The idea of blood guilt
is alive and well today in the United States. Yes,
believe it or not, the same kind of mindset that
characterized the policies of the governments of Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union is today advocated by
proponents of affirmative action.
The idea of blood guilt
is not new; it has recurred time and again in societies
from ancient times to the present day. Those who believe
in blood guilt think that an individual may be held
liable for the transgressions of his kin – however
broadly defined. In the Soviet Union, this idea
translated into denying the
children and
grandchildren of the expropriated bourgeoisie
admission to universities or imprisoning them.
During the Stalin years,
millions of people were deported to hard labor camps and
even executed for no other crime than
being related to
“enemies of the people.” Sometimes entire
nationalities – including Chechens and Ukrainians – were
hunted, deported, and decimated because some among them
opposed the Soviet regime’s policies.
In Nazi Germany, the
legal concept of “Sippenhaft” or kin liability
led the government to arrest and often execute family
members of political dissidents. This is not to mention
that anybody not belonging to the “pure Aryan race”
was considered automatically evil and an enemy of the
German people for no reason other than his ancestry.
Although the penalties
are less grievous, affirmative action today works on the
same premise. A “white” American today may be
denied admission to a university or a job for which he
is qualified if his great-great-grandfather happened to
be a slaveholder – as if the possible transgressions of
a man he never knew might have stained his moral
character.
But he need not even be a
descendant of a slaveholder to be subject to this
punishment. His ancestors might have lived in the
northern states and might have fought to abolish slavery
during the Civil War. Or they might have immigrated to
the United States long after the Emancipation and thus
have had no direct contact with slavery at all.
Under the premise of
blood guilt, this man – who has not done a thing to
infringe on the rights of any African-American
individual – will
still be punished, because there exists an
extremely indirect genetic connection between him and
white slaveholders in the American South during the
Antebellum period.
On
the other hand, under the premise of blood guilt, an
African-American man alive today, who has never been a
slave, is entitled to preferential treatment just
because his ancestors might have suffered under slavery.
It is also possible that his ancestors were never slaves
and were among the free blacks living in the North, or
immigrated to the U. S. from Africa after the
Emancipation. This doesn’t matter to those who believe
in blood guilt; this man’s loose genetic affiliation
with former slaves renders him entitled to compensation
as a “victim”–
unless, of
course, he challenges the entire premise of blood guilt
and insists on being treated as an individual person, in
which case he is denounced as an “Uncle Tom” and
a “race traitor.”
How curious it is when
people who think of themselves as “progressive”,
fall prey to this absurd thinking. Every rigid caste
system, every tribal war, every genocide throughout
history was made possible by the attitude that people
can be punished simply because of their race, ethnicity,
class, or family. Those who today call themselves
“liberal” might be rightly appalled at a social
structure where everyone is assigned a fixed “place”
on the basis of birth – but many of them fail to
recognize that affirmative action is founded on the
exact same principle.
The alternative to blood
guilt has been known ever since America’s founding. It
is an individual’s
responsibility – to recognize that each
person has rights as
an individual and is bound
as an individual
to respect the rights of others.
If he violates the rights
of others, it is he who should be punished. If his
rights have been infringed upon, it is he who is
entitled to compensation. A father’s transgressions do
not render his children legally or morally culpable than
they otherwise would have been. If one person of a
certain racial or ethnic group commits murder or
genocide, this has no bearing on the other members. This
idea has largely freed America from the racially and
ethnically motivated atrocities that have plagued the
world prior to the American founding and continue in
parts of the world today.
It is imperative for
all civilized and rational people to reject the idea of
blood guilt and to purge it from all existing
institutions. Affirmative action must be abolished and
replaced by the evaluation of each individual on the
basis of his merits alone.
