Debatable: Should blacks receive reparations for past slavery?

Journal Times Online, WI ^ | 2/12/04 | Phyllis Sides

[schaketo]

Should blacks in America receive reparations for slavery? That's the issue Professor Manning Marable will address Wednesday at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Marable is a history professor at Columbia University of New York and director of its Institute for Research in African-American Studies.

Marable believes that every black family in the United States should receive reparations, which he calls "compensatory justice," for losses their ancestors sustained as the result of slavery.

He says fair compensation for African Americans would involve a "civic restitution fund" and reparations would not come in the form of direct cash payments, but rather the use of tax money to fund social services for black Americans and scholarships for African-American students and historically black colleges.

Marable concedes that white Americans today are not guilty of enslaving anyone. However, they are the beneficiaries of racism, and as such they have a moral and political responsibility to bear its burden. The historical justifications for providing compensation to the American descendants of black slaves can be traced to the period immediately following the Civil War. The compensation that was promised to ex-slaves was never delivered. They never received their 40 acres and a mule.

African-American historian John Hope Franklin wrote, "Most living Americans do have a connection with slavery. They have inherited the preferential advantage, if they are white, or the loathsome disadvantage, if they are Black; and those positions are virtually as alive today as they were in the 19th century."

Marable points to the Holocaust lawsuits and the restitution Japanese-Americans received as a result of their internment in World War II as models for reparations.

However, people opposed to reparations say America

wasn't solely responsible for slavery nor did it invent slavery. They also say slavery didn't create the socioeconomic gap between blacks and whites.

Attempts have been made to bridge the gap, says Lindsey Scherer, founder of the conservative Web site, "The Right View: Nothing but right." Scherer says the United States has attempted to close the gap "by creating welfare programs, `cultural approaches to education,' and affirmative-action programs, just to name a few, and the end result has only been a decrease in the incentive to work, stigmatized learning, and a decrease in the incentive to excel in the truly bright and talented."

Anti-reparationists also say correlations can't be drawn between Japanese-American and African-American demands for reparations.

Scherer says Japanese Americans suffered direct financial losses because they were interned in concentration camps and couldn't work. Japanese-American internment was different from slavery in the sense that the descendants of the slaves didn't lose money directly because of their ancestors' enslavement, according to Scherer.

[Bluntpoint]

Should blacks receive reparations for past slavery?

Why of course they should!

They need to start with garnishing the wages of that one white guy that has exploited so many blacks today:

Michael Jackson

[joesnuffy]

My ancestors fought in the French n Indian Wars ...also the Revolutionary War (so we help provide minorities with a nation to exploit)..Next my relatives fought in the War of 1812 then the Civil War on the Union Side...many were killed or permanently maimed...so much so that they lost their farms and families...(where are our reparations for freeing black slaves?...oh they want my family to PAY even more...not one bit of gratititude from them for our sacrafices either..(thats ok dont want their gratitude or their money anyway just get off our backs)

Let's just call it even and get on with life...as best we can..under the circumstances...

[Bluntpoint]

Do you have a PayPal account? I want to send you 75 cents to assauge my conscience.

[IronJack]

Excellent quote. The radical egalitarianism you're describing is just what the French tried to implement during their Revolution. The result was a river of blood in the Place de la Concorde.

The American Revolution dodged that radicalism by recognizing the natural inequities that define us. And it is that recognition that is today being overridden by socialism.

[Edmund Burke]

I would be in favor of reparations if the money was paid out to all decendants of former slaves using a special currency that could only be spent in those states in which slavery was legal in 1861. In addition, so as to insure that funds were not spent on frivilous items, reparation payments could be spent only to acquire or improve housing for said decendants which meets or exceeds federal quality standards as being safe, sanitary, and decent.

[The Raven]

How about reparations to taxpayers by the Democrats?

[evad]

By DAMN, it better be stuffed crust too!

LOL!

I'll take Ledo's myself (one of the few good things about Maryland).

[searchandrecovery]

All americans are slaves of the governments (property taxes, federal & state income taxes, corporate taxes, estate taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, bridge & turnpike tolls, unemployment, fica, auto license & registration. Look, my guess is it's about 50% for everyone. We all deserve reparations for slavery.

[evad]

Liberals are the termites of society

Actually, termites are very industrious and hard working.

How about la cocka roach..it has the added benefit of being pfrench.

[bobono]

Please don't forget that for each dollar paid thru reparations, a corresponding amount is due to be paid by the recipient of such reparations to Native Americans. Then, Native Americans shall be taxed on such payment as sweepstakes winnings. If Native Americans accept such payment, they must therefore pay for any land provided to them, or return all land with payment of back taxes owed.

Bring up Native American issues to any African American, and the reparation discussion just sorta dies....

[geedee]

NO!

What was it Charlton Heston said . . .

"FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!!"

If the African-Americans want a race war . . . this will give it to them. Maybe not an armed-war . . . but us silent majority types have had enough of this kinda BS.

[FrankR]

""We are discovering that righting wrongs does not increase social concord...

And it never will...

This movement is not about "reparations"...it's about money. Just like the "riots" are not about demonstrating causes, but more about looting stores and stealing whatever is available.

The liberals are once again throwing this issue against the wall, to see if it will stick. It's an election year...a full field of demoncRATS are trying for office, and wooing the black vote.

Someone mentioned the figure of $40,000 each. Well, $40K goes pretty fast in the period of a year...and as the old saying goes:

"GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE, AND HE'LL WANT A GLASS OF MILK"

As soon as that $40K is gone, they'll be back for something else. No matter who it is, from a spoiled child to some minority who think s/he deserves everything free, THEY CANNOT BE APPEASED.

It seems our liberal press will never learn what life is about...I guess that's why they take the easiest course Colleges offer...Journalism.

[LadyDoc]

why should my husband, an immigrant who fought for the USA, pay "reparations" for something he never did?

If you think "white racists" are the only ones who would oppose this, just think about a bunch of angry Lebenese/Filippinos/Chinese/Mexicans/Guatamalans/Koreans/Pakistanis would think of giving money to people who grew up richer than they were before and after they first came to the USA...

[Delta 21]

Steal money from those who have it. Give it to those who dont.

Reparations have never been paid by the Nazi's to the Jews, or by the Blacks in Africa that sold their brothers into slavery in the first place.

Throw the liberals out!

[Dog Anchor]

There currently is slavery practised by black cultures and there has been slavery practiced by black culture throughout history. For Black Americans to now claim reparations from white institutions is raw bigotry...black racism.

"We are one, we Americans, and we reject any intruder who seeks to divide us by race or class. We honor cultural identity. However, separatism is not allowed. Separatism is not the American way. And we should not permit ideas like political correctness to become some fad that could reverse our hard-won achievements in civil rights and human rights. Xenophobia has no place in the Democratic Party. We seek to unite people not divide them and we reject both white racism and black racism. This party will not tolerate bigotry under any guise. America's strength is rooted in its diversity."
- Barbara Jordon

[freeangel]

This seems like a perfectly reasonable idea to me. I vote yea.

[GreenHornet]

I have good news for those who support reparations: Reparations have already been made!

Reparations have been paid in the form of Affirmative Action, minority scholarships, aid to predominantly Black colleges, Government contract set-asides for minority owned businesses, minority job training programs, and low interest mortgage programs for minority home buyers. There have also been corporate contributions to groups like the Urban League, the NAACP, and the United Negro College Fund.

Reparations have been paid, and paid many times over.

[lewislynn]

Should blacks in America receive reparations for slavery?

I've been wondering when the Bush/Rove out democrat the Democrats machine is going to propose reparations for "the black vote"...we'll see.