Posted on 06/19/2014 6:13:13 AM PDT by LucianOfSamasota
Calls for slavery reparations have returned with the publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" in The Atlantic magazine. In making his argument, Coates goes through the horrors of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination.
First off, let me say that I agree with reparations advocates that slavery was a horrible, despicable violation of basic human rights. The gross discrimination that followed emancipation made a mockery of the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. I also agree that slave owners and slave traders should make reparations to those whom they enslaved. The problem, of course, is that slaves, slave owners and slave traders are all dead. Thus, punishing perpetrators and compensating victims is out of the hands of the living.
Punishing perpetrators and compensating victims is not what reparations advocates want. They want government to compensate today's blacks for the bondage suffered by our ancestors. But there's a problem. Government has no resources of its very own. The only way for government to give one American a dollar is to first — through intimidation, threats and coercion — confiscate that dollar from some other American. Therefore, if anybody cares, a moral question arises. What moral principle justifies punishing a white of today to compensate a black of today for what a white of yesterday did to a black of yesterday?
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
He is getting older now, and its hard to see who will replace him.
Someone needs to create a video library for Williams on YouTube, as has been done for Milton Friedman.
Reparations are DUE to Americans for the economic
and antiFreedom assault of EXEMPT Obama and
the corrupt, enabling EXEMPT Congress.
Reparations should come from the EXEMPT DNC, EXEMPT unions
and the EXEMPT Congress and their EXEMPT Staff.
He expresses my thoughts exactly.
I think we are to the point where they need to start paying us back. They didn’t suffer slavery and we aren’t the slavers. Those were different times. Their own people started slave trading before the white man ever did. Get over it, stop whining, act respectable and stop being wienie babies in the name of greed.
I don’t know how you would decide who gets it. There are people who consider themselves African Americans with skin color almost as light as my tanned Swede skin. Family history? Yea that’s foolproof.
Only thing I can think of doing is establish an AA gene template and establish some kind of procedure for deciding if applicants are close enough to the template to qualify. At the cost of many many $billions. And at the even higher cost of establishing the precedent of dividing ourselves into distinct groups by genes.
Reparations are awful from top to bottom.
Paying us back? I’d be satisfied with simply stopping the current ongoing “reparations”.
And, yes, I know more white people are on the dole than black people, but that’s a red herring.
Return charity to the churches and private sector. Let each claimant demonstrate need and his/her ongoing efforts to not need help in the future.
Of course, this will never happen, because a gov’t dependent person is someone that will support democrats forever.
Incorrect, my dear Doctor. Slavery is alive and well, in that eutopia called Africa. Doing quite well in India and Saudi Arabia and a few other Moslem dominated States.
Your salient point is well made, as always, but when will blacks accept the fact that slavery is thousands of years old and the variant we subscribed to in our Nations infancy was perpetrated by blacks themselves?
“Reparations” is simply an alternative term to the more accurate “Sack.” Conquerors always demand loot.
Great article by Walter Williams, as always. Clear, concise, and worth saving.
More white people are on the ole because there are more of them population wise. Compare the percentage of the population that are white and black and I bet you will find more blacks are receiving welfare than the white population percentage wise. Add to that 0 has killed the economy so effectively that more white people have had to go on welfare because the lost their jobs due to his economic policies.
Here’s one such report that tends to support what I am saying though I don’t know how accurate it is, if the data sets are taken from a wide enough swath of the population, if it’s findings are skewed by bias, etc...
You won’t see that taught in history books. Only white Americans are evil. All others are good, compassionate folks.
Didn't include that because most people understand this.
Leftists/liberals always try the red herring of "more whites on welfare", but it just shows that the leftist in question is just plain ignorant.
In other words, I didn't do anything but dismiss the argument in my other post because it was so obvious.
And more non-blacks are in slavery worldwide.
Con men always go for the easy marks.
Reparations “has” already been paid: 50+ years of Affirmative Action.
This reparations thing is, in my opinion, just a sort of “look over there” sort of thing.
It is not only never gonna happen because nowhere near enough people would support it, but it is grossly unconstitutional.
But it really is a sort of fun intellectual exercise.
I come from a family of poor, but extremely good-looking people. My ancestors were slaves throughout the world. The royalty would see my ancestors and then make them house slaves. Eventually, my ancestors would wind up in bed with the royalty. The spouses of the royalty weren’t free thinkers and became jealous of my ancestors and ran them out of the country. The motto on our family crest is, “Get those bastards out of here before we have more bastards!”
The one real benefit from this is that all the males in my family can put on their pants while running.
We don’t demand reparations for being slaves, but we would like to be acknowledged by the royalty. Perhaps they could have THE ROYAL ORDER OF GOOD-LOOKING BASTARDS. We could have a special sash or something.
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