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.
You are right the demand for reparations has nothing to do with western sickness.
The best reason yet to integrate "loser pays" into our legal system. That would put a stop to these "let's play for a settlement",lawsuits.
"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.
As digusting as slavery was, to even remotely compare it to the mass extermination of the Jewish people during the holocaust borders on ridiculous. There was no comparison.
There was a "Devoted German" lady who posted a very short lived article yesterday asking JimRob why does he allow the "old" Georgia flag to fly on this forum. She stated that it was against the law to fly the old flag, and that she wanted removed from the state home page.
Since the thread was flushed before my long winded reply was finished, I freepmailed her with the following analogy;
" Since slavery has been abolished for 140 years, and the mass extermination of Jewish people by Germany happened only 55 years ago, What gives her the right, as a self proclaimed "Devoted German", to make hypocritical statements like hers?"
I am still waiting on a reply...
how bout....40 acres n a mule.....in zimbabwee...
would that be "fair"? all your neighbors will be black n share your "culture"...
Somebody's gwan to make a whole lotta money......
The analogy of the Palestinians and the money grubbing ghetto dwellers is that BOTH have sub-existed on the backs of others too long and STILL feel that society owes them something. And that something isn't more of anything...it is the DESTRUCTION of everything they are TOO stupid to respect or understand.
i'm part "washington redskin", part "cleveland indian"; does that count?
It Won't. They would only come up with some way for more of us to pay. If the Blacks get this money, what other groups will want reparations also: Indians, Mexicans, etc.
Cry me a river for the poor oppressed slave owners. Why should they have expected even one penny for the life and liberty of another human being? They deserve to have been shot on sight.
The Civil War was totally justified, even Sherman's march to the sea, and apologists for the Old South are apologists for slavery. Their nostalgia for an evil and inferior culture sickens me.
-ccm
Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers' Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940, p. 378
"In 1650 there were only 300 negroes in Virginia, about one percent of the population. They weren't slaves any more than the approximately 4,000 white indentured servants working out their loans for passage money to Virginia, and who were granted 50 acres each when freed from their indentures, so they could raise their own tobacco.
Slavery was established in 1654 when Anthony Johnson, Northampton County, convinced the court that he was entitled to the lifetime services of John Casor, a negro. This was the first judicial approval of life servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
But who was Anthony Johnson, winner of this epoch-making decision? Anthony Johnson was a negro himself, one of the original 20 brought to Jamestown (1619) and 'sold' to the colonists. By 1623 he had earned his freedom and by 1651, was prosperous enough to import five 'servants' of his own, for which he received a grant of 250 acres as 'headrights.'
Anthony Johnson ought to be in a 'Book of Firsts.' As the most ambitious of the first 20, he could have been the first negro to set foot on Virginia soil. He was Virginia's first free negro and first to establish a negro community, first negro landowner, first negro slave owner and as the first, white or black, to secure slave status for a servant, he was actually the founder of slavery in Virginia. A remarkable man."
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