Posted on 06/04/2008 5:10:52 AM PDT by Renfield
While some question the impact of preaching from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ on Senator Obama's thinking, the influence of one of Trinity's most recommended authors on Obama is clear.
Three of Randall Robinson's books are available for purchase on Trinity's website. One, entitled "The Debt: What America Owes To Blacks," is particularly important to understanding Obama's notion of reparations.
So who is Randall Robinson?
He's a Harvard-educated lawyer, author, and civil-rights activist born in 1941. Robinson is described by Wikipedia this way:
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
How much are the 500,000 union dead (nearly all white) worth?
We will see that victory built on anything less than virtue leads to self-destruction.
We will see that, self-proclaimed victims, once they have collected on spoils of victimhood, become arrogant oppressors themselves -- the very things they claim to have been oppressed by.
We'll see it all.
Obama has to be President. Not because he's fit, but because he's black...enough.
So is MCcain for or against the ‘R’ word?
Two words: White guilt.
Welfare on a grand scale. I refuse to take responsibility for something that happened 200 years ago and for something that African Kings promoted.
And perhaps Hillary will be elected. And she will easily implement all the policies which BHO would have given us -- which will look stunningly like her own policies, but that's beside the point.
We always have a lot of talk abotu arkancide and whatnot. But it suddenly struck me how truly awful for our country it would be if Obama were to die. His death would be infinitely worse than his presidency.
the world really doesn't know what that is, does it?
“We will now see the fruit of affirmative action, where one advances solely on the basis of skin color, not merit.
We will see that victory built on anything less than virtue leads to self-destruction.
We will see that, self-proclaimed victims, once they have collected on spoils of victimhood, become arrogant oppressors themselves — the very things they claim to have been oppressed by.
We’ll see it all.
Obama has to be President. Not because he’s fit, but because he’s black...enough.”
Well said!
What do you get if you're a black/white mix...like... Obama?
Why should I have to pay for something that my ancestors did not participate in? (they were all in Italy at the time)
And my last question: Do you think a huge reparations payout would create more or less racism in America? Gee, I wonder...
Not to brag, but I’ve was posting ideas about this months ago. Nice of know Lee Cary reads stuf here. :~)
“How much are the 500,000 union dead (nearly all white) worth?”
And the billions in social welfare costs the past 6 decades?
The debt was paid with genes, not $$$
Taken to the extreme, this is the beginning of the road that leads to Robert Mugabe and and a new oppressor class.
I dunno. The Germans in WWII were awfully angry about the humiliation they received in WWI.
“Taken to the extreme, this is the beginning of the road that leads to Robert Mugabe and and a new oppressor class.”
To be more precise, this could be the road to a second war of independence for those of us who will refuse to fund or sanction such......
Done by Arabs for the most part.
My great-great grandfather never owned a slave. As a legal German immigrant to the United States in 1848, he’d never been involved in any way with slavery, until 1862. That’s when he began a four year effort to liberate the slaves at great personal risk to himself as a member of the 5th Wisconsin Infantry. Meanwhile, his wife and five children survived on the kindness of his community.
Where are my reparations? Oh, no thanks. I don’t need any. My ancestors married the mothers of their children and stayed together to raise them, teach them solid American values and see them prosper. The government didn’t have to throw billions into a Marshall Plan to make that happen.
Well then, you have to give up that trust fund your plantation owning great-great-great-grandaddy left you. Or your 401K, or whatever.
Repreations will not be paid to blacks at all. It will be money paid to Obama and others.
There is no line between what Obama and his mentors want, and what Mugabe has achieved in Zimbabwe. We are looking at the imminent destruction of Western civilization.
Black leadership, in general, adamantly opposes the rearing of Black orphans by non-Black families. Perhaps this would lead to their attendance at schools systems, churches, etc. outside of the ghettos, break the mold that the race pimps want to preserve, and actually give the kids a break.
Blatent reparations (payments to blacks for being black) will probably never happen because they will always be in the minority and the majority of the rest will not feel responsible enough. One could argue that reparations in the form of improving infrastructure and schools in minority areas is a rolling process that has been going on since the 60s. The effect of this is questionable. In the 80s, Kansas City made a massive investment in school infrastructure (mostly benefiting Blacks), but it had no measurable impact on achievement.
What many minorities fail to realize is that attitude is everything. If your attitude is that the world owes me a living, then you have no shot at catching up—only the race hustlers will benefit.
