Now that we're finally purging America of the Confederacy's toxic remnants.....

[jcmaine72]

....is it time to re-examine the issue of reparations? I know it's a complex issue, especially with regards to what form reparations should take. However, it seems that with all these Confederate statues and monuments coming down, and with the romantic aura and mystique that some created around that traitorous regime finally being shattered once and for all, an opportunity has been created to belatedly ameliorate the horrific wrong done to AA people in this nation.

What do you guys think?

[MadDAsHell]

1. It's African American, not "AA." But to your point...

I'd be very interested in this discussion.

But how? Does one have to have a proven family history of slavery in the United States (a difficult task even for many with decently documented family histories)? And if so, are there degrees based on the # of generations of one's ancestors that were enslaved? Or does everyone get the same?

Or are reparations based on skin color alone? Which colors/shades, and who decides? Could get interesting considering race is an entirely social construct; are we going to use color charts?

And is there a "current financial state" clause? For example, if Michael Jordan had ancestors in slavery, does he get a share of the reparations, even though he'd be taking money from those who really need it and any amount he got would be a drop in the bucket compared to his billion dollar net worth?

And maybe a controversial opinion here, but I feel entitled to it as an African American myself: why would we give slavery reparations before reparations to the Native American people whose lands were stolen to create this country in the first place? If we're going to right historical wrongs, why not go in historical order? And no, reservations aren't reparations.

[Snackshack]

3. Excellent reply.

Especially the last paragraph if a decision is made to to try and right the wrongs of history with some form of monetary or material recompense Native Americans would certainly have to be in that group.

[jcmaine72]

11. Sorry about the abbreviation. I'm typing this on my phone and I sometimes get lazy.

It's no excuse, of course.

As for the rest of your post, as Snackshack wrote, excellent point. I personally believe that Natve Americans should also receive reparations. In what order should reparations be awarded to whom? I'd say that would depend largely on what form reparations take. Perhaps they can be awarded to both groups simultaneously, especially if they take the form of things like free college tuition, health care, and/or housing.

At any rate, I apologize again, and thanks for the thought-provoking reply.

[clu]

13. Just college would be all anyone can ask for

Some of the people I knew in high school who went on to get degrees in a lot of cases do alright

[Drahthaardogs]

15. Why should I pay?

My family immigrated from Italy in the early 1900's. We have not even been here 100 years. We suffered our own racial discrimination and we're not considered white until the 1960's. Many still don't consider us white.

None of this is my history, so why should I pay just because we are now considered Caucasian?

[jcmaine72]

16. All whites, whether they're aware of it or not, have benefited from our system.

It doesn't matter if our ancestors owned slaves or not. We still benefit from it. That same system has so overwhelmingly favored whites for so long that sometimes we forget the countless ways in which we have benefited from it. Besides, if compensation took the form of free education or housing, you'd barely be impacted personally.

Look at it this way: Your tax dollars are already being misspent to help our military police the world, drone people thousands of miles away, and on a whole host of other violent, and destructive shit. Why would anyone possibly object to those same tax dollars (for once) being spent on some noble cause, like trying to help this nation heal its oldest and deepest wounds?

[Drahthaardogs]

20. So was it the largest mass lynching in America

The indentured servitude in the coal mines and railroads the banning of our culture and language or the law passed banning our further immigration that benefitted the Italian Americans the most?

[Not Ruth]

36. Would African Americans pay reparations as well as receiving them?

Vietnamese, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, Central American 1.0 and 2.0 immigrants, would they pay reparations? DACA recipients, would they pay?

Or would payment be voluntary?

[JI7]

40. Yes. If reparations are in the form of money from taxes everyone would pay

[JI7]

39. I have no problem paying. My family hasn't been here half of that

And immigrated from a country under colonial rule until about 70 years ago.

But in the us we benefit from civil rights laws and other things other people fought for and have their lives for.

[Drahthaardogs]

45. And what about Native Americans

One could argue that they are first in line for reparations. Do they get some too? Seems to Mr we stole their country in the first place.

[JI7]

46. Same there also

[Drahthaardogs]

47. How about the Japanese and Italians and Mexicans?

We interred them during WWII and basically stole Colorado, New Mexico, California, and Arizona then we treat them like second class citizens.

And the Jews too! Who suffered more than the Jews? 6 million killed during WWII. If we had entered the war earlier how many would have been saved.

