Posted on 06/01/2014 4:40:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
Progressives have long called for reparations—payments to blacks for the horrors of slavery. These were routinely dismissed because they’re absurd – those who suffered the injustice of slavery and those who perpetrated it are long dead, and most Americans of every national origin had nothing to do with it.
But the push for reparations truly never was about slavery, it’s about redistribution of wealth and perpetrating the victimhood mentality that keeps people voting for progressives. To think they’d ever stop would be like thinking a heroin addict wouldn’t steal your iPhone if you let them crash on your couch – it’s just not going to happen.
Enter The Atlantic. Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has brought the issue back to the forefront of progressives’ minds and set a debate raging on MSNBC. Well, as much of a “debate” that can happen when both participants agree on every point.
Coates’ article, “The Case for Reparations: Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole,” lays out a series of damning government policies and actions that directly harmed, if not targeted, black Americans and held them back economically.
The specific claims of Coates have been refuted by people much smarter than I, and I suggest you read the original article and the rebuttals to form your own conclusion. But if progressives are interested in reparations for past wrongs, they should target those who perpetrated them – the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party was the party of slavery. It gained power from it, profited from it, and fought to keep it.
Jim Crow was the spawn of racist Democrats who, angry they could no longer own slaves, set about creating a series of laws, both on the books and off, to deny blacks the dignity they deserved and their rights as full citizens.
It was Democrats who pioneered “separate but equal,” standing in schoolhouse doors to keep out children who only wanted to learn without having to travel miles to an inferior “black school.”
It was Democrats who, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instituted mortgage policies that led directly to the housing market crash and record foreclosures in black communities.
It was Democrats who, through a continual string of lies, promised to right the wrongs their policies caused, only to make them worse. Their legislative and regulatory actions created a permanence to government dependence, trapping generations in poverty and a feeling of hopelessness.
Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, and every major city with a large black population is in or on the verge of financial and social bankruptcy. Vacant lots, abandoned houses, rampant drug dealing and use, gang violence, massive job losses, astronomical crime rates, failed social and governmental services—all are staples of these cities, as is generations of Democratic political leadership. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
There’s a lot of power in telling people they’re powerless, but that you’ll help them. If you convince people they can’t get ahead, that the system, as progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., put it in her 2012 convention speech, “is rigged” against them, many will believe you. If you convince people they are victims of discrimination, be it from skin color or the economics in which they were born, then normal failures in life – such as not getting a job you want – are not chalked up to someone being a better fit or you simply not being the best candidate, but to that “rigged” system. That deflates the human spirit, kills aspiration, and perpetuates the cycle.
There is no power in empowering others. But there is a lot in the opposite. And it is the opposite in which the Democratic Party, led by progressives, lives, and has always lived. They couch their actions in the vernacular of liberty – freeing people from “job lock,” for example – but the results are always the same. Government can’t grant you liberty; you’re born with it, government can only infringe upon it. People who take the bait don’t realize they’ve swallowed the hook too.
Reparations are in order, but they should not be sought from the government—it was only the conduit through which oppression was carried out. They should be sought from the source of that oppression, its originators and perpetrators to this day—the Democratic Party.
We shouldda picked our own cotton ...
Their ancestors coming here as slaves turned out to be the greatest gift they could have been given and they opt to crap in the streets instead of trying to continue building something of value - they owe us...big time.
Haven’t we already paid reparations several times over?
Or looked at another way - we should calculate the quality of life over here versus the quality of life where they came from….and they can give us the difference. Won’t even charge interest.
So Pelosi, when are you paying up? Shall I send you my direct deposit information?
“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy.”
The US had legalized slavery for about 80 years (from the end of the Revolution until the Civil War); the “hundreds of years” nonsense destroys any discussion before it starts.
“Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole”
Americans seem determined to replace the “descendants of slavery” with new blood from south of the border; black America is being repaid by having the government (successfully) assist them in every way to slaughter their offspring. Many urban welfare reservations that had been nearly 100% black are now very Hispanic, even electing Hispanic politicians.
This is how the reparations question has been settled for once and for all...
“Haven’t we already paid reparations several times over?”
Yes, but it has been squandered. Now we’re on Plan B: The Dems’ plan to abort all the blacks and replace them with Hispanics.
How different do you suppose things would be now if slaves had never been brought to the colonies?
problem is... many of us have zer0 interest in a ‘hole’ country that involves progressives
they are the pox on the nation’s soul.
they are the stench of death wafting from the trenches.
they are the embodiment of sloth that seeps the drive from men’s souls
they are everything i despise and detest
and yes, they want everything you have ... if you’ve been a hard working conservative American
there is no dealing with them.
there is no pacifying them.
no matter how many concessions you give, they’ll always want more.
it’s either big govt, cradle to grave progressive utopia, or the meritocracy the founders dreamed of.
i’m in the 10%.
the 10% of Americans that are not ‘re-educatable’.
the 10% that believes in capitalism over socialism.
the 10% that believes Americans should rely on themselves and not fedgov for their subsistence.
the 10% they want to put up against the wall and dispose of, as Larry Grathwohl described.
i’m fine with that, as i’ll be in good company as they try to get us to that wall.
“all of those who use slavery as an excuse to remain idle, or criminally active, and live off the teat of the taxpayers who support them, need to be put in chains and put to work around the country until they pay us back.”
This argument is decades too late, as the all-too-common spectacle of blacks’ palms outstretched to white taxpayers is now met with the increasingly-common spectacle of whites’ palms outstretched in return. Younger whites have learned well from our permanent unassimilated underclass, and many have no intention of ever contibuting anything (but welfare bastards) using the same blueprint. As the standard of living for most white Americans continues to deteriorate, these “reparations discussions” go from insulting to laughably absurd.
OK, I accept. The currently living AA race is committing a great disparity of property and violent crimes against members of other races. So pay up for the damages, the cost of enforcement, and the cost of incarceration.
There is also a great disparity in the percentage taking handouts, so let's have the working AA compensate by paying higher taxes.
I bet I won't get any takers on those reparations.
Seems like a good trade!
There is not, the descendants of slave became citizens of what once was the greatest, freest country on earth with the best opportunity for success, they were repaired. Some chose to embrace freedom, others chose division and disembly and are expected to be handed their “gib me dats”. They were given the greatest gift of mankind and they spit on it and supported those that tore it down and destroyed it, “the American Dream”
welfare is reparations is that what you are saying?
“Haven’t we already paid reparations several times over?”
Welfare, food stamps, free health care, free housing, free cell phones.....that should do it.
Mindless idiots who consistently subscribe to such a divisive political doctrine are completely oblivious to the fact that once passing beyond the tipping point, the collapse into chaos will likely end with them being mislead and enslaved by the socialists they listened to in the first place.
In this situation, it is unlikely a Christian front united and strong enough to change hearts and minds, leading to emancipation would emerge for decades if not centuries.
Didn’t anyone learn anything from the collapsed socialist regimes during the 20th century?!? The price for such ignorance will likely be horrific.
My sympathy account is bankrupt.
I’m calling BS on all of this. If there are any living now who were slaves, they should be entitled to reparations from those slave holders of theirs who are also living now. I have no “White Guilt”. I haven’t owned slaves and I will not pay anything on behalf of those who did.
By the way, there are many people in Muslim countries right now who are slaves. Get excited about that.
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