It’s my turn to pose another question to DeAngelo Starnes. The subject: Reparations for slavery.In each of the last seven terms of Congress, Rep. John Conyers has introduced a bill – H.R. 40 – to get Congress to study the reparations question. These bills always die in committee. (Thank goodness.)
QUESTION #4: Isn’t it psychologically and culturally damaging for black people to walk around believing that the American society owes them money?
Dave, I hate to begin a debate with an agreement. But I have to answer "yes" to your question.
ReplyDeleteFuck walking around feeling like you're owed. If that was the case, I'd be a bitter muthafucka.
But the concept of reparations, I propose, is broader than getting a check.
Because white American society got a helluva head start with free Black labor. And not just in the South. But all over this muthafucka.
And the advantage has been carried worldwide.
Reparations, as a true and pure concept, is about balance and compensation. And the gap created by that headstart should be filled.
Amnesia has caused us to collectively forget "reparations" wasn't something the newly-freed slaves came up with.
Does the line "40 acres and a mule" ring a bell?
Why would the government agree, in a moment of - for them - insanity, promise 40 acres and mule to freed slaves?
I think it was an inherent acknowledgment of the advantage received from hundreds of years of free labor. Free labor that permanently established a powerful nation.
And that free labor needed to be compensated, they recognized.
Now just like they did with the indigenous folks commonly known as Indians, that greed got in the way.
So it didn't happen.
So there's an underpaid debt whose balance is yet to be satisfied.
But black people shouldn't twiddle their thumbs and wait on a check. To do that is an insult to the folks whose blood, sweat, and tears built this muthafucka under heavy psychological and physical abuse.
A check ain't shit if you don't do something with it.
To me, HR 40 goes beyond a check.
Read the fine print:
"To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes."
It requests a study to determine the appropriate remedy. I think that goes beyond a check.
For me, affirmative action is a form of reparations.
Trust funds should be created for persons able to trace their lineage to enslaved Africans for fully-paid for education at all levels (that not wanting us to read thang).
Trust funds for grants, as opposed to loans, for folks desiring to buy real estate, commercial or family-living. Again, only for persons who can trace their ancestry to enslaved Africans.
Trust funds for grants for slave descendents needing money to start a business.
And recognizing the difficulty of tracing ancestry. If you're Black and can trace your shit to a muthafucka with a visa, you're disqualified.
Every other Black person qualifies.
And this is just a start.
Checks just to be having checks is a waste of money.
But trust funds holding grants, not loans, for designated contructive activities would fulfill the "40 acres and a mule" promise.
So that's where I start with reparations. If interned Japanese can get reparations and Jewish people can get a homeland, slave descendents can get reparations.
In closing, I wanna say this out loud - fuck Ward Connelly!!!!!!!
Ding!
My family didn't come here until the early 1900's.
ReplyDeleteDriven from their homelands, (Germany, Romania, Poland, Russia), by hatred and pogroms.
From the ghetto of Warsaw to the ghetto of Hells Kitchen.
I don't want, need, or ask for reparations. Nor do I owe any...
FOURTH
GENERATION,
R
render, don't be so thin-skinned, bruh or sister.
ReplyDeleteRead the whole post and take it into context.
The quote does not speak specifically about Jewish people in the U.S.
But, it is my understanding, and feel free to correct me, the U.S, helped Jewish people set up a homeland in the Middle East now known as Israel. And it is my understanding, that part of the reason was because of what happened in Germany and years of discrimination in Europe. And with Israel getting much dollars to do U.S, dirt, it appears, to me, to be a U.S. outpost in the Middle East.
My reference was just to the notion of the U.S. helping out groups of people that have been wronged because of discrimination.
But it hasn't happened for slave descendents.
No harm intended. And I await any corrections because I'm expecting a lotta mud-slinging on this topic.
render, sorry I got a little dragonhorse and didn't read your post closely enough.
ReplyDeleteYou and your family don't qualify for comparative purposes.
