Posted on 04/11/2009 5:59:09 PM PDT by don-o
Legislation advancing in the Tennessee House aims to create a special legislative committee to study the “continuing effects of slavery and segregation” on African-Americans in the state.
State Rep. G.A. Hardaway, the bill’s sponsor, recently told a House State Government Subcommittee that the legislation’s intent is to fix “multi-generational trauma” in African-Americans.
“In essence that’s what has been happening generation over generation over generation,” said Hardaway, D-Memphis. “Where did it start? Why did it start? What are the lasting effects of some trauma that happened decades ago or generations ago?”
As of June 2008, six states had apologized for their historical roles in supporting slavery, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Those states are Florida, Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia.
Virginia, the state with the largest slave population in the nation in 1860 with more than 1.5 million slaves, was the first to enact an apology resolution in 2007.
Tennessee had about 1 million slaves in 1860. Almost one-third of all Southern families owned slaves at that time, NCSL said.
NCSL also said those apology resolutions included debate whether the measures might lead to calls for reparations — payments to descendants of slaves.
Congress has not yet passed any kind of apology.
Hardaway explained that his bill, filed as a House joint resolution, is about finding the right public policy.
“In order for us to be able to develop public policy that addresses in an efficient way the needs of our constituency, then we need to have some idea of what the problems are and why we have problems,” he said.
Hardaway called on David L. Acey, professor of African-American Studies at the University of Memphis, to give the subcommittee some background about slavery issues facing today’s African-Americans.
“I’m not here to ask you for an apology or anything like that,” Acey told the subcommittee. “In 1555, the first African-American was brought to this country, and from 1555 to 1865 we labored without wages. The law prevented us from participating in the process the United States had declared every American had a right to. From 1555 to 1865, (there were) 310 years of absolute slavery, and it was perpetuated on our people over and over. We were not allowed to practice our culture. We did not know our history. We did not know our language, and it was against the law to do anything. Many people think that after 1865, when (President) Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, it freed the slaves. It took the chains off our feet. We still couldn’t go anywhere.”
African-Americans, said Acey, labored another 100 years under racism and discrimination.
“What about the effects of all that trauma?” Acey asked the subcommittee. “It’s manifested today when you look in our neighborhood and see teenage pregnancy and murders, and all the other things that affect us. The psychological end of slavery is devastating. ... Please keep an open mind. ... Culture is to a people what water is to a fish. If you take a fish out of water, the fish will die. African-Americans have been taken out of their culture. We’re like a freshwater fish been put in saltwater. When we’re in saltwater we don’t swim right. ... If we’re allowed to get back in freshwater, our color will come back. We’ll be agile and we’ll be able to support ourselves.”
The subcommittee passed the resolution and sent it to the full House State and Local Government Committee for consideration. A companion resolution hasn’t been filed in the Senate.
For more information, go to www.capitol.tn.gov. The bill’s number is HJR 0005.
Yeah, it was obvious this crap was coming.
What a pantload.
I’m so tired of the party of no forgiveness.
Guess what? I don’t give two shinolas about the results of their survey. I was born in 1970.
there are no more slaves from that time alive any more. the government perpetuates this mess constantly. non of us have owned slaves, and we need to move forward.
i do understand that with the element of illegal alien and human traficking, slavery is yet again showing its angered head.
but most of Americans have never owned slaves.
““In essence that’s what has been happening generation over generation over generation,” said Hardaway, D-Memphis.”
The cure is called, getting off your butt and working.
I'm no doctor, but I'm quite sure that such trauma can be quickly cured by prescribing $$$$$$$$$$$$.
>Bill would create panel to study effects of slavery,
How are they going to do this unless they make slaves, which is illegal?
This must be so they can figure out how much America owes? I’m not denying that slavery was abhorant and terrible. I do question how I who was born in 1960 somehow owe for things that ended 95 years before my birth?
Also I’d like to add that I also was born in a free state so no one ever owned slaves here.
>I’m so tired of the party of no forgiveness.
Not only is there no forgivness, but they’re offended for things that you and I had nothing to do with!
>Guess what? I don’t give two shinolas about the results of their survey. I was born in 1970.
I was born in `82, do you think that matters to people who will blame you for something you didn’t do?
“In essence that’s what has been happening generation over generation over generation,”
Bullpuckey.
Name me another country that has rocketed black folks to positions of influence and power like the USA has.
Ahhh...but I’m a WOMAN.
Technically, I can get in their face about all the worldly injustices done to women, right? Especially under Islam.
I claim that I have been damaged by what Islamic nations have done to women. Pay me.
This is being created for them to know how to treat us when we are all slaves.
Slavery never ended. Slavery is not owned by any one culture.
He mentions teenage pregnancy as one of the problems resulting from the legacy of slavery. But the out of wedlock birthrate for black girls, and all girls, is much higher now than 40 years ago. Looking at this time line, the big growth of out of wedlock births happened after the civil rights movement, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, after the whole “Jim Crow” era of legal segregation was done away with.
I'll assume that $2 trillion more is added to national debt in form of reparations. Only true blacks get a buncha money and only whitey is on the tab to pay for it.
Fast forward ten years. In 2019, American blacks are still completely dysfunctional as a culture. The only thing that is changed is that white taxpayers are far poorer as a result of a bunch of liberal guilt.
>Ahhh...but I’m a WOMAN.
How does this apply? Did I say “make me a sandwich!”? ;)
>Technically, I can get in their face about all the worldly injustices done to women, right? Especially under Islam.
You could, but I think it’d be more telling to get on to them over abortion... I mean you can’t get lower than killing someone for something they had no control or part in.
>I claim that I have been damaged by what Islamic nations have done to women. Pay me.
I claim that, as a computer scientist, people with no sense of logic should be shot... but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Welfare is now the plantation. The dems keep those who are weak of will and character on that plantation. Welfare has destroyed the black family. The dems like it that way. The dems are the slave masters. The dems voted against Civil Rights. Albert Gore Sr. voted against Civil Rights. Al Gore Jr. as a child, had a black woman as his family’s servant. Rush discussed this years ago,must have been when Gore was running for president. When Al Gore Jr. was a kid he wondered why his daddy and mommy didn’t take their servant lady into restaurants when they went out to eat, why did she have to stay in the car? Well because daddy was a racist, Al jr, that’s why. Evidently that nice hard working black woman was treated like a second class citizen by Albert Gore Sr. Democrat-Tennessee. Why don’t these dems just stop stirring the pot of racism? Oh yeah, that’s one of their “things”. Because “what’s bad for America is good for the democrats.”
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