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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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101 to 13. Not much chance of a check getting in the mail any time soon.


Let's try Reparations to the Irish for Prohibition and see if that one works out any better.
 
Shadowless said:
No, but if Germany paid reparations shouldn't we?
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Germany paid reparation to the community that was actually affected by them.

None of today's black people have ever even sniffed slavery, their parents were never slaves and their grandparents were not slaves. Slavery ended 150 years ago, so paying reparations now would be downright silly.
 
Gardener said:
Germany paid reparation to the community that was actually affected by them.

None of today's black people have ever even sniffed slavery, their parents were never slaves and their grandparents were not slaves. Slavery ended 150 years ago, so paying reparations now would be downright silly.
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But not paying it at the time was downright evil, so I'd rather be able to say our government officially paid reparations to ancestors of slaves.
 
No. Why should I be punished for actions I did not commit?

Does Germany pay reparations to the Jews of the world?
 
radcen said:
Why? This comes off as just wanting to soothe your conscience.
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The national conscience, yes. It's wrong that America has never officially paid reparations for slavery. We should.
 
Blacks were slaves, yes, 150 years ago. That was abhorrent, yes.

However, it could also be argued that the American blacks of today are still much better off than here today than they would have been had their families remained in Africa and they were born there.

Is that not worth something?
 
Shadowless said:
But not paying it at the time was downright evil, so I'd rather be able to say our government officially paid reparations to ancestors of slaves.
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Affirmative action was a form of reparation. It would have been better had it happened in the 1860s or soon thereafter, but reparations now is simply unworkable. Imagine the bureaucracy necessary to ensure the money went to descendants of people who were actual slaves at the time? It would be absolutely enormous!
 
Gardener said:
Affirmative action was a form of reparation. It would have been better had it happened in the 1860s or soon thereafter, but reparations now is simply unworkable. Imagine the bureaucracy necessary to ensure the money went to descendants of people who were actual slaves at the time? It would be absolutely enormous!
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That's a valid point. In my opinion we need to do some form of reparations, there are people saying affirmative action isn't fair which is also valid to a degree, so I am not sure what can be done to right the wrong.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Problem is - as the article points out - the wrong continues to this day, and to a greater extent than most of us know.
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Did not read the article, no need to. The US does have a race issue that continues to this day and it still causes economic damage to African Americans. Throwing money to individuals is not the answer, that is the worst that could be done.
Putting moneys and laws, addressing the changes that are needed is what should be done.
Will it happen - Nope-

George Romney tried decades ago on housing. It was shut down. The problems are still with the US today.
One clear example of opportunity lost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/opinion/sunday/housing-apartheid-american-style.html?_r=0
George Romney served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Richard Nixon. He set out to dismantle segregation and what he described as a “high income white noose” formed by the suburbs that surrounded black inner cities. Under his Open Communities initiative, he instructed HUD officials to reject applications for sewer and highway projects from cities and states with segregationist policies. He believed that ending residential segregation was “essential if we are going to keep our nation from being torn apart.”

As Nikole Hannah-Jones reported in a 2012 investigation for ProPublica, Nixon got wind of Romney’s plan and ordered John Ehrlichman, his domestic policy chief, to shut it down.
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We already pay for the Indians(Native Americans) for supposedly stealing their land. If we are going to pay money to every person we hurt in history we are all going to be very poor. Everyone has been the victim at one point in history, and at one time have been the bullies. We are all guilty and there is no reason on fussing over things we can not change now. Its over. We can no longer do anything about it. MOVE ON
 
Should whites get reparation from the countries that allowed their citizens to hold white slaves? If your answer is no, then the answer to this question should be obvious.
 
Shadowless said:
OK, am I supposed to? We should because it's the right thing to do. That's it.
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feel free to pony up some money. Those of us in the top tax bracket have paid millions to black welfare recipients.
 
Kal'Stang said:
Should whites get reparation from the countries that allowed their citizens to hold white slaves? If your answer is no, then the answer to this question should be obvious.
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maybe black Americans should seek reparations from the blacks in Africa. After all, but for black Africans selling other black Africans to slavers, there'd have been no slavery
 
Kal'Stang said:
There's that too.
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IF the blacks in Africa had not been fighting each other and selling the losers into slavery, how could a few hundred whites with matchlock muskets enslaved hundreds of thousands of native Africans? the fact is, Black Africans were as or more responsible for slavery than those who bought slaves from them and those who bought them in the new world
 
radcen said:
Blacks were slaves, yes, 150 years ago. That was abhorrent, yes.

However, it could also be argued that the American blacks of today are still much better off than here today than they would have been had their families remained in Africa and they were born there.

Is that not worth something?
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That's a bogus argument. Blacks would've been better off if whites had never set foot on African soil.
 
