Posted on 04/29/2015 10:37:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A photo published in The Baltimore Sun on Tuesday showed young black men gleefully, almost hysterically, dashing out of a looted Baltimore CVS store that would later be set ablaze.
One was clutching a box of Froot Loops and half-gallon of ice cream, and one had a couple 50-ounce bottles of Arm & Hammer Laundry Detergent, dermatologist tested, for sensitive skin.
The mob mentality that existed at that moment prompted them to grab items worth less than $20. It was a criminal act warped by the African-American experience in the U.S., where they and their ancestors have long been denied the staples of daily life as immediate as food and as abstract as opportunity to participate in the American dream. Their crime makes an undeniably convincing argument for the need to discuss slavery reparations.
The concentrations of black populations in urban centers are the result of generations of racist policies on housing, banking, education, employment and criminal justice. These cities absorbed people freed from a 250-year-old slave economy that required a civil war to end it. The truth is, the bigotry and commercial exploitation of African-Americans that enriched the nation’s earliest industrialists still exists and continues to funnel black communities into dead ends from which escape is difficult, to say the least.
Those young men with their ice cream and laundry detergent have the choice of seeing their neighborhood as valuable, nurturing communities, or as traps built by the power structure that has determined this is where they belong.
The police, who should be serving and protecting, too often rule by intimidation, meting out punishment beyond the charge of their office. This is not about police going into neighborhoods and straightening out black-on-black crime. It’s about men being afraid to go to jail for not paying child support, making eye contact with a police officer or selling loose cigarettes. These aren’t criminal behaviors, they are responses to living under intimidation.
Looting, violence, vandalism and crime are no solution. They are unjustifiable. They are wrong. They are deplorable. But should they be unexpected any less than infection follows an untreated wound? Two wrongs don't make a right, but until the wound is healed, how could we expect to prevent the infection? Reparations is a way to treat that wound.
The reality of life for the urban black American is heartbreakingly present in the instruction the mother has to give her son regarding police interactions, in the student who isn't even aware that her chances for success are less than those of her more affluent peers. But for so many other Americans, these lives are viewed over one electronic device or another and become reality for what amounts to a few moments in the world of media.
U.S. Rep. John Conyers has in every session of Congress since 1989 filed a bill that would begin a discussion on reparations, but it never passes. This discussion must take place. We must understand why black lives matter, and why in 2015 it's necessary for so many beautiful Americans to be walking through city streets to remind us of that.
What form reparations might take is unknown, but we know that all the policies imbued with racism mentioned above need repair. That might be the place to start.
President Obama said from the White House on Tuesday, "If our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could; it's just that it would require everybody saying, 'This is important; this is significant.' And, that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don't just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped, but we're paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids."
Let’s remind Congress that “This is important; this is significant,” and remind ourselves of it, while we’re at it.
Senior year in high school we did “A Man For All Seasons.”
Our director was a genius at casting. Our Cromwell was played by the smarmiest, sneakiest, most rat-faced guy in the senior class.
He was perfect.
Since the Democrats, Hollywood elitist, and Hillary being the champion for the little guy feels so charitable, and Hillary with her $$$$ Billions, then they should be the one’s who should pay for reparations to the blacks.
We take away your citizenship, give you a 1-way ticket back to glorious africa motherland, and never let you back in.
After all why’d you want to come back to such an awful place?
I claim my self exempt from paying any reparations to the blacks since I was not born when slavery was in existence, and I am flat broke, poorer than a church mouse.
I like your writing style. ...seriously.
More stupid self righteous Yankees
I’ve a better idea
Take all your pasty skin shiney faced hairy armed daughters now and turn them all out to these poor black boys and create a slew of little brown babies that you can personally raise into an army of Obamas and Skip Gates
It’ll be your special form of slave reparations and not on my dime
Put your little darlings instead of my dollars at work and the safety of my loved ones at risk
Benevolent miscegenation.....white paternalistic bigotry at its best
And take Shep with you as your token gay Reb
“One was clutching a box of Froot Loops and half-gallon of ice cream, and one had a couple 50-ounce bottles of Arm & Hammer Laundry Detergent ... Our View: It’s time we started talking about slavery reparations”
So, I assume the issue here is that Froot Loops, ice cream, and Arm & Hammer Laundry Detergent reparations would absolve five generations of white men from something that some of their ancestors were involved in five generations ago, as well as compensate some black people five generations descended from some slaves, right?
Makes total sense to me.
Crazy, but funny.
I hope things are going well for you and yours, Biker girl. ;>)
Late 1600's??
Liberia didn't exist until 1822.
Re: “Their crime makes an undeniably convincing argument for the need to discuss slavery reparations.”
Yeah. . .that makes total sense. I’m convinced.
reparations be damned, give them a whiff of
grape.
Yeah, but the federal government is the major slave holder in America.
And all of us are the slaves.
with 106 trillion+ dollars in unfunded liability and that number only rising, we work for nothing, we own nothing, and our freedom is essentially an illusion.
And this piece of trash was printed in Massachusetts so of course they would believe this,
Reparations were paid at Gettysburg, Antietam, etc. They were repaid well over enough with affirmative action.
Perhaps school vouchers and a few other adjustments might help those people living in that area who want to get a better life, but the Black Community itself has to solve it’s own problems. And the biggest problem is unmarried women spawning multiple offspring from several irresponsible males.
Society shouldn’t have to pay for their stupidity.
Tonight O’Reilly had two educated, older black women on. One was Coretta Scott King, another one was named Rice. He pointed tge latter out to them and THEY saw no problem with this scenario of unwed mothers. And THAT is the problem,
“Bastard” didn’t become a pejorative for no reason.
“Benevolent miscegenation”
Oddly enough that’s close to Dennis Prager’s preferred solution. He thinks it would be a good idea. On race issues he occupies a world of his own imagination.
Excellent.
Gross, really. LOL
Things are okay.
Be better when there’s a bike under my butt, though.
;D
Quadruplesupernovaadinfinitumbarfapalooza.
Who is demanding more after collecting (by proxy or otherwise) at gunpoint?
It is the working people, the taxpayers, who have become the slaves. The fruit of our labors is found in the most obese and demanding parasite class in history.
Editor is Janice Rohlf jrohlf@capecodonline.com. 508-862-1168. Looks like a yuppie idiot with more money than brains.
Www.capecodview.net/about.html
Be polite.
” Then we can proceed to sue the Crown for our losses following the Jacobite Rebellion.”
Count me in on that one.
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