Slavery Reparations

Spartanburg Herald-Journal ^ | March 31,2002

[JeanLM]

Slaves were,as you say slaves before they got to the new world. The origin of trans-atlantic slavery was technology. Ships could move large numbers of people long distances, taking them from where they weren't worth anything to where they were. This was morally wrong but economically understandable. Most of these forced immigrants went to Central and South America (92%). If they hadn't come here they would have still been slaves or dead. In the new world they were worth more than any but the wealthy could afford. How you could ever rectify the economics of all this by suing a few American corporations is beyond me.

[NerdDad]

Cool! My Hessian was Daniel Wedeman. Said to have been the 2nd white settler in the Lackawanna Valley of PA. I'll have to pull my histories back out and look up the Shively brothers.

[BluH2o]

Reparations for what? The black slaves who arrived from Africa on slave ships, had been sold to the slave traders by other blacks. They were already slaves to superior tribes in their native Africa.
The reparation idea came about as a result of successful efforts on the part of Japanese Americans and European Jews to seek redress for their treatment and substantial monetary and human loss (Jews) as a result of WWII. They both have a bonifide claim ... the blacks on the other hand lost very little ... in fact, even as slaves, were probably better off in America than they would have been had they remained slaves in Africa.
Reparations to blacks is utter nonsense.

[HENRYADAMS]

I know. It is not really third worlders demanding money from Europeans. Third Worlders are not really invading and causing problems in America,Australia, Canada, England, France, West Germany, etc. Europeans are NOT being discriminated against by their own leaders. Incompetent third worlders are not really being placed in positions of influence beyond their capacity. Rhodesia and South Africa are NOT really sinking into chaos due to Third World "leadership." Christianity is not really associated with Western Civilization and the religion is not really under attack. It is all a dream. No one thing is ever related to any other-especially when the things being compared deal with egalitarianism, peace, world trade, democracy, 'diversity', 'inclusion' and money.

You are right the demand for reparations has nothing to do with western sickness.

[Montfort]

It's a shame that the descendants of children who were butchered by the now-legal abortion industry could not someday sue all businesses that provided any goods or services to that industry, but aborted children do not have descendants.

[pepsionice]

The only folks who ever bought slaves were those with large 'Wal-mart' type operations...farms of such size, that required a massive amount of manpower to keep them running. When you look at the population of Alabama in 1850, you will find that almost 95 percent of the white male population over the age of 21....never owned a slave. This really tells a big part of the story....because it repeats in almost every southern state. Why would non-slave owners go to war over rich slave-owners? Because this was only a fraction of the entire problem at hand. The vast audience in America today fails to grasp that there were massive differences between southerners and northerners. Lincoln had already figured out how the electoral college would help him win in the mid-1850s and devised a strategy to totally lock out southerners in the 1860 election. When you look at the future of the south on the day after the election....it was all downhill. A Republican president would be sitting in the White House for the next 20 years and they would eventually set all slaves free with no compensation for slave-owners. We all need to sit down and reread the whole chapter in American history, but this time...skip Uncle Tom's Cabin and the movie Roots....get some real history books and understand America in 1850.

[hoot2]

Slavery Reparations/or Repatriation?

[Vigilantcitizen]

"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 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...

[hoot2]

"Communism may have fell ,but the battle against Goofyism goes on. "

how bout....40 acres n a mule.....in zimbabwee...
would that be "fair"? all your neighbors will be black n share your "culture"...

[martian_22]

This "slavery reparations" thing sounds crazy but it's not insane.

Somebody's gwan to make a whole lotta money......

[antivenom]

The real tragedy is that all the hard work carried out by emancipated black slaves has been cheapened and spat upon by the money grubbing lawyers, welfare mothers, and bastard ghetto dwellers...who are waiting for a LOTTO pay out at the expense of hard working Americans, black and white.

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.

[hoot2]

"Amen to that. Have a splash of Cherokee (mom's Grandmother) in my blood. Seems to me that the native
Americans have the first claim to any of these mythical reparations"

i'm part "washington redskin", part "cleveland indian"; does that count?

[Travelgirl]

I would agree with reparations, if their provision would end all affirmative action, equal oppornity programs.

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.

[ccmay]

A Republican president would be sitting in the White House for the next 20 years and they would eventually set all slaves free with no compensation for slave-owners.

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

[Dakmar]

I'm suing the entire black community for Rap-arations. I feel I'm owed money for mental suffering caused by being forced to listen to rap music at stop lights, gas stations, and in the privacy of my own home when they drive by with those 4 billion gigawatt car stereos.

[SauronOfMordor]

The people filing the suit, should locate and sue the descendents of the person who initiated the practice of slavery in the early Virginia colony:

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."

[Joee]

This whole act is a test of BS unseen since the days of the great buffalo herds.