Reparations for Slavery?

Reparations for Slavery?

Today, even after the success of the civil rights movement, the black American population on average has higher infant-mortality rates, lower life expectancy, higher rates of unemployment, lower income, and higher rates of imprisonment than the white population. Some argue that these problems are the "legacy of slavery" brought on by society's discrimination and racism.

Are the conditions really a "legacy of slavery"? If so, what should be done? Some African-Americans argue today for reparations--a sort of compensation for the free labor blacks were forced to render during 250 years of slavery.

(**See the history and more info here): http://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary/reparations-for-slavery-reading.html

Reparations, Pro and Con

Many people and groups have voiced their opposition to the whole idea of slavery reparations. Major arguments against reparations include:

There are no black slaves living today. Slavery ended more than 160 years ago at the cost of several hundred thousand lives lost in the Civil War. It is unfair to ask American taxpayers, many of them from families that came to the United States after slavery ended, to pay for the wrongs of slavery.

The problems faced by African Americans today are not the "legacy of slavery" or even racism. Many blacks have succeeded very well in American society. The problems of poor African Americans are caused by social ills within the inner city, such as the breakdown of families, high crime rates, and dependence on welfare.

Federal and state governments have already spent billions of dollars on social programs such as welfare, subsidized housing, health care, employment development, affirmative action, and education. These programs have benefitted African Americans.

African Americans, particularly the young, need to overcome their problems through their own efforts and not depend on more government handouts and benefits.

Reparations would be too expensive, depriving the country of the opportunity to fix the Social Security and Medicare systems and meet other budget needs that benefit all Americans.

Any reparation plan would lead to unfairness and huge administrative costs:
*Who would receive reparations? Descendants of slaves? All blacks? Would well-off African Americans receive payments?
*If a fund were set up, who would administer it?
*Would those unhappy with the plan call for even more reparations or file lawsuits?

Lots more on the **link above, but I'd mainly like to discuss the pros and cons here if we can.

I support such measures but i understand the USA's general lack of social support services make it much harder to implement.

I think for the USA the solution would be significant investment in Education services in these communities

What about Jews then?
What about the Irish?
The white slaves?
What about mixed race ancestors?

Aren't most of the slaves dead by now?

Sometimes I think there needs to be a line drawn and let's get on with the future now.

eddie wrote:What about Jews then?
What about the Irish?
The white slaves?
What about mixed race ancestors?

Aren't most of the slaves dead by now?

Sometimes I think there needs to be a line drawn and let's get on with the future now.

yeah in a few generations but it is completely unfair to do it while whites are still holding all the things we stole.
a line can be drawn when things are put right, but they are far from right at the moment.
the system still gives unfair advantage to those of European decent.


to take your points
Jews, Given a whole nation and hundreds of millions every year in foreign aide
Irish, IRA? you know that may non brits feel they started with the moral right.
white slaves, well the last white slaves are essentially the convicts and we have Australia.

Mixed race, we count up to 1 sixteenth, you can self determine to identify as part of an ethnicity if you posses more than 1 sixteenth that ancestry. (So 1 great great grandparent)

Do white people continue to inherit wealth that came from free, forced labor of black people? Yes they do. And we're not talking about a small sum, either.

Did freeing the slaves automatically put them on equal footing with the rest of the American labor pool? Obviously not. And they passed their disadvantages on to their ancestors -- less property, lower quality education (as I've talked about before) and less opportunity overall.

Let's say I bought Veya from someone who kidnapped him and had him be my slave for 10 years. Then someone decided that was wrong, and I had to let him go. Would I not be punished? Yet slave owners in the U.S. were never punished for the specific crime of slavery.

The tough thing about reparations would be executing them, actually -- deciding who pays, how much, and to whom. But it would definitely be just.

        AND...

IF THE U.S.A.  starts looking to "reparations" for both past and present wrongs, then the Afro-Americans will have to get in line..

