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When was the Emancipation Proclamation signed? Oh yeah 1865. Can we move on from this ****? Yes, it happened. Yes, it was bad. Yes, we should learn about it in school. But we should stop dredging it up like it ended last year.
This comment is pure ignorance. People who are enslaved today don't own smart phones. They live in third world countries and often go without food, medical care or clean drinking water. They are often locked up in factories and forced to work for no pay and beaten. They endure everything that slaves in the 1800s in America did. Possibly even worse. You are obviously unaware of modern day slavery. I'm not talking about people who are underpaid at their Wal mart jobs in the USA. Here's some reading to help get you started: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ging-neck.html And don't try to dispute the story. It's well known and has been for many years.
Take it to the P&C forum.? Um, no I don't have to. I will continue to discuss it here. It's very relevant to the topic being discussed. It's naive and ignorant to view slavery as a relic of history or something that existed only in the USA.
And what's that have to do with CEO's and corporations?
Yes there is slavery in the modern world, but I find your response a backpedal and disingenuous, as most corporations are forbidden by law (at least in the western countries) from benefiting from slavery, at least the type you are describing. I don't think you are being honest with your re-definition of your original post as you stressed the CEO and corporate aspect. How do CEO's and corporations benifit from a sex slave working in southeast asia?
I've never put too much energy into reparations. But if slave reparations were ever going to happen then going after those businesses and schools that aided slavery and benefited from slave money would be the best way to go about it.
In 2002, Farmer-Paellmann brought suit against Aetna and two other companies in federal court asking for reparations for the descendants of slaves. The lawsuit said Aetna, CSX and Fleet were "unjustly enriched" by "a system that enslaved, tortured, starved and exploited human beings." It argued that African-Americans are still suffering the effects of 2½ centuries of enslavement followed by more than a century of institutionalized racism. The complaint blamed slavery for present-day disparities between blacks and whites in income, education, literacy, health, life expectancy and crime.
This suit was dismissed, and the dismissal largely upheld on appeal.
not named in the suit: the u.s. government, probobly the biggest benefactor in slave trafficking.
As far as the Japanese-Americans. Their reparations went directly to those who had been put in those camps during WWII. It's been said that U.S slave reparations should have gone to newly freed slaves. Today's Black-Americans are generations removed from slavery so they didn't experience slavery.
freed slaves supposedly got 40 acres and a mule, so even-steven ?
While we're talking about achieving justice and fairness, remember that it goes both ways.
If you're going to seek reparations from the United States, then I guess you need to seek reparations first from the British, Spanish and French since the territory that now makes up the United States were colonies of those countries during the first 150 years of slavery. Are you going to sue the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, too, while you're at it? After all, they all had Caribbean colonies with slaves whose descendants ultimately wound up in what is now the United States.
Oh, and I guess you need to take legal action against the ancestral homelands in Africa, given how slaves were the spoils of war for one tribe conquering another. Europeans weren't trekking into the African bush to round up slaves. Nope, the slaves were delivered into the hands of Europeans by Africans at the coastal trading post. It's also worth noting that slavery existed in the United States for far longer as a colony than it did as an independent country. So, if you consider things from a pro rata standpoint, former colonial powers in Europe should really be on the hook for the larger share. Or, if an African American traces his ancestry to Haiti, which gained its independence from France in 1803, should that person be eligible for reparations?
Now, what about those African Americans who immigrated to the United States after the 13th and 14th Amendments were passed? Do they get part of the Jubilee, too? And if there are white, Latino, and Asian Americans who are almost completely descended from those who came here after the Civil War ended, how much should they have to pay? What is their culpability? For example, if someone is of Asian descent whose family immigrated to Hawaii, what exactly is that person's responsibility? Is it justice for that person to pay up? What about those who are biracial? Is their allotted payment half that of a white person's? Or do they only get half of what a fully black person receives? I mean, do we really want to go back to the nonsense of defining people as mulattos or octaroons for the purpose of dispensing cash?
And how do you really figure the economic contribution of slaves? Sure cotton was a cash crop, one that made the Southern states prosperous. But with the end of the Civil War, the South fell into absolute poverty. In fact, whatever wealth accumulated in antebellum times in the South had pretty much evaporated by 1863. Meanwhile, can you really make the case that the industrial north or the west grew and prospered because of slavery? That would be really difficult to prove, given the very small population of slaves that existed in the northern states before slavery was outlawed altogether as the colonies gained their independence. Or what about people in states such as Minnesota, North Dakota, Alaska, Idaho, and all the rest, where every field was plowed, every building erected, and every road paved through the sweat of paid labor? Do those states need to pony up?
In other words, slavery was an atrocity, a tragedy and a blemish on American history. I can't imagine any sane person arguing otherwise. But expecting modern-day Americans to pay up for events that were set into motion almost four centuries ago by other nations--before our country was a sovereign power--and have no control over today, is also an injustice. My family moved here from Germany around the year 1900. My grandfather grew up in New York. What is their culpability? What is his? What is mine? I can't even wrap my head around the tortuous calculations that you'd need to come up with.
