[mhking]

Dorothy Tillman was stupid when I lived up there, and I see she's just as stupid today.

Just damn.

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[Cincinatus]

While the debate over slave reparations has merit

The very first phrase of this piece is ludicrously wrong and it goes downhil from there.

[subterfuge]

"In other words, Brown is a lackey for whitey"

Notice the author doesn't state that 'In other words, TILLMAN BELIEVES Brown is a lackey for whitey.'

These are author LAURA WASHINGTON'S words. Its a not-so-valed tip-off that she believes everything Tillman is saying, just not her means for getting it.

[Southack]

Actually, Tillman is a "useful" idiot.

Consider, as Laz did, that our government owns one third of all land in America. That land is not on the Market. That land isn't helping our economy.

So turning over 40 acres of government land as "reparations" or welfare or land grants or whatever...would soon inject a fair amount of wealth back into our system (after all, some of that land *would* be sold back on the Market).

In the meantime, such reparations would turn Democratic Blacks decisively against our enviro-radicals who want our government to buy up all private land. The Enviro-nuts don't want *any* land to be privately owned, and they want to fight any sale of public government land to the private Market.

Yet how could such PC radicals be against 40 acres of "reparations?"

Now admittedly, this is a pretty cynical way of thinking, but you've got to admit, the enviro-radicals would play their part in fighting such reparations (and that would have larger political consequences).

Sometimes, such as in judo and politics, you can score an advantage by using your own opponents moves against them.

Moving government land back into the private market would do that very thing, were we ever to become so cold-hearted and cynical.

Republicans freed slaves. It isn't out of the question that they could next free our land.

[Vision]

From my perch, that's a good start.

That's a hell of a perch you got there

[ArrogantBustard]

While the debate over slave reparations has merit

Sez you!!!

''She should have kept her mouth shut and said, 'I'm not going to speak against my people,'"

Last time I checked, we were all human. This skin-colour based race thing is silly.

If this "slave reparations" crowd had any guts, they'd show up on individual door-steps demanding their fair share, instead of shilling for the government to do the dirty work for them. Of course, they might find that most Americans don't react favourably to shakedown artists, confidence men, and armed robbers.

[Roughneck]

>>Tillman and other reparations activists rightly argue that America was built on the backs of black slaves<<<

They wrongly argue this. The whites that forged this country worked hard indeed, overcoming religious persecution and serfdom (indentured servitude) within the varying countries they escaped from.

While black slaves DID help the later cotton-growers, and other farmers, blacks were NOT EVER the only ones doing back-breaking work for this country, nor did blacks lay the ground-work of this country.

Blacks are free here, if they dont like it, I vote a ticket back to Africa and a donkey to ride when they get there.

[joesnuffy]

My ancestors were imprisioned at Andersonville..some killed there...others were maimed and as a result lost their homes their farms their familes...their lives...lost all meaning...

Just to FREE her ancestors...I demand full payment...for all my relatives who suffered at Gettysburg, Shiloh,Missionary Ridge,Bull Run, etc etc etc...wont even count the ones that fought in the Revolutionary War...y'all get a pass on that one...as well as every other war Americans fought in to keep us FREE....

[ErnBatavia]

[KellyAdmirer]

Now, this whole reparations deal is interesting. Suppose the descendants of slaves were compensated. Why shouldn't THEIR descendants also be compensated? And THEIR descendants? And so on, ad finitum? Every generation could just apply for their compensation at birth, like an entitlement.

The whole idea is just crazy, spouted by loons who have not a clue.

[JeanLM]

Reparations is an idea that has no basis in law or fact. There is no way to saddle current taxpayers with a moral responsibilty that ended 140 years ago. If there were any claims, they ended with the death of the last slave owner and slave who was owned by him.

The facts: Slavery, as we refer to it in discussions about reparations, ended when the British, who ruled the high seas, started intercepting slavers in the 1820's. So it went on for about 200 years. About 10 million were shipped to the new world, but...only 5% to North America. The rest were consumed in the plantations of Central and South America,as well as the Caribbean. So 500,000 poor souls were shipped here, and about 400,000 survived the trip. From these, our current African American population descended.

Unlike their homeland, where their lives were worthless, here they were extremely valuable. So they were kept alive and protected. Treated badly too, in many cases, but the survival rate was better here than in the tribal warfare back home.

Someone like a statistically enabled historian without bias, could probably compare the life expectancy of the original Africans to their descendants and get the answer and a PhD. Bet the ones that came here are more numerous and better off too.

[hattend]

''She should have kept her mouth shut and said, 'I'm not going to speak against my people,'" she told Sun-Times reporter Fran Spielman.

What "people" are those? Americans?

[billbears]

While the debate over slave reparations has merit,

Didn't even make it through the first sentence before I stopped reading...

[lowbridge]

Tillman is not alone. During the debate over the reparations law, 34th Ward Ald. Carrie Austin voiced her support by declaring, ''I want 40 acres and a Lexus. You can keep the mule.''

Then work for it.

[azhenfud]

"These kinds of remarks make African Americans look like a bunch of operators trying to hustle our way into making an easy buck out of a national tragedy....."

Although not applicable to ALL BLACK AMERICANS, this is quite a brilliant observation. Using the hardships of one's own ancestors to bait a shake-down shows how patheticly despicable these persons are.

"The racial wounds of slavery are real. But as long as the reparations debate is framed around pointless posturing and pandering, they will never be redressed."

Those "wounds" were first begun in Africa, where those "ancestors" sold their brothers and sisters into slavery and murdered those who wouldn't submit. Racism and slavery's evils were far more vicious there than anywhere else on the globe. Reparations - if any - should begin in Africa, but then, that wouldn't afford an easy hustle, would it?

[BenLurkin]

" . . . activists rightly argue that America was built on the backs of black slaves . . ."

Nonsense.

[Alouette]

''Who is she to say that things have changed?'' Tillman ranted. ''Things have not changed.

Somebody sell her down the river.