9. And this raises another question that black leaders might do well to reflect on: What about the debt blacks owe to America -- to white Americans -- for liberating them from slavery? This may not seem like a serious question to some, but that only reveals their ignorance of the history of slavery and its fate. Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, in virtually all societies. But in the 1,000 years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Englishmen and Americans created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have ended. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would have remained slaves indefinitely.

If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?

10. The final and summary reason for rejecting any reparations claim is recognition of the enormous privileges black Americans enjoy as Americans, and therefore of their own stake in America's history, slavery and all.

Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America would be to embark on a course whose consequences are troublesome even to contemplate. Yet the black community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists and nationalists in its ranks, who must be called what they are: racists who want African-Americans to have no part of America's multiethnic social contract. This separatist strain in black America's consciousness has now been joined with the anti-Americanism of the political left to form the animating force behind the reparations movement.

In this regard, Robinson -- himself a political leftist -- is a movement archetype. Anti-white sentiments and anti-American feelings stand out on every page of "The Debt," including a chapter he devotes to praising Fidel Castro, one of the world's longest-surviving and most sadistic dictators. A rhapsody for Fidel Castro's Marxist police state would seem a bizarre irrelevance to a book on reparations for American blacks, except that for Robinson, Castro is a quintessential victim of American "oppression." Robinson despises America that much. "Many blacks -- most perhaps," he asserts in his discussion of Castro, "don't like America." Is Robinson saying they prefer Castro's gulag?

This unthinking, virulent anti-Americanism is the crux of the problem the reparations movement poses for black Americans, and for all Americans. The reparations idea is about not liking America. It is about an irrational hatred of America. It is about holding America responsible for every negative facet of black existence, as though America were God and God had failed. Above all, it is about denying the gift America has given to all of its citizens through the inspired genius of its founding.

To Robinson, Thomas Jefferson, author of the proclamation that "all men are created equal," was merely "a slave owner, a racist and -- if one accepts that consent cannot be given if it cannot be denied -- a rapist." The fact that Americans still honor the author of the Declaration of Independence makes his personal sins into archetypes that define America. Robinson: "Does not the continued un-remarked American deification of Jefferson tell us all how profoundly contemptuous of black sensibilities American society persists in being? How deeply, stubbornly, poisonously racist our society to this day remains?"

This hatred for America and, specifically, for white America blinds Robinson -- and those who think like him -- to a truth far more important than Jefferson's dalliance with Sally Hemings, which may or may not have been unwilling. (Contrary to Robinson, consent obviously can be given, even if it cannot be denied.) For it is the words Jefferson wrote, and that white Americans died for, that accomplished what no black African did: They set Robinson's ancestors free.

For all their country's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in America and above all in the heritage that men like Jefferson helped to shape. This heritage -- enshrined in America's founding and the institutions and ideas to which it gave rise -- is what is really under attack in the reparations movement. This assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left, is an attack not only on white Americans but on all Americans -- African-Americans especially.

America's black citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under attack. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea.

Dredging up a new reason to assault this idea is not in the interest of African-Americans. What would serve the African-American community better would be to reject the political left as represented by people like Robinson, Jesse Jackson and every black leader who endorses this claim. What African-Americans need is to embrace America as their home and to defend its good: the principles and institutions that have set them -- and all of us -- free.

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