Recently,
Cory Booker introduce(d) Senate bill on slavery reparations
I believe that is a very bad idea. It is either a money grab, or enabling social pathologies such as unwed teen pregnancies, dropping out of school and society, and drug abuse.
Historical grievances are many and they run deep. The Blacks, the Mormons, the Mennonites and the Jews have a long history of being persecuted. The Ku Klux Klan (the "Klan") terrorized black people, Catholics and Jews in the second half of the 19th Century and intermittently through the 20th Century. Similar violence occurred via lynchings. Non-violent but very disturbing and humiliating discrimination such as "Jim Crow" laws, residential and school segregation were the order of the day. These were upheld as the law of the land in the despicable
Plessy v. Fergeson Supreme Court decision, which followed from the odious
Dred Scott v. Sanford decision prior to the Civil War. Corey Booker proposes reparations to living African-Americans. See
Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act. Excerpt of Congressional preamble:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Proposed legislation
"To address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes." See, as well, article in Duke Chronicle, an independent new journal at Duke University, Should there be reparations for African Americans?
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Excerpt from Duke Chronical:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by The Chronicle at Duke
"'Reparations for African Americans are crucial to fight white supremacy and compensate for slaverys consequences, scholars said at a town hall forum Monday, but they aren't enough."
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African-Americans are hardly the only group to suffer serious and crippling discrimination.
As detailed in Mormon History
(link) the Mormons were driven from Palmyra, New York to Pennsylvania, to Ohio, to their own city, Nauvoo, Illinois. During that era, Joseph Smith, their leader, was murdered in jail. The Mormons then relocated, finally, to Utah. Persecution of them was abundant, and vicious.
The Mennonites fared somewhat better, but have also been persecuted. See
Mennonite History Is Marked by Persecution.
The Jews' history barely needs retelling. David Nirenberg’s excellent book,
Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, reviewed here in
Tablet Magazine and here in the
New Republic, discusses this baleful history. He explains that much of the hatred was directed at theoretical Jews by people who had never met a real one. The Pharaohnic hatred of the Jews led them to create a parallel myth to the Exodus story, to the effect that they gave the Hebrews the boot, not the other way around. The Holocaust is extremely recent and devastating. One-third of Jews were executed. Many more fled, and lost their property in the process.
The issue of reparations is a delicate one. The Jews received some compensation, by way of West Germany making some payments to the State of Israel as a result of the Holocaust. There have been settlements in some civil actions brought by victims and their immediate descendants for property plundered by the Nazis. These payments were to actual living victims of actual living persecutors. Aside from these payments by the German government to some Jews, and the Jewish State of Israel, reparations are rarely paid, for reasons I consider to be good. Not everything in life can be fair.
I come out against reparations for historical acts. Neither the victims or the perpetrators are alive. The people who suffered slavery will never be recompensed. The people who administered the lashes will never be punished for their cruelty.
The people receiving this unearned lucre have, by and large, never experienced Jim Crow, residential or educational segregation. The people paying taxes to fund the reparations have never, by and large, done anything wrong.
In short, reparations are the punishment of the blameless for the benefit of the uninjured.
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