Posted on 06/12/2015 3:05:04 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Whenever the world gets too crazy for me, I head down to the soul food restaurant and seek out my mentor, the great ghetto philosopher, Cleophus Leroy Brown.
Cleo graciously waived me toward a seat at his usual corner booth. “What’s on your mind, College Boy?”
“Everything,” I blurted out. “”I’m on social media and practically every day someone posts another instance of black folks either being killed or brutally beaten by police just for being doing something, if it isn’t anything more than breathing , while black. Everybody jumped up and down- and rightfully so, I might add, about Freddie Gray, while more than 180 days after he was murdered by police, Tamir Rice’s family has gotten no justice, no charges filed, no nothing! They haven’t even been allowed to bury their child. We just had over 200 bikers involved in a shootout in WACO and the police didn’t kill anybody! Bikers- almost all of them white- shooting up a storm and none of the police were “in fear for their lives” like they were when they killed 12 year old Tamir Rice for playing with a toy gun, and all the other unarmed black folks. And not once did I hear the word ‘thug,’ used!” By now, I was on the verge of requiring oxygen.
“And you want to know what it all means. Right, College Boy?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I thought things were supposed to have been getting better. Especially with a black president and all …”
“And I thought I taught you that exceptions to the rule don’t negate the rule, they prove it! Just ‘cause some people get a seat playing musical chairs, that doesn’t mean there’s a seat for everybody! There are a lot of lessons that can be learned from what’s goin’ on. But the main message I get out a all of this is that America aint ready for reparations!”
Wha?”
“You heard me. But before I break it down for you, College Boy, I want you to tell me what you think reparations means.”
“It means we are finally going to be compensated for all those years of enslavement.”
“That’s the very least significant part of reparations. There has to be a monetary component, but that is just to make a statement of the seriousness of the situation. It should cost a lot, because a lot was taken. But, more than anything else, reparations is an apology. It says we are sorry. And a true apology says something else. Do you know what that something else is?”
“I’m really sorry?” I was truly grasping for straws.
“I means that I regret doing what I did to injure you; that if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t do that. It means that if my wrongful actions have defined our relationship, then I will do whatever it takes to redefine our relationship in a way that is right and just and proper. This represents what is called ‘atonement’ or ‘at-one-ment’ in theological terms. “ Cleo’s look of self satisfaction was so strong it almost knocked the taste out of my mouth. But in my heart, I knew he was right.
“Just look at the history. Whenever we tie today’s issues back to slavery, we get the same tired response. “That was a long time ago. When are you going to stop using that as an excuse? ‘Now If, when slavery was abolished, white America had said, ‘You know what? We must a lost our damn minds. We were so wrong. Here’s your forty acres and a mule, and we are going to do everything, from real education- not just propaganda- to whatever you might need- to bring you into the fold as fellow American citizens’ – if that had happened then we would have had a clean break and slavery really would have been quite a while ago. But instead we were lynched, segregated and denied the vote- even more than a hundred years after the so-called Emancipation Proclamation. Today’s police departments grew out of the paddy rollers whose sole purpose was to police and intimidate slaves.
“To this day, there has never been that clear, clean break with slavery. Never that admission of wrongdoing and renegotiating of relationship based on total equality. When unarmed black folks are slaughtered by the police, it’s just a statement that we aint ready to renegotiate the relationship. As long as Fox News scores more than twice the ratings of MSNBC AND CNN combined, we aint ready for reparations. As long as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh can make millions of dollars just by spreading stupid racism on the radio, we aint ready for reparations. And as long as people have to wear Tee shirts to proclaim that “black lives matter,” we definitely aint ready for reparations. As long as we aint ready for reparations, the stain of slavery will never be lightened (it could never be removed anyway) from the soul of America.
William, You can pay your own. I’m not. Ever. You deserve nothing more than you got. and that was our mistake to begin with.
WHO gets the money and HOW is that determined ?
The writer is a liar, incredibly ignorant, or both. Whichever of those is the case, he has no credibility whatsoever.
Oh well, I'm sure he had nothing new to say on this dead-socialist-horse issue anyway.
'zat you ?
Reparations for slavery were paid in blood from 1861-1865.
He's got me convinced. I've done pretty well financially, well enough to pay my share. Yesterday! I already went out and bought 40 acres and a mule for every black person I enslaved, every black person I lynched, and every black person I denied the right to vote. And there is more. From today forward, I will deal with black people based on total equality - no discrimination in favor or against them. I will judge each person in my life based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
Now can we stop talking about skin color? Good. It was as boring and trivial as talking about eye color.
Nope .... Slats had REAL sense.
As I have stated before, I am actually in favor of slavery reparations in the following form:
1). $5,000,000 tax free to every living person who was held as a slave in the United States while slavery was the law of the land.
