Posted on 03/01/2007 11:44:01 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The first thing to understand about the issue of reparations for slavery is that no money is going to be paid. The very people who are demanding reparations know it is not going to happen. Why then are they demanding something that they know they are not going to get? Because the demagogues themselves will benefit, even if nobody else does. Stirring up historic grievances pays off in publicity and votes.
Some are saying that Congress should at least issue an official apology for slavery. But slavery is not something you apologize for, any more than you apologize for murder. You apologize for accidentally stepping on someone's toes or for playing your TV too loud at night. But, if you have ever enslaved anybody, an apology is not going to cut it. And if you never enslaved anybody, then what are you apologizing for?
The very idea of apologizing for what somebody else did is meaningless, however fashionable it has become. A scholar once said that the great economist David Ricardo "was above the unctuous phrases that cost so little and yield such ample returns." Apparently many others are not.
The only thing that would give the idea of reparations for slavery even the appearance of rationality is an assumption of collective guilt, passed down from generation to generation. But, if we start operating on the principle that people alive today are responsible for what their ancestors did in centuries past, we will be adopting a principle that can tear any society apart, especially a multi-ethnic society like the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at issues-views.com ...
Mutilate people today for what others did back then? Seems to me they are both the same sort of people, and race and color based reparation movements should look themselves in the eye.
Pity the nation that allows its mind to be ruled, not by justice and rationality, but by passing fancy and emotional whimsy.
we did atone for slavery. in fact we fought a bloody war over it. And the vast majority of dead were whites who never owned slaves, yet dies to free them.
ain't that enough?
The great republican party was formed by religious people who wanted to end slavery. Both the north and south democrats undermined all efforts to end slavery, therefor the democrat party should turn over all their money to the descendents of slaves!!!
Let's start with the original sin with slavery, it didn't start in America, it started in Africa. Did a army of white men sashay into Africa and start loading blacks onto ships?
No, they negotiated the fate of these people with the leaders of the tribes for booze and a sundry of gifts. The Chieftains placed a very small price on the lives of their own people but, somehow, no one, especially, the black leaders of present day want to ignore this fact. They, instead, want to blame every single white person living in America today, people who never owned or sold slaves.
So, let these leaders of blacks in America start with the 'original sinners', go to Africa and seek out the descendants of those Chieftains and ask for an apology for the sin's of their fathers or demand reparation. After all, slavery in the United States could not have been possible if were not for the 'sellers' of human beings by their own people.
Slavery in the United Stares has resulted in an African descended citizenry that has more liberty, opportunity, education, wealth and prosperity than any other similarly sized group of black people on the face of the earth. I suspect liberal discomfiture with the notion that black people should express gratitude for this eventual outcome has much to do with her realization that it undercuts much of the basis for "White Guilt" that the Politically Correct so love to wield as a cudgel to beat back dissents against slavery reparations.
I have always been mystified by racial grievance mongers who pontificate on the glorious Nirvana that their lives would be had they only been left in Mother Africa, notwithstanding the general quality of life there. Since most American blacks have some measure of Caucasian genealogical ancestry, and since slavery was the transmission belt that enabled the mixing of their black and white ancestor's gene pools, (whether by rape,semi voluntary or voluntary sexual associations) what they are really saying is that they and their descendants would rather not exist.
I acknowledge the kidnapping and suffering of my African ancestors, and the resultant decades of slavery, oppression, and discrimination that amounted to a monstrous crime for them and was so opposed to this nation's fundamental creed. But the result was me and my family living in a nation that is the enormous net benefit that this one is NOW. I am profoundly grateful to be here.
Do not misunderstand me. I welcome the opportunity for any clarification of the historical record, and should that clarification reveal more evidence of the often bestial nature of the American institution of slavery, than we should unflinchingly face and acknowledge it. The historical record should be properly contextualized, and honestly examined without any attempt to inflate the crime beyond the actual truth of the injustice. We also should acknowledge that the only organized political and philosophical opposition to the once nearly universal institution of slavery was centered in the Western world, principally the US, Great Britain and France. The racial navel gazing, racial identity posturing, and puffed up grievance mongering should be rejected for the PC irrelevance that it is.
It is probably inconceivable to most liberals that a historically aware black man can object to reparations for principled reasons that are grounded in constitutional, historical and cultural factors. But I will acknowledge the grave offense that such objections do to the sensibilities of the doctrinaire thought police and plead guilty to same.....
SMany of the contemporary problems of the black community have little to do with the legacy of slavery than that of a "monopoly of philosophy" (i.e. an unwarranted loyalty to the Democratic party and many of the tenets of modern day liberalism) within the black community that rejects educational alternatives such as school choice, charter schools, and home schooling instead of the ignorance factories that many public schools within the inner-city have become. In his book "Unfounded Loyalty" the Rev. Wayne Perryman lays out a solid case that due to the singularly racist and destructive historical policies of the Democratic party (and I will include the Great Society Welfare state of LBJ's Democrats which has been shown nearly conclusively to have been the single most important factor in the destruction of the two parent black family) it is THEY who should be paying reparations to American blacks.
The main reason that I am not entitled to slavery reparations is because I was NOT ENSLAVED. I grew up in an era in which I remember all of the visible (literally) signs of Jim Crow when I visited relatives in the south in the early 60's. I experienced physical racial attacks as my newly acquired South side Chicago neighborhood underwent racial integration. I experienced some minor racial discrimination at other times and places. No one has to tell me how bad it was, I have first hand experience. The United States today is NO LONGER THE NATION THAT ONCE LEGALLY DISCRIMINATED AGAINST IT'S BLACK CITIZENS, unless you wish to consider "Racial Preferences" for preferred minorities, which is another form of legally codified racism in the guise of cultural Marxism. None of that changes the fact that I am blessed to be a citizen of the greatest nation in the history of mankind, with a higher standard of living, opportunity and liberty than any other.
I
Sometimes it seems as though the race industry merchants and class action lawyers would divide us into warring ethnic enclaves with mortar pits in the streets sniping at each other ala the Balkans, all of them seeking racial spoils with government help. I truly think that the reparations racket is nothing more than a cultural Marxist wealth redistribution scheme.
I have printed out your post and whenever I hear a black leader launches a diatribe of hatred towards this country, I'll read it again to balance out that hatred and to give me a measure of comfort that there are black people like you who refuse to give credence to their race baiting.
As a white man born and raised in the north, my first real look at segregation was in 1958 when, after I joined the Navy, was sent to Virginia for school. I arrived by bus and when walked into the bus terminal I seen a small black women sitting alone in a waiting room with a sign above reading BLACKS ONLY. She caught my eye and the look on her face was one of sadness and humiliation. That picture is in my mind will never leave, even after nearly 50 years.
I have lived long enough to see what great change has occurred since then, unfortunately, most black leaders today refuse to acknowledge there has been any change at all. They preach to the black youth the language of hatred and devision instead of personal responsibility and self worth.
The black leaders can never admit that black children have any chance of achieving the American Dream without their leadership, that they are individuals not groups who are being held down by White America.
The racism of today is in full force, not by White America but by black leadership who instill in the minds of black youth they are second class citizens and unable to achieve, as an individual.
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