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Our View: It's time we started talking about slavery reparations
The Cape Cod View ^ | April 29, 2015 | The Editors

Posted on 04/29/2015 10:37:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

A photo published in The Baltimore Sun on Tuesday showed young black men gleefully, almost hysterically, dashing out of a looted Baltimore CVS store that would later be set ablaze.

One was clutching a box of Froot Loops and half-gallon of ice cream, and one had a couple 50-ounce bottles of Arm & Hammer Laundry Detergent, dermatologist tested, for sensitive skin.

The mob mentality that existed at that moment prompted them to grab items worth less than $20. It was a criminal act warped by the African-American experience in the U.S., where they and their ancestors have long been denied the staples of daily life as immediate as food and as abstract as opportunity to participate in the American dream. Their crime makes an undeniably convincing argument for the need to discuss slavery reparations.

The concentrations of black populations in urban centers are the result of generations of racist policies on housing, banking, education, employment and criminal justice. These cities absorbed people freed from a 250-year-old slave economy that required a civil war to end it. The truth is, the bigotry and commercial exploitation of African-Americans that enriched the nation’s earliest industrialists still exists and continues to funnel black communities into dead ends from which escape is difficult, to say the least.

Those young men with their ice cream and laundry detergent have the choice of seeing their neighborhood as valuable, nurturing communities, or as traps built by the power structure that has determined this is where they belong.

The police, who should be serving and protecting, too often rule by intimidation, meting out punishment beyond the charge of their office. This is not about police going into neighborhoods and straightening out black-on-black crime. It’s about men being afraid to go to jail for not paying child support, making eye contact with a police officer or selling loose cigarettes. These aren’t criminal behaviors, they are responses to living under intimidation.

Looting, violence, vandalism and crime are no solution. They are unjustifiable. They are wrong. They are deplorable. But should they be unexpected any less than infection follows an untreated wound? Two wrongs don't make a right, but until the wound is healed, how could we expect to prevent the infection? Reparations is a way to treat that wound.

The reality of life for the urban black American is heartbreakingly present in the instruction the mother has to give her son regarding police interactions, in the student who isn't even aware that her chances for success are less than those of her more affluent peers. But for so many other Americans, these lives are viewed over one electronic device or another and become reality for what amounts to a few moments in the world of media.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers has in every session of Congress since 1989 filed a bill that would begin a discussion on reparations, but it never passes. This discussion must take place. We must understand why black lives matter, and why in 2015 it's necessary for so many beautiful Americans to be walking through city streets to remind us of that.

What form reparations might take is unknown, but we know that all the policies imbued with racism mentioned above need repair. That might be the place to start.

President Obama said from the White House on Tuesday, "If our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could; it's just that it would require everybody saying, 'This is important; this is significant.' And, that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don't just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped, but we're paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids."

Let’s remind Congress that “This is important; this is significant,” and remind ourselves of it, while we’re at it.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2016election; baltimore; blackkk; blacks; election2016; hillaryclinton; hitlery; redistribution; reparations; riots; whiteprivilege
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Racial, Ethnic, Cultural, and Linguistic Diversity on Cape Cod unquestionably, white residents dominate Cape Cod, comprising almost 96% of all citizens recorded by the Census 2000. --- Blacks or African Americans number nearly 4,000 on Cape Cod (or 2% of our permanent, year-round resident population). --- Today, with over 200,000 year-round residents, our population density is 562 persons per square mile (of land area)

The inexperienced demanding others assuage their white guilt.

101 posted on 04/30/2015 4:01:01 AM PDT by Islander7 (There is no septic system so vile, so filthy, the left won't drink from to further their agenda)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

>> A quarter of a million dollars, tax-free and a one-way ticket back to Africa and you renounce your US citizenship upon arrival. Deal?

That would be a billion bucks to get rid of 4,000 of ‘em.

Kind of steep, but your idea has possibilities. Especially if we get to pick which 4,000. :-)


102 posted on 04/30/2015 4:01:48 AM PDT by Nervous Tick (There is no "allah" but satan, and mohammed was his demon-possessed tool.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I think reparations will probably be approved after most of us are dead. That is, when Whites are in the minority (maybe about 40%) or so. In fact, by that time, all former minority groups may vote reparations for themselves.

That is the bad news. The worse news is that such a law will be one of the last acts of the United States of America. The total collapse of the USA will occur soon after that.


103 posted on 04/30/2015 4:04:01 AM PDT by rbg81
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Many of us have relatives who were killed in the Civil War, where are our reparations?

Pray America is waking


104 posted on 04/30/2015 4:23:53 AM PDT by bray (Cruz to the WH)
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To: jimpick

Those Yankees did not die for their freedom, they died to consolidate power in DC. I wish people would at least know what the war was about without just coming up with what the media was spewing at the time.