I don't think the U.S. benefitted from the free labor of you or your family.
So of course, you and your family are out of the equation when it comes to reparations.
And for the rest of you cowboys that want to make a similar "my family came here worked hard and rose out of the ashes" argument, don't bother. Unless you can point to your family being part of a giving up free labor for hundreds of years, there is no comparison.
DeAngelo: I think you missed the key part of Render's comment: "Nor do I owe any..."
ReplyDeleteWe can't avoid the fact that, to pay for the "trust funds" you envision, the money has to come from somewhere. If it comes from "the U.S. government," then that means the U.S. taxpayers... including many millions of taxpayers whose ancestors are in no way culpable for slavery, because they arrived here after the fact.
The biggest issue for me, however, is: Will it work?
Will it raise up those currently at the bottom?
Focusing on the "unpaid debt" distracts us from the fact that the keys to success in America have already been revealed to us: an embrace of the values of education, law-abidingness and work.
As long as there are masses of people who belittle educational achievement ("acting white"), and oppose the law ("thug life"), and ain't about work ("It's the first o' the muuuunth..."), we're gonna have the same problems we got now.
So why doesn't John Conyers give up the "grievance" hustle and focus in on the real tough problems?
render, I got REAL dragonhorse on you.
ReplyDeleteGood catch, Dave.
Have to admit, I never considered that point.
However ...
I don't agree with Iraq War, but my taxes help pay for that bullshit.
Conyers is not hustling, like Ward Connelly is.
His bill requests a study. And I don't see a problem with that.
Give me a moment to get at the other part of your post.
Reparations would cause an outrage. Not just among whites but other races too.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that it is perhaps too late for reparations now. If slavery was something more recent I don't think people would be too averse to the idea. Hell, lot of people already hate the idea of affirmative action, which imo is the appropriate kind of reparations.
"The biggest issue for me, however, is: Will it work?
ReplyDeleteWill it raise up those currently at the bottom?"
Dave, you my boy and all, but I really wonder if that's your issue?
What do you need to be convinced that it will work? Would you accept the notion of "reparations" if there was a study that showed it could work?
It seems when it comes to Black folks, there's a presumption of guilt, a presumption of ignorance, a presumption of sloth.
So it is automatically assumed that a large check will lead to more dysfunctional behavior.
It is assumed that trust funds reserved for grants for constructive activity won't help close the gap.
And what really gets me is the vibe that people don't want to help out an injustice - no matter how long ago it occurred with the ongoing reverberations still being felt.
And so there's this vibe, "my family didn't own slaves and I abhor racism, so why should I pay?" Where's that vibe when it comes to this fucked up invasion of Iraq?
And so there's this vibe that "my family descended from immigrants who came here and pulled themselves up from the white ghettos of America." And so that explains the pass you get as a person belonging to the white class as opposed to the slave descendents?
But what is really galling is this vibe that Black folks are irresponsible, ignorant, dysfunctional people. As if that shit is part of our DNA without any historical causation references.
It ain't living in the past. It ain't about let's deal with what's recent. It's about history. Because you gotta swim against a whole bunch of muthafuckas getting the benefit of unpaid labor.
Because, during the course of that unpaid labor, they held you back and down.
Because, during the course of that unpaid labor, they fucked with your religion, your language, and your Drum.
Because, during the course of that unpaid labor, they fucked up your family structure.
Because during the course of that unpaid labor, being held down caused folks to lose their way.
And I have to wonder, why is there all this sympathy for the Jews when they throw all that historical injustice in your face? I ain't faulting them, but there's a lot more hostility to us when we, Black folks, ask for compensation and understanding.
And if I could change my name and pass for white, would I have the same level of achievement?
So back to your questions, Will reparations work and will reparations raise up those currently at the bottom?
I don't know. But I think that history owes the slave descendents a shot.
