Reparations discussion

Carolina Red said:
How exactly would you describe these “heirs”?

It seems like folks must believe most of the descendants of slaveowners are still living in their plantation houses sipping tea on the porch.

On top of that, it’s been 150+ years. Descendants of slave owners and abolitionists are intermarried now. Same for descendants of slave owners and descendants of slaves. It’s impossible other than to just have the government pay it.
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Not tea, mint juleps.;)
I think you’re right, but still feel like it’s unfair to a helluva lot of people, me included.
 
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Florida Man said:
Serious question but wouldn’t a form of universal basic income count enough as reparations and have the least difficult logistics?
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That's probably what would happen. Something like 900/mo UBI and then if you qualify for reparations you'd get another 300 or something
 
Eboue said:
I can't get over "chimp out". Is that a common expression or the worlds most obvious dog whistle?
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Yeah same. Considering the rest of his post I can't believe that guy isn't banned yet.

Absolute cnut of the highest order.
 
ATXRedDevil said:
You're not being pragmatic. Saying feck those people and calling people who had absolutely zero responsibility for slavery racist because they wouldn't want to pay for it shows a lack of critical thinking through consequences and ignorance. It's not you're happy to pay for something you didn't do because these people suffered or you're racist. My family moved to the US in 2000 and my Mum was raised dirt poor in post-WW2 Swansea. She shouldn't have to pay for sins she didn't commit and has no relation to. If you don't think growing resentment would have negative consequences you're not thinking. Sometimes you have to look past what you believe is right or wrong and have some pragmaticism.
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Is she okay with some of her tax money funding oversea wars? Because she shouldn't have to pay for that either, surely?

Where's the pragmatism in that? And that's just one example. I'm sure there are hundreds of other examples that she hasn't have a say in or should be blamed for either but where some of her tax money goes to nonetheless.

Because that's just how it goes when you move to another country. Be glad no one forced her to move there..
 
Sen. Tim Scott of my state, making the news...

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/06/19/po...arations/index.html?r=https://www.google.com/

(CNN) — Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only African American Republican senator, told CNN on Wednesday that he agrees with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that reparations are not a "realistic path forward" because it's just too complicated to figure out who to compensate.
"There is no question that slavery is a scourge on the history of America," Scott said. "The question is, are reparations a realistic path forward? The answer is no. The fact is if you just try to unscramble that egg to figure out who are we compensating, who's actually paying for it and who was here in 1865?"
He added, "I think you start seeing a formula that (it) is impossible to unscramble that egg. So I think it's a nonstarter."
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Carolina Red said:
Sen. Tim Scott of my state, making the news...

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/06/19/politics/tim-scott-agrees-mitch-mcconnell-slavery-reparations/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_source=fbCNN&utm_content=2019-06-23T11:30:06&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR0kFiwrKw0qUWfW-RFK3C4thkUdllKzdqbGn_LQBOUvhRv5pnpREvjPFs8&r=https://m.facebook.com/
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Unscrambling an egg analogy probably isn’t the most productive way to analyze this. Not surprised of his view though, as he would get massive blowback from the GOP if he came out as pro reparations.
 
Since this thread is about the hearing

Ta-Nehisi Coates: ‘The matter of reparations is one of making amends’
Yesterday, when asked about reparations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar reply: America should not be held liable for something that happened 150 years ago, since none of us currently alive are responsible.

This rebuttal proffers a strange theory of governance – that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generations. But well into this century, the United States was still paying out pensions to the heirs of civil war soldiers. We honor treaties that date back some 200 years, despite no one being alive who signed those treaties.

Many of us would love to be taxed for the things we are solely and individually responsible for. But we are American citizens, and thus bound to a collective enterprise that extends beyond our individual and personal reach. It would seem ridiculous to dispute invocations of the Founders, or the Greatest Generation, on the basis of a lack of membership in either group. We recognize our lineage as a generational trust, as inheritance, and the real dilemma posed by reparations is just that: a dilemma of inheritance. It is impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery.

As historian Ed Baptist has written, enslavement “shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics” of America, so that by 1836 more than $600m, almost half of the economic activity in the United States, derived directly or indirectly from the cotton produced by the million-odd slaves. By the time the enslaved were emancipated, they comprised the largest single asset in America. Three billion in 1860 dollars, more than all the other assets in the country combined.

