Slavery Reparations Gaining Momentum?
By Dyre42 | Related entries in RaceI was rather surprised to find this two page article in last week’s Washington Post:
“Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum.
“Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has morphed in recent years from a fringe-group rallying cry into sophisticated, mainstream movement. Most recently, a pair of churches apologized for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members.” More
The Wikipedia article Reparations for Slavery quotes Dennis C. Hayes, former CEO of the NAACP, as saying, “Absolutely, we will be pursuing reparations from companies that have historical ties to slavery and engaging all parties to come to the table.”
I emailed the NAACP a week ago asking about their current position on this issue and have yet to receive a response. So, taking into consideration that I have never lived above the Mason-Dixon line I am left wondering am I the only one that sees this as a backwards step in race relations? I don’t recall Martin Luther King or Malcolm X making this issue a key point in their agendas.
Now if one takes the blog Orcinus’ word for it the Minutemen stole the thunder of white supremacist groups by bringing the illegal immigration issue to the forefront. Does this not give hate groups new fuel for their fire? Could this subject eventually snowball into lawsuits against families that formerly owned slaves? Couldn’t this open up a flood gate of reparation suits from everyone the U.S. ever discriminated against?
The long and short of it is,”Is it just me or is this a bad idea?”
Related Article:
Episcopalians Consider Giving Reparations to Black Members
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 and is filed under Race. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 18th, 2006 at 9:02 am
It’s not just you(!)
July 18th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Ditto.
What’s done is done. Make all the heart-felt apologies and show all the genuine remorse that is humanly possible, but reparations are a terrible idea.
July 18th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Hey, I think the reparations crowd has a point. As a half black/half white man, I think I should be forced to pay reparations to myself. Also, I demand that the people of Ghana and Nigeria be forced to pay reparations for their role in selling my ancestors to Dutch slave-traders. Oh, and that reminds me; someone get the Dutch ambassador on the phone, we shouldn’t let them off easily either.
July 18th, 2006 at 9:52 am
If blacks get reparations, then of course native americans should. So we would have to give back the entire U.S.
July 18th, 2006 at 10:05 am
If you dig back far enough, pretty much everybody is descended from someone who did bad things to others. And from somebody who was ill done to. I certainly am. (If not, perhaps, as visibly as Jimmy.)
So everybody cut out the middleman and write themselves a check.
July 20th, 2006 at 6:06 am
I’m with rob. All of you – get the hell off my land. :)
July 20th, 2006 at 6:14 am
Jimmy – Ghana’s per capita GDP is $2,500. The average income for black households is $30,000. The average black household size is about 2.5. So you’re likely making 5 times as much as you would in Ghana. Your ancestors’ loss is your gain.
July 20th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
[...] I learn from Camassia that this is International Blog Against Racism Week. The Washington Post recently reported that two Christian denominations are addressing their own church histories of racism (via Donklephant). The Episcopal Church and the Moravian Church both have apologized for owning slaves and are reflecting on how to address ongoing racial inequities. The Episcopalians are also considering compensation for their black members to make amends for the church’s slaveholding bishops and the financial benefit it received from slavery. [...]
July 25th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
It is so sad to me to see how upset white people get when the very thought of giving blacks a penny is raised. No one complains or goes of the edge when we assist thousands of people around the world simply because it would serve some political agenda all the while making sure as to leave thousands of black in Katrina destitute. The African people of this world, much far beyond America have been the most degraded, humiliated, and depressed people in the history of mankind –I challenge anyone to find a people that has been through as much as we on a global levelâ€â€?they have treated animals better than us. Countless historical documentation of this brutality is of abundance at your libraries. We have been in every sense of the world written off and de-prioritized. If it were not for the slave that so many quickly forget there would be no America the beautiful or whatever the powers that be decide to call it when it serves their purpose. It is true, we are owed monetary amounts. It is the principle that the white man has developed of debt to credit ratio. When you work you must be paid and when you owe someone and they are no longer living then their heir IS the primary beneficiary-they made the rules not us and it is so convenient that when it no longer serves their purpose they want to tell us to go back to Africa. We as a people will not and are not going anywhere so white America, you can get that out of your heads. When you move to the moon, we’ll be right behind you…LOL! I WANT BLACK PEOPLE TO LISTEN TO ME whom ever and wherever you areâ€â€?let them have their money, I know, its not easy, we are a prideful people, you can trace that back to the hieroglyphs carved into the walls in ancient Egypt. We gave birth to the world –their scientists know that as a fact! Let them have there money, we are worth far more than that. Who we are and what we are can never be quantified. For it is far easier for a camel to get through the eye of needle than it is for a rich man to proceed into the gates of heaven and this is from the Bible that they covet as so called Christians.
July 25th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
CTK,
your point is taken, and few disregard that a debt is owed to African Americans in this country. A good portion of social barriers have been dropped in America, the problem with reparations is that the sheer magnitude of that task would be ridiculous. What the African American reparation crowd should be looking for is a series of ways in which a kind of reparation could benefit African Americans through grants and scholarship funds for education to help African Americans in the future. I do not believe that a fifty dollar check to every african american in American would benefit anyone except for the merchants of greed and neglect that hover around the deprived african american communities in America that need the benefits that some type of Reparations program could offer. Sink it into K-12 education programs to help to curb some of the deficits that exist in struggling urban and rural communities. Reparations aren’t so much repulsive as an idea, but reviled as a literal commandment.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Ok.
I see what you all have been talking about and you all have very different opinions and I agree with some of you, and I disagree with some of you. I am half black, half cuban, but in reality Cubans were african’s brought over to Cuba and were taught how to speak Spanish, so i’m black.
Now when it is said that African Americans deserve reparations I agree. Not saying that blacks deserve like Rolex’ s and Mercedes Benz’. I’m just saying that everyone, including blacks, jews, native americans and whites just deserve repsect. That’s all I want.
I have to come to terms with the fact that I will always have to work twice as hard as any white man, because i’m a black/latina female and I always will be, but just to make my life a little easier, I deserve respect from everyone.