It's too easy to say that time has healed the atrocity slavery reaped on Black folks and to diminish the advantage it gave white society. I think if we played out what happened, in today's terms, instead of through this "I made money and I date non-Black people" glasses, we might begin to empathize with the horror that occurred.
Since the Japanese internment and Nazi-imposed Jewish genocide happened within 100 years, there's sympathy for those groups as opposed to African Americans.
Lynching occurred within the last hundred years, too. Where's the sympathy?
Now is that racism? Or blinders?
Ding!
Reparations conversations really disturb me, because they always tend to go down two disturbing trains of thought.
ReplyDeleteThe first one focuses on the practicality of where the money comes from, who should get the money, etc...and uses executional problems as an excuse not to acknowledge that a crime was committed and the idea of reparations is fair.
The second, which is the question posed here, is that reparations should not be paid because black people are not "worthy", and that our bad handling of money, our low moral character or our weak self-image will make it all for naught.
Which actually sort of a variation on the executional issue, and it's for the same effect - it deftly sidesteps the issue of "yes, a crime was committed and justice must be served".
But a crime was committed. The guilty should be punished, and the victims should be compensated.
I don't know about you, but if I got a check in the mail tomorrow for 10,000 dollars or a million dollars, my self worth would not drop one iota. In fact, not only would my self worth INCREASE, my actual worth would too.
And I bet if folks on this board got a check, they would have the same reation.
So who are these people who "don't need" money? Isn't this like the Robin Harris joke about "spare change"? What is spare change? Who doesn't need their money? If something was stolen from my ancestor and that theft cost me money and opportunity, then I deserve compensation. Period.
There are corporations that exist today that profited from the slave trade. Between them and the US government, there's cash available. It can be in a cash payout, or paid out over time, or tax exemptions, scholarships, whatever.
But admit wrong was done - that's the first important step that will actually make people think and feel better. Then make an effort to make it right.
My knee-jerk reaction has always been it sounds like a non-starter. On the other hand, the educational vouchers and grants idea sounds interesting and on its face worth at least talking about.
ReplyDeleteWhite identified people tend to focus on the "I'm not guilty, we're not guilty!" aspect of the reparations of the debate.
ReplyDeleteNo offense, but this is silly. Of course white identified Americans benefited from the white supremacist system, that's why they came. Doesn't matter when they came, clearly they benefited from the way whiteness has been constructed in the US. What went on in Europe is simply not anyone's concern. We're Americans.
The real problem, as UBM noted, is practical. Will it work? Answer: definitely not. Won't work, has no chance of working.
What are reparations, really? Money from the Federal treasury, directed exclusively to black identified Americans. So the unstated claim here is that black identified Americans don't currently get a fair (however one defines "fair") share of the Federal treasury.
There are a lot of economic conservatives who would stop the discussion right there by demonstrating that black Americans have received more than their fare share of Federal monies.
It's certainly a debatable point, and you conclusion will likely depend on what claims you accept as valid. The adjusted for inflation value of 40 acres and a mule? Unpaid wages for centuries of slavery? Punitive damages for decades of abuse and persecution under Jim Crow, against people who are still very much alive today?
If in fact black Americans want a greater share of the Fed treasury, a reparations scheme isn't necessary. Simply by voting regularly, writing letters and making phone calls, together with small but consistent campaign contributions to candidates and organizations who represent their interests, they can have a huge impact on Federal policy.
Black Americans tend not to vote, and only a small number take an active interest in public affairs in a way that impacts the political process. So the common sense solution is to start work at the grass roots level. No reparations scheme necessary. Just vote, write letters, and give your cigarette money to the candidate of your choice.
Another question is, how would money from the Fed treasury be spent differently under reparations than it is now? Right now, it's spent on military, roads, schools, various entitlement programs, etc. Black Americans serve in the military, work in defense plants, drive on Federal roads, send their children to (partially) Federally funded schools and colleges.
If black Americans don't currently benefit from this Federal spending as much as they should, the answer again is better politics, not reparations.
