Why would I have to pay reparations for slavery? Sure I’m white, so what? I’ve nothing to do with this abomination, nor my ancestors, all hard-working peasants, craftsmen…who never saw a black man in their entire life.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Growing_Boy wrote:
I’m sorry, Growing Boy, but I think you’ve been misinformed.
Slavery as practiced in North America on West African blacks, while reprehensible, was not unique or without historical precedent. Everything you described as happening to your people a few centuries ago most certainly happened to all races of people enslaved in every civilization, all throughout history.
“Uppity” slaves in Rome, as I mentioned, were flogged to death or crucified in front of the other slaves, as an example. A slave, regardless of sex or age, was the masters property, to castrate, rape, beat, burn or kill as he saw fit. Fugitive slaves often had the letter “F” branded on their foreheads.
Children of slaves were themselves slaves, and the most economical way for a slave master to increase his supply of slaves was by selective breeding of the best stock.
I’m certainly not trying to cheapen the experience of black slaves in North America. It undoubtedly sucked to be a black slave in North America.
But to claim that it sucked demonstrably more to be a black slave in America than it did to be a slave in all other periods of history, and in all other places in the world, is to reveal extreme historical myopia.[/quote]
Okay I accept this input of information. My main goal was to not lighten the past and wash the blood off the Nation by saying, “It wasn’t as bad as here or as so and so.” They are not my people by race, Varga. I don’t know if my ancestors had slaves but I know for sure that they had servants that were mainly made up of Mestizo and the native peoples. I’m sure the Spaniards treatment was as you have pointed out universally inhumane. The undeniable truth is that no matter of who was worse or if it was no different this entire empire was built on the backs of slaves. Black slaves.
Yeah, there were white slaves but they were NOT the majority. The race factor, the very backbone of the slavery institution in the United States of America, grew to become part of the DNA of the union. It continued long after they were “freed”. It continued all the way until the mid-1960s and traces of it are still found everyday. “We have a ______ for a president.” some have said repeatedly. Personally, I will forever hold this point of view. It’s easy to not see it when you’re the right color.
Did someone seriously tried to sneak in vitriol about my religion in this thread?
This place is nuts!
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Growing_Boy wrote:
The slave could also buy their freedom. In all these cultures there was a pathway to freedom.
Implying that in North America there was no equivalent pathway? Look up the term “manumission.”
It was definitely possible for an African slave in North America to buy his freedom. Alternatively, he might be freed upon the death of the master, as stipulated in his or her will. A slave might also be bought by an abolitionist, and then granted his freedom.
It’s notable that many of these freed blacks went on to own black slaves of their own.
http://www.issues-views.com/index.php/sect/1006/article/1091
For all you know, Growing Boy, your ancestors owned slaves.
Should you be forced to pay reparations?[/quote]
Some of my ancestors owned slaves, but then some fought in the Union army. Is this considered a ‘wash’?
[quote]Berserkergang wrote:
Why would I have to pay reparations for slavery? Sure I’m white, so what? I’ve nothing to do with this abomination, nor my ancestors, all hard-working peasants, craftsmen…who never saw a black man in their entire life.[/quote]
Don’t you want to be your brother’s keeper? Those who work and earn are obviously here to provide for those who don’t want to bothered.
Isn’t this what religious/moral authorities have taught for centuries and centuries? You’re all slow learners.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Did someone seriously tried to sneak in vitriol about my religion in this thread?
This place is nuts![/quote]
Wow!
Any Romans, Greeks or Slavs feel insulted as well?
Edit:
“Did someone seriously tried to sneak in vitriol about my religion in this thread?”
Absolutely not.
[quote]jawara wrote:
I don’t agree with the idea of repartons at all. What I really wonder though, is IF they were paid what affect would they have on the black community? I really don’t think it would have much because the money would have to come from somewhere. But what I really wonder is if they were paid would people like Jesse Jackson, or groups like the Nation of Islam finally stop greiving about the sins of he past.[/quote]
Is this real wonderment, or rhetorical wonderment?
