Posted on 06/18/2014 9:21:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
Calls for slavery reparations have returned with the publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" in The Atlantic magazine (May 21, 2014). 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?
There's another moral or fairness issue. A large percentage, if not most, of today's Americans -- be they of European, Asian, African or Latin ancestry -- don't even go back three or four generations as American citizens. Their ancestors arrived on our shores long after slavery. What standard of justice justifies their being taxed to compensate blacks for slavery? For example, in 1956, thousands of Hungarians fled the brutality of the USSR to settle in the U.S. What do Hungarians owe blacks for slavery?
There's another thorny issue. During slavery, some free blacks purchased other blacks as a means to free family members. But other blacks owned slaves for the same reason whites owned slaves -- to work farms or plantations. Are descendants of these slaveholding blacks eligible for and deserving of reparations?
When African slavery began, there was no way Europeans could have enslaved millions of Africans. They had no immunity from diseases that flourished in tropical Africa. Capturing Africans to sell into slavery was done by Arabs and black Africans. Would reparations advocates demand that citizens of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Kenya and several Muslim states tax themselves to make reparation payments to progeny of people whom their ancestors helped to enslave?
Reparations advocates make the foolish unchallenged argument that the United States became rich on the backs of free black labor. That's nonsense that cannot be supported by fact. Slavery doesn't have a very good record of producing wealth. Slavery was all over the South, and it was outlawed in most of the North. Buying into the reparations argument about the riches of slavery, one would conclude that the antebellum South was rich and the slave-starved North was poor. The truth of the matter is just the opposite. In fact, the poorest states and regions of our nation were places where slavery flourished -- Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia -- while the richest states and regions were those where slavery was absent: Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.
One of the most ignored facts about slavery's tragic history -- and it's virtually a secret today -- is that slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years. It did not become a moral issue until the 18th century. Plus, the moral crusade against slavery started in the West, most notably England.
I think the call for slavery reparations is simply another hustle. Advocates are not demanding that government send checks to individual black people. They want taxpayer money to be put into some kind of reparations fund from which black leaders decide who receives how much and for what purpose.
I’d be willing to vote to give them the damned reparations, IF black Americans agree to sign a contract before receiving them. This contract will state that they will not complain about past cases of slavery, racism, or discrimination anymore, or use them as an excuse for the problems in their lives, or use them as leverage to get favors in politics, jobs, and education. If they violate the contract, they get sent on a ship back to Africa and their citizenship revoked.
It would almost be worth it, wouldn’t it?
Slavery goes on now between Africa and the Middle East and who is giving two F’s among those trying to get a free pay day?
Where are all the over seas protests?
Where is all the so called caring for their brothers and sisters being captured by other tribes and sold into slavery today?
Take money out of this and those wanting the money would not give two F’s about ACTUAL slaves in existence today versus these people who were all born free. They are all hypocrites.
PS, the blacks are the Caribbean today, they survived all the diseases and those they would sue are all dead.
A game to perpetuate the Democrats’ voting base.
What, going back to the Paleolithic, or just the Neolithic?
Just adding a data point there for your consideration.
,,,, doesn’t 50+ yrs. of affirmative action add up to anything to these people ??? Millions of people in the U.S. today came from a non slave owning heritage and carry no guilt to anyone . Get over it !!!!!
,,,So we’re 10%ers ,,, now that’s a lot of guilt . . .
In his article he isn't calling for slavery reparations. He's calling for "every reason I can think of to score some bucks" reparations.
“American Indians = example of what happens to nations that have open borders policies”
HAHHAHA Coke all over the place. Snort!!!
So True So True!!! I will borrow that!
as one southern farmer said to another, “if we knew back then what we know now, we’d have picked our own cotton.”
So she quoted alarming statistics about alcoholism, unemployment, drug use, etc, etc among the Cherokee Tribe, with the expectation that someone would have to pay. I simply said: "Casinos."
She was stunned, and I repeated. "Indian nations are allowed to have casinos, generally in areas where gambling is forbidden. What happens to all that revenue?"
She hemmed and hawed - -and was extremely uncomfortable. In the end, she conceded that it was up to the tribal elders to disperse the profits from the casinos.
So I said to her: "It sounds to me that you want the white man to stamp out the corruption amongst your own tribal elders."
Pitting one group against another with the mantra: "you have to pay; it's your fault that I'm the way I am" will never create success or wealth.
Or maybe it was because that since a number of Cherokee were slave owners then they'd be on the hook for reparations as well?
“...which counties was the 95th mustered from...my in-laws have ancestors that fought in the 93rd, from Lebanon and some surrounding areas...”
His family had come over from Ireland when he was a boy and they lived in Philadelphia...family legend had it that he couldn’t find a job and joined when they first called for volunteers...he was 17-18 at the time...
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