2). $1,000,000 tax free to every direct biological offspring of a person who was held as a slave in the United States while slavery was the law of the land.
3). Nobody else gets a dime.
I think such a plan is imminently fair to former slaves and their children, and will not overly tax the treasury of the nation.
William, the answer, in the form of a question: what is “Liberia” ?
Already gave my reparations by working 35 + years paying taxes much of went to pay for their welfare so their fata$$ mommas could sit at home all day and balloon up to 400+ lbs and breed more welfare babies. I’d guess about anywhere from 1/10th to 1/8th of those hours were “slave” labor on my part to pay for their freebies so if anybody needs reparations its me and the taxpayers who slaved for them while they sat at home, played bideo ames, and smoked weed all day long.
Tell you what, if they want reparations they can go dig up my great great great grandfather and get it get it from him after they dig up their great great great grandfather so they can hand the money to him. Fair enough?
>>As long as we aint ready for reparations, the stain of slavery will never be lightened (it could never be removed anyway) from the soul of America.
If it can’t be removed, then why even try? They’ve had reparations for 50 years and have squandered it all by taking the money and the affirmative action and using it create hip hop culture and to force us to destroy our schools for them. They are like reverse-Rumplestiltskins who turn gold into straw.
But even with their failure to succeed in a nation where anyone can succeed, they have done much better here than in any place that is ruled by blacks.
Last I heard, some if not all of the dead bikers were killed by cops.
Seems very odd that, AFAIK, who fired the deadly bullets has not yet been released.
Another one of these screwy blame-Evil Whitey-for-everything columns proves once again that many blacks are not ready for citizenship.
Reparations for slavery were paid in blood from 1861-1865.
..............
Yup.
We just had over 200 bikers involved in a shootout in WACO and the police didn’t kill anybody! Bikers- almost all of them white- shooting up a storm and none of the police were “in fear for their lives”
The guy is either not on social media as much as he thinks or is a liar or an idiot ...
Probably all three ...
> think such a plan is imminently fair to former slaves and their children, and will not overly tax the treasury of the nation.
It is not fair to us who did not commit those acts. You don’t jail someone else for a crime someone else commiitted. This is complete lunacy. You are thinking you are dealing with reasonable people who can be satisfied. You’re not. If you give them anything they will be back at the feeding trough again just like a stray dog if you feed them. Have some common sense man.
They should also have to pay reparations to all of those blacks who were shot "while black" as the article put it, since they happened in Democrat controlled cities.
And, the Democrats should have to pay Republicans reparations, for all of the attacks on Republicans that occurred during the civil rights struggle and all of the Republicans that were killed to end slavery.
So, when do I get mine?
I see by the papers in the Yankee Capital that Johnny Cochran, and of course Jesse and Al, are wheezing and blowing like a county-fair calliope with a leaky boiler. They always are. This time it was about the need to pay reparations for the ravages tra-la of slavery. It got me to thinking.Rest at the linkI hate it when that happens.
Now, I know I'm hard-hearted, and mean-spirited, and no damn good. It's probably my only virtue. But on consideration, I realized that they might be right. The ravages of slavery do run deep, and cause motingator trouble, with no end in sight. I decided that compensation was only reasonable. Sometimes you don't like a conclusion, but you have to reach it. All right. I'll be a man about it.
You can pay me reparations, Johnny.
To start with, I figure you owe me for three bicycles. Maybe it's a small thing, but I'm tired of losing bicycles. Are we talking market value or replacement? What I really want to be paid for is having to keep my latest two-wheeler in my living room. Do you know how many times I've knocked the fool thing over? And, oh, the scratch in my granddad's antique desk that the brake lever made. What's that worth?
Call it three grand. OK? Direct deposit would be nice.
But . . . how do we dollarize cultural retrogression? God knows I appreciate your offer of reparations, but I'm having trouble with the arithmetic. Help me.
Quite probably an example of the exception that proves the rule. Very difficult to make excuses for the cop in this case.
A judge has just found there is probable cause to charge the cop with murder. Although the law still requires charges to be brought by the prosecutor, who in this case insists he's taking it to the grand jury.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/11/tamir-rice-police-officer-murder-charge
The obvious problem being that the grand jury sees only the evidence presented to it by the DA, which is entirely at his discretion. Which makes it essentially his rubber stamp. He gets an indictment or not depending almost entirely on what evidence he chooses to present.
In the Brown/Wilson case the DA chose to do a data dump on the GJ, presently them with all the available evidence. Right thing to to, IMO, although of course he was then bad-mouthed for NOT slanting the evidence presented to get a conviction.
We need some mechanism for taking the DA out of the loop in police shooting cases. Blacks are unhappy with Wilson NOT being indicted. Cops and many conservatives are unhappy that the Baltimore cops WERE indicted. As long as the indictment process is essentially a political one, since DA is, most places, an elective office, such complaints will continue.
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