Litigation for Past Wrongs Is Wrong Approach

Lawyers filing a class action lawsuit against corporations on behalf of ancestors of slaves in America may be taking the right path to try to enrich themselves with huge attorney fees. But they are taking the wrong path for justice.

It's wrong to hold people living today responsible for the wrongs done centuries ago. It's wrong to use today's moral standards and try to apply them to seek special payout for actions that took place in the past that were once legal. The latest class action litigation is nothing more than another scheme by crafty trial lawyers to use the ever popular "victim mentality" in society in order get big dollar payoffs for themselves.

It's not that rage and frustration that many black Americans may still carry regarding knowledge that their ancestors were slaves in America is understandable. That's a tough pill to swallow for anyone. Tough, maybe, but everyone alive today better be willing to do so because history teaches all people descended from slavery in one form or another, no matter where his or her family originated from or how high in society that person may now be.

But leave it to the lawyers to try to make money off someone's grief over past enslavement. For such low life, money- sniffing scoundrels to take advantage of others in this regard is abysmally unconscionable.

Maybe it feels good to some black Americans to file a lawsuitagainst someone or something as some sort of immediate act of revenge. But it's short- term thinking. If the legal precedent is ever set in this world that we can file for damages against each other for events that occurred in earlier centuries, then watch out. Nobody will be safe from the trial lawyers.

But as a feminist, I take exception to litigation filed on behalf of descendants of "victims" from the past. We've all been victims of the past of some form of injustice. We have to accept the history and ...get over it.

Take women. No group in the entire world has been as oppressed throughout the ages than women. Talk about slavery? Let's talk about the oppression of women. Both social conditions are still well and alive in the world in Africa and some Muslim countries. We ought to concentrate our efforts in helping those who are still caught up in slavery and oppression rather than try to seek payout for ourselves.Of course that horse won't fly. There's no money in it for the lawyers in helping the poor and oppressed in other nations in the world today.

I can still work myself up to a furious state when I think of the struggle of women. Why, we couldn't even vote until the last century. Black males should never forget that as bad as they had it, they came ahead of women for the right to vote in America. Not to mention the sad fact women could not own property,get credit, seek a safe abortion in a modern medical facility, have access to birth control, attend many colleges and state universities, enter all the professions or receive equal pay.

So are American women to file a class action suit against men who oppressed them for thousands of years?
What about the others who suffered? Are Christians to file a for damages against the Romans for damages their ancestors experienced being thrown to the lions? Surely some lawyer could argue this was cruel and unusual punishment. How about those poor souls tortured during the Inquisition for religious reasons? Should their offspring file suit against the Roman Catholic church?

How about the dear Anglos who lost everything to the Normans during their nasty little invasion in 1066? My ancestors lost everything to William the Conqueror and were enslaved for centuries. Should I run out and find a lawyer and file suit against the Normans? (I'll just bet there's a lawyer out there willing to take my case. So watch out all you nasty Normans, the Anglos are coming.)

Are Native Americans to sue because they lost land to early European colonists? How about families descended from the poor "witches" who were burned at the stake in Salem? Where is their payout? How about the Irish, Italian, Oriental or Jewish immigrantswho experienced horrible discrimination when they entered the country and had to fight their way up the economic ladder? Any money in it for their offspring?

How dare lawyers try to pit one group of descendents against the other and claim anyone in earlier times suffered more? How dare they?

Maybe I'm being facetious. Maybe slavery was such a tragedy that white Americans today should be paying the penalties for what happened in the past. But I don't think so. Class action litigation that seeks payout for one ethnic group over another will further divide Americans. We can't afford to be divided. We need to be on one team. We have to accept our history, even history that we don't like. We have to let our history make us stronger and better Americans than before. We have to improve our attitudes and behavior today.

Yes, many of us had ancestors who experienced terrible oppression, discrimination, dire poverty, hardship and worse, indenturedservitude and even enslavement. But we have to forgo the temptations of the greedy trial lawyers and... move on. Forgive the wrongs of the past and concentrate on improving the world today.

That's the only way, not class action litigation, to build a stronger America.