Reparations For Slavery

wallyj84

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Reparations for slavery is apparently an issue this election cycle. 笑 What are your thoughts on the issue?

Personally I don't support reparations, at least not in the form of a check, because I think it has no chance of happening and I don't really see what problem it will actually fix.

I think the legacy of segregration, jim crow and slavery can still be seen in a lot of the dysfunctional elements of black culture. Programs made to address those issues would be a better use of funds than just giving people a check.
 

billybones

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Reparations for slavery is apparently an issue this election cycle. 笑 What are your thoughts on the issue?

Personally I don't support reparations, at least not in the form of a check, because I think it has no chance of happening and I don't really see what problem it will actually fix.

I think the legacy of segregration, jim crow and slavery can still be seen in a lot of the dysfunctional elements of black culture. Programs made to address those issues would be a better use of funds than just giving people a check.
The legacy of slavery should be the equal treatment and consideration of any other person. The parameters of reparations as you’re using it is an ill-defined concept not often used by the coloured members of our modern society in any literal way in relationship to its origin; only by those ignorant enough to be outraged. Reparations is always used as a term of employ or outrage. The trumpists you might hate only propagate it to illicit reactions. Donald John Frump followers suddenly brought it up? Then surely Frump Stump didn’t obstruct!
 

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No matter if it creates outrage or not, the USA, Britain, France, Netherlands, Portugal and Belgium should consider paying for the crimes they committed.
Not only to the Afro-Americans, but to every African nation they got their slaves from.

In the 1990 it created "outrages" in Germany, as large companies agreed to pay billions to the surviving Jews. There is outrages that Germany still pays billions to Israel...

There is no difference to slavery. Just because some become aggressive at the thought they would have to compensate the crime their nation committed, doesn't mean there don't need to be any compensation.




If the question of compensation / punishment always would be connected to the reaction of the criminal, no one would get judged.
I could kill people and wouldn't have to fear any punishment, as long as I'm "outraged".
 
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keenobserver

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There is no way a consensus on how to deal with this will ever be resolved in the U.S. It will become a massive wedge issue and the GOP will beat the Democrats over the head with it relentlessly. The fight for healthcare will be mild by comparison.
 
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chrisrobin

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Its another way the snowflake brigade can begin to feel good about themselves.
For years there has been slavery, and its not just confined to the USA.
2,000 years ago the Romans had slaves on the Galley's, 1,000 before this the Egyptians had slaves, we believe, to build the Pyramids.
In the last 1,000 years there has been slavery of one sort or another going on all over the world. The Arabs did slave raids into Africa (and sold them to the white "slavers". Before that the Vikings plundered Europe, raping and pillaging and taking slaves - a penchant for blondes I do seem to have read.
So where does it all start and how far back do the snowflakes want to go. And will the snowflakes be prepared to give up everything that has been connected at any time to the slave trade?
All the countries that took part in the discovery of Africa - for starters - Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland the USA etc etc etc all had a hand in the slave trade. And, for example, Germany in WWii used slave labor from occupied counties for its war effort and has paid for this sin against humanity because it was investigated almost at the end of the war while the evidence was still there.
What these snowflakes are after is to going back generations.
 

wallyj84

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There is no way a consensus on how to deal with this will ever be resolved in the U.S. It will become a massive wedge issue and the GOP will beat the Democrats over the head with it relentlessly. The fight for healthcare will be mild by comparison.

The post right after yours proves it! lol
 
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wallyj84

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The legacy of slavery should be the equal treatment and consideration of any other person. The parameters of reparations as you’re using it is an ill-defined concept not often used by the coloured members of our modern society in any literal way in relationship to its origin; only by those ignorant enough to be outraged. Reparations is always used as a term of employ or outrage. The trumpists you might hate only propagate it to illicit reactions. Donald John Frump followers suddenly brought it up? Then surely Frump Stump didn’t obstruct!

