5 Reasons Reparations For Slavery Are A Bad Idea

Townhall ^ | July 26, 2014 | John Hawkins

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Reparations paid in full when 700,000 white boys slaughtered each other over whether blacks would be slaves or not.
About a million or more gave arms, legs and eyes for the same cause.

[lurk]

I want Great Britain to compensate me for messing with my Scottish ancestors 500 years back. $50,000 would work.

[Georgia Girl 2]

The only reparations due to Blacks are from the Democratic Party which has held them in virtual slavery since the 60’s.

[dfwgator]

: Just giving people money seldom helps to fix their problem.

The money soon ends up right back where it came from.

[Joe 6-pack]

This is the only aspect of the article I disagree with:

"2) Who would pay reparations? If John Smith gets drunk, runs a stop light, and hits the car of Susie Jones, we know who's at fault....How do you make any of those determinations with reparations?"

That one's easy. It's the Democrat Party, the party of slavers. Make them pay.

[ladyjane]

There were thousands of blacks who were slave holders. There were also black slave breeders.

[BroJoeK]

Vermont Lt: "I was wondering how things would have been different if we had opened the west and given the slave s forty acres and a mule."

By 1910 a million blacks lived on 15,000,000 acres of farmland they owned in Alabama, Mississippi, North & South Carolina alone.
That's an area of land well more than the size of New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware & Rhodes Island combined.
It averages to well over "40 acres and a mule" for families of, say, four.

Also, US land prices were vastly lower in 1865 than today, even considering inflation.
So "40 acres and a mule" in today's values is equivalent to circa $100,000 per family of four.
Multiply $100,000 times say, 10 million black families, that's about a trillion dollars total.

Since the US has already paid vastly more than that in various "Great Society" programs, I'd say that whatever debt was incurred in 1865 has been long since "paid in full" -- no matter how you figure it.

[Vermont Lt]

It was more an academic question about how that might have changed the impact on our country in the intervening years.

I am not advocating it now, clearly.

Just one of those things I was thinking about earlier this summer as I drove through the vast expanses of the US Midwest and west. At the time, the property in some of the western territories was available. (We simply needed to steal it from the Indians first.)

[BroJoeK]

Vermont Lt: "Just one of those things I was thinking about earlier this summer as I drove through the vast expanses of the US Midwest and west.
At the time, the property in some of the western territories was available.
(We simply needed to steal it from the Indians first.)"

The 1862 Homestead Law:

"The [Homestead] law (and those following it) required a three step procedure:
1. file an application,
2. improve the land, and
3. file for deed of title.

Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government (including freed slaves) and was at least 21 years old or the head of a household, could file an application to claim a federal land grant.
The occupant had to reside on the land for five years, and show evidence of having made improvements...

Between 1862 and 1934, the federal government granted 1.6 million homesteads and distributed 270,000,000 acres (420,000 sq mi) of federal land for private ownership.
This was a total of 10% of all land in the United States.[2] Homesteading was discontinued in 1976, except in Alaska, where it continued until 1986.

About 40 percent of the applicants who started the process were able to complete it and obtain title to their homesteaded land."

420,000 square miles is the size of Texas and Montana combined, an average nearly 170 acres per settler.
Sounds like much more than "40 acres and a mule" to me.