Of course many “liberated” blacks were pressed into service, hence the underground railroad to Canada.


105 posted on 04/30/2015 4:29:03 AM PDT by Bulwyf
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
I can't help but notice “the editors” who wrote this hogwash neglected to name themselves. Good thing, I can't imagine anyone wanting to be personally associated with this ridiculousness. Reparations = entitlement and entitlement is exactly what makes these feral thugs think they're justified in stealing. If they want to talk reparations, how about the feral finally making reparations to the responsible citizens who pay for their housing, food, cell phones, electricity, Internet service and policing.
106 posted on 04/30/2015 4:30:45 AM PDT by liberalh8ter (The only difference between flash mob 'urban yutes' and U.S. politicians is the hoodies.)
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To: dead
There's points in this essay where I think, "maybe this is very high level absurdist satire" and it could border on genius.

True that. At first I thought this has to be satire. It's so over the top. But nooo!

107 posted on 04/30/2015 4:39:09 AM PDT by Flick Lives ("I can't believe it's not Fascism!")
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To: chris37
we work for nothing, we own nothing, and our freedom is essentially an illusion.

Hard pill to swallow, but swallow it we must if the Republic is to survive.

108 posted on 04/30/2015 4:39:48 AM PDT by itsahoot (55 years a republican-Now Independent. Will write in Sarah Palin, no matter who runs. RIH-GOP)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Yes. Let's have that "chat".


109 posted on 04/30/2015 5:07:48 AM PDT by Caipirabob (Communists... Socialists... Democrats...Traitors... Who can tell the difference?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

How about a one way ticket home to Africa.


110 posted on 04/30/2015 5:08:34 AM PDT by wetgundog ("Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is No Vice" -AuH2O)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Their crime makes an undeniably convincing argument for the need to discuss slavery reparations.

So now it is only right to reward crime.

The stupidity is breathtaking...

111 posted on 04/30/2015 5:26:58 AM PDT by MortMan (All those in favor of gun control raise both hands!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

They owe reparations to me!!! They have taken lots more out of the system than anyone else all because they had a great grandparent who was a slave 160 years ago

Its one big giant scam to get Gov’t money one way or another


112 posted on 04/30/2015 5:30:39 AM PDT by dennisw (The first principle is to find out who you are then you can achieve anything -- Buddhist monk)
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To: dennisw

It’s been paid - 22 trillion.

Now STFU and get to work.


113 posted on 04/30/2015 5:31:38 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: broken_arrow1
Allow inner-city entrepreneurs to hire people on welfare and pay them only a couple dollars per hour, so the $$$ amount that they pay is only the difference to bring them up to the minimum wage, or slightly higher, and allow the workers to keep their welfare checks and medicaid.

In most of these riot-torn cities, welfare is higher than minimum wage.

114 posted on 04/30/2015 5:34:50 AM PDT by MortMan (All those in favor of gun control raise both hands!)
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To: MrB

Part was repaid in genes..... Michael Jordan


115 posted on 04/30/2015 5:36:47 AM PDT by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc.;+12, 73, ..... Obama is public enemy #1)
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To: doorgunner69

Was stationed there in the 80s. I’m convinced it’s something in the water up there. Funny how none of these obnoxious d-bags ever call for reparations for Mary Jo Kopechne’s family.


116 posted on 04/30/2015 5:39:19 AM PDT by gr8eman (Don't waste your energy trying to understand commies. Use it to defeat them!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The Cape Cod view stopped publication in 2013.

This article is from a New Bedford publication called South coast today. It has a history of being very left wing.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20150429/OPINION/150429374/101228/NEWS0301

The comments after the article are really good. Not a lot of support for the editor’s view.


117 posted on 04/30/2015 5:50:16 AM PDT by ladyjane
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

More blacks have immigrated here since 1890 than were here pre-slavery.

Sorting out if you were actually the 100% ancestor of slaves and not an Ethiopian immigrant from 1970 might cost a trillion dollars and 75 years before one dime was paid.

But, hey - 2/3 of America has at least a portion of Af.American DNA.

We all g’on be rich.


118 posted on 04/30/2015 5:52:22 AM PDT by Noamie
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To: Unam Sanctam

My union ancestors paid reparations many time over. No reparations, only repatriation.


119 posted on 04/30/2015 5:53:38 AM PDT by RJS1950 (The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
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To: RJS1950

If you went on the campaign trail and kept calling for “our black community to finally get their repatriations!” it would only be 1 in 10 blacks who would realize you WEREN’T talking about reparations. That would be fun to watch.


120 posted on 04/30/2015 5:59:08 AM PDT by Noamie
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