The method of cultivating this asset was neither gentle cajoling nor persuasion, but torture, rape and child trafficking. Enslavement reigned for 250 years on these shores. When it ended, this country could have extended its hallowed principles – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – to all, regardless of color. But America had other principles in mind. And so for a century after the civil war, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror, a campaign that extended well into the lifetime of Majority Leader McConnell.

It is tempting to divorce this modern campaign of terror, of plunder, from enslavement, but the logic of enslavement, of white supremacy, respects no such borders and the guard of bondage was lustful and begat many heirs. Coup d’états and convict leasing. Vagrancy laws and debt peonage. Redlining and racist GI bills. Poll taxes and state-sponsored terrorism.

We grant that Mr McConnell was not alive for Appomattox. But he was alive for the electrocution of George Stinney. He was alive for the blinding of Isaac Woodard. He was alive to witness kleptocracy in his native Alabama and a regime premised on electoral theft. Majority Leader McConnell cited civil-rights legislation yesterday, as well he should, because he was alive to witness the harassment, jailing, and betrayal of those responsible for that legislation by a government sworn to protect them. He was alive for the redlining of Chicago and the looting of black homeowners of some $4bn. Victims of that plunder are very much alive today. I am sure they’d love a word with the majority leader.

What they know, what this committee must know, is that while emancipation dead-bolted the door against the bandits of America, Jim Crow wedged the windows wide open. And that is the thing about Senator McConnell’s “something”: it was 150 years ago. And it was right now.

The typical black family in this country has one-tenth the wealth of the typical white family. Black women die in childbirth at four times the rate of white women. And there is, of course, the shame of this land of the free boasting the largest prison population on the planet, of which the descendants of the enslaved make up the largest share.

The matter of reparations is one of making amends and direct redress, but it is also a question of citizenship. In HR-40, this body has a chance to both make good on its 2009 apology for enslavement, and reject fair-weather patriotism – to say that this nation is both its credits and debits. That if Thomas Jefferson matters, so does Sally Hemings. That if D-Day matters, so does Black Wall Street. That if Valley Forge matters, so does Fort Pillow. Because the question really is not whether we’ll be tied to the somethings of our past, but whether we are courageous enough to be tied to the whole of them. Thank you.
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Coleman Hughes: ‘If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further’
It is an honor to testify on a topic as important as this one. Nothing I’m about to say is meant to minimize the horror and brutality of slavery and Jim Crow. Racism is a bloody stain on this country’s history and I consider our failure to pay reparations directly to freed slaves after the civil war to be one of the greatest injustices ever perpetrated by the US government.

But I worry that our desire to fix the past compromises our ability to fix the present. Think about what we’re doing today: we’re spending our time debating a bill that mentions slavery 25 times and incarceration only once, in an era with no black slaves but nearly a million black prisoners. A bill that doesn’t mention homicide once – at a time when the Center for Disease Control reports homicide as the number one cause of death for young black men. I’m not saying acknowledging history doesn’t matter. It does. I’m saying there’s a difference between acknowledging history and allowing history to distract us from the problems we face today.

In 2008 the House of Representatives formally apologized for slavery and Jim Crow. In 2009, the Senate did the same. Black people don’t need another apology. We need safer neighborhoods and better schools. We need a less punitive criminal justice system. We need affordable healthcare. And none of these things can be achieved through reparations for slavery.

Nearly everyone close to me told me not to testify today. They told me that even though I’ve only ever voted for Democrats I would be perceived as a Republican and therefore hated by half the country. Others told me that by distancing myself from Republicans, I would end up angering the other half of the country. And the sad truth is that they were both right. That’s how suspicious we’ve become of one another. That’s how divided we are as a nation.

If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further – making it harder to build the political coalitions required to solve the problems facing black people today. We would insult many black Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors, and turn the relationship between black Americans and white Americans from a coalition into a transaction, from a union between citizens into a lawsuit between plaintiffs and defendants.

What we should do is pay reparations to black Americans who actually grew up under Jim Crow and were directly harmed by second-class citizenship, people like my grandparents. But paying reparations to all descendants of slaves is a mistake.