How come the reparations crowd never talks about their African ancestors that eagerly sold their own as slaves?
Obama will NOT get away with this type of BS.
And, for the record, America does NOT owe reparations to descendants of slaves or the hangers on who pretend to be descendants of slaves.
Furthermore, American citizens are NOT responsible for people who have for centuries been unable to pull themselves up by their boot straps and work for a living.
I’m still waiting for Hussein to be asked on national TV for his stance on reparations. Has he ever been asked?
I love how this moron and also the MSM(wait, is that the same thing?) use these terms "civil-rights" and "activist" without question and act as if that makes anything and everything these people push or harp about as altruistic and morally sound. Just what exactly is an "activist" anyway?
and there were only about 25 million of them not 300 million. Git er done.
Can't we get an 'earmark' to pump out that septic tank that is Harvard? Its beginning to stink!
his half brother the co president of Kenya will be making the family money.
i have an old woman friend, a democrat-tv watcher, who thinks and fears
that obama will be assassinated.
i don’t get it.
Here in New York, we pay $14,000 per year, per student, for education, (I believe it is the highest per capital spending in the world) so that half of the students can fail.
Try 'trillions'.
Then I realized that programs and money diverted to blacks will only cause them to trust in government instead of God. It's another dirty government trick to enslave black people to the government dole when so many are beginning to escape based on hard work and their own merit. These are the things that set blacks back. When 270 million American see 30 million getting special treatment based on race, how can they respect any accomplishment they make?
Treat each man as a man and that is it. Hard work trumps all government subsidies. Trust the Gospel for your welfare and safety and not politicians.
Because as Fr. Pfleger said: we've all benefited from slavery (or some such garbage to that affect).
Concerning reparations what many Freepers have to remember is that most leftists believe in the zero-sum paradigm: we’re rich because we took wealth from other peoples around the world. I know it’s a crazy theory, but many leftists passionately believe it (just go to DummyUnderground the last place I heard this imbecilic nonsense). So redistributing all our “ill-gotten” gains is justified in their minds because we took it from them in the first place.
These demands are made of us because America is made of people who are decent and good and try to discern and do the right thing. No matter what we do, though, it will never be enough. And it will result in failure, followed by more demands.
The average black American can no more identify with the slavery of his ancestors than I can with the hardscrabble life of my forebears in the old country. And when my great grandparents came to America in the 1900s, they were considered not white and had to work menial and dangerous sweatshop and manual labor jobs. I have no silver spoon to extract from my mouth and pawn to pay these supposed dues.
We have tried to bring the American way of life to other countries to help them prosper and been called imperialists and oppressors for it. They want to hold on to their cultures but reap the benefits of ours.
This isn't about reparations, it is about revenge. BHO and his handlers want to turn America into the world's plantation with white America as its state-owned slaves. Maybe Obama should ask Charlie Manson to be his VP. Isn't this what his Helter Skelter was all about?
Liberals completely fail to understand even the most basic economic ideas.
I'm waffling, of late, between the sweeping, dismal sentiments I post at times, and the countervailing reason that things rarely move in a straight line, but that events tend to change the trajectory of history all the time, so that what we extrapolate from today may be far removed from what actually happens. And, too, this obama character is not a known quantity; we assume the unknown is bad (and perhaps have good reason to think it is). We also don't know what history will bring us.
All that said, I read today about Mugabe putting his rival in jail, and I thought, "that could happen here." But perhaps it cannot. I don't think we are easily enough oppressed for the average dictator. They're bullies, and they like easy prey. Right now, everyone's cooperating with the Obama campaign. But if that stops happening, it's all over. The same would be true for any sitting president.
Slavery in the United Stares has resulted in an African descended citizenry that has more liberty, opportunity, education, wealth and prosperity than any other similarly sized group of black people on the face of the earth. I suspect most liberals discomfiture with the notion that black people should express gratitude for this eventual outcome has much to do with the realization that it undercuts much of the basis for “White Guilt” that the Politically Correct so love to wield as a cudgel to beat back dissents against slavery reparations.
I have always been mystified by racial grievance mongers who pontificate on the glorious Nirvana that their lives would be had they only been left in Mother Africa, notwithstanding the general quality of life there. Since most American blacks have some measure of Caucasian genealogical ancestry, and since slavery was the transmission belt that enabled the mixing of their black and white ancestor’s gene pools, (whether by rape,semi voluntary or voluntary sexual associations) what they are really saying is that they and their descendants would rather not exist.
