Who defines them as elite? Also, I do not acknowledge the term African-American unless they have dual citizenship with some African country. I think that every black person, who was born here in the U.S.of A. is an American. If they choose to use the A-A designation then it is clear they do not consider themselves Americans.
A lot of African-American kids have no idea of their culture. They have no idea what part of Africa they came from,"
They are Americans. That is their culture. If they want to celebrate living in grass huts then they can easily go back to Africa where cultural and social developement is a century behind the rest of the world.
"Teaching of the young starts very early," Smith said. "You cannot wait until a child's in seventh or eighth grade and then try to teach them about their history."
In other words, "Start the victimization doctrine as early as possible and they will spend the rest of their lives working the system to get monies from the government (self-loathing, self-made-guilty rich white people).
God, I hate this issue. Nothing is going to divide this country more than this push for reparations. The push for imaginary diversity has done a great job so far. However, it is nothing compared to the ruin that reparations will cause.
I have no problem if some people want to hyphenate themselves although I do think that sometimes it is meant to modify the "American" part. As in half-American. This is intentional by many so called civil rights leaders.
What bugs me is when the oh-so-enlightened left applies this term to anyone darker than a particular shade of brown. I may be wrong but many people of color (eg Colin Powell , Tiger Woods) trace their ancestry to the caribbean and/or polynesia. Are these people African-American?
I think that every black person, who was born here in the U.S.of A. is an American.
I would go a step further and say "born here or naturalized." If you come to America and have legal citizenship then you are an American. Period. It does not matter to me which generation in your family tree made the move. That is why America is unique in the world. If you emigrate to France or Germany you do not become French or German.
Try several millenia.
That's the whole intent of it. You're starting to get it.
Cordially,
This is garbage. Stand up and refute anyone who proposes reparations for slavery. If the liars and haters on the Left succeed with forcing people and companies to pay reparations, the refusal of folks like ourselves to submit to this will start American Civil War II. We won’t start the fight, but we’ll damn well finish it.
He said it is important for African-American children to be able to trace their culture back to the African tribe that they are descended from, noting that he traced his own roots back to a "great empire" in Africa that existed more than 400 years ago. [Except that it didn’t. Ward]
"Civilization itself started in Africa and it worked its way to this part of the world, but most African-Americans as well as white Americans don't know that," he said. "No matter how much we try to disprove that reality, it always comes back to the fact that civilization did start in Africa and then spread out throughout the rest of the planet." [Wrong again. The human species began in Africa, as far as we know. Humanity made the transition from tribal-based hunter-gatherers to agricultural societies elsewhere. Ward.]
According to Smith, racism has historically prevented African-Americans from being compensated for all of the pain and suffering that their ancestors endured. [Right. None of the blood shed in the first American Civil War counts for anything. Even though the issue of slavery was not he primary driver of the first American Civil War, Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation as part of the effort to destroy the corrupt Southern culture of the time. It took Sherman and his famous March through Georgia to finish off the South. Ward]
"After World War II, Jewish Americans [were] paid reparations because of the Nazi atrocities, and rightfully so. After WWII, Japanese-Americans [were] paid reparations because of the internment," he said. "One last example is the recent 9/11. Those Americans are being paid reparations." [So forty years of affirmative action counts for nothing, either. The trillions – yes, I said trillions of dollars spent on ‘social welfare’ programs counts for nothing, either. Ward]
Goldstein said African-Americans suffered a "horrendous" fate both in their overseas transport to the Americas and on dry land as slaves. However, he disagreed with Smith's rationale for comparing slavery to the Jewish Holocaust. [Notice that they don’t mention the fact that before the Arabs made the scene, the most enthusiastic practitioners of slavery were black Africans themselves. They routinely slaughtered, tortured and enslaved members of other tribes – a legacy of savagery that continues on the African continent today. The Arabs were the first out side of Africa to engage in the salve trade. Africans cheerfully sold their own into this promising new market. And it was later said that the routes of the Arab slave caravans could be followed by the trail of bones left by the dead left in their wake. Ward.]