In truth, I think the United States paid the price for slavery in blood in the period of 1861-65, when roughly 2% of the American population died in combat, the equivalent of 6 million Americans dying today. In addition, the American South was devastated by the Civil War for a full century afterward, first from the damage of the war itself followed by the rampant poverty and the economic exploitation that followed. Meanwhile, if by some freakish set of events, this batty shakedown was indeed made into law, all you'd do is offer up a fresh set of injustices to those who never committed those offenses in the first place.
But the Devil is in the details. How are you going to assess the tax? How are you going to make the payments? Who is deserving and who is not? And, actually, yes, the Caribbean is necessarily germane to the discussion. After all, look at how many African Americans in this country have Jamaican, Haitian, Cuban, or another Caribbean ancestry. Most would have migrated here in the past thirty years. Do you give them a smaller check than you would to someone who can trace the family bloodlines to antebellum Mississippi? After all, Jim Crow laws did not apply to them. What about those who call the US Virgin Islands home? They were Danish citizens until 1917. What kind of check do you cut them?
What's more, while cotton made up 60% of US exports in 1860, that figure completely exaggerates its importance to the overall national economy. Total cotton exports in 1860 were $191 million dollars or 4.3% of the total US GDP of $4.4 billion. In terms of proportion, that's comparable to the entertainment industry's contribution to today's American economy.
So the assertion that America got rich due to slaves cultivating cotton is just a fantasy, just as much as saying that America's national wealth today is dependent on the production of television, music, and movies. The US was simply not an export-dependent economy in 1860, given the fact that the country historically has always had a trade imbalance. Instead, America's economic growth mostly derived from a generous immigration policy and heavy investment from overseas. I mean, there were discriminatory laws against Irish, Italians, and Chinese too at various times in this country's history. Certainly not as much as were levied against African Americans, but more than enough to retard their economic growth. Are you going to offer reparations to those groups, too?
Last edited by MinivanDriver; 10-12-2018 at 08:04 AM..
I believe the poster was making the point that you are obviously unaware of chattel slavery.
I'm perfectly aware of it, but thanks anyway. He/she does not fully understand the history slavery and believes it's a relic of the 1800s in the southern states of the USA. Chattel slavery still exists all over the world today where victims are bought and sold, and forced into unpaid labor. It's completely obvious that you and others are completely unaware of this. The children forced to work in African diamond mines is just one example of that. Tortured and beaten. It's not "anti capitalist liberalism" to be opposed to this and it's not about people wanting money for smartphones. Do some reading and learning about what goes in in the world today, it would really open up your eyes.
Last edited by PriscillaVanilla; 10-12-2018 at 08:01 AM..
When was the Emancipation Proclamation signed? Oh yeah 1865. Can we move on from this ****? Yes, it happened. Yes, it was bad. Yes, we should learn about it in school. But we should stop dredging it up like it ended last year.
1863, history major.
The Emancipation Proclamation did squat. It freed slaves in the states that had seceded from the Union, which of course weren't going to listen to any proclamation from the Union in the first place. It didn't free any of the slaves that were still being held in the Union states.
I think you might be confusing it with the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and was passed in 1865.
I'm perfectly aware of it, but thanks anyway. He/she does not fully understand the history slavery and believes it's a relic of the 1800s in the southern states of the USA. Chattel slavery still exists all over the world today where victims are bought and sold, and forced into unpaid labor. It's completely obvious that you and others are completely unaware of this. The children forced to work in African diamond mines is just one example of that. Tortured and beaten. It's not "anti capitalist liberalism" to be opposed to this and it's not about people wanting money for smartphones. Do some reading and learning about what goes in in the world today, it would really open up your eyes.
Once again, I think we are all aware of the issue of modern slavery. But this is an umbrella concept that includes child labor, prison labor, indentured servitude, sex slavery, forced marriages, child soldiers, bonded labor, etc. The scope far surpasses the topic of the institutional slavery that existed in the southern US in the 1800s.
Assuming you are sincere that this was the intention of your original post (I still have my doubts), if you had explained this in your original thread rather than starting with your political-socio-economic agenda statement of "CEO's and Corporations" then we could address that and be good to go. I assume you are bringing in the "Apple employs forced labor in the China factories" type of examples, which is bad labor but not equivalent. Otherwise there are laws in place that prevent the most extreme examples - Fair Trade law of 1932 (prohibits import of items created by forced labor) up to the 2010 California Transparency in Supply Chains Act (which essentially impacts all companies of any size, as they all do business in California). You mentioned also diamonds, hey I don't like De Beers either but conflict diamonds are already prohibited for trade by international law.
But once again, you shouldn't single out "corporations and CEO's", the person you should single out is....YOURSELF perhaps. Do you shop at Walmart? Do you buy stuff from Amazon?
Okay, that's one definition. This discussion seems to be arguing a vague notion of the term, with two or three interpretations in play.
There is absolutely no question that the economic value of slave labor contributed enormously to the development of the US through at least 1900. I am not sure the other notions of "slavery" can be meaningfully included in that discussion.
This is exactly what the Civil War was about, in the most concise possible summary. All moral issues and window dressing aside, the North wanted the South to give up their primary economic engine, which would have meant almost instant and total economic ruin. The South fought for sheer economic survival in the face of overwhelming moral cost. That alone puts the contribution of "slave money" in perspective.
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