Posted on 04/23/2010 12:08:14 AM PDT by lbryce
THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.
There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.
While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others.
For centuries, Europeans in Africa kept close to their military and trading posts on the coast. Exploration of the interior, home to the bulk of Africans sold into bondage at the height of the slave trade, came only during the colonial conquests, which is why Henry Morton Stanley’s pursuit of Dr. David Livingstone in 1871 made for such compelling press: he was going where no (white) man had gone before.
How did slaves make it to these coastal forts?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
*The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.
*Advocates of reparations for the descendants of those slaves generally ignore this untidy problem of the significant role that Africans played in the trade, choosing to believe the romanticized version that our ancestors were all kidnapped unawares by evil white men, like Kunta Kinte was in “Roots.” The truth, however, is much more complex: slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and African sellers alike.
*The African role in the slave trade was fully understood and openly acknowledged by many African-Americans even before the Civil War. For Frederick Douglass, it was an argument against repatriation schemes for the freed slaves. “The savage chiefs of the western coasts of Africa, who for ages have been accustomed to selling their captives into bondage and pocketing the ready cash for them, will not more readily accept our moral and economical ideas than the slave traders of Maryland and Virginia,” he warned. “We are, therefore, less inclined to go to Africa to work against the slave trade than to stay here to work against it.”
*For many African-Americans, these facts can be difficult to accept. Excuses run the gamut, from “Africans didn’t know how harsh slavery in America was” and “Slavery in Africa was, by comparison, humane” or, in a bizarre version of “The devil made me do it,” “Africans were driven to this only by the unprecedented profits offered by greedy European countries.”
*But the sad truth is that the conquest and capture of Africans and their sale to Europeans was one of the main sources of foreign exchange for several African kingdoms for a very long time. Slaves were the main export of the kingdom of Kongo; the Asante Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold. Queen Njinga, the brilliant 17th-century monarch of the Mbundu, waged wars of resistance against the Portuguese but also conquered polities as far as 500 miles inland and sold her captives to the Portuguese. When Njinga converted to Christianity, she sold African traditional religious leaders into slavery, claiming they had violated her new Christian precepts.
*Did these Africans know how harsh slavery was in the New World? Actually, many elite Africans visited Europe in that era, and they did so on slave ships following the prevailing winds through the New World. For example, when Antonio Manuel, Kongo’s ambassador to the Vatican, went to Europe in 1604, he first stopped in Bahia, Brazil, where he arranged to free a countryman who had been wrongfully enslaved.
Powerfully irrefutable arguments that should end the debate once and for all. But those who demand reparations won't allow facts to get in the way.
HR 40 has been introduced in every session of congress for many years.....they want the money!
Reparations: Payments to those who did not suffer, taken from those who committed no crime.
By the time Obamby gets done, there isn’t going to be any money anyway. I suppose they could try to get their “reparations” from China.
Slavery in the US has been over for 150 F**KING years!
GET OVER IT ALREADY!
No wonder we’re getting our asses kicked by third world thugs.
Skip Gates... ugh! I will gladly support reparations if everyone who accepts the payment also accepts repatriation to the African nation of their choice.
Late payment but still payment, which is at the heart of the slavery issue, unlike the Holocaust.
- Just a consideration of the implications.
There is still slavery in this world. That is the elephant in the room. WIth the trillions spent over the years in the US on minority status/changes/neighborhoods/programs, it’s time to turn our attention to the CONTINUING problem of slavery, not something from 150 years ago. IIRC, there are instances of slaves in the US, largely from S Asia.
2. Victims, rightful recipients to whom slave reparations are supposedly due, the slaves themselves, have all been deceased generations ago as well. So whatever reparations approved, I have to assume, are to be paid to slave descendants. Why? How will eligibility be determined?
3. Why is the US Federal goverment held liable for what was responsibility, perogative of individual states?
Yes, indeed. More slavery in the world today than ever.
Related thread:
Professor Barack Obama supported Reparations
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2497965/posts
EUROPEANS brought slavery to our land.
AMERICANS ENDED it with their own blood.
“And there were thousands of former slaves who returned to settle Liberia and Sierra Leone.”
Both those countries have certainly turned out well.(S)
They need to be thankful their ancestors ended up here. They could be living in mud huts like BO’s family.
The racist africanhyphenamericans like the convicted liar, the spitter, Gates and a host of others will never allow the issues of slavery and reparations to go away. They're useful tools to keep africanhyphenamericans dumb and down on the liberal plantation.
Maybe reparations would be OK if we subtracted all the welfare that the descendants of each slave has taken from the US government over the years. Future descendants would not be allowed welfare until that family paid back the deficit.
It would be the best thing that ever happened to them.
Maybe reparations would be OK if we subtracted all the welfare that the descendants of each slave has taken from the US government over the years. Future descendants would not be allowed welfare until that family paid back the deficit.
It would be the best thing that ever happened to them.
He will soon be hawking his new books, having succeeding in achieving fame as a drinking buddy of president obama and Officer Sgt. James Crowley. His publicist is grinning from ear to ear.
How about you just shove the whole slavery! Now if we want to have a truly honest discussion about race and racial BS let's do that but this one way crap is coming to an end.
Good point. One never hears any thanks given to the descendents of the white soldiers whose lives were snuffed out in the thousands during the CW.
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