Take me, for example. I was born three decades after the end of Jim Crow into a privileged household in the suburbs. I attend an Ivy League school. Yet I’m descended from slaves who worked on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. Reparations for slavery would allocate federal resources to me but not to an American with the wrong ancestry, even if that person is living paycheck to paycheck and working multiple jobs to support a family. You might call that justice. I call it justice for the dead at the price of justice for the living.

I understand that reparations are about what people are owed regardless of how well they are doing. I understand that. But the people who are owed for slavery are no longer here, and we’re not entitled to collect on their debts.

Reparations, by definition, are only given to victims. So the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that, you’ve made one-third of black Americans who poll against reparations into victims without their consent. And black Americans have fought too long for the right to define themselves to be spoken for in such a condescending manner.

The question is not what America owes me by virtue of my ancestry. The question is what all Americans owe each other by virtue of being citizens of the same nation. And the obligation of citizenship is not transactional. It’s not contingent on ancestry. It never expires and it can’t be paid off. For all these reasons, bill HR-40 is a moral and political mistake. Thank you.
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Coleman Hughes said:
So the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that, you’ve made one-third of black Americans who poll against reparations into victims without their consent.
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Never heard of this cat before but this is really a stupid and illogical argument.
 
Black people in America don't need financial reparations (and it's pretty much impossible to determine who deserves it given the intermarrying). They need reparations of infrastructure and autonomy in their own communities.

Things better than reparations:
- legalizing marijuana AND revoking any federal or state level marijuana related conviction
- replacing many of of the public schools (middle and high school) in low income neighborhoods with trade schools
- Universal healthcare for any lower middle class family
- Setup police forces of people native to that community (implement quotas)
- Require a significant portion of sales taxes collected in inner city neighborhoods to go towards infrastructure projects
- Higher taxes for "leech" businesses in low income neighborhoods (pawn shops, liquor stores, payday lenders, etc)
- Freeze property tax increases in low income neighborhoods
- Tax breaks for residents of low income neighborhoods who want to start a business in that neighborhood
 
The line through his name is a clue :)
 
They can't? Sure used to be able to. Banned should now be showing either way as I removed his custom one.
 
Ashamed @barros (although living in the US for decades) comes from my country. I feel embarassed when i read the stuff he writes in this particular subforum. I think it's never too late to read and educate yourself but i think in his case, it's a lost cause.
 
Wibble said:
They can't? Sure used to be able to. Banned should now be showing either way as I removed his custom one.
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For me it shows on my computer but not on my cell phone
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
f someone is immigrating to the US they are likely doing so because of economic opportunity. That economic opportunity exists directly because of the atrocities committed in the name of slavery, manifest destiny, de-population of the native population, etc. To me its massively selfish to think that someone deserves all the economic opportunities on offer but thinks they have zero obligations because of the historical conditions that resulted. In other words they want all the benefits but want none of the obligations.
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That a very naive and flawed argument. Slavery can at best be termed as one of the many causes for the current economic opportunity. For example, the post World War 2 situation was a big factor to economic growth than anything earlier.

Secondly, immigration is not a new concept. Even in mid-1800s the influx of Irish workers was a big factor during the Industrial development of US.

Saying current immigrants are enjoying the benefits and have not contributed to the growth is a very narrow minded and biased opinion. And no country will permit immigration if the country doesn't benefit from it.
 
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Edgar Allan Pillow said:
That a very naive and flawed argument. Slavery can at best be termed as one of the many causes for the current economic opportunity. For example, the post World War 2 situation was a big factor to economic growth than anything earlier.

Secondly, immigration is not a new concept. Even in mid-1800s the influx of Irish workers was a big factor during the Industrial development of US.

Saying current immigrants are enjoying the benefits and have not contributed to the growth is a very narrow minded and biased opinion.
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The bold is just another lazy strawman

1. The oppressive institutions of slavery, Native American genocide, alien and sedition laws cannot be separated from the benefits of modern America. There is literally no possible way to claim you as a current immigrant are not a beneficiary of those oppressive institutions because those oppressive codifications cannot be separated from America's history as a nation.

2. The codified discrimination extended beyond just the original institution through Jim Crow laws and all sorts of discriminatory laws and norms.

