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Are Reparations for Slavery in the US a Valid Responsibility?


80hours

Should There be Reparations for Slavery?  

46 members have voted

  1. 1. Which of the following closest indicates your belief in reparations for slavery?

    • There should be, without a doubt, some form of *monetary* reparations for slavery
      7
    • There should not be any form of reparations for slavery further than what society has already offered
      25
    • The cases for and against reparations are so close that both are very valid options
      2
    • There should be some form of reparations for slavery which is not primary monetary
      8
    • If you have something completely different from any of the above in mind, please comment!
      4
  2. 2. (If you did not answer 2 or 5 for the above question) Which group of people below closest resembles the group which reparations should be paid to?

    • Black people in general, with only those who can be prove to *not* have direct ancestral roots to a former slaves not receiving reparations
      7
    • All people who would qualify as "black" in the US, based on some to-be-determined standard
      6
    • Only blacks with incomes/net wealth below a certain amount
      1
    • Only blacks residing in some geographical location
      0
    • If you have something completely different from any of the above in mind, please comment!
      32


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JustanotherTobigirl
6 minutes ago, Kai99 said:

 

Reparations aren't given due to skin color. They are given to compensate for the wrongs of the past. Japanese Americans were given $20,000 each due to their internment during World War 2. The interment had a negative mental and psychical effect on the people, not to mention it just being wrong in general. It is reported that France paid more than 6 billion dollars in Holocaust reparations since 1948, and France just recently agreed to pay 11 million dollars to prisoners who were brought to French concentration camps. Reparations isn't just some one-time thing only meant for blacks. Countries all over, including the United States, pay reparations for former crimes.

It was the people in the camps that got paid, not their ancestors, hence my it's a little late now part you ignored. If this was something where the survivors were still alive, I would be all for jumping on and having the government give reparations. However, that is not the case. It is decades later and all those people are dead. I'm big on the sins of the father are not the sins of the son. 

 

I can't really see a way that paying individual people now would help America or its people. It would further divide the races. What are you going to do, just pay off all the ancestors of slaves assuming that is what the people who were enslaved would have wanted with their money? How do you know they didn't hate their own kids, or believe that what they had should be donated? Doesn't this not include black people who came after slavery, and include people who with mostly white ancestry? If not it is about race. 

 

All in all I can't see this helping the country as a whole, just hurting it. I try seeing things as a bigger picture, not as individual people. While everyone might want a little extra money, that won't change the things our country did, nor will it help improve equality. America has a dark past, probably a dark future too. I'm all for trying to gain equality, but I don't think this is it. I don't think this will help. 

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Reparations were paid to people actually interned in camps.  They were not -- are not -- paid to their descendants.   When the last Holocaust victims are dead, those reparations cease.   That's an entirely different case from suggesting that descendants of slaves being paid reparations.  

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It was the people in the camps that got paid, not their ancestors, hence my it's a little late now part you ignored. If this was something where the survivors were still alive, I would be all for jumping on and having the government give reparations. However, that is not the case. It is decades later and all those people are dead. I'm big on the sins of the father are not the sins of the son.

Except reparations HAVE been paid to the ancestors who have been wronged, as I posted the link for Native Americans who will be compensated. Descendants of those who have died due to so and so historical event, is common. The link I posted also states:

 

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The payments apply to Holocaust survivors who were deported from France to concentration camps on stifling trains operated by the state-owned French railway, SNCF, or, if the survivors have died, to their spouses or heirs.

 

 

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I can't really see a way that paying individual people now would help America or its people. It would further divide the races. What are you going to do, just pay off all the ancestors of slaves assuming that is what the people who were enslaved would have wanted with their money? How do you know they didn't hate their own kids, or believe that what they had should be donated? Doesn't this not include black people who came after slavery, and include people who with mostly white ancestry? If not it is about race. 

It puts money in the pockets of those who have been historically excluded from the wealth made from policies that help to grow white america. It puts money in the pockets of those who ancestors free labor, enriched the United States and made it what is today. Yes, it is a helping hand to people whose ancestors have been wronged time and time again. If reparations to Native Americans didn't divide races, why would reparations to black americans do so?

