Why don’t they go back to Africa and ask the tribes who sold them into slavery for reparations?
Truth be told, the white man didn’t go there and just start grabbing them all up. History shows that it was warring tribes and, in many cases, Muslim tribes who would invade and slaughter, steal and rape other tribes. Part of the spoils of the war was taking survivors as slaves. When they had so many slaves they would trade with Dutch slave traders who would then send the slaves to Europe and America (among other countries). Heck, there is still a booming slave trade in many Muslim countries.
I bet too, that those asking for reparations don’t know (or are ignoring the facts if they do) that free blacks in America also owned slaves. Not all blacks in America were slaves. Quite a percentage were free men and not owned by anyone. They say that 12% of the black free men owned slaves and 1% of whites did as well.
So if anyone wants reparations they had better have proof that they can trace their ancestry back and prove that they had slaves as great grand parents. Not uncles or aunts, but a direct linage to them. They also better prove that their ancestors were not slave owners themselves. Or they will pay for the reparations of those they enslaved.
Then, what about some of us of Irish decent who were brought here as indentured servants? When will we get our “reparations” from England?
This is all a bunch of hogwash. They should be glad, like I am, that my ancestors were slaves and were brought to a great country where we won our freedom and eventually were able to share in the American Dream. Without that twist of fate, we would still be in our ancestral country living life in the way the current countrymen live. In my case that wouldn’t be so bad. But in the case of many blacks I could see that they would be living in horrid conditions in disease and squalor.
How about this my fellow servants, we all get reparations but we pay back all the costs of being brought here, educated, fed, and allowed to live in such a great land?
If you don’t think that’s fair then STFU and go back to your native country.
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Anthony Johnson started the institution of slavery in Virginia in 1854, when he filed suit to declare that John Casor, a black indentured servant, be considered Johnson's slave for life. Prior to that point, blacks came over as indentured servants, served a term of a few years to pay their passage, and then were free.
Anthony Johnson, Virginia's first true slave-owner, was black. He came across as an indentured servant in 1621, in the first ship carrying Africans to Jamestown.
Something they don't teach you in school during Black History Month.