[JI7]

49. Some of those did get reparations

I had no problem with it.

[brush]

54. It's not about individuals paying anything. Come on. And it shouldn't be about individuals...

getting checks.

Small business loans maybe, college tuition, job training, community centers, housing assistance — that sort of thing.

A fraction of our humongously bloated military budget could cover that and Medicare for all too while we're at it so everybody get something.

And that would be a sweet deal for the country. African Americans had their dawn-to-dusk labor stolen for hundreds of years (How would you like to work that hard for life and not be paid?).

If those wages had to be paid, including compound interest of hundred of years, forget it, those trillions would bust the treasury so small business loans, college tuition, job training, community centers and housing assistance is a small price to pay.

Read Ta-Nehesi Coates' "Atlantic Magazine's" article, "The Case for Reparations" to get a clearer perspective on the issue'

[Warpy]

55. Thank you. I was going to reply with something similar but erased it four times

The problem is that too much time has passed. Who pays? Only the descendants of soldiers who fought for the Confederacy? Most of them didn't own slaves and were poor whites who were often forced to fight at the point of a gun. The whole non African population? You're only going to increase resentment with that one, since the majority had ancestors who fought on the Union side and/or had been ardent abolitionists in the northern states. Even more had families who immigrated more recently and had nothing at all to do with the slave trade, like many Asians and Mexicans.

And where do you stop? It seems to me the Native American tribes deserve this even more, but some of them are now getting rich off our stupidity, since legal loopholes allowed them to open casinos on tribal land. Women of all colors have labored without pay for generations and are still doing it, their labor essential but considered to have no value, and if they are doing paid labor, they are systematically and universally underpaid for it. And there are other major injustices out there, it is an unjust country.

Personally, I'd rather put money and effort into pursuing a more just system, something that would be delayed by giving one group a small cash windfall at the expense of everyone else.

The time for reparations was during Reconstruction and should have been paid in the form of real land reform in the south, putting the complete onus on the large plantation owners who'd caused all the trouble in the first place.

[clu]

2. free means tested college for blacks

edit - sorry i'm us-born Mexican - I just call myself Mexican. we're among friends here - AA? ok

[MadDAsHell]

6. How are we going to define "black?" Race is a social construct, not a biological one.

[clu]

7. absolutely right

free means tested education for all

[safeinOhio]

9. We are all gray.

There are most differences within a, so called race, than between so called races.

[lapfog_1]

4. Granting of certain lands and surplus military

Equipment...

Aka 40 acres and a mule

[MadDAsHell]

5. That sounds an awful lot like colonization...nt

[lapfog_1]

33. From the civil war

"West wing" transcript from "six meetings before lunch "

---

JEFF
I'm saying slavery reparations aren't anything new. January 16th, 1865, General Sherman
issued Special Field Order Number 15. Nearly a half million acres from South Carolina
to Florida were divided up into 40 acre plots and given to newly freed slaves. He also
granted them the use of various decommissioned army supplies including...

JOSH
Mules.

JEFF
Yes.

JOSH
40 acres and a mule.

JEFF
Yes. But the order was rescinded four years later by Andrew Johnson. In the ‘60s, during
the Newark riots, you could hear the looters shouting, "That was my 40 acres, I'll be back for the mule!"

[Not Ruth]

8. Has anyone ever received reparations?

[jcmaine72]

12. Not in this nation, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't.

[meadowlander]

34. Yes. In New Zealand

the Waitangi Tribunal resulted in treaty settlements being granted to Maori iwi on the basis of the Crown breaking the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi (which made New Zealand a colony of the British Empire but guaranteed rights to Maori to their lands, waters, ancestral sites, etc).

Various iwi settled with the Crown. Ngai Tahu was granted blocks of land to be developed for communal housing and shares in various semi-nationalised companies. For example, when New Zealand was creating a fisheries quota system, a certain block of fishing permits were reserved for iwi.

The local iwi also have first right of refusal when any state land is divested.

Ngai Tahu reinvested the settlement money and is now one of the property development powerhouses on the South Island and donates profits to community development and education/scholarship funds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi_claims_and_settlements#Ng.C4.81i_Tahu

[Not Ruth]

37. So the colonies that once belonged to Britain and EU members would get reparations

For instance, everyone in the US

[meadowlander]

38. Theoretically Native American tribes probably could

if they could show that they signed a treaty with Britain which was subsequently ignored while their land was forcibly taken from them.

