We used to count black Americans as 3/5 of a person. For reparations, give them 5/3 of a vote.

Washington Post ^ | August 21, 2015g | heodore R. Johnson

[Steelfish]

We used to count black Americans as 3/5 of a person. For reparations, give them 5/3 of a vote. A cash payout will never work. Here’s a better way to fight the enduring damage of slavery.

By Theodore R. Johnson August 21 Theodore R. Johnson is a career naval officer, former White House fellow and doctoral candidate in law and policy at Northeastern University.

If you want to shut down a conversation about race, just say the word “reparations.” Even black Americans are divided over the idea that money can compensate for the vestiges of an evil institution that ended 150 years ago; only 60 percent think the government should make cash payments to descendants of slaves. White Americans, on the other hand, have reached a consensus: In a YouGov poll taken shortly after the Atlantic published Ta-Nehisi Coates’s viral feature, “The Case for Reparations,” 94 percent were opposed.

Yet a year of protests over disparate law enforcement practices, a decade of particularly sharp income inequality and centuries of imparity in America show that racial reconciliation is impossible without some kind of broad-based, systemic reparations. Recognizing the original sin is simply not enough; we must also make moral and material amends for our nation’s treatment of African American citizens. But if a pecuniary answer can’t fix the structural disadvantage — and it can’t — what can?

Weighted voting.

[lacrew]

Bingo!

Those who cry the loudest over the 3/5 compromise have no idea what it really was. It actually reduced the national influence of slave states.

[RginTN]

That was done to punish the South for slavery.

Guess history wasn’t this guy’s college major or reading.

[al_c]

That’s not even good math. If they want to make things even, they should ask for 1 2/5.

[DoodleDawg]

And would a mixed race individual get 4/3rds of a vote?

[Titus-Maximus]

No, the reparations were 300,000 Union soldiers dying for their freedom. And by the way - no other country on Earth died for their freedom - and African slavery still existed, promoted by the Arabs, will into the 20th century.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Epic level ignorance of history.

[Amagi]

There's a lot of willful ignorance about the 3/5ths Compromise Clause on the part of the lying libtards.
Frederick Douglass was able to comprehend the genius of the 3/5ths Clause even if modern day Demmunists are too stupid, or dishonest (or likely both) to do so.
Moreover we have had reparations already and it has predictably been a failure:

• War on Poverty has transferred $22 trillion from the producers to the takers, with no end in sight for a demand for more entitlements
• Affirmative Action has given us the worst presidency in the history of the republic, and the disastrous policies of an inexperienced, incompetent, dishonest, swaggering mental lightweight.

[Blood of Tyrants]

The sad and ironic thing is that if they hadn’t aborted 20 million black babies, they would have more votes.

[Impy]

Indeed, this is BREATHTAKING ignorance. BREATHTAKING. I CAN’T BREATHE!!!

The f-tard who wrote this article is a naval officer and “doctoral candidate”? I’m surprised he can tie his g*ddamn shoes and count to 10. Earth to Teddy, Earth to Teddy, is anyone home up there? I have to assume if can indeed count to 10 that he knows he’s full of it and is just trying to inflame the kind of extremely ignorant people that think White people made AIDS in a lab to kill Blacks.

He should have wished for slaves to have been counted NOT AT ALL, cause then the slavemasters would have had FEWER seats in Congress. And by all rights slaves shouldn’t have been counted at all. I don’t know what the justification the slave masters came up (or if they even bothered with one) with but they demanded slaves be counted and the North compromised. If it was up to slave masters they would’ve been counted as a whole person! Can you dig it, Teddy?

[InterceptPoint]

Indeed, this is BREATHTAKING ignorance. BREATHTAKING. I CAN’T BREATHE!!! ...
++++
Another Impy Classic. Bravo.

[Impy]

And NO slaves voted Teddy, none of them. They didn’t cast .6% of a vote they casted no vote! So even the basic premise of your analogy is retarded. To be consistent with your own nonsense you would have to argue for Blacks to be over counted in the census to be given more seats in Black areas, not for individual voters to have more voting power.

This is moronic on so many levels it makes me want to punch something.

[LS]

One estimate was that the 3/5 rule added a our 6% to the South’s electoral clout in the House over 75 years.

[LS]

And taxes. Everyone forgets the 3/5 clause was to BENEFIT the South by increasing its representation---which it did, adding 6% on average to the South's House seats from people who were not free to leave and who could not vote---but it PENALIZED the South by counting the same slaves toward state taxation. However, the state taxation plan was never implemented, with the U.S. Government getting all its revenue from land sales and tariffs.

Thus, the South gave up NOTHING for slavery, but received additional votes in Congress for 70 years.

[LS]

No, the South FAVORED the compromise because it gained additional House seats than it would have had if no slaves were counted. It supposedly LOST in the compromise the tax $$ the states were to pay based on population by adding 3 out of five slaves to the tax rolls---but this part was never implemented.

You may be thinking it "limited" slave holders by "only" counting 3 out of 5 slaves as people instead of 5 out of 5, but that wasn't how the slaveholders saw it. They saw they were getting to count tens of thousands of "non-persons" as voters without having to give them all the rights and liberties of voters---AND NEVER HAD TO "PAY" for this via the taxation part of the compromise. It was "free voters" just as Dems always got.

[Paleo Conservative]

As Freidrich Douglas correctly pointed out in the 19th century, this diminished the political power of the slave owners both in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Would these people really have wanted slaves to count as whole persons for the purpose of aportioning political representation?

[Paleo Conservative]

Or increased it. It depends on your perspective.

The "free" States wanted not to count slaves AT ALL for the purpose of congressional representation. The "slave" states wanted to count everybody equally (slave or free), with the probable exception of Indians (who nobody wanted to count).

Perhaps the purests would have not ratified the Constitution and continued to live under the Aritcles of Confederation. In that case perhaps the British might have won the War of 1812 and reacquired some or all of their former colonies and the United States cease to exist. The purpose of the compromise was to allow the Constituion to be ratified and create a federal structure that could better protect the states from foreign empires that desired expansion of their holdings in North America and weakening or destruction of the United States.

[sickoflibs]

Blacks owe us reparations for imposing Obama on us for 8 years,

[TruthWillWin]

The dems already average 5/3rds of a vote for many, why do they need more?

[sickoflibs]

Hey, how did my name get left off this ping list??

Am I being black-balled???

:)

[GOPsterinMA]

Time for “Option E”.