Reparations Are Owed: Here are a few ways to pay the bill

Slate ^ | May 22, 2014 | Jamelle Bouie

[Cvengr]

There were far more white indentured servants than black slaves in the 1700s, who were beaten to death, while the black slaves were treated as expensive livestock.

My reparations should be twice as much as what any black receives. Where are my reparations? /s

[Peet]

How many trillions of dollars has been given to blacks since 1965?

---

How many blacks have thanked the ancestors of those who died in the civil war?

[Fiji Hill]

Take 20% to 30% of the net worth of every white American of every age, no exception. They must feel pain in order to acknowledge and atone for the sins of their race.

Here's what will happen:

• The blacks will quickly shoot the wad. High rates of poverty and unemployment in the black community will return to their 2014 levels.

• Whites, particularly younger ones, will finally lose their sense of guilt over slavery and Jim Crow. It will be replaced by anger and resentment.

• Race relations will be set back a century as incidents like the Rosewood Massacre start to occur with regularity.

[catfish1957]

No problem. Every white person will pay $1M for every black slave they have ever owned. That transaction will be settle pretty fast.

[catfish1957]

Yep I am waiting for my reparations after the 1066 invasion. Damn Normans.

[abishai]

And some of those Normans were descended from Anglo-Saxon slaves taken by the Vikings, and some of those Anglo-Saxon slaves were descended from enslaved Picts taken by the Anglos, and some of those Picts were descended from Briton slaves taken by the Picts...

[Gluteus Maximus]

My ancestors fought in the Union Army.

Some of my ancestors came to Wisconsin during the English-enforced Great Famine in Ireland. They arrived starving with a whole slew of kids, including about five boys. They homesteaded a place near the town of Glenmore, Wisconsin. Those boys all grew up and joined the Union Army. They trained at Camp Randall in Madison, which is now the UW stadium area. One of them survived the infamous Libby Prison and then spent the rest of his working life after the war as the Clerk of the Court in Green Bay.

My people earned their right to call themselves Americans. That time in Libby Prison wipes out generations of any notional "debt." In fact, given that all of my ancestors who fought for the Union were volunteers and were white (I'm trying to think of a time black people volunteered to die in droves to free white people - any instances of that anybody can think of?) I'd say that if anything black people as a group owe Irish Americans like me as a group.

But that is of course absurd. The one thing all of us owe to this great country is to lead moral lives. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Honor your father and your mother. And so on. We're all falling down on that, but seriously, how are blacks as a group doing on that score?

How about we start the national conversation on race with a frank discussion of black rates of abortion, murder, rape, robbery, etc.?

[jmacusa]

Sounds good to me but it would go no where. Blacks don’t want this issue to be resolved. For many in the black community racism is a business.

[ourworldawry]

“Comments?”

Humans have outlived their usefulness.

[ctdonath2]

Reparations have been paid.
A half-million died to end slavery.
The nation of Liberia was created for those wanting “to go home”.
Trillions have been taxed & spent on welfare.
No direct victims are alive.
No immediate descendants of victims are alive, unto several generations.
No perpetrators are alive.
No immediate descendants of perpetrators are alive, unto several generations.
Determining “guilty” and “victim” lineages would require individual genealogies of some 300,000,000 people.
Punishing the innocent is likely, arguably 100%.
Only a very limited number of lineages in a small number of states could conceivably be subject.
Statutes of limitations apply in every conceivable way.

Per a parallel thread, I’m open to “compromise”.
To wit, “40 acres and a mule” still stands. I believe the BLM has plenty available. I’ll volunteer taking ownership thereof if you won’t.

[2ndDivisionVet]

What were they “perpetrating” since at the time chattel slavery was as legal as anything else was? Alaska is almost completely government-owned land, and a small tractor could be substituted for a mule, if the recipient wishes. I'd even throw in a cow, some chickens and a pregnant sow.

[ctdonath2]

For the sake of “compromise” I might just concede the principle that it was _legal_ doesn’t trump warranting reparations for evil (just because the government declares X legal shouldn’t absolve it of the harm done; imagine “open season on Tea Party types”).

Oh, and if they want reparations for slavery, maybe I’ll insist they likewise concede reparations for 2nd Amendment violations (including consequences of 922(o)). “Shall not be infringed” is pretty darned clear.

