Posted on 05/09/2006 10:02:08 PM PDT by peggybac
John Conyers: U.S. Owes Slavery Reparations
The left wing Democrat who will become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee if his party wins back Congress in November wants to hold full blown congressional hearings on whether the government should pay African Americans reparations for slavery.
Michigan Rep. John Conyers has attracted attention in recent months for his House resolution calling for an impeachment investigation against President Bush.
But another Conyers cause-celeb is reparations, which he's been advocating since 1989, when he first introduced legislation to establish what he calls, "The Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African American Act." ( H.R. 40)
In a press release posted to his official congressional web site, Conyers explains how he intends to handle the hot-button issue.
"My bill does four things:
• It acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery.
• It establishes a commission to study slavery, its subsequent racial and economic discrimination against freed slaves.
• It studies the impact of those forces on today's living African Americans.
• The commission would then make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies to redress the harm inflicted on living African Americans."
Conyers says:
"I chose the number of the bill, 40, as a symbol of the forty acres and a mule that the United States initially promised freed slaves. This unfulfilled promise and the serious devastation that slavery had on African-American lives has never been officially recognized by the United States Government . . . " He goes on:
"Just as we've discussed the Holocaust, and Japanese interment camps, and to some extent the devastation that the colonists inflicted upon the Indians, we must talk about slavery and its continued effects."
Though Conyers reintroduces his reparations resolution every year, would-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has never indicated whether she'd back the controversial proposal.
I've studied slavery. My conclusion is: There is a greater chance that Conyers' ancestors, back in Africa, owned Jesse Jackass' ancestors than did any of mine. Ergo, STFU.
One of the books of the Tamuli. I think it was _Domes_Of_Fire_.
I was forced to go to public school -- I deserve reparations!
What I find ironic is that Conyers own Democratic Party was responsible for keeping slavery in place from the Party's inception until slavery ended. And the Republicans had to fight the Democrats tooth and nail to end it. So it appears to me that the reparations should be paid by the Democratic Party.
ping
I keep wondering why reparations are such a big deal to blacks? No black alive today was ever a slave to start with. I look at the minorities in the United States today.
Japanese, Chinese, and asians in general come here, work hard, and make something of themselves.
Mexicans and central/south americans, for the most part, work hard and support their families.
Europeans work hard and assimilate.
Blacks, those that are born here, are whiny. They cry about racism against their ancestors 160 years ago and how it affects them now. They are born in a country that is the land of opportunity, the greatest nation on the face of the earth, and all they can do is look to the past, sit down on their asses and cry their eyes out.
That is the problem. While everyone else looks to the future, blacks in the United States look to Africa and the past. Until they overcome this, they will be nothing more than they are now.
Black kids who actually do their homework are taunted for "going white" -- and we wonder why they have problems?
But but but, I thought we already spend billions on this. It's called public education.
Every single Democrat congressional candidate should be required to go on record on the reparations issue.
Yeah right. I think you named it after "North Dallas 40". Can't believe that each freed slave was promised a democrat (donkey). To bad that plan fell thru, we'd be much better off now.
The US Federal government had nothing to do with it--and Constitutionally, had not the power to act, one way or the other.
Slavery was legal in The United States of America for approximately 88 years.
Slavery was legal in The Confederate States of America for approximately 4 years.
Any bets that Rep Conyers-D would want to tax only the states in "the Old Confederacy" or everyone in the United States?
Lutefisk is a magical food. It is both fish and foul.
Very, very foul...
R A C I S T S RACISTS Racists racists you will write this 100 times or until you learn to spell.
The Republican party was founded to fight slavery. The democrat party is the party who kept slavery alive.
Conyers is a stupid lackey. I don't owe anyone anything.
I didn' have no stinking slave.
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