 

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All in all I can't see this helping the country as a whole, just hurting it. I try seeing things as a bigger picture, not as individual people. While everyone might want a little extra money, that won't change the things our country did, nor will it help improve equality. America has a dark past, probably a dark future too. I'm all for trying to gain equality, but I don't think this is it. I don't think this will help. 

So have United States, France, England, all those who have paid reparations, been hurt by it? Give me reasons why it would hurt the country. There are thousands of ways reparations can help African Americans. 

 

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No one who has said that reparations should be instituted has suggested a plan by which they could be done.      Come on, just how would that be possible?   Details, please, including who, when, how much, where the money would come from, etc.  

There are many ways it could happen. Those eligible will have to have some documentation of proof of descendants. There has to be a defined definition for black americans. They can't be foreign blacks. The huffington post had a an article that detailed examples of how it can be done. This can happen.

 

Also, I'm curious, do you feel that France should  NOW pay 11 million dollars to the american Jewish descendants of those who experience French concentration camps , or was that the wrong thing to do in your eyes? Is the american government purposely selling drugs in black communities to destabilize them not grounds for reparations?

 

 

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1 hour ago, Kai99 said:

 

Reparations aren't given due to skin color. They are given to compensate for the wrongs of the past. Japanese Americans were given $20,000 each due to their internment during World War 2. The interment had a negative mental and psychical effect on the people, not to mention it just being wrong in general. It is reported that France paid more than 6 billion dollars in Holocaust reparations since 1948, and France just recently agreed to pay 11 million dollars to prisoners who were brought to French concentration camps. Reparations isn't just some one-time thing only meant for blacks. Countries all over, including the United States, pay reparations for former crimes.

But that was to those who were interned.

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13 minutes ago, Kai99 said:

Also, I'm curious, do you feel that France should  NOW pay 11 million dollars to the american Jewish descendants of those who experience French concentration camps , or was that the wrong thing to do in your eyes? Is the american government purposely selling drugs in black communities to destabilize them not grounds for reparations?

 

 

Do you have a plan -- a detailed plan -- by which this could all be done?   Making post after post claiming the moral ground for reparations doesn't tell us just how this could be done.

 

So give us your plan.   Otherwise, it's just oration.  

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You know I'm kind of broke and could use some extra money. I wonder if I should try to get free money because bad things happened to my dead ancestors... :P 

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Just now, Sally said:

Do you have a plan -- a detailed plan -- by which this could all be done?   Making post after post claiming the moral ground for reparations doesn't tell us just how this could be done.

 

So give us your plan.   Otherwise, it's just oration.  

What is your answer to my question above? Why did you ignore it? I've already given examples of how. The first step is deciding of the black american population, what would exclude them? Than go on from there. Making a definitive answer to that question, will help to define who will get it. Those excluded will include those individual black Americans who are aren't american citizens, recently immigrated, or gained citizenship in the last thirty years. Maybe those mixed american citizens African ancestry should be no less than 30%. There are many non black citizens who do have black ancestry in their blood, but their percentages dont go higher than 12-15%. 

 

 

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"Go on from there"  is not a plan.  Where would the money come from?  

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1 minute ago, Sally said:

"Go on from there"  is not a plan.  Where would the money come from?  

 

Answer the question.

 

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Also, I'm curious, do you feel that France should  NOW pay 11 million dollars to the american Jewish descendants of those who experience French concentration camps , or was that the wrong thing to do in your eyes? Is the american government purposely selling drugs in black communities to destabilize them not grounds for reparations?

 

 

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14 hours ago, Kai99 said:

So the wealth from slavery that helped to make the United States an economic powerhouse... just up and disappeared? Those 400 years of free labor did no benefit for the people of today? Did the US not make much of their wealth with cotton? Hmm lets see the truth:

 

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/04/14/four-eras-slavery-benefit-corporations

 

 

And as far as more modern examples, please read them and weep

 

United States would NOT be where it is today without slavery. It was the backbone that held the country up, all due to the force labor of black African slaves who never got the chance to enjoy that wealth. 

