Posted on 08/12/2020 12:12:12 PM PDT by Brown Deer
What do Stokely Carmichael, Harry Belafonte, Colin Powell, Sidney Poitier and Busta Rhymes have in common? And how are Beyoncé, Ava DuVernay, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris alike?
None of the first set is descended from American slaves. All of the second are descended from slave-owners. Much of the media and the political establishment is pushing the idea of reparations for black Americans. But, as these lists show, it isn’t obvious who should get paid and who should pay.
Consider the case of Kamala Harris. Should her Indian mother pay reparations to her Jamaican father for his partial ancestry from slaves? Should she foot half the bill? Or should her father, whose ancestors also owned slaves, be taxed based on his degree of descent from slave-owners? Or should he, born a Jamaican, pay reparations to Native Americans, or take his reparations suit to the Spanish and British governments, as Jamaica was never American territory?
To determine my debt to Kamala Harris, will we first calculate her slave-owning ancestry and then subtract her enslaved ancestry? Should my assessment be based on the year when my ancestors arrived? None of my ancestors lived in America in 1861. Neither did her ancestors. Should I be asked to recompense Kamala Harris, the daughter of recent immigrants?
Proponents of reparations rightly note that several million enslaved Americans received no wages for their enormous amounts of labor. So, they say, it’s only fair that 155 years later their offspring should be recompensed. This assertion is usually attached to the contention that American prosperity resulted from the profits generated by slavery. To see that this is false, consider how poor most New World countries which had slavery are today. But even if the claim were true, reparations would be unfair.
Is it fair to require people who are not descended from slave-owners to shell out? The 1860 census showed that fewer than 394,000 American households owned slaves. Hence, the number of American descendants of slave-owners is a small fraction of the current US population. And a large proportion of all Americans are the ancestors of people who came to our country after the Civil War ended. That may be nearly half of the total, and it includes a large share of the present black population, many of whom emigrated from the West Indies or elsewhere. (Almost 9 percent of African Americans are new immigrants, which by itself should raise questions about claims that America is horribly racist.)
Complicating things still further is the fact that many American blacks have ancestry from slave-owners. This may be because, like Beyoncé, they have white slave-owner ancestors, men or women who married their slaves. Or it may be because they have forebears who were black slave-owners. This number was not trivial. Before the Civil War, there were black slave-owners in many Southern states. In New Orleans alone there were more than 3,000 black slave-owners. Take Marie Therese Metoyer. Born in rural Louisiana, she married a white slave-owner, and by 1830 she had gained title to an estate with 287 slaves. Earlier, in South Carolina, the Pendarvis family had accumulated over 155 slaves.
America has tried to deal with its ugly history of slavery and racial discrimination through affirmative action. Yet, as many of its critics have pointed out, this has helped relatively few even as it created vast resentment. Reparations is a plan to benefit more African Americans based on the crimes of a proportionately small number of the current population’s ancestors. How can that fail to generate still more conflict, antipathy and division?
Reparations isn’t a new idea. Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, who organized the 1963 March on Washington, was asked about it by the New York Times in 1969. Calling it ‘preposterous’, he added, ‘If my great-grandfather picked cotton for 50 years, then he may deserve some money, but he’s dead and gone and nobody owes me anything.’
The Kingstoni-Bombayan must pay!
If anyone should get reparations, it should be me.
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I am directly descended from two Civil War veterans from Iowa and Wisconsin, one was badly wounded. My family also sheltered and transported escaping slaves.
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I will accept cash only, small bills, non-sequential, and of course, tax free. I am willing to sign a hold-harmless agreement, agreeing to cease all further claims against former slave-owning families, whomever they are.
No one should pay reparations. And let’s knock off the “ancestors were slaveowners” stuff too. I know the Left likes to bring that up, so turning it against them means what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, but to me it seems like a ridiculous, senseless, and time-wasting argument. I have an ancestor who owned a few slaves in Tennessee. I would have talked to the old man about emancipating them, except he died 92 years before I was born. I don’t recall getting a dime’s worth of benefit from his having owned slaves, and neither did my other ancestors through him, who were small farmers, and by no means rich, up to my mother’s generation.
The only “reparations” that should be paid, should be paid to the BLM protestors.
Yep...to the protestors.
The “reparations” should consist of a loin cloth, a spear and a free one-way boat trip back to their mother country, Africa...never to return.
I think Oprah should be taxed at a rate of 100% of her wealth and income and all of it redistributed to “blacks” in the income level of the lowest 10 percent. Certainly her massive wealth could have only come from her own subconscious “white privilege” (thinking she’s really a white woman in a “black” body). And surely it was the white supremacists that helped raise Oprah to her elite status, because “white supremacy” still runs everything, don’t ya know. Oprah, give up all you have as “reparations”. Whatever you got only came on the backs of other blacks. /100 satire but with an hones point for the hypocrite Oprah/
I am all for reparations.
Every person living who has owned slaves should pay them.
Every person living who has been a slave should be paid.
Beyond that, they are utter bullhockey.
Exactly.
It is my understanding that her slave-holding ancestors owned Irish slaves.
Why doesn’t anybody bring that up?
Her flipp’n candidacy amounts to reparation
Very good questions. Shows how insane the idea of reparations is.
No one pays anything! EVERYONE in this country benefited from slavery. A horrible thought, but true. Everyone, including everyone who is a citizen today, without regard to color.
This obsession with race is a sign of a national psychosis, and there’s no sign of a cure.
The big problem with your idea, is that the majority of BLM protestors are white.
“...The big problem with your idea, is that the majority of BLM protestors are white....”
Send them with em...as slaves.
They need to pay the descendants of Irish slaves before they pay the descendants of black slaves. The Irish were slaves first in the Americas.
When the British outlawed slavery in 1835; two years later they made provisions to pay reparations to the former slave owners for the loss of their property. Slave Compensation Act of 1837.
They finished paying off the reparations bond in 2015. No money ever went to the former slaves, only the former slave owners.
Nobody should pay reparations.
I agree, I should get some cash. My 6th great grandfather had 7 sons fighting for the north and 4 were killed trying to free the slaves.
Second part is most northern states should receive reparations from the blacks since we fought and died to free them.
What’s often forgotten in the whole “reparations” soup:
1. Most white Americans have no ancestors that owned slaves.
2. The English introduced slavery to the colonies, and the Slave trade from Africa was almost entirely an English undertaking. The continued the promotion of slavery in North America for 160 years before the United States even existed.
3. After 160 years of English-induced slavery, the United States gained independence and embarked on a slow limiting of slavery, and ended the practice after 90 years, at the cost of (at the time) the bloodiest war in history,
4. The effort to end slavery took some 600,000 lives, including 400,000 Union soldiers, almost entirely white. Their families received almost no compensation or reparations for their losses beyond a free headstone in a cemetery far from home.
5. Young Americans are sadly completely ignorant of the above as a result of the shabby history education they receive from teachers’ unions loyal to the party of slavery, The Democratic Party, which has not offered to pay reparations.
6. So far, Neither the British government, nor the Crown has offered a single penny in reparations, nor have they been asked. NFL players at NFL games played in London are careful not to take a knee, preferring to stand, according to tradition, in honor of the flag and crown under which the slave system was created.
Agree. These reparations punks need to look up the white indentured servants who came here and had to pay their passage fee for travel here on ship.
Total BS.
If your wife treats you like a slave does she have to pay reparations? Just askin’!
“Woe is me.”
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