So what are the parameters of reparations used by "coloured people"?
 

wallyj84

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No matter if it creates outrage or not, the USA, Britain, France, Netherlands, Portugal and Belgium should consider paying for the crimes they committed.
Not only to the Afro-Americans, but to every African nation they got their slaves from.

In the 1990 it created "outrages" in Germany, as large companies agreed to pay billions to the surviving Jews. There is outrages that Germany still pays billions to Israel...

There is no difference to slavery. Just because some become aggressive at the thought they would have to compensate the crime their nation committed, doesn't mean there don't need to be any compensation.




If the question of compensation / punishment always would be connected to the reaction of the criminal, no one would get judged.
I could kill people and wouldn't have to fear any punishment, as long as I'm "outraged".

On a moral level I don't have an issue with reparations. I just think that too much time has passed. Reparations would have been good immediately after slavery or even as recently as 1950, but now too many generations have passed.

I think there is a moral imperative to alleviate the problems caused by slavery and Jim crow, but I don't think reparations are the way to do it.
 
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Klingsor

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Its another way the snowflake brigade can begin to feel good about themselves.
For years there has been slavery, and its not just confined to the USA.
2,000 years ago the Romans had slaves on the Galley's, 1,000 before this the Egyptians had slaves, we believe, to build the Pyramids.
In the last 1,000 years there has been slavery of one sort or another going on all over the world. The Arabs did slave raids into Africa (and sold them to the white "slavers". Before that the Vikings plundered Europe, raping and pillaging and taking slaves - a penchant for blondes I do seem to have read.
So where does it all start and how far back do the snowflakes want to go. And will the snowflakes be prepared to give up everything that has been connected at any time to the slave trade?
All the countries that took part in the discovery of Africa - for starters - Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland the USA etc etc etc all had a hand in the slave trade. And, for example, Germany in WWii used slave labor from occupied counties for its war effort and has paid for this sin against humanity because it was investigated almost at the end of the war while the evidence was still there.
What these snowflakes are after is to going back generations.

I haven't heard "Everybody does it" since grade school! :rolleyes:
 

englad

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I think just writing a cheque to absolve yourself of guilt isn't the right approach. It sounds a bit like a secular version of an indulgence. Throwing money at something to stop yourself thinking about the past. Even after that sort of money is provided, you need to still be mindful of what happened in the past and how that affects people to the present day. It's difficult to do this as well, given that this would be a set of indirect reparations, to descendants of slavery. There are also extra nuances that make the situation more complicated, like the role of West African kingdoms in the transatlantic slave trade. Could anyone imagine asking a very poor country like Sierra Leone to pay money to African Americans for example?

The focus needs to be on tackling racial inequalities and institutionalised racism. Slavery still exists anyway in the United States thanks to the wording of the 13th amendment and mass incarceration, and thanks to institutionalised racism, there are more black men who are slaves now (just as prisoners) than there were in the ante-bellum south. Righting these wrongs will include large amounts of money, but I'm concerned that if we call that reparations, it might be seen as a blank cheque absolving all the wrongs of the past.

And on a global level, colonialism was in many ways worse and affected almost all of Africa. I think the best way to right the wrongs of colonialism is more investment and foreign aid to Africa in particular. As colonialism was more recent, there are also direct reparations cases that should be approved (like torture victims in the Mau Mau uprising).
 

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Its another way the snowflake brigade can begin to feel good about themselves.
For years there has been slavery, and its not just confined to the USA.
2,000 years ago the Romans had slaves on the Galley's, 1,000 before this the Egyptians had slaves, we believe, to build the Pyramids.
In the last 1,000 years there has been slavery of one sort or another going on all over the world. The Arabs did slave raids into Africa (and sold them to the white "slavers". Before that the Vikings plundered Europe, raping and pillaging and taking slaves - a penchant for blondes I do seem to have read.
So where does it all start and how far back do the snowflakes want to go. And will the snowflakes be prepared to give up everything that has been connected at any time to the slave trade?
All the countries that took part in the discovery of Africa - for starters - Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland the USA etc etc etc all had a hand in the slave trade. And, for example, Germany in WWii used slave labor from occupied counties for its war effort and has paid for this sin against humanity because it was investigated almost at the end of the war while the evidence was still there.
What these snowflakes are after is to going back generations.