White identified people tend to focus on the "I'm not guilty, we're not guilty!" aspect of the reparations of the debate.
ReplyDeleteNo offense, but this is silly. Of course white identified Americans benefited from the white supremacist system, that's why they came. Doesn't matter when they came, clearly they benefited from the way whiteness has been constructed in the US. What went on in Europe is simply not anyone's concern. We're Americans.
The real problem, as UBM noted, is practical. Will it work? Answer: definitely not. Won't work, has no chance of working.
What are reparations, really? Money from the Federal treasury, directed exclusively to black identified Americans. So the unstated claim here is that black identified Americans don't currently get a fair (however one defines "fair") share of the Federal treasury.
There are a lot of economic conservatives who would stop the discussion right there by demonstrating that black Americans have received more than their fare share of Federal monies.
It's certainly a debatable point, and you conclusion will likely depend on what claims you accept as valid. The adjusted for inflation value of 40 acres and a mule? Unpaid wages for centuries of slavery? Punitive damages for decades of abuse and persecution under Jim Crow, against people who are still very much alive today?
If in fact black Americans want a greater share of the Fed treasury, a reparations scheme isn't necessary. Simply by voting regularly, writing letters and making phone calls, together with small but consistent campaign contributions to candidates and organizations who represent their interests, they can have a huge impact on Federal policy.
Black Americans tend not to vote, and only a small number take an active interest in public affairs in a way that impacts the political process. So the common sense solution is to start work at the grass roots level. No reparations scheme necessary. Just vote, write letters, and give your cigarette money to the candidate of your choice.
Another question is, how would money from the Fed treasury be spent differently under reparations than it is now? Right now, it's spent on military, roads, schools, various entitlement programs, etc. Black Americans serve in the military, work in defense plants, drive on Federal roads, send their children to (partially) Federally funded schools and colleges.
If black Americans don't currently benefit from this Federal spending as much as they should, the answer again is better politics, not reparations.
Reginald, welcome to my spot.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "... if I got a check in the mail tomorrow for 10,000 dollars or a million dollars, my self worth would not drop one iota. In fact, not only would my self worth INCREASE, my actual worth would too."
Clever, Reggie. But is it true?
Here's why reparations is intellectual and psychological quicksand. Set aside even the question of whether money can fix what's broken in black America. Can a dollar amount be placed on the harm done to those who were actually enslaved?
It was reading Randall Robinson's "The Debt" that really turned me off to the reparations argument. Because Robinson pumps up black suffering so huge... with such grandiloquently maudlin language... that it seems such a debt could never be erased.
How could it? Slavery/racism is America's original sin.
Okay, so what do we do?
I think that to focus psychologically, culturally and politically on what white folks owe... is a position of weakness. Psychological weakness, cultural weakness... political weakness.
"If only white folks would finally do us right, and pay this debt off, then we can prosper."
Isn't it healthier to shift this who-owes-whom-what equation?
Isn't it us who owe the debt to our ancestors?
Their suffering, their hard labor, their humiliations bought something... a place in America for their descendants. We owe it to them to get educated, to maximize our talents, to work hard, to not be criminals.
We owe it to them to prosper. That is the only thing that will redeem their suffering. DeAngelo's law degree, Reggie's Harvard B.A. ... that is the redemption.
And that way lies our destiny, gents.
"No offense, but this is silly. Of course white identified Americans benefited from the white supremacist system, that's why they came. Doesn't matter when they came, clearly they benefited from the way whiteness has been constructed in the US. What went on in Europe is simply not anyone's concern. We're Americans."
ReplyDeleteWhat about Hispanics and other non-white people?
Put it this way...
ReplyDelete"Wasn’t and isn't it psychologically and culturally damaging for Jewish people to walk around believing that the German society owed and owes them money?"
What would your answer be, David?
^ That deal was cut in 1952, Michael, when actual living injured parties were plentiful. And even then, there was significant opposition within Israel to the concept of monetary reparations.
