History & Reparation

As an Asian immigrant, I have mostly sat in observation as I see America repeatedly confronted by raging controversy on symbols that bring up old wounds, unresolved feelings, and unsettled arguments on race — and in the South, the age-old Confederacy Issue. In early 2019, it was Blackface. But the list of recent episodes is endless. In the Oxford Dictionary, reparation is defined thus: "The action of making amends for a wrong one has done, by providing payment or other assistance to those who have been wronged." Making amends for wrong done — especially grave injustice across the generations — is grounded in ethics. Reparations is not a new conversation in the United States. The U.S. did pay reparations to the Japanese-Americans for their internment in camps during World War II. There are little-known morsels of history of former slave owners granting reparations individually to the Black people they freed.

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I am all for visiting the subject matter and discussing it — rather than assuming that the U.S. simply owes reparations.

I am all for visiting the subject matter and discussing it — rather than assuming that the U.S. owes reparations. I don't know if we saved them to bring this country forward, or if they would have been better off in their native lands — perhaps free, but lacking medical care and financial means that would have made it harder. That is a question to think about. In this category, not only Blacks from Africa who were sold by their own for money — should we not get some sort of reparation from those now oil-and-gold-rich nations?

Same goes for the Confederacy. All nations' history is full of brutality and bloodshed. If we look at the Roman Empire, the Ottomans, the Greeks — even most recently the British Empire where it was said "the sun never sets" — all of them have one thing in common: bloodshed and brutal incidents that to this day make the hair on your arm stand up. We may not be particularly proud of them, but they are part of our history. The dealings with the Native Indians, by today's standards, would be horrific — but at that time they were considered warranted by the newcomers and settlers to this continent. No matter what was done, I believe we did the best we could to make them right. But I am not in favor of paying any sort of reparation.

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Knowledge is indeed power. The destruction of accurate history is about more than schools — it is about self-determination.

The other important thing to hold on to in this debate is that statues do not do a particularly effective job of documenting the past or educating people about it. Historians study how societies change. In order to do that, we examine sources created at the time — newspapers, teapots, speeches, tweets, photographs, landscapes, and so on — and judge what we think happened by comparing these primary sources to things other historians have said, on the basis of evidence they have found. We argue a lot. But if we cannot see an ever-widening story, we cannot give an accurate account of how societies change. An inaccurate picture of what creates change means that people cannot make good decisions about the future. They are at the mercy of those who are creating the stories. Knowledge is indeed power.

So, the destruction of accurate history is about more than schools. It is about self-determination. It is about having the freedom to make good decisions about your life. It is about the very things that democracy is supposed to stand for.

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We cannot be the World Police. We should stay busy making our own lives better by using the same efforts at home instead of abroad.

We can argue all day as to why or why not, but that won't solve the problem. What has been done is done. We cannot make it right. No matter how much money we pay, it won't make it right. All we can do is go forward — be more sensitive to others' needs and do the right thing. Same goes for our war on terror: in the name of protecting our rights, we engage ourselves in fighting other people's wars. War in any definition is brutal, whether at home or abroad. We cannot be the World Police and fight for someone else where we are not invited — it creates more terror at home and abroad. Why should we risk the freedom and lives of our young men and women when we can solve the issues in coalition with other nations together, but not unilaterally? We cannot tell others how to live their lives. We should stay busy making our own lives better by using the same efforts at home instead of abroad.

I may not make you agree with my views on these issues — but one thing I can make you agree on: our interests have been at risk more and more at home and abroad due to the politically correct action plans we have been adhering to for the last 50 years. A great nation must spend every resource possible to do what is right — not to make it look right. Today is the time to be more sensitive to our own needs, time to be proactive in an ever-changing world, and we have to be mindful, creative, and above all — FAIR.