Posted on 03/30/2021 9:34:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Whites were slaves in North Africa before Blacks were slaves in America so, who owes whom reparations?
DISCLAIMER FOR THE EASILY TRIGGERED: Slavery is wrong. I make no apologies for it. None of the research presented herein is intended to lessen the injustice of African slavery in America or slavery in any incarnation. If you disagree with what I have researched and decide to call me a (insert your insult here) I will say now, that you’re rubber and I’m glue. What you say bounces off me and sticks to you. Such is my present-day retort and likely my future rebuttal, should I feel so inclined. If you’re still curious as to why I posted this disclaimer, read on.
So, today, someone shared with me this article from Fox News, “Evanston, Illinois first in US to pay reparations to Black residents” and here are some quotes from that article.
The City Council in Evanston, Ill., voted 8-1 late Monday to approve a plan to make reparations available to Black residents over past discrimination and the lingering effects of slavery.
The plan, which could be the first of its kind in the U.S., is to distribute $400,000 to eligible Black households. The Associated Press reported that qualifying households in the city of 73,000 would be eligible to receive $25,000 for home repairs or down payments on property.
Ald. Robin Rue Simmons, the lawmaker who proposed the initiative back in 2019, called the approval a first step but said more needs to be done.
“It is, alone, not enough,” she said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “We all know that the road to repair and justice in the Black community is going to be a generation of work. It’s going to be many programs and initiatives and more funding.”
Further down in the article it reads…
Qualifying residents must either have lived in or been a direct descendant of a Black person who lived in Evanston between 1919 to 1969 and who suffered discrimination in housing because of city ordinances, policies or practices.
The article reminded me of a conversation I had with a very dear friend of mine about race issues in America. (My friend happens to be white.) She asked me what percentage of black people would likely hold her personally responsible for slavery? I told her that I could not quantify a percentage but likely many African Americans would hold her personally responsible for the sins of her ancestors because of news reports like this.
Now, I’ve heard several arguments made for reparations on numerous occasions, but I tend to reject them. Why? For me, it always comes down to this – who should pay?
The topic of reparations for African Americans is a topic that has been discussed ad nauseum and typically for political advantage. Case in point, here’s a quote the Washington Times. The headline reads, “California moves to consider reparations for slavery.” The date of the article is August 29, 2020.
California lawmakers are setting up a task force to study and make recommendations for reparations to African Americans, particularly the descendants of slaves, as the nation struggles again with civil rights and unrest following the latest shooting of a Black man by police.
The state Senate supported creating the nine-member commission on a bipartisan 33-3 vote Saturday. The measure returns to the Assembly for a final vote before lawmakers adjourn for the year on Monday, though Assembly members overwhelmingly already approved an earlier version of the bill.
“Let’s be clear: Chattel slavery, both in California and across our nation, birthed a legacy of racial harm and inequity that continues to impact the conditions of Black life in California,” said Democratic Sen. Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles.
She cited disproportionate homelessness, unemployment, involvement in the criminal justice system, lower academic performance and higher health risks during the coronavirus pandemic.
Although California before the Civil War was officially a free state, Mitchell listed legal and judicial steps state officials took at the time to support slavery in Southern states while repressing Blacks.
The legislation would require the task force to conduct a detailed study of the impact of slavery in California and recommend to the Legislature by July 2023 the form of compensation that should be awarded, how it should be awarded, and who should be should be eligible for compensation.
The panel, which would start meeting no later than June 2021, could also recommend other forms of rehabilitation or redress.
A sober minded person might ask, what does slavery that happened centuries ago have to do with today’s homelessness, unemployment, health risks associated with the coronavirus and the other social issues mentioned in that quote? Outside of inciting the passions of would-be voters, what immediate benefit does it provide to the people of California?
When reparations are discussed it is typically proposed that the US government should be paying African Americans an undetermined amount of money for the suffering inflicted upon their ancestors by all the white people in America. If we look at this logically and without angry rhetoric, that argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. To illustrate that, let me share with you some inconvenient facts.
Inconvenient fact #1: Very few white people in America owned slaves.
Inconvenient fact #2: Native Americans owned and traded in slaves!
Inconvenient fact #3: African Americans owned slaves too
Should white people today be forced to pay reparations when only 1.6 percent of whites during the slavery era owned slaves? Should we demand payment from Native Americans and African Americans as well? Both groups owned African American slaves too. I could go on but, no, I’ll share a bit more.
Inconvenient fact #4: Whites Were Slaves in North Africa Before Blacks Were Slaves in America
I am quoting a 2004 article now from Ohio State News.”