I would imagine that most European colonists chose to come to America and America chose to rebel from British rule which would seem to nullify any entitlement to reparations.

That's not really a comparable situation to either indigenous people being paid reparations for the loss of their land or reparations for people (and their descendants) who were forcibly brought to the US, treated as property and not compensated for their work.

To add to my original point, Germany also offered partial reparations to Israel for the Holocaust:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_Agreement_between_Israel_and_West_Germany

[Not Ruth]

41. The King obstructed justice, which means that he committed treason

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3218


8. "He has obstructed the Administration of justice."

The King had rejected a North Carolina law setting up a court system.

[meadowlander]

44. I think you'd need a more specific citation in case law to establish that.

You would need to know the specifics of any treaties between the colonies and Britain in 1776 (which would probably have all been nullified by the later revolution anyway) and also whether or not the King at that time could be legally prosecuted for treason. And even if the King could be prosecuted for treason, under what law would that entitle his victims to reparations?

Failure to set up a British court system in North Carolina in the 1770s hasn't led to a centuries long social and economic disadvantage for all Americans in the same way that slavery created a system of disenfranchisement for African Americans which still persists to this day.

[BannonsLiver]

56. Japanese American internment camp victims were paid reparations

And if I recall, it occurred during the Reagan admin. About $20,000 each.

[JI7]

10. i have no problem with that but will take demographic changes for it to have any chance

many white people don't even think whites who kill innocent black people should be punished for it.

[jcmaine72]

14. Those demographic changes are occurring more each day.

The point of no return ensuring a future white minority has already been passed, whether the deplorables like it or not. Not only that, but sensibilities have (painfully and slowly) evolved as well. I never thought for one moment, for example, that there would come a day when Confederate statues and monuments would be systematically removed all across the South, did you?

Time is not on the side of the deplorables. They know this, which is why more and more of them have become desperate and scared and have allowed their white supremacist sympathies to come to the fore.

[Sunlei]

18. those are symbols of segregation,including the flag. USA still self segregate-churches,schools, nei

neighborhoods across America. The laws have changed-people not much.

People won't change as long as membership/supporters of hate groups are allowed to be secret societies.

[Sunlei]

17. world will never be purged from the cancer of hate-of skin color /religion/no religion/class.

I do think all the land and homes stolen from Americas POC over the past about 200 years,

includes Native Americans screwed by "treaties"- regain those lands back to the original treaty and/or homes/lands "families" paid fair market current values.

people run out of Americas local counties due to race left behind much land and homes the locals took over and forged new local court deed documents.

a bucket of beads and $20 dollars in junk- plus a treaty Native-Americans couldn't even read wasn't a fair deal even 200 years ago.

[heaven05]

25. many, many Africans

went to many, many other lands as slaves also...this is one of the reasons racial-racist hate against Africans is so prevalent worldwide. AmeriKKKa being the leader in that hate, followed closely by europe.

[JustAnotherGen]

19. Based on the below responses

And the way the question was framed - nope.

Race is a reality. All the ivory tower intellectuals untouched by the daily barrage of bigotry in this country can go on and on with their social construct nonsense. It doesn't change one fucking instance of the reality.

Next - slavery ain't got nothing to do with it. Those participation trophies went up during the Jim Crow regime that was law in the South and In Practice everywhere else.

Finally - if we were going to entertain it -

If you had two grandparents or parents in the census as black in 1963 - you could simply get a 10 or 20, or 30 year relief from Federal Taxes.

I saw someone up above wrote "why should I pay when . . ."

Exactly. Black folks helped build this country long long before Ellis Island existed and then we were literally blocked from buying homes in decent areas, an equal education. You know what?

My dad's parents were born at the turn of the last century, stood IN Jim Crow and amassed wealth in defiance.

They paid for allllll those white folks and got not one fucking thing in return. They were ROBBED. Bread was taken off their table and given to racists.

So here's how this works - Just get off the backs of affluent, rich, and wealthy black Americans. Seriously. A good decent liberal will see we aren't the same as the Koch brothers.

PS - ETA:

It's not my fault if a 44 years old white male went to work in the mines. He made a choice. Why should I pay for his lung cancer? See how this works? He's my peer. As an infant I had ZERO say in his upbringing that lead to that choice. Why should I (whiny plea) have to pay for his PARENTS lack of initiative. Or - his grandparents. It's not my fault he didn't take advantage of the default setting.