ReplyDeleteI did not ask who cut what deal, David. I asked you:
ReplyDelete"Wasn’t and isn't it psychologically and culturally damaging for Jewish people to walk around believing that the German society owed and owes them money?"
Yes or No?
Now make sure you give the right answer if you want to thrive or even survive as a writer in Hollywood.
Football always takes me out on Sundays. My boys, the Raiders, flamed out another losing season. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. But I see brighter days ahead.
ReplyDeleteSo far, this episode of Stakes Be High has rendered some real thoughtful comments. I likes, I likes.
Dave,
"Isn't it us who owe the debt to our ancestors?
Their suffering, their hard labor, their humiliations bought something... a place in America for their descendants. We owe it to them to get educated, to maximize our talents, to work hard, to not be criminals."
Great piece of writing. And I agree.
My only dispute is that reparations is a form of Justice. And that is the Truth.
Fuck practicality. Fuck the Federal Treasury, too, for that matter.
Folks scream about the protecting the Treasury when it comes to helping Black folks, but don't scream when it comes to Blackwater contracts.
They'll scream that slavery is over and that their tax dollars shouldn't have to right a wrong. But are silent when it comes to spending dollars on warehousing Black folks in prison.
Don't want tax dollars to fund public schools but scream about ignorant, poor Black folks.
Maybe we can agree on another thing. We are a society, and a society is an organism.
How is the organism going to survive if one part of it treats the other like a cancer? Even when it depends on that cancer for its character and wealth?
So back to the ultimate issue in this ongoing debate, is the hostility to reparations embelmatic of a global white supremacy system?
And fuck a lovefest! Where's the hate mail? dragonhorse, thordaddy, memomachine (ain't heard from you since Fisher called you out), y'all still out there? I'm waiting for an attack. Come on now. Don't disappoint.
Ding!
starnes,
ReplyDeleteThe perverse irony of "black" reparations is that the farther we go into the future with any subsequent increase in calls for reparations, the more immoral the entire movement becomes.
Then again, a white supremacist system that controls the flow of money handing out reparations...? Seems counter-intuitive?
In addition, because the radical black minority that is pushing so hard for reparations, albeit in a woeful manner, does so without any acknowledgment of things done to correct past wrongs, it fails to get broad appeal because it is seen as nothing but a black man's hustle.
ReplyDeleteGuys in my age bracket that have grown up in a society immersed in liberalism ain't buying your jive talk. Are we really supposed to believe that we live in a white supremacist theocracy with invisible racism abound? That ain't what I see, homey! LOL!
Thanks for the welcome, David, love your site and love this thread.
ReplyDeleteDid you really ask me would I be okay with a million dollars of reparations money? Did you seriously ask that? Let me ask you: would YOU not be okay with it?
The whole "taint" thing boggles me. A win is a win.
Are you against affirmative action? Because I have heard similar arguments against AA, saying it "taints" black achievement.
Huh? Black doctors who got into college through AA save lives everyday.
Meanwhile, our President was a C student who was admitted to the best universities in the country because he was a Legacy and he was wealthy. Do you think he spends a lot of time wringing his hands about his "tainted" degree?
Back to the reparations issue: A crime was committed. Justice must be served.
Those who committed the crime must admit their guilt, or have it be proven in a court of law. From Nuremburg Trials after World War 2 to the South African Truth and Reconcilation hearings, that has been an important part of healing in the wake of a societal crime. It actually helps both parties.
Second of all, the guilty must be punished and victims compensated. Civilization depends on fair justice, it's as simple as that.
Yes, a long time has elapsed. Perhaps the fact that this has not occured is the reason why racial inequality is still such a problem in our country.
Money may not solve every problem, but man, it's amazing how many problems it does solve.
If you're worried about black folks losing their minds after they get their money, or black folks blowing their reparations checks on rims, then let's figure out how to fix that. Money pays for a lot of shrinks and finanical planners.
