Posted on 05/23/2014 12:53:38 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The 15,000+ word essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, The Case for Reparations, is getting completely predictable reactions.
It’s looooong, which gives it a perceived weight which just is not there.
In fact, there’s not much new there, except for historical anecdotes shedding detail but not light on what we already knew to be the history of slavery, segregation and discrimination:
"… the crime with which reparations activists charge the country implicates more than just a few towns or corporations. The crime indicts the American people themselves, at every level, and in nearly every configuration. A crime that implicates the entire American people deserves its hearing in the legislative body that represents them."
"…. No one can know what would come out of such a debate. Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders."
Coates never gives the answer as to who gets what and how.
And that’s ultimately the problem with reparations arguments that are not based upon the people causing the harm paying the people directly harmed by specific conduct soon after the conduct is remedied.
If you can’t answer the question of why a Vietnamese boat person has to pay reparations for the conduct of white plantation owners more than a century earlier, then you can’t make the argument.
If you can’t answer the question of why two successful black doctors living in a fashionable suburb should get reparations paid for by the white children of Appalachia, then you can’t make the argument.
If you can’t answer the question of why the adult black recent immigrant from Paris should be pay or be paid reparations based on the color of his skin for crimes committed in a land he did not grow up in, then you can’t make the argument.
And what about the increasing number of children of mixed race?
And I could go on and on.
Ultimately, Coates’ argument is a dead end.
And he seems to recognize that. He wants a permanent inquisition, a guilt commission:
"The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter. Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge—that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it…."
"What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt."
"What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history."
…. as if we have not been having that conversation and playing on that collective guilt for three generations.
And as if we have not thrown trillions at the problem, and sullied ourselves with engaging in more racism to remedy past racism.
And as if we live in a static world were it’s always 1863, or at best 1963, and people are captive victims to history, including history in which they did not participate.
While Coates article will be celebrated because it so much fits the mainstream liberal narrative, it’s ultimately a backwards looking road to nowhere.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
“The same as me. Some of my ancestors came here in 1690, but they never owned a slave that I can find. But even if they owned thousands, what’s that to me?”
The unassimilated gibsmedats will say you only have what you own today because of what was donein 1690 (even if you started out homeless & penniless).
Any time someone pushes for “reparations”, then they have acknowledged that they have no hope blacks will ever assimilate or be productive. Blacks with their acts together don’t even mention this silliness. This book mentions 250 years of slavery; “black leaders” use 400. The fact is that this country had legalized slavery for less than 80 years (from the end of the Revolution until the Civil War); anyone using other time frams are being disingenuous (as though we owe blacks for Spain’s actions pre-dating out country).
This is one issue that keeps races divided; it serves the Dems well (until the other non-whites they reach out to realize they’d be getting the bill).
The South, and thereby the country as a whole, paid a terrible, terrible price for eradicating that original sin.
“All he has done successfully is beg on the corner for another handout.”
Some will never stop asking; much easier than learning a profession and getting a job. It is an acknowledgment of perpetual failure without hope.
The rationale behind affirmative action (in place now for decades, even putting an African mulatto in the White House) is that they are “owed”; how many generations exactly are “owed”? We’ve given unearned diplomas, degrees, jobs, and promotions to three generations already; is there a cut-off? (of course not)
“I live in Maine and have always been a pro-Union man, but crap like this makes me want to fly the Confederate flag from my front porch. (I took my American flag down on 1/20/09 and will not fly Old Glory again until The Present Occupant leaves office.)”
Because that is practically a crime, I’d suggest any of the earlier American flags instead (Gadsen, bicentennial) - same idea (power to the states, limited federal government), less stigma. As far as the Union flag (Old Glory), I’ve never even owned one. While affirmative action is the law of the land, I’ll pass; someday those that want to maintain the illusion of a nation will realize the left doesn’t use Old Glory either...it has lost all meaning to far too many.
You're taking the "two parties" illusion a little too seriously, IMO.
Ayah!
I hear Burkina-Faso has some great acreage!
Other than the self-proclaimed freed slave CongressWO-MAN!! Sheila Jackson Lee, find me a live slave from The Civil War era, and, of course, they would get the money.
Any other discourse will entail any kind of generational entitlement, which is illegal.
which is my attitude about most college majors these days. One way to solve that problem would be for the government to forgive all education loans to people that get jobs within 6 months of gaining a bachelor's degree. No government agency job or government-subsidized job would count. You would see people absolutely RUNNING from useless majors. But, I realize that is only a dream.....
Fly the original Stars and Bars flag that was the banner of the Confederacy until 1863. Liberal idiots won’t recognize it and you’ll be making a deeper historical statement.
Look up the current Georgia state flag as a reference. We goobers in the South aren’t as dumb as we sound, y’all.
Meanwhile, if ol’ Ta’hini Chickpeas wants general racial war, then let’s bring it. Wants dem reparayshuns, den come an’ takes dem!
Do these folks hold the rest of the world to the same standard to which they hold America? or is America, to them, exceptional in its badness?
What, is it a grade school book report or something? How many pages is it single spaced? Does he get a gold star, a pat on the back and an "E" for effort? The word counting is juvenile, not impressive.
Liberia - that is the answer as far as I am concerned. The deal: give up US citizenship, one way free ticket to Liberia, one year of welfare benefits in cash up front. Be gone and don’t come back.
50 years of Affirmative Action “is” reparation. Too bad it was squandered away...
The day when Americans who never committed any crimes have to pay restitution to people who were never victims is the day logic has completely left America.
One finger and two words.
No, I'm just not falling for the trap of looking for an easy target by blaming the "GOPe" for replacing the Conservative candidates that Conservative America is voting for in the primaries with RINOs.
“One way to solve that problem would be for the government to forgive all education loans to people that get jobs within 6 months of gaining a bachelor’s degree. No government agency job or government-subsidized job would count. You would see people absolutely RUNNING from useless majors.”
I’m not interested in subsidizing ANY higher education today (after having to pay my own way 20 years ago). These majors will die off because the upper middle class and unassimilated lower class that took them can’t afford it any more - they know there is no future with the degree (outside of government work, which is out of money). I’d imagine those programs will be consolidated into an “unassimilated malcontent” degree.
When I was in school we had to take 3 credits in an “unassimilated malcontent” course (either ethnic or gender); to this day when the state college calls looking for money I tell them to ask “Professor H_” why I’m not giving. I’m glad the evil liberals in those areas are getting to see the traumatic failure of everything they believed in com to fruition; for a freak hippie she-professor to be on a campus increasingly surrounded by Arabs and Hispanics (the least gender-progressive groups around) warms my heart.
“Fly the original Stars and Bars flag that was the banner of the Confederacy until 1863. Liberal idiots won’t recognize it and you’ll be making a deeper historical statement.”
Probably doesn’t make sense for a non-Southerner; the bicentennial flag was for the whole country at independence. I have a 3’x5’ Georgia flag from before the change; very sharp.
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