Reparations: A Moral Obligation

Deep Green Philly ^ | February 21, 2014

[Verginius Rufus]

The black churches, or at least the best-known representatives like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright, encourage this resentment of whites...whatever happened to "love your enemies" and "turn the other cheek"? Do they have abridged Bibles which omit the Sermon on the Mount? They want present-day people to hate other people for injustices done perhaps by that other person's great-great-great-grandfather (and of course millions of white Americans had no ancestors already in the US as of 1865).

Present-day African-Americans, apart from recent immigrants from Africa, would not exist if their ancestors had not suffered the misfortune of being taken from their native countries, transported to the New World, and forced to labor as slaves. If their ancestors had stayed where they were born, they would have married people from their own village or some nearby village. Those who were brought to America came from a large region of Africa, and those who had children had them by people they would never have met if they stayed in Africa. Each person is the result of a particular combination of ancestors who got together and procreated--remove any one of them from the family tree and the later descendants never get born.

[Organic Panic]

I have to go vomit now.

I think the trillions of dollars since LBJ has been quite enough.

[MarkL]

I don't buy it... I refuse to be held responsible for something others have done, many years before my own birth, my parents birth, or even before my great grandparents (or my mother's father) came to this country, from where they and their parents were persecuted.

I don't believe in the Star Trek "Klingon" crap, where the children are responsible for the actions of their parents, let alone how these race hustlers are attempting to assign blame. And of course, leftists will buy into it.

Mark

[Darren McCarty]

Comments? Yeah. Man up. Irish, Italians, Scots, Poles, Jews, and many other whites didn’t have it easy.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The idea is foreign to Judeo-Christianity as well.

Also it’s not like slavery is the reason for the current pit that black people find themselves in. At the end of Jim Crow, black families were doing pretty well in spite of it. Then complete freedom came, and they abused it. That part can’t be blamed on palefaces, unless it is those who voted for welfare bribery where private charity used to operate.

[driftless2]

What appears to be a belief shared by a great many black Americans idea is that somehow they are separate from all the other peoples of the world in suffering. Most assuredly, there is maybe only a very tiny percent of the world's populations which has not suffered tremendously at the hands of other people at some point in its history. Not only that, those same people probably were responsible for the suffering of others. If everybody is a victim, then nobody is a victim.

Like you said, American blacks are much more fortunate than African blacks. Few Africans make the kind of wealth American blacks do. Years ago I remember reading an article by some black scribbler who pondered the question of being fortunate. But he answered sarcastically laughing at the idea that he was fortunate.

But the facts are he was very fortunate. Just like many of ancient ancestors, the Slavs, who were invaded by the Romans and made slaves...where they got the word slave from. Bad for my ancestors but good for me. The children of slaves inherited Roman laws and civilization which started them on their way to laws and civilization. It might not be the perfect way to do it, but I'm glad I'm not some goatherder in the Balkans living hand to mouth.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Seems the best thing that black people can do for themselves is to stop believing a pack of lies.

Some day, perhaps, the pity parties will get old.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Also when a modern African Negro comes to the USA it is likely he (or she) has serious business in mind and has neither time nor patience for pity parties. This person looks upon the Afro-American population of the USA with incredulity. If they’re thinking of ancestors at all, they are thinking of how these ancestors are, figuratively, mourning in their graves for how silly their children have become. The only chains holding them now are in their heads!

[Verginius Rufus]

If you look at the background of many successful African Americans, you will find post-1865 immigrant ancestors from the Caribbean--people who came here with the attitude of other immigrants and eager to take advantage of America's opportunities.

Slavery encouraged the art of doing as little work as possible since there was no incentive to get the job done faster (in most cases--some masters offered chances to make money for producing more). Then sharecropping, a common fate after the War, may have encouraged the belief that it didn't do much good to work hard. At least W. E. B. Du Bois thought he observed that attitude when he traveled around the South (expressed in one of the essays in The Souls of Black Folk).

[HamiltonJay]

Both sides of my family came to the United States after slavery was long over... As to reparations, I think more than a 1/2 million dead in the civil war and TRILLIONS in welfare and affirmative action have paid back whatever debt was owed monetarily.

[Kackikat]

Amen.