NEVER FORGOT, that there also are :

The "Indogenes" :  i.e. native Americans; who were still being ripped off and disenfranchised across the 20th century, as the FBI and Marshalls were being used to favour and facilitate advances into First Nation lands by mining, oil and forestry companies;

And : early British convicts/forced labour that were shipped to their American colonies in the early-mid 18th century, before Britain switched their attention to Botany Bay, Hobart and Launceston (Tasmania), and Batman (Battown) (Melbourne), after losing their north American colonies in the War of Independence.

There were black and Arab slave owners - actually didn't black people start slavery?
I do know the English got it abolished.
That's one thing I'm proud of my country for (and no I'm not turning this into a country-bashing knob-measuring contest!)

Why would distant relatives get money for their dead ancesters? Where does this all stop?

ENGLAND STILL had indentured and "forced" labour for more than a century after it was theoretically abolished back in Britain --  it was hidden away from delicate British eyes by being carried out in far-off colonies...    Places like Australia and New Zealand, South East Asia, India, the Caribbean, and parts of Africa..

AS DID several other European and Asian countries, well into the 20th century..

AND one should never forget Britain's "poor houses, and 'workhouses' for unwed mothers, and forced-labour orphanages..", that still existed in the early 20th century.   Britain didn't invent emancipation.


The Arabs didn't invent slavery -- they simply improved on and perfected what had been happening for millenia, and introduced the idea of international slave trades..


AND AS FOR eddie's perception that "distant relatives" might get compensation  --  does she truly not understand that the injustices are even now still continuing in many places (the corporate land swindles are still in place in many of the former colonies..) --  or that the so-called "Stolen Generations" and White****/Apartheid policies were a 20th century phenomenon  ???

The Ottoman Empire was only abolished after WWI..        

Wolfie I am talking about reparations for slaves so that would mean that distant ancestors would get the money.

And black people did start slavery

I think the sole aim is to undo the wrong. To do this we need to address present vestiges of past, not just slavery, but all discrimination.

When Ben speaks of passing on the poverty and disadvantages, it's not just the material shortcomings. We still have to undo the racist mentality...particularly in the South.

The only way we can do that is by elevating the symbols as well as the people. Reparations are mere cash. We all have some sense of quality. Automobiles and big houses are some of the symbols, but education and entrepreneurial liberty are much greater signs. When former slaves have the right to hold their heads up high, then reparation is being done.

One of the great achievements of Barak Obama is to have presented a person of great quality, with black skin. Here is a man of obvious wit and high intelligence, ivy-league education, Harvard Law degree, president of the Harvard Law Review, former Senator...a man who has the right symbols. And he even dresses right.

Indeed, the reason why the 'bad' Americans dislike him was/is not simply because he is black, but because he proves that blacks, with the right advantages, can be the best among us. Southerners and racists didn't want that; they wanted confirmation that blacks are lazy, unintelligent and talent-less. Instead, like the film Trading Places, it proved that blacks can fit in all the right circles.

But I digress. The key for blacks is not some bare fund of money, but a milieu of success and achievement...the opportunity for a life at the top.

eddie wrote:
Wolfie I am talking about reparations for slaves so that would mean that distant ancestors would get the money.

And black people did start slavery  

"Black people" started everything,  eddie  !!!   Between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago..

Then later on, ALL of our ancestors came "Out of Africa" some 70,000 years ago.

And possibly were even bringing some 'slaves' with them, even back then..

Listen you're preaching to the converted here wolfie - I remember having these debates and defending black people years and years ago. I was raised in a black area and most of my friends and all of my boyfriends, were black. So I am of the same mindset for the most part.

But.

I am also of the mindset that at some point - we as a society, every colour and creed, have to stop paying for what our previous people did.

History, "his story", not mine.

How many times do I have say "i am not responsible for what my father, grandfather or great grandfather did. [Whatever it was]

nicko wrote:How many times do I have say "i am not responsible for what my father, grandfather or great grandfather did.   [Whatever it was]

Exactly. His story.

nicko wrote:How many times do I have say "i am not responsible for what my father, grandfather or great grandfather did.   [Whatever it was]

I don't think anybody's trying to hold you (or anyone else) personally responsible for the institution of slavery. What we should be doing, as Quill pointed out, is making sure that everyone today has equality of opportunity. Obviously we're still a long way away from that, and it's ridiculous to act as though a kid born here:


(Rough neighborhood in Detroit)

... has the same chance as a kid born here:


(Bloomfield Hills, just 20 miles from downtown Detroit)

What have pictures of those homes got to do with reparation for slavery?
I mean I get the gist, but let's move forward and help those out of the slums of course, but not by giving out fake-sorry-money, for the past sins of our fathers.

eddie wrote:What have pictures of those homes got to do with reparation for slavery?
I mean I get the gist, but let's move forward and help those out of the slums of course, but not by giving out fake-sorry-money, for the past sins of our fathers.