 

Do black Americans deserve reparations. Yes, and the reasons  why go well beyond just 400 years of free labor (yes, the descendants need to paid for that labor) that created the economic powerhouse known as the United States.

 

Other reasons included:

 

African Americans were economically kept at a disadvantage by unfair wages and practices that help to keep blacks in a semi-slave state after the civil war( Jim Crow Laws, Sharecropping).

The prison system that was originally created to lock black people in a semi-slave state, which we can still see the effects of that today.

The years of legal violence, of which a white person could kill a black person with no consequence in many southern states.  The emerging, but not fully formed KKK , after the civil war,  traveled to place to place harming and killing any black that they saw.

The years upon years of injustices that resulted from those laws.

The Black Wall Street of the time which could have help to secure wealth for thousands of blacks, was destroyed by a race riot in which planes dropped bombs down on the people and buildings below, the only time such a thing occurred on American soil, killing hundreds and leaving others destitute. No one was punished for this.

The many laws that economically help to benefit whites, but were denied to blacks that helped to build white wealth, like the National Housing Act of 1934 and the WWII G. I. Bill.

The government-controlled destruction of black communities, from Nixon's war on drugs to Reagan's CIA funding their illegal activities by selling drugs in black communities, while increasing the prison time for drug offenses of which we can still see the effects of that today.

 

There is no other group in the US that was as systematically disadvantage like African Americans. It was brutal, it was consistent, and it was intentional. I can walk outside and still see the damage of the years of discrimination today.

 

Do you want to know who received reparations for slavery? Over 900 Slave Owners. They were rewarded 300 dollars per slave, an equivalent of $7000 today. Get out of here with that "no one benefited from slavery today" crap. Get out a history book and read.

 

 

 

Then blacks owe the decedents of union soldiers reparations. Union soldiers fought and died in a war and in doing so, they helped to end slavery. Also, blacks owe other blacks reparations because blacks owned other blacks as slaves. Africans also owe American blacks for selling their ancestors into slavery. Moreover, Africans owe whites for the Barbary Slave trade (which predated the discovery of a middle passage across the Atlantic).

 

The drug war hurts everyone.

 

This wreaks of the original sin mentality the left has towards whites, especially American whites. Basically: You were born a white American; therefore you should pay for things you didn't do, things your long-dead ancestors did.

 

400 years of free labor? The United States has only existed for 250 years.

 

Many people contributed to the economic prosperity of the U.S. Maybe we should pay their descendents as well.

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10 hours ago, Kai99 said:

That's pretty stupid too. I say this as someone with Cherokee ancestry.

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4 hours ago, Kai99 said:

 

Answer the question.

 

 

It's a question to you.  You are the one promoting the payment of reparations, not me.  You should present your plan for paying those reparations.  Otherwise, you're  just talking blue sky nonsense.  

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That's pretty stupid too. I say this as someone with Cherokee ancestry.

Can you honestly say you know enough about the issue to form a fair opinion? Why is it stupid when it is well known that many Natives were purposely duped to signing away their lands by the government not informing them what the contract actually stated. Many of them could not read English and even the ones who could, would not have been able t o decipher the contract. They have been fighting against it for a long time, as stated here:

 

"The policy of reaching settlements on the disputes, some of which date back more than a century, is part of a campaign promise the president made to American Indians before he took office."

 

This is also why I don't take people who claim they are part Native seriously. I have both black and whites friends who say the exact same thing. Even if its true, being Native "down-the-line" means nothing because I guarantee, as someone who passes for white, you will not relate to the issues of those who are physically Native, nor does it mean you will care about the issues that they fight for. Just as someone who looks completely white, but whose great, great grandmother is part black, could not relate or even sympathizes with black causes.

 

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It's a question to you.  You are the one promoting the payment of reparations, not me.  You should present your plan for paying those reparations.  Otherwise, you're  just talking blue sky nonsense.  

My questions are valid in this thread. Your avoidance in answering them shows you know very well how which ever way you answer them would implicate your future argument.

