Daily Wire's Matt Walsh: “All of us today would be in a worse spot if slavery never existed at all across the entire globe”
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From the March 31, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Matt Walsh Show
MATT WALSH (HOST): The point is that the push for reparations rests on the notion that Black Americans are in a considerably worse spot today than they would have been had their ancestors never been brought here as slaves. They say that we must repair this damage, damage that Black Americans are currently experiencing, they say, to the tune of $5 million or 7.5 million or maybe 75 million. Black Americans today are the furthest removed from that historic atrocity and yet should be paid the most in restitution for it. That's the claim. But this is a false notion. In fact, it seems rather clear that Black Americans are doing better here today than they would be had their ancestors generations ago never been brought to these shores. We can prove this point by simply asking which African country anyone asking for reparations would prefer to live in. The answer, of course, is none of them.
Now, you might offer the rebuttal that if slavery never existed, if we're re-imagining history without that institution at all, then Africa itself would be in a better shade, better place and better shape. And maybe, indeed, Black Americans would be better off there. But this seems highly unlikely, and it also ignores the fact that Africans participated in slavery and the slave trade as much as they were victims of it. Not to mention, if we're reimagining the world without African slavery, then we have to also imagine it without all other forms of global slavery since African slavery was merely one variety, one offshoot of this global institution. And now we have totally, at that point, rewritten the history of the world in a way so dramatic that it's absolutely impossible to say which individuals today would end up worse or better in this alternate universe. I mean, if you go back in time and get rid of slavery from the entire world, you have just -- it's impossible to say what the world looks like right now.
Actually, what we can say is that we'd all end up worse -- all of us today would be in a worse spot if slavery never existed at all across the entire globe because a change that significant would likely shift the course of events in a way that would mean none of us would even exist. It would mean a world full of other people who are not us. So, I know that I benefit today from virtually everything my ancestors did and everything did to them, because if any of that had not happened, there's a very good chance that I never would have come into being. And as I see it, I benefit from being if the other option is not being.