[MadDAsHell]

21. I don't get how we can argue gender is a social construct but simultaneously argue that race is not

That seems more than a little inconsistent and politically convenient; the deplorables will eat us alive on that argument.

[JustAnotherGen]

22. This is about racists

Not about gender. Stay on topic.

And we aren't arguing anything.

The day after the election some old ugly white guy approached me in his MAGA hat, called me nigger and said "This is revenge".

Fuck that social construct bullshit. Fuck the person that originally pulled it out of their ass, their children and their children's next ten generations. Fuck them.

Don't you try and tell me jack shit about racists and bigots.

You are making an argument on your own. Every single deplorable is a bigot until they prove otherwise.

[heaven05]

27. exactly

another failed attempt to distract-divert from the truth of your post. Nothing new there, here.

[JustAnotherGen]

24. Coates

You need to look up his arguments on this.

Until you are familiar with that - you are unarmed.

[heaven05]

23. BAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

straight shot of reality

[JustAnotherGen]

26. Yeah

See how it skewed to an argument I didn't make?

You think that racist I mentioned in response saw a woman?

Hell no! He saw a "nigger" and went to his default setting of being a bigot in a MAGA hat.

Those people are pieces of shit, stupid, and worthless. At least I still call those things humans.

45/140? No. It's an IT.

[Eliot Rosewater]

29. The deplorables like that guy in the hat want you gone or dead.

they want anyone who advocates for your rights gone or dead, also.

We arent getting anywhere until we accept that.

[JustAnotherGen]

30. Thank you!

Intellectual "reasoning" never works with hysterical unreasonable people. They are off their rockers.

[Skidmore]

35. Well said. nt

[JI7]

42. Or pay for shitty cops who kill and abuse innocent black people

I would rather my money go for reparations to those whose families did not get paid for their work and therefore were not able to pass it down to future generations.

Plus one reason my people do well is becsuse those blacks sms other minorities fought and have their lives for equal rights.

[heaven05]

28. first, yes the open

obvious relics of the first failed attempt at white male supremacy are coming down. Yet, the mindset being encouraged and enabled by the new confederate administration in Washington D.C. is reinstilling the mentality of a hateful, vicious, violent period in our history. WHITE PEOPLE of the new confederacy and it's potus, legislature and supreme courts WILL NEVER allow any type of reparation. And that disallowance will be dressed up with flowery and sometimes dry legalese and with lipstick.

[cyclonefence]

31. I am tired of hearing "my family didn't own slaves"

as an excuse not to care about the mistreatment unto murder of African Americans in our country. I used to point out to these guys, who generally were younger than me and not very well educated (by which I mean they didn't take US history in high school) that when the colonies flooded the world cotton market with cheaper cotton (because it was produced with unpaid, driven labor), our country almost from its beginnings cornered one of the most lucrative commercial ventures in the world. Plus, so much easier, safer and especially cheaper to ship cotton by rail from the South to the mills in MA, than to ship cotton from Africa and the Middle East to the mills in Birmingham. Every white person benefited and continues to benefit from the enslavement of African Americans because their labor built the foundation for the prosperity of our land.

Now I learn that US Steel in the 20th century owned private prisons in Alabama and could "buy" prisoners--overwhelmingly African American men arrested on minor charges like "loitering"--and put them back into virtual slavery by forcing them to work unpaid in coal mines, which produced the coke that fired the US Steel furnaces. Would US Steel have been so profitable without the free labor of thousands and thousands of men who were forced to live underground, chained at night in underground barracks, assigned to dig 8 tons of coal per day or be whipped? What if US Steel had had to pay what other companies paid in union wages for that same coal? Would it have become the pre-eminent producer of steel that it was?

I am reading Slavery by Another Name and expect to find that this (I can't think of word strong enough--despicable?) episode does not stand alone.

I don't know how in hell reparations could be paid. It's not a matter of money--or not merely of money--but of destruction of culture, of families, of belief in oneself, in *everything* that allows a person to survive in society. This all was intentionally and methodically done to African Americans, and I don't know what we can do to fix it, or atone for it, but I do know that every white person must share the burden of this guilt. We benefited, whether our families owned slaves or not.

[jcmaine72]

32. A big +1. I wish we could rec posts here.

[Kaleva]

52. The US would have become an rich industrial powehouse even without slavery.

The same cannot be said about the destruction of Native American nations. At best, the US would today be restricted in area of the original 13 colonies hugging the Atlantic coast.