A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before. In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.
Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.
Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).
Now, should today’s white people demand reparations from today’s black people for the crime of enslaving their ancestors for two centuries? For some reason, lack of education mostly, so many people in America believe that America created the institution of slavery. I assure you America did not invent slavery. A cursory glance into a bible proves that. But, I digress, because I am veering off from something, I really want to say in 3 points.
No doubt, some of you reading this will have a problem with what I’ve shared. Perhaps, you are calling me names now. (No doubt. Its why I posted the disclaimer at the beginning.) If so, let me leave you with one final quote where a certain group is demanding social justice because of slavery. This quote is from BBC News.
The West is being asked to pay Africa $777 [trillion] within five years in reparation for enslaving Africans while colonising the continent. The African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission, meeting in Accra for its first international conference, also called for all international debt owed by Africa to be “unconditionally cancelled”.
The Accra Declaration issued at the conference says that money will be demanded from ”all those nations of Western Europe and the Americas and institutions, who participated and benefited from the slave trade and colonialism”.
The conference, co-chaired by Dr Hamet Maulana and Mrs Debra Kofie, announced plans to set up an international team of lawyers from Africa and the diaspora to pursue all legal means to collect the money. The group will also be contacting the International Court of Justice, as well as the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity for assistance.
Mrs Kofie told the BBC the reparation figure was based on the number of human lives lost to Africa during the slave-trade, as well as an assessment of the worth of the gold, diamonds and other minerals taken from the continent during colonial rule.
She says Africa’s turn has come. “We are the only group that have not received reparations. The Jewish people have received reparations. The native Americans have received reparations. The Korean comfort women and so-on and so forth,” she said.
The declaration added that all those in the diaspora, who want to return and settle in Africa, should be allowed to do so and that those who enslaved and colonised Africa should provide seaworthy vessels and aircraft for such repatriation.
The date of that article from BBC News is August 20, 1999.
Thanks for reading this far. I know it was a rather long rant today. A shorter one tomorrow. (I think. It all depends on what I read.)
Jim Stroud
P.S. Did you know that reparations were actually paid to slaves after the Civil War? This was thanks to a measure initiated by Abraham Lincoln (R). However, after his assassination, his Vice President – Andrew Johnson (D) assumed power and reversed it. Click here to listen to my podcast where I discuss that bit of history. (Or, just listen to it below.)
They died in the war that freed the slaves or made freedom for slaves possible. That means that in effect they did die to free slaves.
They died to make more people slaves of Washington DC.
The usual B.S.
When the Union armies invaded the South for the first time, they had no intention of doing anything at all about slavery. They intended to keep it in place exactly as it was.
They weren't trying to get rid of slavery, but that doesn't meant that "they intended to keep it in place exactly as it was."
The soldiers weren't thinking about it one way or the other. Not being abolitionists, though, didn't mean they wanted to keep slavery going.
It was a time of change for the country and what would come out in the end wasn't clear, but not having a plan to get rid of slavery didn't mean that they would have liked to see it continue or would exert themselves to keep it in place exactly as it was. That was what the other side wanted.
This whole War of Secession has been bandied about here for years. I’m not going to go into that.
And too often does that get substituted for the real reason they invaded and killed people. Let us not forget that the real reason they invaded other people and killed them was to reestablish despotic Washington DC control over those people's lives.
The Southern states were paying by far the bulk of all the taxes to fund Washington DC. They were getting precious little in return for that money, but it was making people in New York and Washington DC fabulously wealthy.
This was a precursor of the exact same corrupt structure we have in Washington DC today.
And if anyone is being honest, freedom for slaves was completely impossible without violating the actual constitutional laws of that era. Declaring the Southern states "Insurrectionists" gave them the extra-legal powers to violate real constitutional law.
They weren't trying to get rid of slavery, but that doesn't meant that "they intended to keep it in place exactly as it was."
By "They", you mean Lincoln, and yes, Lincoln was intent on keeping everything exactly the way it was. He not only said so on numerous occasions, he supported the passage of the Corwin Amendment, which explicitly stated that everything regarding the slaves would be kept exactly as it was.
The soldiers weren't thinking about it one way or the other. Not being abolitionists, though, didn't mean they wanted to keep slavery going.
And I think this is probably accurate. Except for the nutburgers out of Massachusetts, most people didn't give a sh*t about slavery in the Southern states.
Probably the majority of northern soldiers had a dim view of it, but stamping it out was certainly not their motivation.
