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Is America Ready For Reparations?
Thy Black Man ^ | May 31, 2015 | William Griggs

Posted on 06/12/2015 3:05:04 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Whenever the world gets too crazy for me, I head down to the soul food restaurant and seek out my mentor, the great ghetto philosopher, Cleophus Leroy Brown.

Cleo graciously waived me toward a seat at his usual corner booth. “What’s on your mind, College Boy?”

“Everything,” I blurted out. “”I’m on social media and practically every day someone posts another instance of black folks either being killed or brutally beaten by police just for being doing something, if it isn’t anything more than breathing , while black. Everybody jumped up and down- and rightfully so, I might add, about Freddie Gray, while more than 180 days after he was murdered by police, Tamir Rice’s family has gotten no justice, no charges filed, no nothing! They haven’t even been allowed to bury their child. We just had over 200 bikers involved in a shootout in WACO and the police didn’t kill anybody! Bikers- almost all of them white- shooting up a storm and none of the police were “in fear for their lives” like they were when they killed 12 year old Tamir Rice for playing with a toy gun, and all the other unarmed black folks. And not once did I hear the word ‘thug,’ used!” By now, I was on the verge of requiring oxygen.

“And you want to know what it all means. Right, College Boy?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I thought things were supposed to have been getting better. Especially with a black president and all …”

“And I thought I taught you that exceptions to the rule don’t negate the rule, they prove it! Just ‘cause some people get a seat playing musical chairs, that doesn’t mean there’s a seat for everybody! There are a lot of lessons that can be learned from what’s goin’ on. But the main message I get out a all of this is that America aint ready for reparations!”

Wha?”

“You heard me. But before I break it down for you, College Boy, I want you to tell me what you think reparations means.”

“It means we are finally going to be compensated for all those years of enslavement.”

“That’s the very least significant part of reparations. There has to be a monetary component, but that is just to make a statement of the seriousness of the situation. It should cost a lot, because a lot was taken. But, more than anything else, reparations is an apology. It says we are sorry. And a true apology says something else. Do you know what that something else is?”

“I’m really sorry?” I was truly grasping for straws.

“I means that I regret doing what I did to injure you; that if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t do that. It means that if my wrongful actions have defined our relationship, then I will do whatever it takes to redefine our relationship in a way that is right and just and proper. This represents what is called ‘atonement’ or ‘at-one-ment’ in theological terms. “ Cleo’s look of self satisfaction was so strong it almost knocked the taste out of my mouth. But in my heart, I knew he was right.

“Just look at the history. Whenever we tie today’s issues back to slavery, we get the same tired response. “That was a long time ago. When are you going to stop using that as an excuse? ‘Now If, when slavery was abolished, white America had said, ‘You know what? We must a lost our damn minds. We were so wrong. Here’s your forty acres and a mule, and we are going to do everything, from real education- not just propaganda- to whatever you might need- to bring you into the fold as fellow American citizens’ – if that had happened then we would have had a clean break and slavery really would have been quite a while ago. But instead we were lynched, segregated and denied the vote- even more than a hundred years after the so-called Emancipation Proclamation. Today’s police departments grew out of the paddy rollers whose sole purpose was to police and intimidate slaves.

“To this day, there has never been that clear, clean break with slavery. Never that admission of wrongdoing and renegotiating of relationship based on total equality. When unarmed black folks are slaughtered by the police, it’s just a statement that we aint ready to renegotiate the relationship. As long as Fox News scores more than twice the ratings of MSNBC AND CNN combined, we aint ready for reparations. As long as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh can make millions of dollars just by spreading stupid racism on the radio, we aint ready for reparations. And as long as people have to wear Tee shirts to proclaim that “black lives matter,” we definitely aint ready for reparations. As long as we aint ready for reparations, the stain of slavery will never be lightened (it could never be removed anyway) from the soul of America.


TOPICS: Editorial
KEYWORDS: blacks; racism; reparations; whites
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To: 22202NOVA

BRIBERY.

Yeah, now that’ll work jess fine.


21 posted on 06/12/2015 3:45:25 AM PDT by Flintlock (Our soapbox is gone, the ballot box stolen--we're left with the bullet box now.)
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To: jsanders2001

I don’t think you’ve read what the Vet is saying properly.

There ARE no former slaves still alive. There might possibly be a few of their children still alive, but if any it’s probably well under 100.

I agree with him. Let’s give each of them $1M and call it even.

Only bit of info I could find was one child of slaves claimed still alive in 2009. She’s probably dead by now.


22 posted on 06/12/2015 3:46:06 AM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Baloney. No reparations should be paid out to these whiners. If any reparations WERE going to be paid, I would nominate Ben Afflek to pay out. HIS family owned slaves!


23 posted on 06/12/2015 3:46:59 AM PDT by sneakers
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The people who were wronged, and the wrong doers are no longer alive. No one to receive payment, and no one to pay reparations.

But I will agree to reparations on one condition. Those who qualify, are eligible will get money, but they must give up American citizenship, go back to Africa and cannot return.