3. These are systemic issues that individuals cannot just "opt out" of because they are current immigrants. It's part of the responsibility of the social contract of being an American citizen. The nation of America has a historical social debt owed to certain oppressed communities. By being a citizen of the USA that is part of the social contract to that country just like a recent immigrant to Germany must respect the stricter German laws against "free speech" and anti-semitism because of the social responsible of their collective past as a nation.

I feel like my German friends and immigrants I've met to Germany grok this in a way that some Americans and some laissez-faire capitalist inclined immigrants to America have a hard time internalizing without getting their panties in a bunch.

BTW did you get all up in arms when the US government decided to pay reparations to Japanese families that were put in concentration camps for WWII? Do you oppose reparations on principle?
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
The bold is just another lazy strawman

1. The oppressive institutions of slavery, Native American genocide, alien and sedition laws cannot be separated from the benefits of modern America. There is literally no possible way to claim you as a current immigrant are not a beneficiary of those oppressive institutions because those oppressive codifications cannot be separated from America's history as a nation.

2. The codified discrimination extended beyond just the original institution through Jim Crow laws and all sorts of discriminatory laws and norms.

3. These are systemic issues that individuals cannot just "opt out" of because they are current immigrants. It's part of the responsibility of the social contract of being an American citizen. The nation of America has a historical social debt owed to certain oppressed communities. By being a citizen of the USA that is part of the social contract to that country just like a recent immigrant to Germany must respect the stricter German laws against "free speech" and anti-semitism because of the social responsible of their collective past as a nation.

I feel like my German friends and immigrants I've met to Germany grok this in a way that some Americans and some laissez-faire capitalist inclined immigrants to America have a hard time internalizing without getting their panties in a bunch.

BTW did you get all up in arms when the US government decided to pay reparations to Japanese families that were put in concentration camps for WWII? Do you oppose reparations on principle?
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:lol: I just replied to your generic comment with it's opposite.

Slavery is one of the many factors that lead to US being the current economic superpower that it is now. Even the question of whether it was a major factor or not is debatable. Establishing a direct causal/impact relationship between slavery and current economic superiority is flawed and ignores wider context.

And the 1st 2nd generation people American citizens too, so they are entitled to opinion on what current actions should take...just like anyone else. As you can see from comments from even older generation Americans like Mitch McConnell not may subscribe to your theories of 'social contracts' et al to assume responsibility. It's not just immigrants view.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
:lol: I just replied to your generic comment with it's opposite.

Slavery is one of the many factors that lead to US being the current economic superpower that it is now. Even the question of whether it was a major factor or not is debatable. Establishing a direct causal/impact relationship between slavery and current economic superiority is flawed and ignores wider context.

And the 1st 2nd generation people American citizens too, so they are entitled to opinion on what current actions should take...just like anyone else. As you can see from comments from even older generation Americans like Mitch McConnell not may subscribe to your theories of 'social contracts' et al to assume responsibility. It's not just immigrants view.
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No you didn't. What you wrote was not the logical reverse of what I said but I'm not wasting any more time on you misreading sentences.

Uh, of course its not just an "immigrants view". I never said it was. I specifically said "some Americans" (implying native born) in addition to "some laissez faire capitalist inclined immigrants" (obviously implying its not all immigrants). Its simply a selfish me-first world view used by people who really don't care about anything but 'getting theirs'.

And if you want to compare your views to Mitch McConnell go right ahead mate
 
I just want to take a moment here to acknowledge someone invoking the fact that their opinion is aligned with Mitch McConnell's and thinking that's a positive.
 
afrocentricity said:
Ok but for real, who are the people that would feel a way if they were informed that for a few years their taxes may be used to aid reperations versus some other thing you wouldn't like to pay for? What are your backgrounds?
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Not one direct response.... Can't say I'm surprised that people would rather dance around it...
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
And if you want to compare your views to Mitch McConnell go right ahead mate
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freeurmind said:
I just want to take a moment here to acknowledge someone invoking the fact that their opinion is aligned with Mitch McConnell's and thinking that's a positive.
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I'm just saying that the thought process to absolve themselves of responsibility is shared by others and not just by immigrants. Mitch was an example. It's not my opinion.
 
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