 

This thread is asking whether or not you think black americans deserve Reparations. My answer is yes, they do. Do I think that will ever happen? No, not because the US couldn't pay for it, they can, but simply due to politics. If Dems go all out for reparations, plenty of white Dems will go against it and head to the Republican party. Democrats don't want that to happen. They want to gain more white voters, not lose them, and black reparations are completely unpopular in white america.

 

But lets look at the money issue that you keep bringing up. For some odd reason, your implying that the US isn't capable of doing large payouts. Now lets look here for a moment. Back in 1880, the US government paid an equivalent of now 5.8 billion dollars to slave owners. Back in 1880. The US is paying Native Americans a total of $493 million today. The Obama administration, in their last year, chose to pay off our debt to Iran which, with the interest, was 1. 7 billion dollars ( which more than likely would not have happened under Trump, keep that in mind). Now France, the 7th largest economy in the world, paid a total of 6 billion dollars of Holocaust reparations. Now keep in mind that is simply Holocaust reparations, so no doubt if calculating all reparations paid since 1948, that number would be higher. France is able to do so... without bankrupting their economy. Your telling me the US, as the number one economy in the world, would go bankrupt? 

 

ETA Also, Germany has paid a total of 89 billion dollars in Holocaust reparations, and they are in 4th place in terms of economy. Still going strong...

 

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The same U.S.A. which gave rise to Jim Crowe and the Klan also gave rise to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the United Negro College Fund, affirmative action, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, the N.A.A.C.P., the Voting Rights act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and the Fair Housing Act.

 

The U.S. has also seen things like the forced integration of Little Rock High School. The blacks who were to attend school there had military protection. We have seen blacks become very successful, powerful, and influential. We have even had a black man in the oval office.

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On 1/1/2018 at 11:24 AM, Kai99 said:

Many of them could not read English and even the ones who could, would not have been able t o decipher the contract. They have been fighting against it for a long time, as stated here.

 

Nor does it mean you will care about the issues that they fight for. Just as someone who looks completely white, but whose great, great grandmother is part black, could not relate or even sympathizes with black causes.

 

 

Why? Because you think Native Americans who did speak English were too stupid to understand the document(s)?

 

Actually, I care about people of all races and want the best for them. I also consider my Cherokee ancestors to be every bit as much of my family and heritage as my white ones. Some aspects of native culture, I even affinity for.

 

Only those directly involved owe anything for what Germany did during WW2. Otherwise, no one else does. 77,000 Germans were put to death for opposing Nazism. People within the government and military even staged a coup against Nazism, France sure as hell does not owe anything because they were enemies of Germany and were invaded by Germany. Germans who were born after 1945 should feel no guilt for what their ancestors did. This actually goes for everyone. If you did not do the crime, you should not feel guilty or pay.

 

On the notion that people benefit now from slavery: All Americans do then by virtue of being American. When slavery was a thing in the U.S., free men who looked for jobs that had to compete with slaves had to take pay cuts. So, even then not everyone benefited. Freed slaves benefited from the death of union soldiers. We have already paid for slavery with the deadliest war in U.S. history which killed 600,000 people. Even non slaveholding southerners suffered during the war literally by having their state and country invaded, burned, and looted.

 

 

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On 1/1/2018 at 6:24 PM, Kai99 said:

ETA Also, Germany has paid a total of 89 billion dollars in Holocaust reparations, and they are in 4th place in terms of economy. Still going strong...

The holocaust and slavery are a bit different, there are still probably holocaust survivors alive (though becoming very scarce), there are no more former people who were slaves in America when slavery were legal alive anymore. 

Time does play a roll. Also just because a country can pay reparations, doesn't mean they should passed a certain point or time. 

 

imo reparations should only be payed to those directly effected, I don't even have a problem really if the reparations are payed 70 years later, as long as they are going to those directly effected

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On 1/7/2018 at 8:04 AM, XYZ96 said:

The holocaust and slavery are a bit different, there are still probably holocaust survivors alive (though becoming very scarce), there are no more former people who were slaves in America when slavery were legal alive anymore. 

Time does play a roll. Also just because a country can pay reparations, doesn't mean they should passed a certain point or time. 