If they don’t want to give up their citizenship, then they waive reparations.


24 posted on 06/12/2015 3:49:42 AM PDT by Lopeover (Cruz or lose!)
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To: Sherman Logan

Thought about it a bit.

Let’s assume a child born in early December 1865 KY as a slave, which would make him the youngest possible slave.

If he fathered a child at 70 (in 1935), that child would be 80 years old today.

The oldest man on record to become a father (don’t know if confirmed by DNA or not) was 96. So in theory the child of an American slave could be only 56 years old this year. But not bloody likely.


25 posted on 06/12/2015 3:51:13 AM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: Sherman Logan

No I read that and got it. I’m talking about their descendents. I don’t want to pay one red cent for so many reasons but I don’t feel like explaining why with a half a page minimum on here.


26 posted on 06/12/2015 3:52:07 AM PDT by jsanders2001
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

If only Lincoln had lived to carry out his intent to return all the freed slaves to Africa! They would have had no excuse for their failure as a race.


27 posted on 06/12/2015 3:53:13 AM PDT by txrefugee
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

When you are 13% of the population, and you are beholden on the other 87% to feed and cloth you...you don’t want to start a fight.


28 posted on 06/12/2015 3:55:00 AM PDT by Cowboy Bob (Isn't it funny that Socialists never want to share their own money?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

This dude can shove it.


29 posted on 06/12/2015 3:58:37 AM PDT by Dallas59 (Only a fool stumbles on things behind him.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

A war that took how many lives from young men who never owned a slave does say “We were wrong”?
Because if that war wasn’t enough, then nothing will ever be enough.
We have apologized, several times in very specific language.
What’s really lacking here is forgiveness. And there’s a reason for that. To forgive means to give up the race card and stop spreading the blame. I could even mean apologizing to the white man for blaming him for a culture he did not create.


30 posted on 06/12/2015 4:00:39 AM PDT by Wiser now (Socialism does not eliminate poverty, it guarantees it.)
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To: WayneS

I am actually NOT in favor of slavery reparations, but in the following form it might be justified:

1). $5,000,000 tax free to every living person who fought to free a slave in the United States while slavery was the law of the land.

2). $1,000,000 tax free to every direct biological offspring of a person who was fought to free a slave in the United States while slavery was the law of the land.

3). Nobody else gets a dime.

I think such a plan is imminently fair to those who fought to free slaves and their children, and will not overly tax the treasury of the nation.


31 posted on 06/12/2015 4:04:53 AM PDT by Yosemitest (It's Simple ! Fight, ... or Die !)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

> “black folks either being killed or brutally beaten by police just for being doing something, if it isn’t anything more than breathing , while black.”

A delusion.


32 posted on 06/12/2015 4:06:25 AM PDT by Ray76 (Obama says, "Unlike my mum, Ruth has all the documents needed to prove who Mark's father was.")
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

> “black folks either being killed or brutally beaten by police just for being doing something, if it isn’t anything more than breathing , while black.”

A delusion.


33 posted on 06/12/2015 4:06:26 AM PDT by Ray76 (Obama says, "Unlike my mum, Ruth has all the documents needed to prove who Mark's father was.")
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To: Ray76

I learned a long time ago, there’s nothing that can go wrong for a black man or a white woman that they can’t find a way to blame white guys for....


34 posted on 06/12/2015 4:15:31 AM PDT by papertyger
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To: 22202NOVA

My great-great grandfather served in The Army of The Potomac. I don’t owe these bastards a dime.


35 posted on 06/12/2015 4:17:33 AM PDT by jmacusa
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To: Yosemitest

Here is why Blacks, if they thought about it, would not want reparations

1. Reparations mean that the debt is paid. There would be no need for affirmative action or minority set asides or added points to college admissions

2. What happens if you give ignorant, uneducated people $1,000,000? Supply and demand is what. It would trigger inflation that would wipe the buying power out.

3. Most of the ghetto dwellers have very little impulse control and money management skills. They’d just spend the cash and in 5 years be right back where they started (See #1) with no recourse to ask for more.


36 posted on 06/12/2015 4:27:28 AM PDT by Fai Mao (Genius at Large)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Reparations have been paid since LBJ..
TRILLIONS WASTED ON SOCIAL PROGRAMS.....
We need to END THIS SOCIALIST NONSENSE...


37 posted on 06/12/2015 4:28:32 AM PDT by zzwhale
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

How about FU and h*ll no!


38 posted on 06/12/2015 4:32:55 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
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To: Bryanw92
But even with their failure to succeed in a nation where anyone can succeed, they have done much better here than in any place that is ruled by blacks.

Evidence:

Now that we are ruled by a black, African Americans (with one notable exception) are doing even worse than at the start of the Obama Recession.

39 posted on 06/12/2015 4:34:06 AM PDT by Pollster1 ("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Don’t you love reading a screed from somebody with ZERO intellect and all emotional rationalization?


40 posted on 06/12/2015 4:34:46 AM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal (Unapologetic supporters of Obama, Sodomy, and Abortion will find the afterlife rather torturous)
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