Slavery -- me

I thought I'd take a few minutes to write this morning. Our new church building is complete, and our first joint service is at 10:30. Instead of 3 morning services, there will be only one. We had been going to the 9:45 service.

While searching for something about the UN the other morning, I came across the slavery article (previous post) written by Thomas Sowell. I have read articles from Sowell and Walter Williams since my high school days. In a country where 90+% of the black people vote for the same candidate, I like to read from black men who have a different viewpoint than the masses. I also read Leonard Pitts who is much more liberal than Sowell and Williams, but I find he makes a lot of sense quite often as well. At least his arguments seem sensible. He has helped me understand the "African-American mind" a bit better.

Personally I never owned a slave nor do I know an actual slave or former slave, and I live in the South. From all I know, my ancestors were poor, white folks, and I know my dad worked with black people in tobacco fields in Caswell County when he grew up in the 1950s and '60s. For me, reparations would be taking a step backwards in race relations. Why punish people living today for something their ancestors did? And why reward people living now who never were slaves? I believe reparations would cause a lot of hard feelings. I am tired of "white guilt" and "American guilt." I'm tired of guilt period. I agree that slavery was a shameful part of America's past, but, thank God, it is in the past! Let's leave it there. I was glad to find Sowell's article and see that the African nations were much to blame for the slave trade. Reading on Wikipedia, I found that slavery is practiced in some African and Asian nations EVEN TODAY! The white Americans did not invent slavery nor have we continued with it. Let's get over it and move on. You don't make much progress while looking behind you.

Philippians 3:

13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
15 Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.