I acknowledge the kidnapping and suffering of my African ancestors, and the resultant decades of slavery, oppression, and discrimination that amounted to a monstrous crime for them and to this nation’s creed. But the result was me and my family living in a nation that is the enormous net benefit that this one is NOW. I am profoundly grateful to be here.
Do not misunderstand me. I welcome the opportunity for any clarification of the historical record, and should that clarification reveal more evidence of the often bestial nature of the American institution of slavery, than we should unflinchingly face and acknowledge it. The historical record should be properly contextualized, and honestly examined without any attempt to inflate the crime beyond the actual truth of the injustice. We also should acknowledge that the only organized political and philosophical opposition to the once nearly universal institution of slavery was centered in the Western world, principally the US, Great Britain and France. The racial navel gazing, racial identity posturing, and puffed up grievance mongering should be rejected for the PC irrelevance that it is.
Libs and Cultural marxists often resort to a variation of the of the tiresome “ Uncle Tom” argument without using that epithet by referring to “black people who didn’t want to leave the Masters plantation when slavery ended.” I can safely conclude that they view contemporary issues first and foremost through the prism of racial identity politics. It is probably inconceivable to them that a historically aware black man can object to reparations for principled reasons that are grounded in constitutional, historical and cultural factors. But I will acknowledge the grave offense that such objections do to the sensibilities of the doctrinaire thought police and plead guilty to same.....
They often speak negatively of the legacy of colonial exploitation as though it was completely negative with absolutely nothing of significance to contribute to any nation’s future successful growth. Much of Great Britain was subdued and conquered by the Romans, at an enormous price in slaughter, blood and enslavement, but the infrastructure, basis of law, and technology that they left behind had much to do with Britain becoming one of the greatest empires in history from a disparate aggregation of uncivilized tribes. Singapore, Ireland and Hong Kong were brutally colonized, but despite being devoid of natural resources are now among the most prosperous countries on earth, owing in large part to the civil service tradition that the British left behind. Similar institutions were extant in most of the British and Belgian African colonies. I do not attempt to gainsay the proposition that colonial rule is often brutal and cruel. Rather I say that it can often serve as a basis for the future success of nations that are freed from the colonial yoke should they embrace capitalism, the rule of law and liberty. Africa’s contemporary problems have more to do with corruption, graft, strong man rule, tribalism, and an undue infatuation with Marxist socialism than with any legacy of slavery.
Similarly many of the contemporary problems of the black community have little to do with the legacy of slavery than that of a “monopoly of philosophy” (i.e. an unwarranted loyalty to the Democratic party and many of the tenets of modern day liberalism) within the black community that rejects educational alternatives such as school choice, charter schools, and home schooling instead of the ignorance factories that many public schools within the inner-city have become. In his book “Unfounded Loyalty” the Rev. Wayne Perryman lays out a solid case that due to the singularly racist and destructive historical policies of the Democratic party (and I will include the Great Society Welfare state of LBJ’s Democrats which has been shown nearly conclusively to have been the single most important factor in the destruction of the two parent black family) it is THEY who should be paying reparations to American blacks.
The main reason that I am not entitled to slavery reparations is because I was NOT ENSLAVED. I grew up in an era in which I remember all of the visible (literally) signs of Jim Crow when I visited relatives in the south in the early 60’s. I experienced physical racial attacks as my newly acquired South side Chicago neighborhood underwent racial integration. I experienced some minor racial discrimination at other times and places. No one has to tell me how bad it was, I have first hand experience. The United States today is NO LONGER THE NATION THAT ONCE LEGALLY DISCRIMINATED AGAINST IT’S BLACK CITIZENS, unless you wish to consider “Racial Preferences” for preferred minorities, which is another form of legally codified racism in the guise of cultural Marxism. None of that changes the fact that I am blessed to be a citizen of the greatest nation in the history of mankind, with a higher standard of living, opportunity and liberty than any other.
Sometimes it seems as though the race industry merchants and class action lawyers would divide us into warring ethnic enclaves with mortar pits in the streets sniping at each other ala the Balkans, all of them seeking racial spoils with government help. I truly think that the reparations racket is nothing more than a cultural Marxist wealth redistribution scheme.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.