Fwd: FOOLISH talk of reparations for Black slavery

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ron Ruggieri <radicalron72647@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 22 May 2023 at 12:58
Subject: FOOLISH talk of reparations for Black slavery
To: Letters, NYT <letters@nytimes.com>

The daffy Republican Right claims that MARXISM is taking over Democratic Party . But talk of " reparations " for the descendants of black slaves in the Old South is clueless about ABCs of MARXISM. Freed from the slave plantation, Black people in the Old South were immediately prey to the almost equally horrible WAGE SLAVERY of the Northern industrialists - as were MILLIONS of immigrants from Europe - Italians, Germans, Irish , Poles , Jews, Russians . Are any angry mobs attacking statues and monuments to millionaire capitalists of the Gilded Age ? All those mansions on Bellevue Ave. in Newport , Rhode Island do not testify to an ongoing exploitation and oppression of the " melting pot " American working class ? What a pathetic daydream : MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to MILLIONS of Black Americans who are barely stable within the working class ? Whatever its benign intent REPARATIONS are not part of any SOCIALIST program to correct the irrational nature of the capitalist economic system. Making millions of Black Americans instant millionaires can only insult millions of WORKING CLASS WHITE CHRISTIANS who never inherited collective guilt for the PAST horrors of the slave system. My mother's relatives ( family name Engley ) have their names inscribed on a City Hall building in Uxbridge , Mass. They fought in the American Revolution and in the American Civil War on the side of Abraham Lincoln and the North. What do WE owe you ? Also the white families of the Old South do not inherit any guilt or obligation for foolish" reparations " to Black Americans who were freed way back in 1865 . You must live in the PRESENT and accept OBJECTIVE REALITY which is the ogre for today's WOKE WARRIOR Democrats .

Ron Ruggieri , 75 Mathewson St., Cranston, Rhode Island ( 401-580-7432 )