TurtleDude said:
IF the blacks in Africa had not been fighting each other and selling the losers into slavery, how could a few hundred whites with matchlock muskets enslaved hundreds of thousands of native Africans? the fact is, Black Africans were as or more responsible for slavery than those who bought slaves from them and those who bought them in the new world
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The fact is, you're just repeating a failed "lost cause" justification for slavery.....


'Africa was not a country. Africans were not selling “their own”, they were selling their enemies, just as the Greeks and Romans once did. Africa, then as now, was made up of different countries. They were no more selling “their own” than, say, “Europeans” were killing “their own” during the Holocaust.

Most African countries did not sell slaves and some even fought against it. But because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.

The Transatlantic slave trade was on a much greater scale than anything the Africans or anyone else ever did in the history of slavery. Countries were destroyed and millions died. Over 12 million were sold in less than 400 years, something so huge that it changed the genetic map of the world.

The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its other ills, was not that. Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade. So slavery in places like Haiti, Barbados and America was much more cruel.

As a moral argument it fails too:

It uses what I call the Arab Trader argument: it excuses an evil of one’s own past by finding the same sort of evil done by others. Whites sold slaves, but Africans and Arab traders did too! Which, morally speaking, is at the same level as an eight-year-old saying, “He did it too!” when caught doing something bad. We do not accept this argument from eight-year-olds, nor from bank robbers or wife beaters. “Africans did it too!” is no better..."​

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/africans-sold-their-own-people-as-slaves/


So unless you're proposing we should start kidnapping Mexicans for the sake of future generations so they might be better off in the US, too....your argument fails miserably.
 
Moot said:
The fact is, you're just repeating a failed "lost cause" justification for slavery.....


'Africa was not a country. Africans were not selling “their own”, they were selling their enemies, just as the Greeks and Romans once did. Africa, then as now, was made up of different countries. They were no more selling “their own” than, say, “Europeans” were killing “their own” during the Holocaust.

Most African countries did not sell slaves and some even fought against it. But because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.

The Transatlantic slave trade was on a much greater scale than anything the Africans or anyone else ever did in the history of slavery. Countries were destroyed and millions died. Over 12 million were sold in less than 400 years, something so huge that it changed the genetic map of the world.

The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its other ills, was not that. Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade. So slavery in places like Haiti, Barbados and America was much more cruel.

As a moral argument it fails too:

It uses what I call the Arab Trader argument: it excuses an evil of one’s own past by finding the same sort of evil done by others. Whites sold slaves, but Africans and Arab traders did too! Which, morally speaking, is at the same level as an eight-year-old saying, “He did it too!” when caught doing something bad. We do not accept this argument from eight-year-olds, nor from bank robbers or wife beaters. “Africans did it too!” is no better..."​

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/africans-sold-their-own-people-as-slaves/


So unless you're proposing we should start kidnapping Mexicans for the sake of future generations so they might be better off in the US, too....your argument fails miserably.
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so what you are trying to obfuscate is the fact that Africans were the source of slaves to non-African slavers. why should white Americans, most of whom have no slave owners in their background, have to pay reparations when those who were responsible for the initial supply of slaves should not?

reparations is a moronic idea based on the equally idiotic concept of group rights and group guilt

when you can find a white who owns slaves and the slaves he owns, we will talk

there is no sound argument for reparations. and I note blacks in America are-by all standards, better off then ones living in places like Liberia
 
TurtleDude said:
so what you are trying to obfuscate is the fact that Africans were the source of slaves to non-African slavers. why should white Americans, most of whom have no slave owners in their background, have to pay reparations when those who were responsible for the initial supply of slaves should not?

reparations is a moronic idea based on the equally idiotic concept of group rights and group guilt

when you can find a white who owns slaves and the slaves he owns, we will talk

there is no sound argument for reparations. and I note blacks in America are-by all standards, better off then ones living in places like Liberia
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I don't think paying reparations is ever going to happen...but, there are plenty of reasons why we probably should and not just for slavery but for the 150 years of institutionalized racism and oppression that followed reconstruction IE: Jim Crowe, lynching's, denying them the right to vote, to affordable housing and property, quality education, healthcare, jobs and basically the opportunity to build wealth when the white middle class was building theirs with the help of the government through GI bill, home and business loans, job opportunities, etc.
 
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Moot said:
I don't think paying reparations is ever going to happen...but, there are plenty of reasons why we probably should and not just for slavery but for the 150 years of institutionalized racism and oppression that followed reconstruction IE: Jim Crowe, lynching's, denying them the right to vote, to property, quality education, healthcare, jobs and the opportunity to build wealth when the white middle class was building theirs with the help of the government through GI bill, home and business loans, college scholarships and grants, etc.
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well that is all countered by all the crime perpetrated by blacks and the cost to us taxpayers

its a silly idea and does nothing valuable for society as a whole.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
If the nation as a whole did something wrong, is it not our duty as a nation to right that wrong?
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The nation as a whole includes African-Americans.

Should they pay reparations to themselves?
 
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