexico, and he started off by apologizing to the Mexican mothers he'd just heard speak about losing children in the drug wars. Whitaker, a recovering addict, said he now realized that his drug use had no doubt had consequences south of the border, where cartel violence has cost thousands of lives.

After a generation or more of affirmative action, some African Americans now seek reparations ("Black Reparations Idea Builds at UCLA Meeting," May 12). In reality, African Americans should view themselves as among the most fortunate people in the world to be in the United States rather than in sub-Saharan Africa, where yearly incomes of most people are under $2,000. David Hewson Coronado I am not opposed to reparations for various groups that have been discriminated against or worse--brought to this country in chains, for example.

Every morning, she climbed the wide marble steps of the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga was not trained for this work. She was a homemaker, not a historian. But she had a lifetime of simmering anger and unanswered questions. By lamplight in the grand reading room, she scoured thousands of documents, inventing her own organizing system to keep track of the information she found. She brought home so many copies that she commandeered a bathtub and used it as a filing cabinet.

Re "But Save Reparations for Jim Crow," Commentary, Aug. 29: Eric Rauchway and Clarence Walker repeat the demands made by blacks in regard to reparations. Now the reasons for reparations have changed. Now reparations are demanded for the years of segregation blacks have suffered instead of for the slavery their forebears were forced into. The writers very cleverly demand reparations not from the rest of us but from some disembodied entity called "the U.S. government." My, my. This should certainly enlist the aid of the rest of us since it will be the U.S. government paying these billions of dollars and not the rest of us. After all, it was the U.S. government that did all this segregation, not the rest of us. So all of the good-hearted rest of us should punish the U.S. government for this terrible deed.

The United States need not pat itself on the back for finally providing reparations to Japanese-American citizens who were interned (read imprisoned) during World War II. Justice delayed is justice denied. The sight of 100-year-olds receiving their checks should be a source of shame and embarrassment to all Americans (Part B, Oct. 13). There was no more justification for interning Japanese-Americans than German-Americans and Italian-Americans. That the freedom and livelihood of Asians, and Asians alone, were taken away, is painful evidence of the potency of racism in the 1940s.

David Tamashiro's proposal on redress/reparation for Japanese Americans (Op/Ed, Dec. 14) is not only unsettling, it is downright dangerous. He suggests "that each internee voluntarily contribute 1% of the settlement proposed by the House bill in order to pay the national debt." Though he cites a precedent for "going the third mile" in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, there is another story that we in the redress/reparation movement look to for historical inspiration: the movement to resist the camps on the grounds that not only were they immoral but also unconstitutional.

The German money was supposed to go to Jews who had been victims of the Nazis. Instead, the supervisor of two reparation funds and several accomplices steered more than $42 million to thousands of ineligible recipients while skimming millions of dollars for themselves, according to federal charges filed Tuesday. The alleged ringleader was identified as Semyon Domnitser, a Russian immigrant who for the last 11 years had headed two large funds at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a nonprofit established in 1951 to distribute German money to Holocaust survivors, prosecutors said.

Beleaguered petroleum giant BP agreed Tuesday to sell oil and natural gas fields in the United States and other countries to rival Apache Corp. for $7 billion in its biggest move yet to raise money to pay reparations for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The company announced plans to sell its Permian Basin fields in Texas and New Mexico — acquired as part of the purchase of Los Angeles-based Arco in 2000 — as well as properties in Canada and Egypt. Apache was said to be interested in BP's Alaskan assets, but they weren't part of the deal.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner has said his experience as state insurance commissioner has "crystallized" his thinking as a conservative. A document obtained by The Times shows that Poizner, who in past campaigns described himself as a moderate, has apparently shifted more than previously known. FOR THE RECORD: Steve Poizner: An article about Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner in Friday's LATExtra section said that he expressed support for needle exchange programs on a 2004 questionnaire from the NAACP.

To what degree is the elected government of Iraq obligated to pay for the sins committed by the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Should neighboring Kuwait forgive Iraq's new leadership $24 billion in outstanding debt for the destruction wrought by the 1990 invasion, a seven-month occupation, looting and the violent retreat of Iraqi forces? And is it relevant that Iraq may need the money more than Kuwait does?

In an unprecedented feat, British surgeons implanted a donor heart in a dying toddler whose own heart was too weak to sustain life, then removed it 10 years later after the girl's own heart had fully recovered. The technique is unlikely to become widespread because of the severe shortage of pediatric donor hearts, but it suggests that better mechanical assist devices that take some or all of the load off a diseased heart could allow time for weakened hearts to heal themselves.

Re "So long, slavery reparations," Opinion, Oct. 31 Walter Olson's epitaph for reparations for the descendants of African slaves in the United States is premature. Although the issue may no longer appear in the daily news, it is most certainly buried in the American conscience, destined to resurface. Olson argues that black servitude was largely redressed by "social welfare, education, housing and urban programs." This may have been the intent, but it certainly was not the result.

Just a few years ago, at roughly the turn of the millennium, slavery reparations seemed the coming thing. A New York Times article in June 2001 reported that the movement to obtain compensation for slaves' descendants had "taken on substantial force" and was "gaining steam" both in the nation's universities and in the black community. All the major black organizations had signed on, including the NAACP, the Urban League and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Right now, the Clemens situation is pretty simple. Roger is over and out. But while everybody else is turning their backs on him, leaving the sinking ship before the bow goes under, we are here to help. Understandably, Clemens hates newspaper people right now. During his steroids charade, we have not been gentle. We are guided by a public mandate and a constitutional amendment that makes us tell as much of the truth as we can. All appearances are that this is a foreign concept to Clemens.