It was a time of change for the country and what would come out in the end wasn't clear, but not having a plan to get rid of slavery didn't mean that they would have liked to see it continue or would exert themselves to keep it in place exactly as it was.
I think this is correct.
That was what the other side wanted.
I'm pretty sure the other side simply want to continue living their lives as they had always done without other people telling them how to live, or capturing most of their money through their control of the Congress making laws which favored the Northern states.
And by "Other Side" I meant the non slaves. The slaves of course wanted to be free, but when the war began, neither side recognized their right to be free, and neither side hand any intention of doing so for the foreseeable future.
What about reparations for tax slaves,while the corporations and politicians become wealthy.
Rubbish.
First of all, in the Civil War's first year more battles were fought in Union states & territories than in the Confederacy, and more Confederate soldiers died in the Union than in the Confederacy.
It was a war of declared Confederate aggression against the United States.
Second, the only "despotic control" from Washington came from that established by Southern Democrats who effectively ruled over DC from 1801 until secession in 1861.
Of course, being Democrats they would not wish to suffer under the rules they had for 60 years imposed, but any normal person would think: what's good enough for the goose must be good for the Democrat gander.
DiogenesLamp: "The Southern states were paying by far the bulk of all the taxes to fund Washington DC.
They were getting precious little in return for that money, but it was making people in New York and Washington DC fabulously wealthy."
That's still a total lie, regardless of how often you repeat it.
The truth is that tariff revenues from Confederate ports in 1860 represented roughly 5% of total Federal revenues.
So our Lost Causers like to claim that "Southern Products" represented the vast majority of US exports and that's how (magically) they "paid for" import tariffs.
Well, first, cotton was the only export of any major value produced in Confederate states and it did represent about 50% of total US exports, including specie.
But for every dollar of cotton exported, the South also "imported" a dollar's worth of manufactured goods from the North.
And that's how Northerners earned the money to keep well over 90% of raw material imports coming through Norther ports.
In 1861, when Civil War eliminated those trade patterns, the Northern economy was disrupted, somewhat, but then quickly recovered and continued to prosper without Confederate cotton exports.
DiogenesLamp: "And if anyone is being honest, freedom for slaves was completely impossible without violating the actual constitutional laws of that era.
Declaring the Southern states "Insurrectionists" gave them the extra-legal powers to violate real constitutional law."
No, despite DiogenesLamp's alliance with Crazy Roger Taney to declare abolition "unconstitutional", it was totally constitutional for Union states which wanted it.
"Contraband of war" was also well understood & accepted by both Union & Confederate armies.
Confederate armies in Union states seized horses, livestock & slaves as "contraband of war".
The Union army in Confederate states freed slaves under the same rules of warfare -- from Day One of war in 1861.
And so DiogenesLamp tries to maintain the ludicrous position that the North only fought to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves, except when they were freeing the slaves as "Contraband of War" from the very beginning.
DiogenesLamp: "By "They", you mean Lincoln, and yes, Lincoln was intent on keeping everything exactly the way it was.
He not only said so on numerous occasions, he supported the passage of the Corwin Amendment, which explicitly stated that everything regarding the slaves would be kept exactly as it was."
Corwin was primarily a Democrat amendment, passed with unanimous Democrat support by Democrat President Buchanan, joined by a minority of 1861 Romney/Cheney-type Republicans.
Lincoln himself did not oppose it because he didn't think it actually changed anything.
Beginning in 1863 Lincoln strongly supported passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.
DiogenesLamp: "And I think this is probably accurate.
Except for the nutburgers out of Massachusetts, most people didn't give a sh*t about slavery in the Southern states.
Probably the majority of northern soldiers had a dim view of it, but stamping it out was certainly not their motivation."
Fair to say, in 1861 most Northern farm-boys had never seen a slave and rarely, if ever, a freed-black.
But they did know slavery was part of the US Constitution, and were satisfied to let it remain -- outside their own states.
They also understood that slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederacy, and to defeat the rebellion permanently would require slavery's destruction.
And so they did.
DiogenesLamp: "I'm pretty sure the other side simply want to continue living their lives as they had always done without other people telling them how to live, or capturing most of their money through their control of the Congress making laws which favored the Northern states."
Even Southern farm-boys understood that slavery needed to be preserved & protected by strict laws, but also needed to be constantly expanded, westward & southward, to maintain its economic viability.
But many Southern farm-boys also understood that slavery was wrong, should be abolished and so supported the Union side.
They were treated very poorly by Confederates. 