[cyclonefence]

58. I am not comparing our treatment of Native Americans with our treatment of African-Americans

but I believe you are wrong about the ability of the US to have become so wealthy and powerful without the forced, unpaid labor of slaves.

I agree with you about our treatment of Native Americans, but I think you are being too generous. We would not even be the 13 original colonies--maybe a village or two--but without the destruction of the tribes on the east coast, we probably would not be even that.

Beyond that--that both were horrible, inhuman behaviors by white Europeans against people of color, to the great and everlasting benefit of white people--comparisons are odious.

[Kaleva]

59. The industrial North, mid 1800s, was much more then cotton mills.

By 1865, without slave labor, the northern states had arguably the most powerful army in the world despite having just fought a bloody 4 year war. I think it important to acknowledge that this nation was built, not with just slave labor, but also by the labor of immigrants. People who were looked down upon by the white upper crust of American society. Immigrants who were the Irish, Jews, slavs, Chinese, Italians and so on. People who worked in the mines and factories, served in the Northern armies and many of whom couldn't speak any English.

Your arguements are interesting and I've ben thinking about what you wrote for much of the day. It's people like you that make DU interesting.

[cyclonefence]

60. I'm enjoying talking about this

from Wikipedia, "History of the Cotton Trade"

In 1791, U.S. cotton production was small, at only 900,000 kilograms. Several factors contributed to the growth of the cotton industry in the U.S.: the increasing British demand; innovations in spinning, weaving, and steam power; inexpensive land; and a slave labour force. The modern cotton gin, invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney, enormously grew the American cotton industry, which was previously limited by the speed of manual removal of seeds from the fibre, and helped cotton to surpass tobacco as the primary cash crop of the South. By 1801 the annual production of cotton had reached over 22 million kilograms, and by the early 1830s the United States produced the majority of the world's cotton. Cotton also exceeded the value of all other United States exports combined. The need for fertile land conducive to its cultivation lead to the expansion of slavery in the United States and an early 19th-century land rush known as Alabama Fever.

Cultivation of cotton using slaves brought huge profits to the owners of large plantations, making them some of the wealthiest men in the U.S. prior to the Civil War. In the non-slave-owning states, farms rarely grew larger than what could be cultivated by one family due to scarcity of farm workers. In the slave states, owners of farms could buy many slaves and thus cultivate large areas of land. By the 1850s, slaves made up 50% of the population of the main cotton states: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Slaves were the most important asset in cotton cultivation, and their sale brought profits to slaveowners outside of cotton-cultivating areas. Thus, the cotton industry contributed significantly to the Southern upper class's support of slavery. Although the Southern small-farm owners did not grow cotton due to its lack of short-term profitability, they were still supportive of the system in the hopes of one day owning slaves.

Cotton's central place in the national economy and its international importance led Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina to make a famous boast in 1858:

Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet... What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years?... England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not to make war on cotton. No power on the earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cotton

[X_Digger]

43. Oh FFS.

[Amishman]

48. Can we talk about renaming New York?

After all it is named for James Stuart, the Duke of York, who founded the Royal African Company which was the keystone of the British slave trade.

[jcmaine72]

50. Sarcasm aside, if that should be the desire of New Yorkers someday, I say let them decide.

Americans (some anyway) are finally trying to grapple with this country's monstrously racist and hate-filled past, all while other Americans (led by our Commander in Sleaze), ironically enough, are trying their utmost to drag this nation back to that past. With that in mind, I'd prefer that there be excesses on the side that's at least trying to help this nation heal as opposed to the side that's seeking to tear us apart and re-assert absolute white supremacy.

[TygrBright]

51. Interested in this b/c hoping the issue of reparations for women comes up someday... n/t

[Kaleva]

53. Was going to mention the same thing.

Women, of any race, should be at the head of the line.

[TygrBright]

57. Just so. Centuries of being property, having no legal identity apart from a male caretaker...

...no economic opportunity, no legal entitlement to an ownership share in the assets of the families they put in thousands of unpaid hours of backbreaking labor to build, no access to credit, no access to education, no redress for appalling physical abuse.

It has to be part of any major economic reorganization.

And I can't imagine any significant form of reparations that wouldn't entail major economic reorganization.

hopefully,
Bright