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Do you believe that America should pay reparations to African Americans?

Should we pay reparations to the African American community?

  • We should pay reparations to the African American communtiy

    Votes: 15 10.6%
  • We should not pay reparations to the African American community

    Votes: 126 89.4%

  • Total voters
    141
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Go ahead and get your checkbook out if it makes you feel better, Glen. The rest of us don't owe anyone anything.

Agreed. THe concept of group rights or group guilt is anathema to a free society
 
No more than we should pay those of Irish, Italian, Mexican and Chinese descent. This is where PC screws everything up, there are very few true "African Americans", if any since we only recently began allowing dual citizenship. Munging the language causes this sort of nonsense.

I only know one African-American. He was born in Tanzania and emigrated to America. Once here, he became an EMT and got his American citizenship. He's also pale white, blonde, blue-eyed and a hell of a nice guy. I do know several black people, but none of them are African-American, since they were all born here.
 
Te-Nehisi Coates' recent article in The Atlantic has raised a few eyebrows, and showed me just how much I did not know concerning how America and America's government has oppressed the African American community in the past...and even to the modern day.

Coates points out that reparations isn't a matter of "we can't afford it" or "how do we determine who gets paid how much", but a matter of right and wrong. America - and America's government - committed great wrongs against the African American community over many generations, including within my own lifetime.

I was raised to believe that if I did somebody wrong, I should apologize sincerely...and I should do my level best to make it up to those I wronged. I was taught that a refusal to make up for what I have done to others is not just wrong, but dishonorable.

It is for this reason that I agree that we as a nation should pay reparations to the African American community - because it is a matter of right and wrong, a matter of our national honor
.




Anyone who wants to reach in their own pocket and drag some money out and give it to anyone has my permission to do that.

But they'll never have my permission to give one penny of my money or taxes that I paid to anyone.




Where would it ever end? Lots of groups in the USA have an axe to grind.
 
Sorry - we were just talking about this in another thread so I got my already-written points confused.

We've done quite a few things over the decades to try to redirect the path and address various damages and errors. The fact that none of these efforts are appreciated by some people shows that even throwing money at them won't matter. Some people will always think it a smart, wise idea - and even if we did do it and pay every black man, woman, and child 5,000 in cold hard cash it wouldn't alter a single thing.

Money will not fix any of the issues in our country today.
Who is the 'we" that you're talking about? I keep seeing this argument by a lot of white people that "we" have already done so much for "them". Are you guys fashioning yourselves little white saviors who tried to save the poor little, ungrateful black people because that's what it sounds like. Of course, you would never admit it because that would require you guys to admit something about yourselves that is intolerable your little colorblind minds.
 
I cannot imagine anything that would inflame racial enmity more than reparations. It would be catastrophic in its ability to drive an invigorated racial wedge into American society. This would be disastrous.
How would it inflame racial enmity? I think what you mean is that it would make a bunch of white people mad since I can't imagine that it would create much hostility from black people. Sounds like the angry white people would just have to suck it up and realize that their white privilege was going down the drain. I mean, black people having being sucking things up because of white people for centuries. White people can't do it for a little bit?
 
No, I don't think so. What has a slave built 150 - 160 years or so ago that benefited me? I would say that you have benefited from my labor, though.
LOL, the prosperity of this country and all the benefits that come with it is, in GREAT PART, due to slave labor. What the **** kind of question is that?
 
Te-Nehisi Coates' recent article in The Atlantic has raised a few eyebrows, and showed me just how much I did not know concerning how America and America's government has oppressed the African American community in the past...and even to the modern day.

Coates points out that reparations isn't a matter of "we can't afford it" or "how do we determine who gets paid how much", but a matter of right and wrong. America - and America's government - committed great wrongs against the African American community over many generations, including within my own lifetime.

I was raised to believe that if I did somebody wrong, I should apologize sincerely...and I should do my level best to make it up to those I wronged. I was taught that a refusal to make up for what I have done to others is not just wrong, but dishonorable.

It is for this reason that I agree that we as a nation should pay reparations to the African American community - because it is a matter of right and wrong, a matter of our national honor.
I come and go on this issue, vacillating between yes and no on reparations. In some ways, we are paying reparations via our many poverty and education programs which are geared toward helping African Americans. But, i am also cognoscente of the fact that we enslaved Blacks; we forced them through both law and threat of violence into ghettos, sub-par schools and other institutions; now we jail them in record numbers...

I just don't know.
 
These black Africans should be paying us for rescuing them from a fate worse than slavery, being eatened, burned alive and torchered was their alternative.
 
