Posted on 07/09/2006 6:03:15 PM PDT by JingoJim
Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum.
(Excerpt) Read more at federalnewsradio.com ...
Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has morphed in recent years from a fringe-group rallying cry into sophisticated, mainstream movement. Most recently, a pair of churches apologized for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members.
The overall issue is hardly settled, even among black Americans: Some say that focusing on slavery shouldn't be a top priority or that it doesn't make sense to compensate people generations after a historical wrong.
Yet reparations efforts have led a number of cities and states to approve measures that force businesses to publicize their historical ties to slavery. Several reparations court cases are in progress, and international human rights officials are increasingly spotlighting the issue.
"This matter is growing in significance rather than declining," said Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and a leading reparations activist. "It has more vigor and vitality in the 21st century than it's had in the history of the reparations movement."
No, they're not. This is purely wishful thinking, an outright lie. This movement is as dead as the ERA.
I guess that I would support reparations if we took the money from the places where the slaves were bought, and paid them to the nations where the slaves were shipped.
That way all Americans, of all heritage (Natives, African, Asian, and European) benefit from penalizing the African nations who benefited by sending their kinsmen into bondage.
Yeah, will all those slaves in America please step forward and be counted....uh, you mean they are all dead?? I don't see any slaves...do you???
It is like me saying to Britain, I want reparations from you because my great, great grandfather was oppressed and repressed by you!!!
Total freakin' liberal insanity, as usual. The hard work of the liberal left continues to MANUAFACTURE ITS NEEDED VICTIMS. Their lifeblood, along with confiscatory taxation and equal spending.
it's the lawyers , hard at work again....
we shall know no peace until the lawyers hands are pried off of American society's throat
Yup. I pay reperations for slavery every single day.
And I'd like all my Cherokee land returned asap. Thanks. :)
Yeah, gaining momentum. Give it another 300 years, and perhaps then it will become reality. Just think of 600 years of interest to what will then be a billion eligible Americans.
I don't have any problem with businesses who have had ties to slavery being sued by those who can prove that their ancestors did not receive compensation for work done but I don't support reparations in a general sense. It has long been time to move on. Those that committed the wrongs have turned to dust and those who wait for pay outs to address past wrongs are short changing themselves and their children. People who wish to succeed don't let past wrongs hold them back but instead like many of the first free blacks paid for their freedom many times over and were empowered by their faith in God not the goodwill of governments and men.
How come they don't demand reperations from the arabs. They were the ones who caught and sold them.
And no longer allowed to run for public office of any kind!
Not Caught but still catching.
Children can still be had cheap in Sub Saharan Africa.
The Dog Days of Summer, wherein loopy topics like this are elevated to national prominence while everyone's away on vacation.
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you got that right....
Figure out the average annual income of a black person in the USA vs. same for one in Africa. I want my share of the difference from every black American if in fact my ancestors are responsible for bringing them here.
The slaves are dead and the people/corporations that used them are dead ....it was a bygone era ..... we are not beholding to them .... why should this generation pay for that generation???? And then too, who gets taxpayer's money??
I once asked a black coworker who is in favor of this what her reasons were. She couldn't give me an answer. She simply saw this as free money. (BTW, she didn't know when her ancestors came to this country.)
Never gonna happen.
Thomas Sowell brilliantly explains why this is a dumb, illogical idea.
Yeah, my parents came from Hungary in the 1950s. My family had nothing to do with slavery, so why should I have to pay.
Then again, maybe my family should be paid reparations by the Russian communists who tortured my grandfather to death and oppressed the Hungarian people for over 50 years, forcing my parents to flee Hungary with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Nothing pisses me off more than people who think that I am somehow "privileged" because I'm white.
Please mail my reparations check to:
55 W. 125th Street
Harlem, NY 10027
Sincerely,
Slick Willie Clinton, Esq.
Arab slave traders sold their ancestors into slavery, so they should get all the middle eastern oil money.
Tight or loose pack?
Reparations for slavery would lead to the armed insurection of every white man that has a set of balls and a weapon. I have both.
"This matter is growing in significance rather than declining," said Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and a leading reparations activist. "It has more vigor and vitality in the 21st century than it's had in the history of the reparations movement."
Some of my ancestors were murdered, raped and enslaved when the moors from North Africa sacked Sicily, can I get some reparations from them?
I'm all for reparations - as long as they're figured net of the entire cost of the Union war effort in current dollars, including a reasonable figure for the Union dead. My rough math suggests that black Americans are probably net debtors on the cost of freeing them.
Only in a pig's dream.
Actually, most of the slave traders were the local tribal "kings" and chiefs in the Western African areas from which the bulk of the slaves came. Perhaps African Americans should look to them, or their descendents, for compensation. Oh, I forgot, they're all broke except the Nigerians have some oil.
Mid-term elections are coming up. Time to roil the base.
Well, if they don't hurry up the last living person to have been a slave in the United States will have died...
Oh, wait a minute... That was 1865?
I am all for reparations as long as my family gets reparation for the those who died to give them the freedoms they currently enjoy.
I am from the North.
Some of my family died in the Civl War just so they could complain a hundred years later.
I would personally pay reparations, to any real, authentic, 175 year old slave that presents himself...
A fair bet since the word 'slave' comes from the word "Slav" or those of Slovak or Slovenian heritage.
I don't have a link handy, but Thomas Sowell has written a book about the history of slavery in and outside of America. I'm sure the word is translated differently from other older cultures, but the specific word slave comes from the Slavish people according to Sowell. He was talking about it on one of the occaisions when Walter Williams subbed for Rush and had Sowell as a guest.
Have y'all ever noticed how the black leaders and white liberals in our country never, ever talk about stopping the foreign aid or use other means to stop slavery in Africa and other parts of the world?
Hmmmmm, perhaps its because they know that there is a snowball chance in hell of getting money out of it.
I see no evidence of slavery reparations gaining momentum. I suppose it is all in the company you keep?
Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and a leading reparations activist.
Ok Charles open up YOUR checkbook and leave mine the hell alone.
I think I'll start a thread on DU for reparations to be included in the Dem platform in 2008.
The "Gimme, gimme, gimme more" crowd never stops. Blacks really shouldn't 'go there'. Taken to its extreme, they'd best head back to Africa and seek reparations from those fellow Black Africans who defeated and subdued their ancestors and sold them to the evil "White devils" for trinkets and loincloths. Seeking money and special privileges for pain and suffering they never experienced illustrates just how lazy, ungrateful and ignorant the 'Gimme' crowd really is.
Africans look at Black Americans as a pooch looks at his doodie.....just leg kick some dirt on it to bury it.
I want to get paid for the three years my great grandfather was away from his farm and family fighting to end slavery.
Perhaps a formal apology from Congress would be in order, but I'm not for paying any sort of remission for slavery. For one, everyone who directly suffered is dead. For two, my family fought for the Union, and we paid in blood whatever we might owe.
A guess (only a guess), Mr. Jim was trolling.
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