It's so sad that we don't even think reparations is possible. Considering clear historical precedent and the resources black folks have at their disposal today, it's clear we can't even dream of profound social change. The murders of MLK and X have punked several generations of black folks.
^ reginald like a muthafucka! Needed another smart person on my side in this.
ReplyDeleteAnd on that note, thordaddy like a muthafucka! Thanks for the hate mail. It's folks like you that prove the point. And stop trying to sound smart cuz it ain't working. Your phrases "radical black minority" and "jive talk" exposes you. Just say "nigga" and get it over with.
BTW, it's either "deangelo" or "Mr. Starnes" for you, a'ight "homey"
Love the hate mail. Keep it flowing!
Reginald wrote: "Did you really ask me would I be okay with a million dollars of reparations money? Did you seriously ask that?"
ReplyDeleteActually, I think I questioned whether the money would have any elevational impact on your "self-worth."
Them that's got their shit together will prosper without the reparations check.
Them that ain't got their shit together will surely fuck up a wet dream... check or no check.
And at the end of the day, some will rise, others will drop, many will struggle just to break even... as dictated by that all-powerful combination of natural talents, internal values and fickle luck.
I'm in an airport right now, but I got something good to drop in regard to the matter of unfinished "justice." Please pardon me if I can't post it till later today.
Dave - hope you had a good flight, let me jump in here and respond to what you have written so far.
ReplyDeleteThis whole "the government/society/white man doesn't owe you something" is based on an attitude that this is NOT your money.
That's not how I feel at all. It IS my money. I am an American, my ancestors built this country without pay, I'm here to collect.
Bush is very effective at achieving his agenda because he defines his own reality. Sure, wealth and power help, but his Democratic opponents had wealth and power but they didn't have the will to win.
Or to quote the zen master George Clinton "to each his reach and if I can't cop it ain't mine to have".
I'm getting my money. If you don't want yours, give it to me.
Sure, you can say "winners win and losers lose", but without capital you're not really playing the game.
John Johnson pawned his mother's furniture to start Johnson Publicatons. But how many entepenureal minds as great as his didn't have the furniture to pawn? The missed opportunity costs alone from not having capital over the centuries is mind-boggling.
Do you know how long it takes to learn how to handle money? To learn how to properly invest, to start businesses, even to pick out appropiate luxury items.
Generations have to try and fail and try and fail and finally institutionalize proper behavior. All that practice takes money.
a huge infusion of captial in the black community increases the odds that black wealth would no longer be exceptional. It's all about reaching that tipping point.
^reginald like a double muthafucka! I like this cat.
ReplyDeleteAnd I swear it ain't me under a different name.
Where're the rest of the haters?
Couldn't have said it better, reginald.
So, I'm gonna score that round to the proponents for reparations.
Ding!
Dave - hope you had a good flight...
ReplyDeleteThanks, couldn't have been better, Reg. Sanaa Lathan was on the same flight! What a good-looking woman. (Hell... her dad is prettier than most women.)
Now, I need to handle some unfinished business with Fisher before I address your parry.
So Fisher... you really want me to spell out the difference between German reparations for the Holocaust and U.S. reparations for slavery?
If you don't get the moral significance of reparations 7 years after the fact versus reparations 140 years after the fact... you just don't want to.
So let me break it down like this. You honestly think you're entitled to compensation -- you, today -- for something your great-great-great-grandfather went through??
Not your father. Not your grandfather. Not your great-grandfather. Not your great-great-grandfather. We're talking five or six generations back.
Gots to be a statue of limitations on shit.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteyou and reginald have come up with some really great prose - as we weigh the pros and cons of this issue.
Thanks guys!
^ Or "statute."
ReplyDeleteThanks, DeAngelo. As for your and Reggie's point about this being, at essence, a matter of unfinished "justice"... let's look back a century.
ReplyDelete(Sorry if I'm hasty. Connecting flight like a mug...)
