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.
Keyes is pro-reparations?
I actually voted for that guy in the primaries. Twice, as I recall.
Do you have a link or source for that? It should be remembered and publicised.
You can make this a reality!!
< /sarcasm >
Absolutely; it was one of his key points in his Senate race.
Of all the problems we currently have that the Congress doesn't want or have the time to work on and this nutcase Conyers is talking about reparations. He's an idiot.
And better that you do it in highly visible places before the elections.
How anout my reparations for that rathole called the Great Society?
Some really bad things were done to my ancestors - in fact one of my ancestors was completely and forcibly dispossessed of what would have been a very valuable estate today..... it happened in 1755 and I think I am owed reparations, damnit!!
There's no "statute of limitations" on the venal idiocy of John Conyers.
Assuming that reparations will be paid by the Federal government, which means paid from tax revenues, this means that black Americans who pay taxes will pay reparations to themselves.
If money is to be given back to the the descendants of former slaves, can we also guaruntee a bushel of potatoes for each of the families of Irish descent who fled the potato famine? While we're at it, let's provide plenty of cash to the descendants of the British soldiers who fought against this nation in the Revolutionary War. (You know they've suffered enough.) Let's dig way back and return the relics and penant-cash that Martin Luther denied the Catholic church. While we're at it, there's a caveman I heard about who lost a doe and died of hunger.
Not to downplay the seriousness of the institution of slavery, but no one living today has experienced the system of slavery which was abolished in the 19th century. Are we so greedy as to put price tags on our heritage, and honestly will money rewrite what has already been done? Call me a hard-headed-daughter-of-an-immigrant, but my family came here with a 3x4 traveling chest and three children, plopped themselves down in the middle of the dustbowl and rode it out. Not to say our lives are any better than they'd be in the motherland, but geez, give opportunity a try and see what materializes.
And now I'll kindly shut my trap.
"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."
Well, the Democrats should start paying them. They're the one's who advocated slavery in the first place anyway. They're the ones who seceded on issues related to slavery. If they want to do something, let the dickocrats do it--it's their fault.
More evidence that something is seriously wrong when people like this are running the country
Hmmmm...I wonder how much the descendants of slave owners would be reimbursed.
Oh God. Alan Keyes for reparation????? Did he go to the Dark Side?
Will Africans who came to America in recent times be paid reparations also?
The more I think about it, the more I remember it...because I remember my sense of immediate revulsion.
He's no conservative, he's a pretender. And I was a sucker.
Exactly. My ancestors didn't come over from Scandinavia until the 1870's (at the earliest!). We didn't keep slaves. We don't owe anyone anything.
What an a$$.
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