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.
Please stop the fear mongering.
heck yeah, I am all for it, just bring me a former slave and I will pay them out of my own pocket.
Being able to live in the U.S., as opposed to Africa, is reparation enough.
Every living slave should be allowed to immediately file a lawsuit to claim millions in damages from his/her owner. Every living slave owner should be tried for his/her crimes, pay punitive and actual damages, then spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Absolutely! Hear hear! All you slaves and slave owners, please raise your hands!
2)I have lived in Southern states, Northern states and Africa.
3)No one alive was ever a slave in the US.
4)He should thank the Lord that his ancestors were brought here by whatever means.
What fear mongering is that? These are John Conyers own words; embarrassing aren't they?
"This will become a reality if the Rats get in power again."
Fear mongering. It won't happen.
You don't think the left is catering to their extreme base, ie, Conyers? LOL
No I don't. Conyers is good for a laugh and not much else.
The left knows they can handle a bunch of things, including raising taxes, with a reparations bill. And then use the money for all their touchy feely crap. It's coming.
Will Conyers mention the fact that free blacks also owned black slaves, and that the blacks who ran Africa were the ones selling the slaves in the first place?
State & Federal spending on liberal welfare is $1.7 billion per DAY! They are already getting their reparation from the U.S. taxpayers!
Don't Americans of ALL races pay taxes? If this money is going to be paid out to blacks, by the feds, through our tax dollars, are they going to "segregate" our money so just the whites are paying the blacks and the blacks aren't paying themselves back? And since it was the Republicans under President Lincoln who waged a Civil War to abolish slavery, do only the white Democrats have to pay the blacks this money because they wanted to keep slavery?
A novel called "The Known World" won the Pulitzer in 2004. It was by Edward Jones. It was about blacks who owned black slaves and all that entailed. How do we deal with blacks whose relatives way back when were slave owners themselves?
This bill is absolutely insulting and offensive to everyone in this Nation. And while I'm sure it was designed to be that way, few will realize it because if you're not for it you're a big, fat racist! How people can buy into this stupidity is beyond me.
The first American slaves were Irish! We were indentured servants enslaved for 7 years on contract and brutally beaten to death, unlike the paid for black slaves!
If anyone gets repartitions, it is the Irish-Americans!
*wink*
Isn't that what welfare is?
Conyers is just working on removing all reason to be a member of the Democrat party.
Do the rank and file union boys know that "whites need not apply" at the Conyers democrat party table?
I'm Irish so I'm for it. Plus we can sue the UK for genocide against our people. During the potato famine Ireland was exporting food and a million died, and 1.5 million left for America.
This promise was unfulfilled because Lincoln's Democrat replacement, the only other President to be impeached, Andrew Johnson, reneged on it.
HAha I was waiting for that joke.
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