 

imo reparations should only be payed to those directly effected, I don't even have a problem really if the reparations are payed 70 years later, as long as they are going to those directly effected

I've listed plenty of more recent reasons why reparations should be paid. The government sponsored tactics to harm the black american community has been both prolonged and intentionally done. The damage still so apparent today. Also, just as you do not have to be directly affected to obtain both Holocaust and Native American reparations, the same should go for black americans... who have been personally affected by certain events in recent history.

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Where is the line to be drawn for who get what and what kind of events in history that make you qualified to reperations? Shpuld Spanish people be repaired for the war of aggression USA had against them that in the long term caused a civil war in Spain which effects are still felt today? Or are that too far fetched and too long back in history? Where is the line in the sand to be drawn?

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5 hours ago, Kai99 said:

I've listed plenty of more recent reasons why reparations should be paid. The government sponsored tactics to harm the black american community has been both prolonged and intentionally done. The damage still so apparent today. Also, just as you do not have to be directly affected to obtain both Holocaust and Native American reparations, the same should go for black americans... who have been personally affected by certain events in recent history.

If reparations were paid for these government sponsored tactics, then those wouldn't be reparations for slavery, they'd be reparations for whatever tactics those are (I assume you're talking about the whole war on drugs thing, and I don't know enough about that to have a sensible opinion, so I'm just going to leave it at that)

 

now you could try and make a case for the whole segregation thing, as several blacks who lived during that time are still alive, but even there I don't think reparations should be made. In cases of inequality, what I think should be down is, the inequality should be eliminated, and depending on the circumstances, affirmative action like things can/should be put into place temporarily, and the communities should be helped out as a whole, and not just the individuals in the community.  

 

Otherwise, who should get reparations, who shouldn't, the (western) world hasn't been exactly equal for all for a super long time (it probably still isn't completely), should we pay reparations to homosexuals, because we only started seeing homosexuality as not a metal illness in the last 50 or so years and because they were sometimes given lobotomies, because it was seen as a mental disorder? There are many examples of inequality and systemic oppression of groups in the last century, and even more cases of people being worse off, because of past events in previous centuries.

 

I personality think reparations should only be payed in few instances, like the japanese that were in internment camps for example, most other cases, the communities should be helped as a whole and not paying individuals who might be in those communities, but might not be anymore (as in rich people from minorities that were oppressed in the past, who got out of poverty, they don't really need any help any more, so instead of helping a fairly abstract [insert color or ethnicity here] community, more concrete communities, like poor rural communities, inner city communities and so on, should be helped). For example, many blacks are poor, proportionately more then whites, and a good chunk of that comes from them ending up poor due to past events (like the whole segregation thing), but I think a better way to deal with that then paying them all for being black, is to better the school system, so schools in poorer areas aren't significantly worse then in not poor areas and to maybe better the infrastructure in the communities and other things like that.  

 

(also I still hold the stance, in the cases were reparations are payed to people specifically, it should only be payed to those directly effected.) 

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If reparations were paid for these government sponsored tactics, then those wouldn't be reparations for slavery, they'd be reparations for whatever tactics those are (I assume you're talking about the whole war on drugs thing, and I don't know enough about that to have a sensible opinion, so I'm just going to leave it at that)

Actually, slavery would still be a part of that. America built its enormous wealth on slave labor. Without slavery, the US that you know and love today would NOT exist. All thanks to the hundreds of years of free labor.  This is a well documented truth. 

 

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now you could try and make a case for the whole segregation thing, as several blacks who lived during that time are still alive, but even there I don't think reparations should be made. In cases of inequality, what I think should be down is, the inequality should be eliminated, and depending on the circumstances, affirmative action like things can/should be put into place temporarily, and the communities should be helped out as a whole, and not just the individuals in the community.  

 I've listed several examples of why blacks are owed reparations. Please address those listed and why these reasons aren't good enough for reparations.

 

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African Americans were economically kept at a disadvantage by unfair wages and practices that help to keep blacks in a semi-slave state after the civil war( Jim Crow Laws, Sharecropping).

The prison system that was originally created to lock black people in a semi-slave state, which we can still see the effects of that today.

