Posted on 05/19/2017 11:54:05 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
ALBANY, N.Y. >> Legislators rolled out a bill Tuesday to create a state commission on the impact of slavery on New York and what kind of reparations should be made to the descendants of freed slaves.
“We’re always being studied,” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Assembly member Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn). “Every time I turn around we’re being studied... so here’s one, how about studying the history of slavery in New York State.”
“Most people believe that slavery was a southern thing, it was mostly southern states,” he said, but most do not know New York City had more slaves than any city in the U.S. beside Charleston, S.C.
The bill calls for a one-year study of all historical aspects of slavery in New York and its residual impact today. Five of the 14 members of the commission would be appointed by the governor and legislative leaders, with the rest picked by The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, the December 12th Movement, and by Dr. Ron Daniels of the Institute of the Black World. The three groups are black cultural and nationalist groups.
Barron said the bill is new and he decided to put it out as a relatively new member of the Legislature. Barron is a longtime activist in New York City. In Albany, he once got into a shouting match with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and at a Black and Puerto Rican Caucus conference; in the Assembly, he was one of only a few legislators to vote against electing Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver before he was indicted and later convicted and stripped of his office.
The bill says during the colonial period slaves accounted for 20 percent of the state population, and 40 percent of households in the state owned slaves. “These slaves were an integral part of the population which settled and developed what he now know as New York,” starting with the arrival of the first slaves in New Amsterdam in the late 1620s, the bill says.
“There are crimes against humanity and crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations ... Certain crimes have no statute of limitations and slavery is one of those crimes,” said Sen. James Sanders Jr. (D-Queens), the Senate sponsor of the measure.
“To look at me you will know someone survived at the bottom of a ship, shackled to a stranger, someone with whom he or she could not speak because the languages were not the same,” said Assembly Deputy Speaker Earlene Hooper (D-Nassau County). “Someone survived. We are the strongest people on the face of the earth to be able to survive a crossing of that type.”
Assembly member Victor Pichardo (D-Bronx) said the repercussions of slavery are still seen in New York in housing and other areas. “To this day there are clauses in specific deeds in Long Island and in upstate New York where folks of color cannot buy homes,” he said. “This exists and to this day we are dealing with the idea and the suppression, from the highest levels of government, of voter suppression and there have been voter I.D. laws across the nation.”
He said a study commission would “create a true remedy to the crimes and the sins that this country has committed, particularly to folks of African descent ... it’s not about financial justice, it is about justice overall. It’s about receiving what is due to our communities and for the United States to actually come to grips with and recognize the horrors of slavery and how it has damaged communities and families to this day.”
Legislators said that reparations have been paid to the Jewish victims of the Nazis, and to the families of Japanese-Americans put into internment camps during World War II. Descendants of freed slaves should also be compensated.
The bill establishes “the Commission to Study Reparations for African-Americans and to Recommend Remedies,” and part of its charge would be to appropriate money for compensation.
Slavery was well established in New York for 200 years and the last slave was not freed until 1827, after a gradual freeing of slave beginning in 1799. Slavery was widespread on Long Island, the Hudson Valley and the Mohawk Valley.
New York City had an active slave market for most of the 18th century, and the state was one of the first colonies to pass a law proscribing the death penalty for a slave who murdered or tried to kill his or her master.
If your very FATHER raped someone or murdered them, you do not get arrested and punished for his crime. This idea is ridiculous.
The idea that being “held back” keeps people from achieving for generations is a MYTH. Proven so by many who were tortured beyond belief in Hitler’s Germany, came here and worked hard and made good lives for themselves and their offspring.
It’s not like you can dig up the people who bought you nor can you dig up your very own ancestors, of the tribes you originate from, and sue them for reperations.
How come you don’t go to the Hague and sue them as well?
I guess by now provenance is an issue so you want to play professional victim and continue tell everyone you are inferior by circumstance and by God you will hold onto your contrived excuse for failure.
And yet today’s imigrants beat your ass all day long and thrive economically and they sure don’t commit the number of crimes your community engages in.
Nor are they killing each other and constituting the vast majority of murders, which so happen to be black on black crimes...
How romantic....
The strongest people reduced to gimmefreeschitters.
What a joke.
I reject the premise as well.
The "rich" must pay the poor in perpetuity through wealth redistribution. A disproportionate number of poor in this model are blacks that the Left have deceived into thinking they are hopeless victims incapable of making it due to ongoing injustice. The Democrats are a very very sick bunch.
Reparations is a con job to give money to people who did squat to deserve it. There was a time when people worked for a nickle a day. Should their ancestors demand that they were underpaid and they be given the $120 a day they should have received? These New York Democrats have become con artists.
Good cant wait till MASS does this also...
I have an ancestor who was a slave in the 1600s...
Oh and she was white...
Legislators said that reparations have been paid to the Jewish victims of the Nazis, and to the families of Japanese-Americans put into internment camps during World War II. Descendants of freed slaves should also be compensated.
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I do hope the bill also states that any freed slave may apply for the “reparations” as the Jaws and Japanese-Americans did...on their own behalf...
and that the money should be back pay equal only to 19th Century pay scales...deductions made for room and board and clothing allowance...and for the wife and kiddies also...
oh and paid by their own former “masters” ...
I and my family and ancestors never owned slaves...
I refuse to pay for wages for someone elses employees...
I don’t own any cotton fields...
I have the original ancestor who was an indentured servant/farm help in 1666 in Virginia. He had to do three years of work to pay off the ‘debt’. He was 17 at the time. Oddly enough, forty years later, he’ll pass away in Virginia, owning two farms, and fairly wealthy.
Two hundred years from now some legislature will be debating reparations for white males discriminated against by affirmative action programs in education and employment in the late 1900s and early 2000s.
What goes around comes around.
My 6th great grandfather timothy McGinnis from Ulster Ireland was an indentured servant at Livingston Manor south of Rensellaer in 1720..
Timothy age 15, his father and his brothers over the age of 10 were all included, the boys until they were 21...
at age 21 now free to move about the country, Timothy went up the Mohawk River and made a lot of money as the fur trapper...
he soon owned about 26,000 acres ...
Including immigrants from Africa!
While you are studying the problem, why not trace the descendants of the BLACKS who owned slaves or bought & sold slaves. Just to ensure that they do you receive Reparations, rather they PAY reparations.
Popcorn concession in Harlem, anyone?
As if being stuck with 40 million losers isn’t payment enough. They have ruined every single city in America.
Funny thing, many slave owners took out life insurance policies on their slaves thru New York based insurance companies. Most of the companies still exist today. Let them, who were paid a premium to insure the black man, pay reparations.
My ancestors lived in New York. They can send me a check anytime...
Afraid Trump will get more black voters.
One of my family is buried a Gettysburg, my grandfather’s grandfather was a permanently disabled Vet of that war. Send me a check....
Hmmm, New Yorker here. Despite my blue eyes and white suburban upbringing I am 1/8 black. Do I pay or do I get paid?
This NYSer’s direct ancestor fought for the Union. We gave at the office.
Everybody in the world could have grievances. This is more democrat vote buying. With public money. Once any handouts started, we were on a bad path.
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