You're making a false equivalence, which I'm not surprised by. The transatlantic slave trade invented the very concept of race, as a justification for enslaving a specific group of people. The numbers involved and the form of global capitalism that underpinned it, also made it very different from slavery in the ancient world.

Slavery in the ancient world, was a very different beast. Most slaves in the ancient world were prisoners of war, and there wasn't a concept of race at the time. Race is a thoroughly modern social construct, there's no similar example in antiquity.

And as an FYI, there's no evidence that slaves built the Egyptian pyramids, and Germany didn't exist during the main period of the transatlantic slave trade (it was founded in 1871).
 

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On a moral level I don't have an issue with reparations. I just think that too much time has passed. Reparations would have been good immediately after slavery or even as recently as 1950, but now too many generations have passed.
what you be the justification to refuse it? I don't think time matters.

But it's a general reaction "I support the idea in general, but I don't think we should pay" it's common in Germany... even the left feared the costs.
I think there is a moral imperative to alleviate the problems caused by slavery and Jim crow, but I don't think reparations are the way to do it.
I think reparations are ONE way but has to be guided by other "reparations"
 

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Money can solve many problems.
But there are so many problems it can not fix.
In fact money can cause as many problems as it can fix
Till now, no one tried to fix the problems, caused by slavery, with money...

The Jews were happy getting some billions. I guess the minimum would be to offer descendants of slaves the money - then it's up to them to desire if they want the money or not...
 

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There is no way a consensus on how to deal with this will ever be resolved in the U.S. It will become a massive wedge issue and the GOP will beat the Democrats over the head with it relentlessly. The fight for healthcare will be mild by comparison.
It would become a MASSIVE problem...

I guess Germany's biggest plus, to solve its problems, was the missing of the victims.

After WW2 nearly no Jew lived in Germany. We didn't had to face our victims. This made it easier to solve our guilt.


The USA has the problem that their victims are still part of their society.
 
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Any reparations legislation would need to go through Congress first.

I haven't seen any significant efforts from that direction. Even if a pro-reparation candidate were to win, i think the most we'd see in the next 4 years is a feasibility study.
 

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Even if a pro-reparation candidate were to win, i think the most we'd see in the next 4 years is a feasibility study.

That's still a step forward. This is a problem that we on the left need to address, that the right wing has mastered: Demand everything, then slowly nibble away until you get it. Getting a feasibility study done removes one of the obstacles to enacting reparations.
 

chrisrobin

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You're making a false equivalence, which I'm not surprised by. The transatlantic slave trade invented the very concept of race, as a justification for enslaving a specific group of people. The numbers involved and the form of global capitalism that underpinned it, also made it very different from slavery in the ancient world.

Slavery in the ancient world, was a very different beast. Most slaves in the ancient world were prisoners of war, and there wasn't a concept of race at the time. Race is a thoroughly modern social construct, there's no similar example in antiquity.

And as an FYI, there's no evidence that slaves built the Egyptian pyramids, and Germany didn't exist during the main period of the transatlantic slave trade (it was founded in 1871).
Slavery is slavery.
No one mentioned Germany as being part of the so called slave trade - begun years before America was discovered - but it did use non combatants as slaves in WWii.
 

flooble

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"Other people did the same thing a thousand years ago" is not exactly the defence you think it is. The simple fact of the matter is that the USA as it exists right now was built on the backs of enslavement of people from Africa and genocide of the people who were already living in North America. Period. There is no way around that. And all of the racism you see in the USA today stems directly from that. Reparations aren't only about "so and so enslaved your great great grandmother, here's your money," it's about "the bullshit that you are having to deal with every single day was caused by these acts, so here is help."