[quote]jawara wrote:
Lets just say reparations for slavery were paid out. What do you think the end result would be? Would black people be better off, worse off? Would home ownership go up and fix the housing bubble? Would the money have to be printed? [/quote]
Couple of points here to consider.
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Just Blacks? Why not have the Romans pay the Jews for the Diaspora? Or the Irish from the English*? Point is that forcing group reparations can get completely out of hand. (This also starts us on a completely new Marxist legal precedence of group guilt, which is not part of the US legal system, so we get to make it up as we go along.) Limiting it to the Blacks in the US will cause howls from all quarters, since pretty much everyone who came to the US was outrunning some form of persecution. What about my Armenian friends who were religious refugees from Tsarist Orthodoxy? Slavery was common there (Hell, slave comes from “slav” because so many of them were sold off as slaves.)
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Slavery was standard the world over. Deal with it. (Thomas Sowell wrote and excellent history of slavery, BTW.) The rise of service industries and machines are what ended it. In many parts of the world it is still being practiced. Since it was universal, what about other countries? Do we make them try to pay reparations too? What about my Finnish friends who moved here fairly recently. They never had Black slaves and had nothing to do with the whole thing. Are they to pay as well? I’ll tell you up front, if you think they should because they are very, very white, that is racism, not justice. Do we come up with a sliding scale for liability? Who decides it? A mere hint that injustice should be enlisted in the name of justice will torpedo it.
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It accepts the usual Left-wing drivel that Blacks are so fragile that they need to be made wards of the state for all time to come. In particular, they need to live in subsidized ghettos run by careerist social workers who know their needs far better than they do. (I think that the official, PC position sells up the enormous resilience of Blacks in one of the great stories of humanity.)
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The best ethical reason for not accepting them if offered is this: it puts a wage on suffering. Rather than the (correct, IMHO) stance that there is no amount of money that offsets this. If offered, Blacks should refuse payment directly if for no other reason than it paves the way for a next time around – we know now exactly what it costs to have slaves. Rather than being morally reprehensible it becomes business as usual.
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The “Dutch Syndrome” named for the rather scary quick decline of the Netherlands starting in the 1960’s when oil was discovered off the coast and money became very plentiful. Easy money almost completely erodes community and culture, plus inflation will render it pretty well worthless in the long run. Look at what it’s done for all the rich kids in Saudi Arabia. They got a burning sense of entitlement and formed al Qaeda.
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Finally, if you can get a lot of people to agree to this, it will be because they think all will be squared with it.The Civil Rights movement will be over with the passage of reparations and the backlash will almost completely undo any progress. Who would accept that a millionaire is the victim of a hate crime?
And as always, I might just be full of shit…
– jj
- Being of Irish extraction, if the English were to offer me reparations I’d tell them to go fuck themselves. We sure as Hell don’t need them to help us now and they can go on feeling guilty forever. You all realize that at one point (early 1600’s), most of the slaves in the Caribbean were Irish? That’s what happens when you lose against the British. Irish were considered shiftless and lazy, but Blacks were not and they cost a great deal more, plus they were thought to be malaria resistant (this is true, thanks to sickle-cell anemia). This is what started the trend towards having Blacks as slaves.
Oh and one of the major points in first draft of the Declaration of Independence was to separate from Britain because the English were taking no steps to end slavery and the Americans thought they would never be free of it. That paragraph was struck because it was too strongly worded against King George and it was felt that an argument with Parliament was more likely to get resolved than what many (still in the age of Divine Right) would have seen as simple treason.
And one last thing: Freeing slaves was tried in Colonial America and did not work. The Quakers in New England made a huge show of it. What really happened was that a few high profile Quakers (who were quite wealthy) freed their slaves and rehired them. Once the legislation went through though, the remaining slaves were sold down South. Yes, that’s right. The net effect of passing a law to free them was to make their lives more miserable. This is why abolitionist societies were springing up in the 1780’s and 1790’s. The thinking was the social engineering on a large scale would be a disaster for the Blacks so grass roots movements at the local level would do the trick (as we would say it now).