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It's time that all this reparations nonsense was stopped. As far as the U.S. is concerned, there is nobody still around who was a slave and nobody still around who was a slave owner/trader. As I asked in another thread, would you hang a man for a murder committed by his great-grandfather? Of course not. So why should anyone here today be held responsible for something which his ancestors might have done long before he was even born? Using a generic case of you and me, it comes down to the question of why should I pay you for something I didn't do and which never happened to you?
Even if we were to ignore the blatant injustice of holding people responsible for something their ancestors did, it would be an impossible task to track exactly who owes reparations to whom. I'm from England and can trace my ancestry back with reasonable certainty only about as far as the 18th century, and then there are still some gaps. Might I have had an ancestor involved with the slave trade? Not so far as I'm aware, but I have no way of knowing for certain. There's just as much a chance that I could have had an ancestor who was involved in putting an end to the slave trade (the Royal Navy played a very large part in ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade). So am I supposed to pay or not pay reparations depending upon whether my ancestor was a good guy or a bad guy? Surely nobody would suggest that I should pay just for being white - That would be racist, right?
In a similar way, how about any black people who are descended from the black slave owners? Surely they should also pay other black people descended from slaves in order to be fair. And while we're at it, the descendants of anyone involved in the slave trade - black or white - should pay reparations to all of the other people who fought to put an end to it.
But coming back to the specific issue at a city level, just where is the money for reparations going to come from? The city gets its funding from local taxes and the state, plus maybe some federal funding. So ultimately, everybody is going to end up with higher taxes in order to pay reparations to one specific group, based soley upon the race of that group. Isn't that just the sort of racial discrimination everybody wants eliminated?
The whole thing becomes so tangled and nonsensical that only a crazed bureaucratic mind could ever think it could be fair in any way whatsoever.
I get it. Some people don't want reparations at all, under any circumstance. That's not the line on this thread.
The reasoning for the reparations is that, because slavery was racially based in the United States, this left a stigma for African Americans to deal with. Post Civil War, there were Jim Crow laws and Segregation....in parts of the country.
However, California was always a free State. Berkeley, doesn't show signs of a giant African American ghetto where citizens are trapped in a cycle of poverty. It's quite the opposite. Most people in Berkeley are doing rather well.
Generally speaking, one shows damage first, and then goes on to show the causation of said damage in seeking an award. In this case, there doesn't seem to be damage, at least nothing that significantly correlates to under-performance along racial lines. In some instances, African Americans draw the highest incomes for a given occupation.
Moderator cut: link removed, competitor site
So what's the basis for passing a reparations amount at a municipal level that largely did no participate in and has no lasting effects of the past?
Black people were lynched as far north as Duluth MN. New England states also had slavery they abolished it sooner.
You could get lynched back then for lots of things completely unrelated to race.
As for slavery, everyone had slavery at one point in time or another.
Heck, the only reason the European-African slave trade took off around the 16th century and beyond was because:
-Turks cut off the flow of slaves from the Baltic (whites) when they took Constantinople.
-North African\Middle eastern slavers took African slaves for themselves (Huge black slave uprising in what is modern day Iraq back then)
-Native Americans, exposed to new diseases died or fled making them unsuitable for slavery.
-Christianity at the time started rallying against slavery making the case that at least white-slavery was wrong.
If you just switch technology levels between Europe and Africa around that time, you'd have Africa snatching up European slaves, establishing colonies in the Americas etc. There was no better morality involved, just better ships and weapons.
I get it. Some people don't want reparations at all, under any circumstance. That's not the line on this thread.
The reasoning for the reparations is that, because slavery was racially based in the United States, this left a stigma for African Americans to deal with. Post Civil War, there were Jim Crow laws and Segregation....in parts of the country.
However, California was always a free State. Berkeley, doesn't show signs of a giant African American ghetto where citizens are trapped in a cycle of poverty. It's quite the opposite. Most people in Berkeley are doing rather well.
