Posted on 03/31/2002 3:59:06 AM PST by Captain Shady
Modern corporations and individuals arent responsible for injuries from 140 years ago
A New York woman has filed a lawsuit on behalf of "all African-American slave descendents" against three companies accused of benefiting from slavery.
This is the first of the slavery reparation lawsuits. Other attorneys and civil rights activists, including Johnnie Cochran, also are working on lawsuits. Like tobacco and gun control activists, they have not gotten what they want through the democratic process, so they are taking their cause to the courts.
Of course, this case is even more flawed than the others. Not only are there no surviving former slaves who could reasonably file a lawsuit, there are no surviving perpetrators of slavery to sue.
The truth is that slavery in this country was ended almost 140 years ago. It is a shameful part of our past, but it is a part of our collective history. It is not wise nor feasible to apportion blame and compensation more than a century later.
But reason will not deter these activists from their quest for money and power.
The lawsuit filed last week by the great-great-granddaughter of a South Carolina slave names three companies. It claims that the predecessor firms of FleetBoston Financial Corp., Aetna Inc. and the CSX Corp. knowingly benefited from slavery.
Specifically, the suit claims that FleetBoston at one time acquired a bank that had been owned by a man who also owned ships used in the slave trade. It claims that Aetnas predecessor firm insured slaves for slaveholders. And it claims that CSX acquired railroads built or run by slave labor.
You can see the direction in which this effort is heading. If corporations can be held financially responsible for what their predecessors did, surely individuals can be held responsible for what their predecessors did. And the span of six generations between the injury and the lawsuit means nothing to slavery reparation advocates.
To bolster their case, advocates of slavery reparations point to the Holocaust-related lawsuits. But the comparison is ridiculous. Actual Holocaust survivors sued the actual companies that used Nazi slave labor. A century from now, the Holocaust suits would have been just as pointless as the slavery reparation litigation.
These lawsuits are unlikely to succeed in court. But they may intimidate companies into settlement. No corporation wants to see its name constantly linked to slavery. Such settlements would be nothing more than blackmail payoffs.
The truth is that its too late to place responsibility for slavery. Its perpetrators, both corporate and individual, are dead. There is no reason to persecute and sue their descendants.
In the entire nation, the % was likely under 30% but this is just a guess. There were many free blacks in the south and also the blacks owned slaves. I did see a statistic that in the south ONLY 2% of white families ever owned a slave. The rest were too poor to afford a slave.
It's been too many computer books ago to be able to quote or cite, but I recall reading a couple years ago that a very large percentage (over 30%) of all whites brought to the new world by/as early settlers were indentured servants (slaves). Blacks were not the only--or even the first--slaves in this country. The difference is that most (I said most) of the white slaves used hard work and personal initiative to overcome a bad situation. There was no government tit for them to glom onto in those days.
State | AGGR. NO. OF FREE COLORED PERSONS | TOTAL POPULATION | TOTAL NO. OF SLAVES |
---|---|---|---|
ALABAMA | 2,690 | 964,201 | 435,080 |
ARKANSAS | 144 | 435,450 | 111,115 |
CALIFORNIA | 4,086 | 379,985 | M |
CONNECTICUT | 8,627 | 460,138 | M |
DELAWARE | 19,829 | 112,216 | 1,798 |
FLORIDA | 932 | 140,424 | 61,745 |
GEORGIA | 3,500 | 1,057,286 | 462,198 |
ILLINOIS | 7,628 | 1,711,942 | M |
INDIANA | 11,428 | 1,350,419 | M |
IOWA | 1,069 | 674,904 | M |
KANSAS | 625 | 107,206 | 2 |
KENTUCKY | 10,684 | 1,155,684 | 225,483 |
LOUISIANA | 18,647 | 708,002 | 331,726 |
MAINE | 1,327 | 628,270 | M |
MARYLAND | 83,942 | 687,049 | 87,189 |
MASSACHUSETTS | 9,602 | 1,231,057 | M |
MICHIGAN | 6,799 | 749,104 | M |
MINNESOTA | 259 | 172,014 | M |
MISSISSIPPI | 773 | 791,305 | 436,631 |
MISSOURI | 3,572 | 1,182,012 | 114,931 |
NEBRASKA | 67 | 28,841 | 15 |
NEVADA | 45 | 6,848 | M |
NEW HAMPSHIRE | 494 | 326,064 | M |
NEW JERSEY | 25,318 | 672,035 | M |
NEW YORK | 49,005 | 3,880,726 | M |
NORTH CAROLINA | 30,463 | 992,622 | 331,059 |
OHIO | 36,673 | 2,339,502 | M |
OREGON | 128 | 52,456 | M |
PENNSYLVANIA | 56,949 | 2,906,206 | M |
RHODE ISLAND | 3,952 | 174,611 | M |
SOUTH CAROLINA | 9,914 | 703,708 | 402,406 |
TENNESSEE | 7,300 | 1,109,801 | 275,719 |
TEXAS | 355 | 604,215 | 182,566 |
VERMONT | 709 | 315,089 | M |
VIRGINIA | 58,042 | 1,596,318 | 490,865 |
WISCONSIN | 1,171 | 775,872 | M |
Thank You. Sometimes I wonder if I'd have the "intestinal fortitude" to do what they did: I hope so. My grandfather (mother's father) grew up in Poland, and experienced the pogroms, but eventually wound up working, making boots for the Czar's army, just before the Russian Revolution. He lost his wife in one of the pogroms, but his children survived. He arrived in the US in the 1920's, hoping to eventually bring his family across. In the early 1930's he tried to convince his children to come to the US, but they had families of their own, and decided to stay in Poland. Of course, they never made it out.
He lived a hard life, but made a good life for his family, after remarrying in 1933. He married a widdow with 2 sons and 4 daughters, and they had a daughter together, who was my mother.
Like I said, everyone has a history of pain and loss. Most people get on with their lives: Others use it as an excuse.
Mark
Like I said, everyone has a history of pain and loss.I believe one of the cornerstone tenants of Marxism is class warfare. Unless you can divide people into classes you cannot exploit the pain and loss. Blacks feel that are a seperate class. Most kids raised in government schools today feel that this "class conscienceness" is just fine and dandy.
So, if your ancestors suffered and my ancestors suffered then I can say Polish suffering is not equal to Black suffering I win in the class warfare realm. Keep the differences accentuated and you can have grievances for thousands of years.
I wouldn't. Trading one evil for another is no solution. "Affirmative Action" and "Equal Opportunity" should be abolished on their own lack of merit. Adding another gross injustice to the mix will accomplish nothing.
Coming soon to a jurisdiction near you.
I would actually like to see the courts give this lawsuit some serious consideration. Corporations have been spineless in the face of civil rights extortion, bowing to the baseless demands of Jesse Jackass, NAACP, and others by paying for the privlege of not being labeled racist by these criminals. Perhaps with the threat of serious financial hardship, the loss of business, and potential bankruptcy will corporations finally find the intestinal fortitude to stand up to these thugs.
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