The years of legal violence, of which a white person could kill a black person with no consequence in many southern states.  The emerging, but not fully formed KKK , after the civil war,  traveled to place to place harming and killing any black that they saw.

The years upon years of injustices that resulted from those laws.

The Black Wall Street of the time which could have help to secure wealth for thousands of blacks, was destroyed by a race riot in which planes dropped bombs down on the people and buildings below, the only time such a thing occurred on American soil, killing hundreds and leaving others destitute. No one was punished for this.

The many laws that economically help to benefit whites, but were denied to blacks that helped to build white wealth, like the National Housing Act of 1934 and the WWII G. I. Bill.

The government-controlled destruction of black communities, from Nixon's war on drugs to Reagan's CIA funding their illegal activities by selling drugs in black communities, while increasing the prison time for drug offenses of which we can still see the effects of that today.

 

There is no other group in the US that was as systematically disadvantage like African Americans. It was brutal, it was consistent, and it was intentional. I can walk outside and still see the damage of the years of discrimination today

 

 

 

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Otherwise, who should get reparations, who shouldn't, the (western) world hasn't been exactly equal for all for a super long time (it probably still isn't completely), should we pay reparations to homosexuals, because we only started seeing homosexuality as not a metal illness in the last 50 or so years and because they were sometimes given lobotomies, because it was seen as a mental disorder? There are many examples of inequality and systemic oppression of groups in the last century, and even more cases of people being worse off, because of past events in previous centuries.

Who should and who shouldn't largely depends on who today fights for it and whether or not the government recognize that issue as a incident that needs to compensated. While Germany has paid over 89 billion dollars for holocaust reparations, they barely acknowledged the horrors that they committed in Namibia in the early 1900s where over 80,000 of a population of 100,000 were brutally killed in a similar way to how they would eventually do to the Jews.. For the longest of time, Germany refused to recognize what they did in Namibia even though what occurred is well documented. In 2017, Namibia is now requesting over 30 billion dollars in reparations. I say they deserve those reparations.

 

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I personality think reparations should only be payed in few instances, like the japanese that were in internment camps for example, most other cases, the communities should be helped as a whole and not paying individuals who might be in those communities, but might not be anymore (as in rich people from minorities that were oppressed in the past, who got out of poverty, they don't really need any help any more, so instead of helping a fairly abstract [insert color or ethnicity here] community, more concrete communities, like poor rural communities, inner city communities and so on, should be helped). For example, many blacks are poor, proportionately more then whites, and a good chunk of that comes from them ending up poor due to past events (like the whole segregation thing), but I think a better way to deal with that then paying them all for being black, is to better the school system, so schools in poorer areas aren't significantly worse then in not poor areas and to maybe better the infrastructure in the communities and other things like that.  

 

(also I still hold the stance, in the cases were reparations are payed to people specifically, it should only be payed to those directly effected.) 

The Japanese Americans were target and rounded up one by one, their names documented. It is easy to say that the US should pay for those affected because the population was so clearly rounded up and abused. That did not happen to black americans. When the government began purposely targeting black people, they didn't round us up and identified us by name. They simply implanted the drugs in mainly black areas while at the same time, increasing the prison sentences for even the smallest of drug offenses. They help to start the gang wars that eventually killed thousands upon thousands of black citizens. They destroyed the family structure by imprisoning the fathers, even admittingly for reasons that were false. Your not going to find a list of black people who were effected by these tactics. We ALL were. I know and also heard from many black people whose families were torn apart due to drugs and gang violence. The US has acknowledge what they did. Why not pay black americans for the damage that was done? 

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19 hours ago, Kai99 said:

Actually, slavery would still be a part of that. America built its enormous wealth on slave labor. Without slavery, the US that you know and love today would NOT exist. All thanks to the hundreds of years of free labor.  This is a well documented truth. 

 

many things in the past contribute to the a country becoming rich, many of which will no doubt be terrible, but we should live in the present, not the past. 

