A Confederacy of Dunces

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"With all due respect, I think you fellows are overlooking a clue that explains why some white people are so attached to the Confederate flag," Charlie Chan chimed in. "No. 1 Son has been telling me about a must-read new book called The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, by Randall Robinson, which makes the case that white America is suffering from a massive case of denial about the impact of slavery and discrimination. He contends that most white folks just aren't emotionally ready to admit that their lofty position in the world is partly due to 246 years' worth of unpaid labor by millions of slaves."

"He's right," said Buckwheat. "It's like there's a deliberate effort to whitewash all that ugly history. Take the national Capitol in Washington. Many of the huge sandstone blocks it's built out of were quarried by slave laborers. In fact, The Statue of Freedom--the figure of a Native American woman warrior that stands on the dome--was cast in bronze by slave laborers in 1863 and hoisted up there. You'd think there would be a national museum or monument to them, but there isn't even a plaque."

"Maybe that's because the white folks are afraid the government would have to pay reparations to African Americans if they fessed up about what their ancestors did to our ancestors," said Kingfish. "Brother White, didn't you calculate a couple of years ago that the due bill for slavery could be as much as $24 trillion? I sho' could use my share of dat!"

"Now who's being STUPID, Kingfish?" said the Frito Bandito, as he began to deal the next hand. "If you could ever get white folks to admit that black folks are owed reparations for slavery, they'd probably try to pay it off with Confederate money."