Posted on 02/11/2019 1:12:42 PM PST by Red Badger
WASHINGTON – CNN political analyst April Ryan, Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, said past U.S. presidents like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush refused to formally “apologize for slavery” because it would lead to some form of reparations for descendants of slaves.
“In my first book, I tackled the issue of reparations as a healing, as a possible healing, asking people… from the time I started at the White House, when the race initiative happened with Bill Clinton, oh my God, everybody was saying that’s the girl who is always asking, ‘Mr. President, will you apologize for slavery?’ But it’s real. When he started that race initiative issue, people were thinking about, OK, if you are talking about race and healing, there’s this black-white dynamic that has to be healed and also a Native American dynamic that really wasn’t on the table like it should have been,” Ryan said during a recent Race in America Today discussion to mark Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.
“But when it came to the black-white issue – will there be an apology for slavery – there were some blacks that were for it and some blacks that were against it. He was listening to a cross-section of black people and they never apologized. You know why? And this is the truth. It never came to that formal ‘OK, we’re going to apologize or not.’ You know one of the main reasons why? Because if you say I’m sorry then you have to come out with some kind of healing – that is reparations,” she added.
Ryan continued, “How do you determine reparations, now or in, what is it? 1997, 98. What is it? It is not 40 acres and a mule – and 40 acres and a mule now would equate to a house in Potomac and a Land Rover. So then you get into the question: Who is black now? And all of that was, yes, I am African-American, period, end of story. And if I do, what is it? Twenty-two or 23 [percent] in me, OK, fine, but I’m African-American.”
Ryan explained why she isn’t going to ask President Donald Trump if he will apologize for slavery.
“I have asked that question over and over again. George W. Bush said, well, Africans participated so they deal with it, yes, President Obama’s administration thought, well, why would the black president apologize for slavery? The optics of it did not look right and you know what the answer is with this president. I’m not even going to ask,” she said during the event.
“I’m not going to ask anything anymore about, are you racist? You just watch and see what it is. If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, walks like a duck, it’s a duck,” she added.
Former Democratic National Committee Interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile suggested that the U.S. follow South Africa’s example on reparations.
Under President Thabo Mbeki in 2003, the South African government announced it would “pay reparations totaling $85 million to more than 19,000 victims of apartheid crimes who testified about their suffering before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” according to the New York Times.
Brazile said she has “always believed” the U.S. “needed something” like the reconciliation process that took place in South Africa.
“So, 244 years of slavery and, based on what I learned from my family, when slavery was over with, they had no car, they had no home, they had nothing, they started from scratch, from 1863 to 1964, getting public accommodations you had a whole other struggle with Jim Crow, and then from 1964, ’65 forward. We’re not that far from where we started and yet we’re still having this conversation,” Brazile said.
“I’ve always believed that we needed something like they had in South Africa where we talk about reconciliation, where we’re able to put this stuff on the table,” she added. “Look, I’m more like James Brown. I don’t want to nobody to give me nothing – just open the door, I’ll get it myself. But I don’t want to nobody to hold me back. I’m not going back.”
Brazile connected the issue of reconciliation to her experiences as a member of the Catholic Church.
“I was in the Catholic Church last week, first Sunday, and I almost cried because my church is asking us to forgive them…. When I first started in the church I had to sit in the back because I was black. Now I can sit anywhere I want and this church is now apologizing. So the church needs some reconciliation now. We need it in our country. We don’t have it,” Brazile said.
“We can’t talk as Americans about our shared experiences because we don’t have a path. So we have to create those spaces in our community.”
The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act (H.R. 40) seeks to “address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.”
The bill calls for a 13-member commission to study reparations and “the president shall call the first meeting of the commission within 120 days” after the enactment of the legislation.
“Seven members of the Commission shall constitute a quorum, but a lesser number may hold hearings,” the bill reads.
Wesley Lowery, national correspondent for The Washington Post, said he would be “fascinated” to see the results of a federal study of reparations if H.R. 40 became law.