 

19 hours ago, Kai99 said:

the Japanese Americans were target and rounded up one by one, their names documented. It is easy to say that the US should pay for those affected because the population was so clearly rounded up and abused. That did not happen to black americans. When the government began purposely targeting black people, they didn't round us up and identified us by name. They simply implanted the drugs in mainly black areas while at the same time, increasing the prison sentences for even the smallest of drug offenses. They help to start the gang wars that eventually killed thousands upon thousands of black citizens. They destroyed the family structure by imprisoning the fathers, even admittingly for reasons that were false. Your not going to find a list of black people who were effected by these tactics. We ALL were. I know and also heard from many black people whose families were torn apart due to drugs and gang violence. The US has acknowledge what they did. Why not pay black americans for the damage that was done? 

So the communities were effected, therefore, in my opinion, the communities should be built back up. So put money into infrastructure, schooling and drug and crime prevention, that would make more sense then giving it to individual people and would help more in the long term.  

 

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20 hours ago, Kai99 said:

Actually, slavery would still be a part of that. America built its enormous wealth on slave labor. Without slavery, the US that you know and love today would NOT exist. All thanks to the hundreds of years of free labor.  This is a well documented truth. 

America itself wasn't even rich when the slaves made people wealthy in the states (Nor was there even half of the states in the Union yet). Slavery was abolished after the civil war, and the majority of the wealth gained occured after the Great depression 65 years later after slavery had long been abolished. So no, slavery hardly contributed to the wealth of USA itself, it only made a handful of elites, rich pre-civil war (Most which lived in the 13 colonies and south).

 

Employed and free blacks and whites contributed to America's wealth that you are reaping the rewards of, regardless of race. The economic boom that occurred happened after the Great depression was because of several different factors such as the benefits of our constitutional rights, work ethic, equality etc.

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So the communities were effected, therefore, in my opinion, the communities should be built back up. So put money into infrastructure, schooling and drug and crime prevention, that would make more sense then giving it to individual people and would help more in the long term.

But you just said you were okay with Japanese Americans getting reparations since they were personally affected. African Americans were personally affected by the actions done purposely by the American government. Why are you accepting one but denying reparations for another?

 

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merica itself wasn't even rich when the slaves made people wealthy in the states (Nor was there even half of the states in the Union yet). Slavery was abolished after the civil war, and the majority of the wealth gained occured after the Great depression 65 years later after slavery had long been abolished. So no, slavery hardly contributed to the wealth of USA itself, it only made a handful of elites, rich pre-civil war (Most which lived in the 13 colonies and south).

 

Employed and free blacks and whites contributed to America's wealth that you are reaping the rewards of, regardless of race. The economic boom that occurred happened after the Great depression was because of several different factors such as the benefits of our constitutional rights, work ethic, equality etc.

 

Actually, yes slavery did make america wealthy and yes, the US WAS a very rich nation back in the day. In more ways than one, as I already sourced, but just to reiterate that fact:

 

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Cotton was more valuable than all other U.S. commodities combined. In this "great laboratory of American capitalism" slaves were the most valuable property, and that meant big business for the slave traders, even in the North, as the Fugitive Slave Act legitimatized capture and transport to the South.

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Cotton drove the textile industry in the northern states. In 1860, New England had over half of the manufacturing operations, and consumed two-thirds of all the cotton used in U.S. mills. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts called it "a conspiracy of the lords of the loom and the lords of the lash."

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Other industries flourished as well, through the predecessors of companies that still exist and thrive today. The Norfolk Southern Railroad leased slaves for one-year terms of hard labor. The parent company of USA Today had links to the slave trade. Insurance companies such as Aetna issued policies protecting slaves as property. Many Wall Street firms, who held slave auctions outside their doors, had their beginnings in the cotton trade. Lehman Brothers, which began investing in 1850, founded the New York Cotton Exchange in 1870. The predecessors of JP Morgan/Chase got their start with loans to slave owners, at times with enslaved Africans as collateral. In 2005 JP Morgan apologized for its predecessors' slave trading activities in Louisiana, and Bank of America and Wachovia also apologized for their early involvement with slave trading.

