Posted on 03/09/2012 1:08:30 PM PST by Nachum
My own interest in the reparations movement started in the 1970’s 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 N’COBRA, 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 ...
Reminder, get up early tomorrow for the gun show...
5.56mm
1. While blacks were being transported to this country (helped by other blacks in Africa, mind you), while they were slaves, and for a good part of the time after slavery ended when they were being discriminated against, my own ancestors were being oppressed by the various Czars of All the Russias. Hence, my entire family had no involvement in the historical injustices faced by blacks. Hence, I will refuse to pay any taxes if our government decides to pay “reparations” of as much as one red cent to the distant descendants of slaves.
2. Even IF my ancestors ALL were slave owners over 150 years ago, I would still refuse to pay reparations because I DID NOTHING WRONG.
3. My ancestors were slaves in Egypt (as documented in every Bible), a nation that many black activists claim was a black African nation. Where are MY reparations? I’ll take a symbolic $1.00, plus interest at the very modest rate of 1% per year - for ALL Jews. That works out to about $182.2 trillion, but I’ll be generous and leave $2.2 trillion on the table for black slave reparations (take a deduction that from what the blacks will pay the Jews). That means about $12 million for every Jewish man, woman and child. Pay up soon, my family could really use the $48 million to pay a few of our bills.
4. The truth is that there is almost certainly not one single living human being who is not descended from slaves - not ONE, not even the Queen of England. Shall we all pay each other reparations, or shall we do the sensible thing and just say that we cannot right every historical wrong and simply resolve to make sure that there is no more slavery? Let’s start with the continuing slavery in Africa, especially that practiced by black Moslems against Christians and others.
How about reparations to the Jews for their ancestors being held as slaves in Egypt.
See #22.
Welcome to FR.
My family fought in the civil war to free the slaves - something that didn’t happen in Africa until years and years later. (Odd how that’s never mentioned... ) I’d like to be paid back for that favor...
He and his ilk already do: they’re called taxpayers.
also what about the American Revolution when the rebels burnt down another ancestors house in the Susquehanna River Valley, Pennsylvania and confiscated his land and drove off his wife and little children who had to flee for their lives ???
and also the ancestor in NY along the Mohawk River...Herkimer County...a widow of a hero of the Battle of Lake George who was put in prison along with her family some young children..A trading post burnt down, house and land confiscated...
and the 1812 War...
My ancestor, a widow had her house burnt down in St Davids, Ontario by the invading Americans July 1814...They didnt find the grist mill and saw mill out on the edge of town..
Wheres mine ???
I should clean up with all this lose...
My family probably threw the torch, in NY anyway. Proud descendant of NY Revolutionary and War of 1812 Veterans, kicked limey ass!
Every once in a while I have to remind one of my black friends that my Uncle, who I knew well until he died a dozen years ago, was a slave. (Japanese POW camp slave laborer). Irish and white and he was a slave. Sometimes I also mention that at least the blacks were worth something when they got here, the Irish weren’t worth anything to the ship after they bought a ticket. The idea that slavery affects the average black person today is a farce. As for reparations, it was an economic system we inherited at our birth as a nation. As every Democrat knows, if you inherit something, you aren’t responsible for it. Nudge nudge wink wink, say no more, say no more.
Let us not forget that this Ogletree has visited
the Whitehouse 19 times. Surely they talked about
more than the weather.
The interesting question pertaining to reparations is who would get the reparations and who would pay? I know, those pushing for reparations always claim that whites wouldn’t pay, it would be the government but that’s a spurious argument.
First, who would get the reparations? Do you have to prove a family tree that includes a slave? Or, as most assume, you only have to be ‘black’. Well, what’s ‘black’? Do you have to have a genetic test? How much of your genetic background must you have to be qualified for reparations? In proportion to your black ancestry? Most folks don’t realize this but it’s a fact that most ‘blacks’ have some ‘white’ genetics and most ‘whites’ have some ‘black’ genetics. To see how absurd this is, suppose someone is ‘half-black’ and ‘half-white’. Does his ‘half-white’ part owe his ‘half-black’ reparations?
Since I can prove that all my ancestors were NORWEGIAN, I claim that I don’t have to pay anything!!!!
Reparations = theft. Most Americans whose money would be used to pay reparations came to America long after slavery was abolished.
Sorry mate. You owe me, since your ancestors invaded, raped, pillaged and enslaved mine a few times.
I’ll be generous, say $200 per incident? That’d be no more than $20 or $30k.
The whole reparations thingies is just bull s#it.
My Dad’s family came from Italy in 1910, never owned slaves.
My Mom’s family came here in 1625 from Holland and never owned slaves plus became active in the move to end slavery.
I wonder if the blacks that owned slaves will be made to pay.
My Mom had distant family members who fought and died in the Civil War trying to free them.
Oh, well. Before we (USA) pay lets subtract the $14 trillion dollars already paid since 1964.
Anthony Johnson started the institution of slavery in Virginia in 1854, when he filed suit to declare that John Casor, a black indentured servant, be considered Johnson's slave for life. Prior to that point, blacks came over as indentured servants, served a term of a few years to pay their passage, and then were free.
Anthony Johnson, Virginia's first true slave-owner, was black. He came across as an indentured servant in 1621, in the first ship carrying Africans to Jamestown.
Something they don't teach you in school during Black History Month.
4. The truth is that there is almost certainly not one single living human being who is not descended from slaves - not ONE, not even the Queen of England. Shall we all pay each other reparations, or shall we do the sensible thing and just say that we cannot right every historical wrong...
You're speaking as a grown up - and you're right. So right your words comes across as 'obvious'... wish that it were so...
Members of the black community were sold on the idea that getting others to feel pity for them - or feel guilt - was the way to 'get stuff'. We have liberal elites to thank for that one. In the short run it works - in the long run the rest of us start resenting them.
My family fought in the Civil War to help free the slaves - I don't feel they 'owe me' for that... There's something to be said for doing what's right and moving on. I'm tired of the black nonstop pity party. More blacks have been killed by black gang members in the last 15 years than all the blacks lynched by racists whites in the history of the South. By far...And money?
Liberal ideas of victim-hood and marxism-lite don't work. Bad cultural ideas propping up their culture is what's keeping them poor. Not something that happened a hundred - two hundred years ago.
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