This shows the true liberal mentality: “It is all about me. It is not good enough that others before me have made amends - I have to do it myself in order for it to be valid and for me to, finally, feel good.”
It is a severe, debilitating foray into unreality. And these are the people running the country!
I want to sit back and watch this debate with some double green apple martinis.
The slave owners and slaves are all gone now. This is just another dumbass, DemocRAT exercise in bovive scatology by a bunch of morons and buffoons in Washington.
All this will do is promote more racial strife and create resentment against blacks. But then again, that’s what slimeball Democrats like Harkin want.
History note: BLACKS started Slavery — most slaves were NOT hunted as shows on “Roots” but were sold to Eurpoeans by their BLACK African slaveholders.
The ignorance of our legislators is astounding. The fact they ACT on that ignorance is frightening.
Because political correctness wasn't invented yet.
The worst thing you can do for a young black man or woman is to tell them that they are owed a check for something that happened long before they were born. Like everybody else, they need character development to succeed in life. Sewing a victim mentality is hardly the way to achieve that. Randall Robinson and other race hustlers are doing great harm to those they claim to be advocates for.
Not apologizing on my behalf.
I just want to know when Great Britain is going to apologize for the way my Scottish ancestors were treated, killed, and enslaved.
It is estimated that over 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War. That is one type of reparation. While I would agree that a formal apology via Congress would have been appropriate right after the Civil War ended, I would imagine that there was an effort to avoid stoking the embers so soon after the end of that war. Slavery is horrible, but you can’t go back and undo what happened then. Most Americans do not have relatives who were involved in slavery, or who were even in the US at that time. So it makes no sense to exact reparations from people who didn’t have anything to do with what the reparations are for. Also, what percentage of blacks actually have ancestors who were slaves in the US?
I trot these facts out every once and a while. This looks like another opportune moment:
From: "The Historical Atlas of The United States" published by the National Geographic Society in 1988: Total number of African slaves brought to Colonial America (U.S.) was 399,000. (Page 40 under "African Immigration in Chains") This total figure of imported slaves grew to a maximum population of 2,000,000 and peaked in 1830
Imported to Spanish America...(Cuba, Mexico, Central and South America)...1,552,100. No estimates as to what this population topped out at.....or when
Imported to British Caribbean...(Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Jamaica and Honduras)...1,665,000. No final estimate of peak population
Imported to Danish Caribbean...(Leeward Islands)...28,000. No estimate.
Imported to French Caribbean...(Suriname and Guyana and Haiti)...1,600,000. No estimate.
Imported to Dutch Caribbean...(Aruba and Leeward Islands)...500,000. No estimate.
And finally...Brazil imported a total 3,646,800 African slaves into their country. There is no final estimate as to what the total population reached or when it occurred.
About 6% of the Africans brought to the New World as slaves ended up in what would be the United States of America. Slavery was also carried on in the Eastern Hemisphere by Africans themselves during this unfortunate period of history but when reminded of this terrible scourge we are, for some reason......only reminded of our own (U.S.) participation..Hopefully, this information will also dispel the notion that the economic success of this country was due to forced human bondage. I haven't seen the stats lately....but I don't recall Brazil ever being an economic dynamo....or Aruba... or....you get my meaning.
It seems an appropriate response to people who claimed they have been damaged by the slavery of their ancestors, is to return them to their original homeland at government expense.
Shsouldn’t Obama be the one apologizing to blacks-—it was his ancestors who sold Africans to slave traders!
I left many infringements of human rights off the list, and I apologize for those as well as apologize for leaving them off the list.
"You wonder why we didn’t do it 100 years ago," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)The blame squarely rests with Harkin's own party. Republicans passed America's first Civil Rights Act in 1875. Nearly a century later Democracts finally got on board with their version in 1964.
"Every man that wanted the privilege of whipping another man to make him work for nothing, and pay him with lashes on his naked back, was a Democrat. Every man that raised bloodhounds to pursue human beings was a Democrat. Every man that cursed Abraham Lincoln because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation was a Democrat." - Robert Ingersoll, 1876.Speaking of reparations, how much does America intend to pay the families of soldiers who fought and died to free slaves?
“The Senate unanimously passed a resolution on Thursday apologizing for slavery, making way for a joint congressional resolution. Click here for the WaPo story. “You wonder why we didn’t do it 100 years ago,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), lead sponsor of the resolution, said after the vote. “It is important to have a collective response to a collective injustice.””
Maybe Harkin wonders why “we” didn’t do it 100 years ago, but I know the answer. Democrats would never have approved an apology 100 years ago - DEMOCRATS WERE THE SLAVEHOLDERS! They would not have apologized in 1863, and not in 1963; they filibustered and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 until the bitter end. Clowns, utter disgusting clowns, Byrd, Kennedy, Fwank, Peloser, Reid, and so on. Clowns.
“If we’re taxed or otherwise charged one thin dime for this, I expect to see another Civil War that will make the last one look like a Junior High production of Gone With The Wind.”
Yes.
However, the time may have already come. ACORN comes to mind. So does everything else the dems and Obama have been doing by stealing our children’s and grandchildren’s future.
I think that a reparations bill should be passed by Congress. The key provision of the bill should be this: the sum of $10,000,000 will be paid to each currently living slave for the forced labor he or she did during his or her lifetime. That seems fair.