Te-Nehisi Coates' recent article in The Atlantic has raised a few eyebrows, and showed me just how much I did not know concerning how America and America's government has oppressed the African American community in the past...and even to the modern day.

Coates points out that reparations isn't a matter of "we can't afford it" or "how do we determine who gets paid how much", but a matter of right and wrong. America - and America's government - committed great wrongs against the African American community over many generations, including within my own lifetime.

I was raised to believe that if I did somebody wrong, I should apologize sincerely...and I should do my level best to make it up to those I wronged. I was taught that a refusal to make up for what I have done to others is not just wrong, but dishonorable.

It is for this reason that I agree that we as a nation should pay reparations to the African American community - because it is a matter of right and wrong, a matter of our national honor.

I voted no, but we should have an honest discussion about it. Money alone won't fix the harms done to them. So, how we move forward is worth a sit down.
 
If there is a black person who was a slave in 1865 and is still alive he or she should receive compensation otherwise no.
 
A thousand times no.

The people that deserved reparations are long dead. It's a silly topic, really.
 
I voted no, but we should have an honest discussion about it. Money alone won't fix the harms done to them. So, how we move forward is worth a sit down.

Yes, and intellectual honesty requires that such discussion should include the fact that slavery is a minimal or perhaps not a factor in the black experience in America today. It also has to include a myriad of well-intended but disastrous government programs of 'reparations' that were supposed to help black people but instead have forced too many into permanent second class citizen status entrenched in permanent unemployablility and generations of crime ridden poverty that perpetuate themselves. And now, in 2014, THAT is what has harmed black people for the last 60 years.

And because those disastrous policies have so enriched and empowered the permanent political class, they are not about to change their spots and do anything differently. So look to those folks for any reparations due.

PEOPLE LOVE THE PAST. It provides convenient excuses for all manner of individual or group shortcomings. Academic "experts," politicians and race hustlers use history as a cover-up. They point to the ugly facts of slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination as explanations for the high rates of black illegitimacy, crime and family breakdown. The connection between slavery and discrimination, and what we see today, is hardly ever challenged. But challenge it we must.

Only 40 percent of black children live in two-parent households. The illegitimacy rate among blacks stands close to 70 percent. The "legacy of slavery" explanation for today's weak black family structure loses all manner of credibility when one examines evidence from the past.
Even during slavery, most black children lived in biological two-parent families. One study of 19th-century slave families (Herbert Gutman, "The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925") found that in up to three-fourths of the families, all the children had the same mother and father. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households were double-headed. In fact, "Five in six children under the age of six lived with both parents.". . . .

. . . .Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a black teen-age girl raising a child without a man was rare among blacks. Gutman, also found in analyzing data on black families in Harlem between 1905 and 1925 that only 3 percent of all families "were headed by a woman under 30.". . . .

. . . .The "politically correct" theory is that poverty and discrimination is the cause of high crime rates. During my youth in the 1930s and 1940s, black neighborhoods were far safer than today. It would be preposterous to suggest back then there was less poverty and discrimination.

The level of social pathology seen in many black communities is unprecedented and has nothing to do with a so-called legacy of slavery, unless we're willing to say that slavery has a delayed reaction of four or five generations.

--Walter Williams PhD 1999
Walter Williams

******************************

. . .There has been much documented racial progress since 1963. But there has also been much retrogression, of which the disintegration of the black family has been central, especially among those at the bottom of the social pyramid.


Many people — especially politicians and activists — want to take credit for the economic and other advancement of blacks, even though a larger proportion of blacks rose out of poverty in the 20 years before 1960 than in the 20 years afterwards.

But no one wants to take responsibility for the policies and ideologies that led to the breakup of the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination. . . .

. . . Civil rights were necessary, but far from sufficient. Education and job skills are crucial, and the government cannot give you these things. All it can do is make them available.

Race hustlers who blame all lags on the racism of others are among the obstacles to taking the fullest advantage of education and other opportunities. What does that say about the content of their character? . . . .
A Poignant Anniversary by Thomas Sowell on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent
 
Yes, and intellectual honesty requires that such discussion should include the fact that slavery is a minimal or perhaps not a factor in the black experience in America today. It also has to include a myriad of well-intended but disastrous government programs of 'reparations' that were supposed to help black people but instead have forced too many into permanent second class citizen status entrenched in permanent unemployablility and generations of crime ridden poverty that perpetuate themselves. And now, in 2014, THAT is what has harmed black people for the last 60 years.

And because those disastrous policies have so enriched and empowered the permanent political class, they are not about to change their spots and do anything differently. So look to those folks for any reparations due.