A century ago, the most "militant" wing of the black uplift movement was the Niagara Movement, led by the best and brightest Negroes in America -- W.E.B. Du Bois, Monroe Trotter, John Hope... scholars, entrepreneurs...
Now, if reparations for slavery was such a manifest demand of justice, why wasn't it at the top of the list of objectives of the Niagara Movement?
Forty years after abolition, black folks weren't demanding reparations. Black folks were demanding their right to vote, an end to mob violence, an end to unjust laws.
A century ago, the premise was: "The chains are off. Now, if white folks would just take their foot off our throat, we could rise."
A century later, now it's about needing a shitload of money to be made whole?
Let's also remind ourselves of the "duties" the Niagara Movement put forth for black people... duties which, to me, a century later, look like the true keys to the kingdom, the secret of success:
1. The duty to vote.
2. The duty to respect the rights of others.
3. The duty to work.
4. The duty to obey the laws.
5. The duty to be clean and orderly.
6. The duty to send our children to school.
7. The duty to respect ourselves, even as we respect others.
(Yep... "militant" Negroes used to talk about personal responsibility. What a concept.)
Regarding Natives Americans, treaties (laws) were broken, therefore courts had a means to rectify. In the case of the Jews, German law (again) was broken. As with the Japanese internment, US laws were broken. I will vote for slavery reparations when someone shows me a law, either in Africa or the US, that was broken, and how the injured entities, as in the case of tribes, endure today. Otherwise, we are revising history with today's moral and legal standards, and that just don't work in our constitution. If that were the case, we should be hitting up complicit African tribes that sold us at the jump, as well.
ReplyDeleteDavid Mills...
ReplyDelete"If you don't get the moral significance of reparations 7 years after the fact versus reparations 140 years after the fact... you just don't want to."
You still have neglected to answer my question which is:
"Wasn’t and isn't it psychologically and culturally damaging for Jewish people to walk around believing that the German society owed and owes them money?
Yes or No?"
So I guess I can surmise from the lack of your answer to that question that your implied answer is no, as long as it is not later than 7 years after the Shoa and yes as long as it is more than 7 years after the Shoa? In other words, the Jewish people presently have no rights of reparations vis-a-vis the Germans?
Yes or No?
Is it your position that there is a statute of limitation on the right of the Jewish people to receive reparations from the Germans? If yes, when? Eight years after the Shoa? 20 years after the Shoa? 40 years after the Shoa? Do the Jewish people have any rights to reparations today, 52 years after the Shoa? Maybe 140 years after the Shoa?
Do the grandchildren of the Jewish persons who languished in Nazi slave camps have any right to reparations?
Yes or no?
Does the life (and by life I mean not only the biological life, but opportunities denied to that life and the lives that life created) of a Jewish victim of Nazi Racism diminish in value over time?
Yes or no?
Remember now, the wrong answer could cost you your career in Hollywood.
Also remember, no answer could cost you your career in Hollywood as well.
(Not that I am in any way saying or implying that you would give a "correct" answer for any other reasons than your conviction of conscience)
starnes,
ReplyDeleteYou talk about slavery, injustice and humiliation for your black ancestors and then have the gall to whine about "hate mail." Weak, bro!
One thing I noticed, similar to a proud jihadist, is that when you are confronted with the underlying motivation for your actions, i.e., hustling the white man, you are too proud and honest to deny it.
Also, you agitate for a response and instead of confronting it, you simply fall back on a weak tactic of claiming racism.
Again, the farther we go into the future with any subsequent increase in claims of reparations, the more the entire movement and its adherents become morally tainted.
Fisher: I tell you what I would say "No" to... in a heartbeat.
ReplyDeleteAssume that Germany had never paid reparations to Holocaust survivors.
Then, in the year 2085, organized Jewry said to Germany: "You know what? Remember that shit y'all did to us back in the 1940s? You owe us for that. And we want to get paid. We, the great-great-great-grandchildren of the Jews you victimized."
