Reparations?
He!l no.
A large number of black freemen owned slaves themselves.
How do you sort our who was slave and slaveowner?
There were also several all black confederate regiments. In the Northern Black Regiments, the officers were white; in the Southern Black Regiments, the officers were black.
Nevr heard of a black confederate regiment? Try the Louisiana Native Guard. Actually there were 2 Louisiana native Guard Regiments, one fought for the Confederacy and the other fought for the Union.
No reparations.
Any black who was promised 40 acres and a mule should get them.
Then they should be back-billed for the trillions of dollars in welfare expenses they’ve cost since Lyndon Johnson drove them back onto the plantation.
How about a one way ticket to the African nation of their choice?
Hell no. Through trillions of dollars of welfare transfer payments that “debt” has been paid long ago.
I have long advocated doing a financial analysis of how much better blacks are in the U.S. than they would be if there hadn’t been slavery. Take the average wage for blacks in the U.S. and subtract that from the average wage of blacks in Africa. Write a check for the difference and STFU.
Should "White" America Get Reparations?
Every single slave alive in America, including tax-slaves should be entitled to reparations.
Reparations were paid in the form of BLOOD on a thousand battlefields from Bull Run to Appomattox. Half a million men gave their lives or limbs over the curse of Slavery on one side or the other.
The debt has been paid in full.
Any American who has never owned a slave should not.
This is one of the most absurd ideas ever. How can someone who never owned a slave,and was born 75 to 100 years after slavery ended be responsible for what their ancestors may or may not have done 150 years ago or more? My ancestors were poor southern farmers who did not own slaves. Trying to determine which black people were descendants of slaves and which white people were descendants of slave owners would be a bureaucratic nightmare of enormous proportions. If they want to see the cost of their freedom, take them to Gettysburg, Antietam, Bull Run, or Chancellorsville. I’ve had racism, attempts at white guilt, and black victim mentality up to my eyeballs. Maybe all of the “descendants of slaves” owe reparations to the family members of American soldiers who fought for their freedom!
“Should Black America receive reparations from the U.S. government for slavery?”
They have been receiving reparations since LBJ and the Great Society created the welfare state. About 45 years now. I’d say reparations have been paid.
Get a bill for reparations, yes. How much are they going to pay me? We have spent trillions on them and have got nothing in return.
P.S. The first black slave owner in the New World was...a black man. Suprise!
Congress could have appropriated money to buy property from the former slaveholders. The main reason Reconstruction didn't last longer than it did was the lack of support for it in the North (since the former Confederate states were excluded from Congress for several years)--it was a political loser for candidates running for office in Northern states.
Even if massive amounts had been spent setting up former slaves as small farmers, would that have solved the problem? Lots of whites with small farms in those days struggled to survive, and most of their descendants eventually gave up farming. How many poor blacks of today would be rich if their great-great-great-grandfather had been given 40 acres and a mule in 1865?
Long-term success comes from earning it--not from being given a lot of money.
Not only no, but HELL NO!!!
Next question?
The second half of Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell points out that slavery existed as an accepted institution worldwide and throughout recorded history.The Epistle to Philemon is a letter from Saint Paul to a slaveowner imploring, almost demanding, that he forgive his runaway slave:
10 I appeal to you for my child [j] Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my [k]imprisonment,Sowell says that the institution of slavery was so accepted that there did not exist any literature defending the institution until it came under attack and was defended in the American South.
11 who formerly was useless to you, but now is useful both to you and to me.
12 I have sent him back to you in person, that is, sending my very heart,
13 whom I wished to keep with me, so that on your behalf he might minister to me in my [l] imprisonment for the gospel;
14 but without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but of your own free will.Sowell Points out that behind the leadership of William Wilberforce, Britain became antislavery in the era of the founding of the US. And that Britain maintained a squadron of its navy off the coast of Africa for no purpose other than the altruistic motive of suppressing the slave trade. Christianity did not immediately delegitimate the institution of slavery - but no one but Christians ever delegitimated slavery as an institution. And, among Christians it was historically Protestants in the forefront of opposition to the institution, and among Protestants it was English speaking Protestants who were in the lead. The institution basically was delegitimated in the Nineteenth Century because of the influence of the British Empire.
And, of course, the American Civil War. The conclusion is that if you are enslaved, even if those who are enslaving you are themselves Christians with rifles, you don’t look to any other demographic than Christians with rifles to free you.
I favor reparations be paid to any surviving slaves, and any descendants of those slaves who can prove that they would even exist without the institution of slavery. I put it to you that no living American can make that claim with any assurance. The Butterfly Effect says that although there would be people in America if there hadn’t been any slavery here long ago, none of the people now living are descended from the same parents who would have married and had children in an alternate universe without the institution of slavery, and the resultant civil war, in America. Our grandparents would not even have met, even in the unlikely event that their own parents did meet and marry.
Do black Americans imagine that, absent America and the unfortunate slave trade of the Seventeenth Century, Africa today would have all the people it does today and all of black America as well? Do they imagine that their unfortunate ancestors enslaved in America were worse off than those who were imported into Muslim countries in vast numbers but not permitted to reproduce, thereby leaving no descendants in those Muslim countries?
Boat tickets back to Africa seems fair.
Let’s do it.
Every intact black family is more than welcome to receive reparations. When the rest of the culture learns how to succeed on their own, then we can take further action.
That ought to limit the liability of another entitlement program.