It’s possible that someone alive today could be the child of someone who was a slave in the US, if his or her father was a child in 1865 and fathered children late in life. Men can father children in their 70s or even 80s. But there are probably not many children of slaves alive. Grandchildren of slaves or grandchildren of slave owners are even more possible, but again they probably are not very numerous.
I second that! Let’s hear it for “The Great I Am!’’.
One or two grandchildren of President John Tyler (d. 1862) are still alive. (President Tyler's father was one of the Anti-Federalists at the Virginia ratifying convention in 1788.)
My grandfather died in 1977. His grandfather was born in 1780. That's a span of 197 years.
C-SPAN recently showed a film from 1942 about black people on one of the islands off the coast of South Carolina. An elderly man shown in the film had been born a slave. I could imagine that one of his grandchildren could still be alive.
Where was the first major battle fought? Who invaded who?
Sure, after someone invades you, it's only fair play to invade them back.
This is what you do. You spin everything and deliberately leave out details that clarify what happened.
Will those of us whose ancestors were rabid abolitionists get a break on paying the demanded extortion?
There is not one living American soldier from WW1. There is a small handful of solders left from WW2. The average life span of an American in 1900 was 47. And the US population at the time of the civil war was less than 50 million (less than 4 million slaves.) I am not doubting any of your facts. But if there is one or two people who have slave grandparents its a very rare anomaly. And certainly not worth reparations for the 99.999% of the black population which does not fall into that category. Of that 99.999 there are far more who have ancestors who were white, or slave owners, or who were foreigners. Basically slavery did not effect the African Americans of today.
And by the way, when it comes to 80 year olds having children, often a women or even a man will lie about who the actual father is, to change inheritance, provide an heir or to quash rumors of homosexuality.
Well... according to a silly theory by somebody screen-named DiogenesLamp, the first battle was on a piece of paper written by President Lincoln in ordering his "war fleet" to "attack Confederates" in Charleston -- that piece of paper was the beginning of Civil War, right?
But any more reasonable person would say the decisive beginning battle was the Confederates' attack on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter.
And that came after dozens of Confederate seizures of Federal properties, leading Lincoln to call up 75,000 militia (April 15) and declare insurrection (April 19).
By the end of 1861, 35 battles were fought, 25 of them in the Union states & territories of Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma and West Virginia.
Seven battles were fought in Confederate Virginia, plus one each in North Carolina and Florida.
In 1861 more Confederate soldiers died invading the Union than in defending the Confederacy. 
DiogenesLamp: "Sure, after someone invades you, it's only fair play to invade them back.
This is what you do.
You spin everything and deliberately leave out details that clarify what happened."
So here, yet again, you complain about not seeing enough "details" and yet, and yet, most of my posts you ignore because, you say, they are too detailed.
The real truth here is that Confederate battles against Union forces in Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma & West Virginia had nothing to with "invade them back" and everything to do with Confederates attempting to militarily take over Union states or territory which did not want to secede.
That's the important "detail" you keep leaving out, FRiend.
If you don’t want to answer the question, just say so. It takes less time than reading your deflections and obfuscations.
I answered your question, directly and in full context, including your complaint about not enough details.
But you don't like my answers, so you pretend they are just "deflections and obfuscations".
Sorry, FRiend, but that is just your typically trained Democrat mind at work.
You need a better way of thinking.
Who invaded who?
See? That's your problem -- you only know those pieces of history you wish to know and ignore or just deny the rest.
In fact, Bull Run was far from the first battle, or "invasion", it was the eleventh.
Before Bull Run there were ten other battles producing a total of over 1,000 casualties, but you don't know about them because you don't wish to know.
Of those ten prior battles, one was the Confederate assault on Union troops in Fort Sumter, two were in Missouri, three in West Virginia and four in Virginia.
Of those 10 battles, Confederates won four and suffered about 700 casualties, the Union won six and suffered 360 casualties.
In all, 1861 saw 35 named battles, 25 in Union states & territories, 10 in Confederate states.
Those 35 battles produced over 15,500 casualties of which Bull Run represented about 30%.
Winners & losers: in 1861 the Union won 11 battles in the Union and 3 in Confederate states, Confederates won 10 battles in the Union and 5 in Confederate states.
Six of those 35 battles in 1861 are classified as "inconclusive".
Bottom line: 1861 was not "all about" Bull Run, rather it was "all about" the Confederate invasion of the United States, where 25 of 35 battles were fought and where Confederates suffered 1,000 more casualties than they did in Confederate states, even including Bull Run.
Are you push the meme that the CSA intended on invading, holding and occupying the ENTIRE north? I see you are still stuck on stupid.
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