[Dqban22]

REPARATIONS? YES...SEND THE BILL TO THE KKK PARTY!!!

An Open Letter to the Democratic Party (From Black Republican Woman)

Lincoln Heritage Institute ^ | 3-18-08 | Lt. Colonel Frances Rice,

“We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert:

Whereas in the early 1600’s 20 African men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship as slaves and from that tiny seed grew the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery which shaped the course of American development,

Whereas reconciliation and healing always begin with an apology and an effort to repay those who have been wronged,

Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices and current soft bigotry of low expectations are having on us today,

Whereas the Democratic Party fought to expand slavery and, after the Civil War, established Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive legislation that were designed to disenfranchise African Americans,

Whereas the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, and their primary goal was to intimidate and terrorize African American voters, Republicans who moved South to protect African Americans and any other whites who supported them,

Whereas, according to leading historians (both black and white), the horrific atrocities committed against African Americans during slavery and Reconstruction were financed, sponsored, and promoted by the Democratic Party and their Ku Klux Klan supporters,

Whereas from 1870 to 1930, in an effort to deny African Americans their civil rights and to keep African Americans from voting Republican, thousands of African Americans were shot, beaten, lynched, mutilated, and burned to death by Ku Klux Klan terrorists from the Democratic Party,

Whereas Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission,

Whereas the Democratic party has used racist demagoguery to deceive African Americans about the history of the Republican Party that: (a) started as the anti-slavery party in 1854, (b) fought to free African Americans from slavery, (c) designed Reconstruction, a ten-year period of unprecedented political power for African Americans, (d) passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting African Americans freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote, (e) passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting African Americans protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, (f) passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 granting African Americans protection from the Jim Crow laws, (g) established Affirmative Action programs to help African Americans proper with Republican President Richard Nixon’s 1969 Philadelphia Plan that set the first goals and timetables and his 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act that made Affirmative Action Programs the law of our nation, and (h) never sponsored or launched a program, passed laws, or engaged in practices that resulted in the death of millions of African Americans,

Whereas Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka (a 1954 decision by Chief Justice Earl Warren who was appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower) was a landmark civil rights case that was designed to overturn the racist practices that were established by the Democratic Party,

Whereas after Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt received the vote of African Americans, he banned African American newspapers from the military shortly after taking office because he was convinced the newspapers were communists,

Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Law, opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was later criticized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for ignoring civil rights issues.

Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy authorized the FBI (supervised by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy) to investigate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on suspicion of being a communist,

Whereas Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, made a 14-hour filibuster speech in the Senate in June 1964 in an unsuccessful effort to block passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and was heralded in April 2004 by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd as a senator who would have been a great leader during the Civil War,

Whereas when the 1964 Civil Rights Act came up for vote, Senator Al Gore, Sr. and the rest of the Southern Democrats voted against the bill,

Whereas in the House of Representatives only 61 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act as compared to 80 percent of Republicans, and in the Senate only 69 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, compared to 82 percent of the Republicans,

Whereas Democratic President Bill Clinton sent troops to Europe to protect the citizens of Bosnia and Kosovo while allowing an estimated 800,000 black Rwandans to be massacred in Africa, vetoed the welfare reform law twice before signing it, and refused to comply with a court order to have shipping companies develop an Affirmative Action Plan,

Whereas Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore created harmful racial division when he falsely claimed that the 2000 presidential election was “stolen” from him and that African Americans in Florida were disenfranchised, even though a second recount of Florida votes by the “Miami Herald” and a consortium of major news organizations confirmed that he lost the election, and a ruling by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declared that African Americans were not denied the right to vote,

Whereas the Democratic Party’s soft bigotry of low expectations and social promotions have consigned African Americans to economic bondage and created a culture of dependency on government social programs,

Whereas the Democratic Party’s use of deception and fear to block welfare reform, the faith-based initiative and school choice that would help African Americans prosper is consistent with the Democratic Party’s heritage of racism that included sanctioning of slavery and kukluxery, a perversion of moral sentiment among leaders of the Democratic Party whose racist legacy bode ill until this generation of African Americans,

Now, therefore, for the above and other documented atrocities and accumulated wrongs inflicted upon African Americans, we demand a formal written apology and other appropriate remuneration from the leadership of the Democratic party.