 

Now think about this Yato. Slaves were considered inexpensive to keep. They took care of themselves and there was no laws that protected their well being. As long as you owned them, slaves were permanent free labor and with hundreds of slaves you can grow and produce the products needed to grow wealth without having to pay a single soul. If, for example, Amazon had slaves to maintain their business model, the billions of dollars in profits that they make today would quadruple, simply because they no longer had to hire thousands of workers to maintain their business.  This is how the US made their wealth. While of course not every business back than was maintained by slaves, there were many large industries who were able to take advantage of that free labor which greatly helped to grow the US economy.

 

Also, keep in mind that after the Civil War, the US paid off an equivalent of 8.9 billion dollars in reparations to slave owners.  This after having to pay up what no doubt would be today billions of dollars during four years of war since war is an expensive endeavor ( the industries and labor needed to make the weapons,  the pay, feeding, and maintenance of the soldiers, etc). For a country that supposedly wasn't that rich, how could that be possible without bankrupting the US?

 

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I made a response but this forum quoting software is dumb and the post was irreparably broken.

 

The gist was a pithy way of saying "I'm not responsible for any of that, so you don't deserve my money."

 

It's as simple as that.

Nor was every american responsible for interning the Japanese American citizens nor duping the Native Americans of their lands, yet our tax dollars still went to pay reparations for them. Also, "your" money goes to many different issues that has nothing to do with you.  

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Both Japanese Americans and Native Americans were either imprisoned or had their lands stolen by the American government.   No actual American government enslaved African Americans.  That enslavement was done by individual American citizens.  

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11 minutes ago, Sally said:

No actual American government enslaved African Americans.  That enslavement was done by individual American citizens.  

The government played a large role in providing the legal foundations for slavery as a property right (upholding slavery through the police and court systems by government agents). While individuals were the direct slave-holders, the institution of slavery very much relied on government sanction, and the treatment of slaves as non-humans before the law.

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Why don't you just demand reparations from the people who owned the slave trade instead, not the American people?

 

 Oh wait, I'll tell you why. Because you will be called racist, because some of the people who owned the Slave trade were the Jews. 

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13 hours ago, Kai99 said:

But you just said you were okay with Japanese Americans getting reparations since they were personally affected. African Americans were personally affected by the actions done purposely by the American government. Why are you accepting one but denying reparations for another?

and as you said: 

On 1/12/2018 at 2:39 AM, Kai99 said:

The Japanese Americans were target and rounded up one by one, their names documented. [...] That did not happen to black americans. 

Japanese american individuals were sought out, that's the difference. Of course the african american were affected, when their communities were put in a bad position, communities are made up of people after all, but the people in the communities weren't individually sought out, you even stated that yourself, and I believe individual people should only get reparations if they themselves were individually sought out, otherwise, I'm totally for trying to build up the communities that were effected, by bettering the school system, infrastructure, etc. 

 

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That's a very slippery slope to cross and once crossed, where does it end? The simple answer is that it won't. As horrible as past events were, they're done now. While not American, I'm Canadian. There's a different approach to old mistreatments than down in the States. The Natives do get reparations in the form of designated land and government paychecks, and you know how that's working out? Shitty.

 

A lot of the higher ups in native culture have become greedy, cashing in on the paychecks and paying no mind to the state of the reserve, while doling out just enough money for those living on them to survive. Many reservations are now trapped in a viscious circle of poor living conditions, drug abuse, and the continued aid that comes in and only further fuels the fire. Try to take this money away and it's likely a backlash of claims to racism will arise and our politically correct government will fold over. Ironic considering our government doesn't give a fuck about the Natives, very much like all the rest of the citizens in the country, and only maintains the land agreements(barely) and (barely)pays the cheques when the time comes. Greed exists in all people. Show most people an easy way to make money and it will corrupt the vast majority of them into a self indulged state of utter laziness and apathy only sustained by the influx of more money.

 

People need to wake up and smell reality and start working together in all of their respective social and cultural circles rather than pinning blame and developing an innate victim complex that suckers in charitable fools and pushes spineless politicians along. The problems don't lie in the past with the dead, they're created and continued by the living today, on all sides. Nobody is spotless in these situations.

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Why are we dragging Jewish people into this now?

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