Well, you just answered your own question. An advantageous upbringing is causative of a better life, not mere money.

QUITE A FEW PEOPLE who live in modern Britain, and much of Western Europe, do seem to suffer a lot of "selective amnesia"...

THEY like to ignore the fact that the "ruling classes" and their mercantile chums, of the time, largely ran out of money back in the 15th and 16th centuries -- and unable to exploit their local environ's and serfs any further, had to look into expanding their empire building into the "New World" to find more coal, timber, gold, diamonds, cotton, wool, flax, hemp and silk for cloth, food and spices, to keep on powering along their expansionist dreams..


AND SO, trafficking in slaves and forced labour was yet another means to facilitate their "economic expansion" goals..
Raping and pillaging many of those "colonised" countries along the way, leaving many of them destitute in the process.

AND LEAVING many populations of former slaves existing around the Americas and parts of Africa and Asia, at the end of the American Civil War, the end of WWI, and the twight years of the British Empire..


ANYBODY still living in modern day Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy -- and even Russia -- are enjoying such things as public education, health and welfare systems, and national defence, that were built on such expansionist policies over the last 500 years...

THOSE who object to these 1st world countries paying out 'Foreign Aid' monies, on the spurious grounds that today's generations "weren't around back then ! are ignoring where much of their motherlands' wealth came from..          


I today's Brit's really want to sheet the blame for any current shortfalls home to where it really belongs, then they should be looking at those who actually caused the problems -- the Royal families and Aristocracies, Merchant classes, the odd Fascist or Communist dictator, and those modern day "robber baron" corporations and industrialists, and their lickspit publicists like Ruppert Murdoch and the late Conrad Black -- rather than being sucked into trying to shift current problems onto the victims of past endeavours !


AND IT'S NOT like slavery has yet disappeared from this planet, either..

Last year, the UN announced that there were around 30 million+ slaves being moved around in the national and international slave trafficking markets !
NOT ONLY the 10 million plus ""sex slaves" being peddled throughout parts of Asia and the Middle East, and to a lesser extent some back street brothels in many western countries as well..
BUT ALSO, more than twice that number being used as forced labour in mines, factories and farms in many back corners of certain African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries (including the construction of the stadium for the next Soccer World Cup..).

ON TOP OF THAT aborhent trade, the true figures get even worse, again..
AS WELL AS that known direct trafficking in slave labour and sex slaves, there is the also the sad fact that there is well over a hundred million more people who are either working as bonded or indentured workers (trapped by contrived and usurious 'debts'..),  or who are effectively trapped as "economic slaves" -- those who are either so poor that they simply can't escape the situation that they are in -- or who otherwise may be likewise trapped by other factors, e.g. geography, lack of education/know-how/opportunity, family ties, islation or remoteness...          


ADDING THESE other factors in, the current level of those either caught in actual slavery, or trapped in 'slave like' conditions, could be as high as 210 -->> 250 Million people  !!!

AND IT often seems easier for certain denialists, such as our own little cabal of fascist turds on here, to try blaming those victims for their own circumstances -- rather than directing blame to where it really belongs...  

Still nothing to do with me!

And your lot are as much to blame!

Wolfie, do you think people should Spend their lives:

Bemoaning what happened to their ancestors and asking for sorry-money?

Bemoaning the fact that some possible distant relative was involved in some terrible shananigans and worrying about how to pay for it?

At some point we have to have a cut-off point where we don't have to carry the burdens of what went before us.
Or this shit never ends and people tirelessly go round the same circles of depression, guilt and wailing about history.

Speaking of slavery, has anyone watched the new, updated version of the serial, Roots?