“I do think that it would make sense for us to study and explore the ideas around reparations. And too often we have conversations about reparations, we base that conversation in slavery,” Lowery said.
“When you read someone like [Ta-Nehisi] Coates, he has made the argument that, fine, let’s have a discussion about reparations based in red lining, let’s have a conversation in terms of housing policy, that American wealth comes from our ability to own homes. And we know why black Americans have not had the opportunity to own their homes and pass that wealth down while white Americans have, right?” he added.
Lowery continued, “As we grapple with the reality that we’re only about 50 years into full franchisement of African-Americans in the United States of America, I think there’s a real conversation and debate to be had, even if you were to set slavery aside, what other systematic structural forms of discrimination have lasted into our current times and our current generation that we might explore a way to provide reparations for.”
Yeah, why don’t we give the machetes so they can skillfully chop whities heads off
Load-O'-Bull.
My family is black, and has been passing down real estate holdings to heirs for generations.
You’re welcome; this nonsense has to be called out every time...
Way too much trouble to give any of them anything. Give them nothing, and no apology of any kind. Oh and while we’re there, ask them to apologize for all the trouble and expense we’ve been put through by them since they’ve been free.
I believe I should receive reparations monies for
not having ever owned slave and receiving profits
therefrom.
the South African Model worked so well....
Please check my math and let me know if I made a math error.
Then use or adapt what I posted to counter this bs, and ping me.
On top of all that, New Orleans had enough small parish churches in the early '60s that it is unlikely that Brazile ever saw segregated seating in church. Many churches in predominantly black parts of the city were already "desegregated", even before Rummel took action. Yes, Donna is spinning a convenient yarn.
Your point is perfect - and some malcontents, when they’ve been free for THREE times as long as slavery existed in the US, will still want “reparations”...
Why not, the Spaniards were the first ones who brought slaves to the Americas?
My Civil War ancestors fought for the North - how about reparations from the blacks to all whites who gave their lives or their limbs to set the blacks free?
Will I be expected to give funds for reparations when my ancestors fought to free the blacks? What about all descendents of all Union soldiers who fought?
What about all the whites in the south who did not own slaves?
Few more points: no amount of reparations would satisfy many - they’d always want more.
Give sums of money to those who have never known how to manage it - and it will be gone in a short time. Then what? More reparations?
I could go on for hours......
There are only about 1,000 reasons reparations are plain and simply WRONG.
In 1959?
I’m speaking of the Catholic Church in the United States in 1959 - but you knew that.
I was referring to your comment that Hispanics don’t want to fund that charade.
You could say that about practically any two groups of people: Catholics and Protestants, Arabs and Jews, Greeks and Turks, Cowboys fans and Redskins fans, Muslims and everyone else.
As long as just one side is willing to ‘live and let live’ but the other is intransigent or outright hostile, there will never be ‘peace’, until Jesus returns and stops all the foolishness................
We’re already getting the South Africa deal....4% of the population already commits about 50% of all violent crime.
Me, being half Filipino, don’t owe them a penny.
My other ‘half’ were dirt poor and never had any slaves, going back to the Revolutionary War...........
Well, you could compare and contrast South Africa in 1989 with South Africa in 2019, but it should be enough to point out that whites are not 9% of the US population.
Someone, I don’t remember who, once said that you could give black Americans ‘reparations’ in cash of let’s say, $100K per family and in a year’s time you would get it all back...............
Or Rhodesia with Zimbabwe.........................
Remember the Dem Party is all about ‘paternalism’.
They look upon every member of every minority as being helpless, and they want them to stay that way.
“Vote for US and WE will Help You, you poor miserable person!” but they have no intention of ever doing so.
If you have a political party whose power base is ‘poor’ people, you will make damn sure you never run out of ‘poor people’, and will increase their numbers at every opportunity, even if you have to IMPORT THEM FROM SOUTH OF THE BORDER.
Why can’t people see this?...........................
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.