Walter Williams
reparations and slavery
"Reparations advocates make the
foolish unchallenged pronouncement that United States became rich on
the backs of free black labor. That's utter nonsense. Slavery has never
had a very good record of producing wealth. Think about it. Slavery
was all over the South. Buying into the reparations nonsense, you'd
have to conclude that the antebellum South was rich and the slave-starved
North was poor. The truth of the matter is just the opposite. In fact,
the poorest states and regions of our country were places where slavery
flourished: Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia while the richest states
and regions were those where slavery was absent: Pennsylvania, New York
and Massachusetts."