Generally speaking, one shows damage first, and then goes on to show the causation of said damage in seeking an award. In this case, there doesn't seem to be damage, at least nothing that significantly correlates to under-performance along racial lines. In some instances, African Americans draw the highest incomes for a given occupation.
Moderator cut: link removed, competitor site
So what's the basis for passing a reparations amount at a municipal level that largely did no participate in and has no lasting effects of the past?
Yes, some of it has a clear tie-in where history shows land stolen etc.
For the reparations of which you discuss, that's 100% up to local gov. in my opinion and obviously in places like Berkley and other similar enclaves, it's done for a variety of reasons including white guilt, virtue signaling and more mundane reasons like securing votes.
As for slavery, everyone had slavery at one point in time or another.
Precisely. Today we (in the west and many other places) accept that slavery was (and is, because it's still going on in some parts of the world) immoral, but the fact is that for much of mankind's history it was regarded as normal - And it wasn't based specifically on the idea of one race enslaving those of another race. People of a particular race enslaved people of the same race from neighboring tribes or countries.
As a Brit, there's a good chance that if I could trace my lineage back far enough I might have had an ancestor who had land stolen during the Norman invasion of the 11th century. Going back even further, I might have a distant ancestor who had land stolen and was enslaved by the Romans when they invaded Britain.
I believe that the continued call for reparations - whether at national, state, or local level - is just causing even more division between people, and ultimately is going to hinder race relations rather than improve them. But then that's what some people want.
the irish voluntarily came here and were indentured servants. please stop making this false equivalent comparison. And eventually the irish were allowed to become "white" in America.
Discrimination is discrimination!
"And eventually the irish were allowed to become "white" in America."
And eventually the BLACKS were allowed to do what they wanted in America.
Like someone said, if things are so bad here for some blacks, they are FREE to go back to Africa.
It's time that all this reparations nonsense was stopped. As far as the U.S. is concerned, there is nobody still around who was a slave and nobody still around who was a slave owner/trader. As I asked in another thread, would you hang a man for a murder committed by his great-grandfather? Of course not. So why should anyone here today be held responsible for something which his ancestors might have done long before he was even born? Using a generic case of you and me, it comes down to the question of why should I pay you for something I didn't do and which never happened to you?
Even if we were to ignore the blatant injustice of holding people responsible for something their ancestors did, it would be an impossible task to track exactly who owes reparations to whom. I'm from England and can trace my ancestry back with reasonable certainty only about as far as the 18th century, and then there are still some gaps. Might I have had an ancestor involved with the slave trade? Not so far as I'm aware, but I have no way of knowing for certain. There's just as much a chance that I could have had an ancestor who was involved in putting an end to the slave trade (the Royal Navy played a very large part in ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade). So am I supposed to pay or not pay reparations depending upon whether my ancestor was a good guy or a bad guy? Surely nobody would suggest that I should pay just for being white - That would be racist, right?
In a similar way, how about any black people who are descended from the black slave owners? Surely they should also pay other black people descended from slaves in order to be fair. And while we're at it, the descendants of anyone involved in the slave trade - black or white - should pay reparations to all of the other people who fought to put an end to it.
But coming back to the specific issue at a city level, just where is the money for reparations going to come from? The city gets its funding from local taxes and the state, plus maybe some federal funding. So ultimately, everybody is going to end up with higher taxes in order to pay reparations to one specific group, based soley upon the race of that group. Isn't that just the sort of racial discrimination everybody wants eliminated?
The whole thing becomes so tangled and nonsensical that only a crazed bureaucratic mind could ever think it could be fair in any way whatsoever.
"Even if we were to ignore the blatant injustice of holding people responsible for something their ancestors did"
I have yet to hear about our blacks holding THEIR ancestors responsible for selling them into slavery.
What is NEVER answered on here is. BLACKS also owned slaves in America.
Should today's black get reparations from WHITES when their ancestors were BLACK slave owners?
And how do we know which of today's blacks had white or black slaves owners?
Last edited by Quick Enough; 03-28-2022 at 06:23 AM..
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