Setup for reparations discussions anything but fair for the con side

The Baltimore Sun ^ | Originally published Nov 24, 2002 | Gregory Kane

[vannrox]

IWALKED OUT of New York's Penn Station right into a horde of bodies that couldn't quite avoid smashing into each other along 7th Avenue near 34th Street. After about 20 minutes, I figured the driver who was supposed to take me to Queens wasn't going to show.

So down into the subway I went, to hop one of those cars to Queens that former Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker said were so horrible. (The ride wasn't that bad.) My debating partner, Congress of Racial Equality national spokesman Niger Innis, picked me up in Queens, and the two of us headed for the Rev. Floyd Flake's huge church.

[vannrox]

Hum...

[Sparta]

They want their 40 acres and a mule, give it to them, then kick them out of the country.(The ones who take reparations that is.)

[VMI70]

"The pro-reparationists get about five, six, or seven on their team. They square off against one or two on the con side."

Sounds like about an equal match to me.

[Abcdefg]

Doesn't the 14th Amendment guarantee equal treatment under the law? How could the courts justify treating non-Blacks differently than Blacks when it comes time to collect the money or to disperse it? For that matter, how could affimative action exist?

[What Is Ain't]

My sincere thanks to Gregory Kane and Niger Innis for challenging these shakedown artists.

[Jarhead_22]

They want their 40 acres and a mule, give it to them, then kick them out of the country.(The ones who take reparations that is.)

How about 40 acres in Iraq and a mule? As well as a voided US passport.

[Sparta]

I like that suggestion.

[Jarhead_22]

I'm here to help.

[mhking]

Black conservative ping

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Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.

[kcar]

I'm sure Hillary will promise her 40 acres of ass. (somebody censor me please).

[goldstategop]

In all this they never show a single ounce of gratitude to God for making them free. Its all about dollars with these folks.

[Petronius]

Why don't we devote a day to urinating on the graves of those who died in the Civil War. To sensitive patriots like myself, this is far less offensive than reparations.

[demosthenes the elder]

can't, but I will *censure* you!
BAAAAAD kcar!
how dare you infliuct upon my virgin mind such an horrific mental picture as that... of acres of cottage-cheese textured lumpen pasty buttocks...
>turboyak/projectile vomiting commences<

[demosthenes the elder]

and, of course, some of us come from families which consisted of dirt-poor whites, or of post-emancipation immigrants (or, like me, both) who would find reparations nothing less than theft, to be treated as such.
I have said it before and will say it again: anyone coming to my door demanding anything from me as "reparations" for slavery had better be wearing a kevlar bodysuit.

[Eternal_Bear]

but, but...don't you feel the pain? (absolute sarcasm)

[okie01]

"My sincere thanks to Gregory Kane and Niger Innis for challenging these shakedown artists."

With a special thanks to Gregory Kane. As an anti-reparations black man, he can't have many friends in the workplace at the Baltimore Sun.

[dyed_in_the_wool]

However, the way blacks were treated after the end of slavery does deserve reparations, and in many cases there is documentable history. Sadly, there is so little knowledge of our history in this country that most people can't even imagine what went on, though it's all right there in the record.

But what butters my biscuit is how the IRISH were treated in Philadelphia by the land-owning blacks who were afraid that the unclean Irish would destroy their city.
Church burnings and hangings were the order of the day, but you won't hear that mentioned anywhere...
Because nobody can conceive of blacks doing things like that. Especially not to 'white' people.

[dyed_in_the_wool]

You of course have a source on that?

Uh, the Cathedral? Why do you think the windows are so high on the old building?
Besides, I'm sure there may be one or two books out there on early Philadelphia history, outlining the Black Upper Class of Philadelphia and their attempts to deal with the rowdy Irish.
You'd just have to look for it.

[demosthenes the elder]

hey, old friend. this is news to me as well, though it does not surprise me either in that it happened or that you know about it. whyfor you never talk about this back in HS?

As to the whole concept of reparations... I am one of fewer than twenty people alive today with my last name. So far as I have been able to ascertain: All the rest of my folks who failed to flee Odessa in the Ukraine were exterminated in Stalinist pogroms. Before the communists took over, my ancestors had lots of trouble with antisemites, trouble of a sort and duration which makes the Black experience in this country seem rather laughably comfortable and brief. Does this mean that the modern states of Russia and the Ukraine owe me reparations?
Feh! I scorn the notion.
My life is mine own - I am the only one responsible for where I go with it. All of my sins and failings are MINE. All of my virtues and successes are MINE. I refuse to share either responsibility or blame, or be forced to share the proceeds thereof.
My life is MINE.
Anyone who tries to steal any portion of it from me had better be wearing Kevlar.

[demosthenes the elder]

It is kind of impossible to get references for specific casualties of the Ukraine "famine" and various Stalinist purges, since the Russians did not keep records. What do you propose I do... summon up Beriya's ghost from Hell and question him?
I know how many of my folks got out, I know who their descendents are and where they are today, and know their total number. Thus my assertion of my being one of fewer than 20 people with my last name is beyond disputation.
I know what the name was prior to Ellis Island, and know where they lived prior to 1921. I have not found any listing of that name in online registries in the Ukraine and Russia, and so far all other inquiries have yielded no results. I have not yet tried contacting/searching Israel, though that is the next rational step.
As for the rest, are you simply unaware of the civilian bodycount Stalin amassed? Estimates range from the absurdly conservative 25 million to the probably overlarge 80 million murdered/purged Russian/Soviet civilians, many of whom were specifically targeted among the Ukrainian Jews. Are you similarly unaware of the hundreds of years of constant oppression, rapine, and murder of Russian and Ukrainian Jews under the Czarist regime?
These are facts. Go learn some.

[dyed_in_the_wool]

The main reason is I didn't know a good deal of it. I knew there were problems in Philadelphia for Catholics during the 19th century. Realize Old Saint Joe's was the only place you could LEGALLY celebrate mass in English in 1733. The Jebbies had to dress like Quakers to get the land at 4th & Walnut.
Only in College did I find out about the Black Power Structure in Philadelphia. Not exactly a secret. Realize also that a disproportionate number of the current indigenous African-Americans in Philadelphia were transplants from the South during the early part of the last century.
Catholics were considered inimicable to the 'Great Experiment' due to their supposed fealty to the Pope. (Now two Jebbie-trained boys like us don't believe in stuff like that, do we?)
On top of this, the Irish were considered the filthiest of the filthy, even lower than blacks. For reference, see Mel Brooks, Blazing Saddles (where the Irish are the last group to get cut in.)
Seriously, though, NINA laws et al. aren't a figment of imagination. Although there was a population increase and amalgam of 'Western Euro' immigrants which eventually overcame a lot of these issues, Irish mayors in big cities were looked on in much the same way that John Street is now.
This doesn't diminish the fact that there was/is a significant black power base in Philadelphia. It's changed over time, and it has not always been dominant, but it's been there.

[demosthenes the elder]

Oh, I was well aware of the Irash state as pariahs back in the day... same with Italians, Greeks, Poles, Slavs, Russians, Jews, what old HPL would have called the "sweaty, swarthy wave of debased humanity washing over our formerly pristine shore" before he got a little older and calmed down.

[demosthenes the elder]

as a side-note: what on Earth happened to ol' Dutchy's comments? Did he get banned? Why? I thought we had hime nicely on a toasting fork.