PEOPLE LOVE THE PAST. It provides convenient excuses for all manner of individual or group shortcomings. Academic "experts," politicians and race hustlers use history as a cover-up. They point to the ugly facts of slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination as explanations for the high rates of black illegitimacy, crime and family breakdown. The connection between slavery and discrimination, and what we see today, is hardly ever challenged. But challenge it we must.

Only 40 percent of black children live in two-parent households. The illegitimacy rate among blacks stands close to 70 percent. The "legacy of slavery" explanation for today's weak black family structure loses all manner of credibility when one examines evidence from the past.
Even during slavery, most black children lived in biological two-parent families. One study of 19th-century slave families (Herbert Gutman, "The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925") found that in up to three-fourths of the families, all the children had the same mother and father. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households were double-headed. In fact, "Five in six children under the age of six lived with both parents.". . . .

. . . .Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a black teen-age girl raising a child without a man was rare among blacks. Gutman, also found in analyzing data on black families in Harlem between 1905 and 1925 that only 3 percent of all families "were headed by a woman under 30.". . . .

. . . .The "politically correct" theory is that poverty and discrimination is the cause of high crime rates. During my youth in the 1930s and 1940s, black neighborhoods were far safer than today. It would be preposterous to suggest back then there was less poverty and discrimination.

The level of social pathology seen in many black communities is unprecedented and has nothing to do with a so-called legacy of slavery, unless we're willing to say that slavery has a delayed reaction of four or five generations.

--Walter Williams PhD 1999
Walter Williams

******************************

. . .There has been much documented racial progress since 1963. But there has also been much retrogression, of which the disintegration of the black family has been central, especially among those at the bottom of the social pyramid.


Many people — especially politicians and activists — want to take credit for the economic and other advancement of blacks, even though a larger proportion of blacks rose out of poverty in the 20 years before 1960 than in the 20 years afterwards.

But no one wants to take responsibility for the policies and ideologies that led to the breakup of the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination. . . .

. . . Civil rights were necessary, but far from sufficient. Education and job skills are crucial, and the government cannot give you these things. All it can do is make them available.

Race hustlers who blame all lags on the racism of others are among the obstacles to taking the fullest advantage of education and other opportunities. What does that say about the content of their character? . . . .
A Poignant Anniversary by Thomas Sowell on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent

I commend you on your passion. Nice links. That said, the damage done isn't quite made up as fast as people SEEM to think. The 60's weren't that long ago. Many still live in families that have no history of reading. Poverty begets poverty much as wealth p begets wealth. certainly there are exceptions, but I'm not we should base opinions on exceptions, either way.
 
I'm German and Iroquois, I don't owe the Black African's a damn thing.
 
I commend you on your passion. Nice links. That said, the damage done isn't quite made up as fast as people SEEM to think. The 60's weren't that long ago. Many still live in families that have no history of reading. Poverty begets poverty much as wealth p begets wealth. certainly there are exceptions, but I'm not we should base opinions on exceptions, either way.

I think if we don't base opinions on the root causes of WHY poverty begets poverty now we will keep doing the same destructive stupid stuff we are doing and calling it righteous. Poverty certainly did not beget poverty when I was starting out and it certainly did not when Williams and Sowell were starting out and it certainty was not true of the black people who were the most rapidly advancing demographic group in America economically--they hadn't yet caught up with whites but they were getting there--until the government decided to 'help them out'.

I doubt anybody in the country has done more extensive research on the subject than has Thomas Sowell and I strongly recommend his books and essays on the subject. If somebody wants an eye opener, set aside the politically correct garbage that is spread like gravy all over everything these days, and read the real history. It will change your attitude about it forever.
 
I think if we don't base opinions on the root causes of WHY poverty begets poverty now we will keep doing the same destructive stupid stuff we are doing and calling it righteous. Poverty certainly did not beget poverty when I was starting out and it certainly did not when Williams and Sowell were starting out and it certainty was not true of the black people who were the most rapidly advancing demographic group in America economically--they hadn't yet caught up with whites but they were getting there--until the government decided to 'help them out'.

I doubt anybody in the country has done more extensive research on the subject than has Thomas Sowell and I strongly recommend his books and essays on the subject. If somebody wants an eye opener, set aside the politically correct garbage that is spread like gravy all over everything these days, and read the real history. It will change your attitude about it forever.

I quite agree that root causes are important, though we might disagree what they are. But leaving a people with no blue print, from a different place, with no history, no generational background with which to ground a people, and then declare it all their fault and no need to do anything at all? Well, that don't seem quite right.

And no Thomas Sowell is the poorest of sources. I've read his work. His degree is in economic and his social history is limited and different from many of his race.

