Posted on 03/09/2012 1:08:30 PM PST by Nachum
My own interest in the reparations movement started in the 1970s when my teacher and mentor at Stanford, Dr. St. Clair Drake, arranged for me to attend the Sixth Pan-African Conference in Dar es Salem, Tanzania. These conferences were held to focus on efforts to end colonial rule in Africa and to promote economic and political development within the African nations. I traveled as part of a delegation of over two hundred African Americans, but the member of our delegation who had an enormous impact on me was Audrey Moore, affectionately known as Queen Mother Moore. Viewed by many as the matriarch of the reparations movement in America, she forced us to give serious attention to the issue of reparations for American descendants of African slaves at a time when many of us were focusing on economic and political reform in Africa. Although I had studied African and African-American history, this trip was the first time that I learned anything about the struggle for reparations.
Reparations for slavery finally achieved credibility in 1988, when a bipartisan congress granted reparations to Japanese Americans interned by the government during World War II. Congressman John Conyers of Detroit took the next step when he introduced HR 40, legislation proposing to conduct a study of slavery and to determine whether there is a basis to provide reparations to descendants of African slaves. At the same time, a group of scholars and activists from around the United Stated created NCOBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, which has led the push for reparations at the grassroots level.
My recent involvement in the reparations movement stems from my close friendship and working relationship with Randall Robinson, President Emeritus of TransAfrica, an African-American think tank focused on political and economic reform. Three years ago
(Excerpt) Read more at black-collegian.com ...
Unlike Obama I had slave ancestors...
But youz white, Nana..
So ???
In MASS 1630s...
Shouldn’t the Black African tribes who captured the slaves and transported them to the coastal ports chip in a few bucks, too?
Oh please, please let Obama utter the word reparations on camera.
You know he and Michele are all for it, if they would just be honest and admit it the election would be over.
Ok, sure let’s do reparations. Every slave owner alive today should pay every freed slave alive today some money.
Racists like Mr. Ogletree want their own white slaves, only they won’t ever let slavery end.
Every policy of his has been de facto reparations,
though everyone on the left would vehemently deny it.
Mr. Ogletree, let me tell you brother. There ain't no 'white guilt' here, for sure. Take your crap to somewhere somebody will listen.
I say give them their reparations....
Then make deductions for all those years of them recieving welfare, food stamps, public school education, public (section 8) housing, Medicare/Medicaid, EITC, etc.
Shouldn’t blacks in this country be grateful that their ancestors were brought to this country? Otherwise, they would be suffering in squalor and tribal warfare in the old country. Not to mention having to run from hungry cheetahs.
Reparations = $100,000 dollars each and a one way ticket back to Africa, with all rights of citizenship cancelled.
I’ll go even one further -
give them reparations,
but going forward,
no affirmative action,
lifetime welfare limits,
generational welfare limits,
no “United Negro College fund” unless there’s a “United Caucasion College fund”,
no set asides,
no differing standards in qualifications for jobs or college...
In the 60s, MAD Magazine had a cover that could be likened to Reparations or white apology to blacks, etc. It was a picture of a blonde haired, blue-eyed southern belle forced to cower down before a Mississippi Masala-type former slave, if you will. Title was something akin to the equivalent of “Here, she’s yours - sorry for the slavery, thing.”
Actually, I’m in favor of reparations. So, let’s do the math:
Figure the average income of a black family in the US.
Now, let’s figure the average income of an African.
How much would the black Americans have to pay?
Many of those Japanese, who were interned, deserved to be. The problem was the government didn’t or couldn’t figure out which ones, so they sent them all under order by Demcrat President, Franklin Roosevelt.
Slaves were an entirely different matter. It wasn’t the government who rounded up the slaves and held them. It was individuals. Reparations are similar to a teacher punishing a whole class for the misbehavior of a few. No, I take that back, reparations are like punishing a class for the misbehavior of some of the students that were in the class the first year that the teacher began teaching.
I was thinking the same thing. If any money is left over, use it to buy one-way boat tickets to Africa.
Drill baby, drill!
Not for nothing did Ogletree, in the 2008 campaign, hide the video of obama flunkying for Derrick Bell.
Note to ogletree: There are two ways you can try to get the money. You can try to use the government to steal it from me, in which case I’ll give you a war.
Or you can get your flunky in the White House to print a few trillion and shower you with what will be fairly worthless dollars.
I’m hoping you’ll try the former.
Why don’t they go back to Africa and ask the tribes who sold them into slavery for reparations?
Truth be told, the white man didn’t go there and just start grabbing them all up. History shows that it was warring tribes and, in many cases, Muslim tribes who would invade and slaughter, steal and rape other tribes. Part of the spoils of the war was taking survivors as slaves. When they had so many slaves they would trade with Dutch slave traders who would then send the slaves to Europe and America (among other countries). Heck, there is still a booming slave trade in many Muslim countries.
I bet too, that those asking for reparations don’t know (or are ignoring the facts if they do) that free blacks in America also owned slaves. Not all blacks in America were slaves. Quite a percentage were free men and not owned by anyone. They say that 12% of the black free men owned slaves and 1% of whites did as well.
So if anyone wants reparations they had better have proof that they can trace their ancestry back and prove that they had slaves as great grand parents. Not uncles or aunts, but a direct linage to them. They also better prove that their ancestors were not slave owners themselves. Or they will pay for the reparations of those they enslaved.
Then, what about some of us of Irish decent who were brought here as indentured servants? When will we get our “reparations” from England?
This is all a bunch of hogwash. They should be glad, like I am, that my ancestors were slaves and were brought to a great country where we won our freedom and eventually were able to share in the American Dream. Without that twist of fate, we would still be in our ancestral country living life in the way the current countrymen live. In my case that wouldn’t be so bad. But in the case of many blacks I could see that they would be living in horrid conditions in disease and squalor.
How about this my fellow servants, we all get reparations but we pay back all the costs of being brought here, educated, fed, and allowed to live in such a great land?
If you don’t think that’s fair then STFU and go back to your native country.
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