However, the point here is that exceptions shouldn't lead the way. We need something that reaches many, and not just a few.
 
Te-Nehisi Coates' recent article in The Atlantic has raised a few eyebrows, and showed me just how much I did not know concerning how America and America's government has oppressed the African American community in the past...and even to the modern day.

Coates points out that reparations isn't a matter of "we can't afford it" or "how do we determine who gets paid how much", but a matter of right and wrong. America - and America's government - committed great wrongs against the African American community over many generations, including within my own lifetime.
.

The idea that we should pay someone for something that happened to their ancestors is ****en moronic. It is one of the most idiotic things the left has ever suggested. People who suggest that we should pay someone for what happened to that individual's ancestor should be treated no different than we treat the birthers, truffers, JFK conspiracy theorists and other retards.
 
I quite agree that root causes are important, though we might disagree what they are. But leaving a people with no blue print, from a different place, with no history, no generational background with which to ground a people, and then declare it all their fault and no need to do anything at all? Well, that don't seem quite right.

And no Thomas Sowell is the poorest of sources. I've read his work. His degree is in economic and his social history is limited and different from many of his race.

However, the point here is that exceptions shouldn't lead the way. We need something that reaches many, and not just a few.

Well let's see. Thomas Sowell descended from slaves and grew up under segregation and went through the same rebellious years that many youths do. He had to drop out of 9th grade due to financial difficulties and go to work doing menial odd jobs just to feed himself. He finished highschool by going to night classes and after a stint in the military managed to graduate with honors from some prestigious universities. How is his social history limited any more than anybody else's?

His point is that he is NOT the exception but his numbers are legion among black people who have managed to own and run businesses, achieve acclaim in the entertainment and sports industries, who have achieved success as academics, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and in elective office despite being descended from slaves and growing up amidst racial prejudices and segregation. And most who have done so have done it the hard way--they earned what they have and have merited what they have achieved by seizing and utilizing opportunity wherever they found it.

But government policy that encourages black people to see themselves as the oppressed, as the disadvantaged, as victims of slavery and that discourages all the best things that help people of all cultures and ethnic groups and races to succeed has consigned whole sub groups of black people to crushing poverty and believing there is no way out of it for them unless the government does it for them.

And for the government to keep promising it will do it for them so they will keep voting the same people in, and then the government continuing the same failed policies that have created the situation, is criminal. It is those politicians we should look to for any reparations that are due living people.
 
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Well let's see. Thomas Sowell descended from slaves and grew up under segregation and went through the same rebellious years that many youths do. He had to drop out of 9th grade due to financial difficulties and go to work doing menial odd jobs just to feed himself. He finished highschool by going to night classes and after a stint in the military managed to graduate with honors from some prestigious universities. How is his social history limited any more than anybody else's?

middle aged white english professors just know these things, Owl. Back out now before he tells you to check your privilege. ;)

His point is that he is NOT the exception but his numbers are legion among black people who have managed to own and run businesses, achieve acclaim in the entertainment and sports industries, who have achieved success as academics, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and in elective office despite being descended from slaves and growing up amidst racial prejudices and segregation. And most who have done so have done it the hard way--they earned what they have and have merited what they have achieved by seizing and utilizing opportunity wherever they found it.

But government policy that encourages black people to see themselves as the oppressed, as the disadvantaged, as victims of slavery and that discourages all the best things that help people of all cultures and ethnic groups and races to succeed has consigned whole sub groups of black people to crushing poverty and believing there is no way out of it for them unless the government does it for them.

And for the government to keep promising it will do it for them so they will keep voting the same people in, and then the government continuing the same failed policies that have created the situation, is criminal. It is those politicians we should be look to for any reparations that are due living people.

Bingo. Well said.
 
middle aged white english professors just know these things, Owl. Back out now before he tells you to check your privilege. ;)



Bingo. Well said.

Thanks. I am not a middle aged white professor - I'm more of a crusty old female curdmugeon who came up the hard way much as Sowell did and who has enough expertise and who has witnessed up close and personal the truly evil results from do-gooder government programs that honestly don't care what kind of results they are producing so long as they can fool the people into voting for the permanent political class that promotes them.
 
Thanks. I am not a middle aged white professor - I'm more of a crusty old female curdmugeon who came up the hard way much as Sowell did and who has enough expertise and who has witnessed up close and personal the truly evil results from do-gooder government programs that honestly don't care what kind of results they are producing so long as they can fool the people into voting for the permanent political class that promotes them.

Wait. Surely you aren't suggesting that you don't even have an associates in Identity Studies? And yet you felt qualified to comment on your own life and the things you have observed?


:rollseyes: See, this is why we need universal healthcare.
 
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