No. No way.
That shit doesn't even sound right.
DeAng – Don’t sweat it, I’m not that thin-skinned. And it’s bruh…
ReplyDelete=
Now y’all are slipping into subjects that I do know something about.
My family, in the US, is considered ineligible by most groups for reparations from Germany because there were no European-born survivors from my family to claim those reparations. The entire European branch of my family tree was wiped out by 1944. No survivors.
=
The original 1951-52 reparations deal between Germany and Israel was intended to help Israel pay the costs of absorbing half a million surviving refugees from Europe. Even then the deal was hotly contested within the newly formed Israeli government, (riots in the streets, attempted bomb attacks, even a threatened mutiny within the two year old IDF).
"There are two approaches. One is the ghetto Jew's approach and the other is of an independent people. I don't want to run after a German and spit in his face. I don't want to run after anybody. I want to sit here and build here. I'm not going to go to America to take part in a vigil against Adenauer.”
-David Ben-Gurion
The late 1990’s reparation deals involved settlements between individual European companies that had used slave labor as well as European insurance companies that had previously refused to compensate those who had lost property or been killed during the war. Various individual families and groups, including non-Jews, were included in that overall compensation package. The kicker was one had to be alive and to have actually been a refugee from Europe in order to collect anything.
I’m a Ben-Gurion style Zionist. I don’t miss what I never had and I work hard to earn and keep whatever I have.
I’m also an individualist. In that I do not hold all of 20th century Germany or all Germans responsible for the Holocaust. I fail to see why any German born after 1933 or so, should have to pay for something they didn’t do.
However, there are still a few decrepit individual wartime Nazi’s puttering around, inspiring modern day nazi’s with their age old hatred and bile. I’m all for those individuals paying through the nose until they bleed. Those modern day neo-nazi’s can most often be found (in the US) hanging with the modern version of the KKK. They are one and the same, no matter what name they wear.
As LGF has been exposing, these days you can find the majority of those assholes working hard in Ron Paul’s current presidential campaign.
=
With the exception of Truman’s 1948 recognition of statehood and a 1951 Congressional resettlement aid package for refugees in Israel, the US offered no other support in the creation of Israel. Eisenhower even slapped an arms embargo on Israel that remained in force until 1966.
Concerning current aid and military equipment deals with Israel…
We get what we pay for from Israel. Most of that aid is used to purchase military hardware from the US. Israel provides the US with a great deal of intelligence information as well as with technical improvements about the usage of that same military hardware. (Take a long look at the machine you’re reading this on, odds are, it’s got Israeli technical designs or Israeli produced parts in it.) This is the very essence of an alliance.
What exactly does the US get for its $50 billion in aid and military hardware to Egypt? A 23 year long military dictatorship that sometimes promises too not attack Israel again and nothing else.
=
DeAng…
We both know full well that Charles Woodson caused Tom Brady to fumble on that snowy playoff Sunday in 2001 (Tuck Rule Game). But once the ball has been hiked, you cannot return to the preceding play.
It’s more productive to think about what the next play is going to be.
Besides, I don’t think Rich Gannon wants to replay that game; he took a beating from the weather and Bellyaches Bully’s that day.
Besides, I can’t improve much on Dave’s posts from December 29, 2007 5:13 PM and December 30th, 2007 11:02 AM.
SQUEEZE
ONE
OUT,
R
Dave,
ReplyDeleteround seven to you!
That was some Ali rope-a-dope shit.
Personal and societal responsibility like a muthafucka.
Foreshadowing the next round of Stakes Be High.
Which I think we can go on tour with as an ongoing show.
But I digress.
The Niagara Movement threw me for a loop. Good one.
So to answer the call of the question, I'm with reginald. I don't think I'll feel too damaged by a reparations check.
In fact, I think I might have a great deal more confidence.
To make my dreams come true.
And to protect myself from crazy muthafuckas like thordaddy.
thordaddy, we don't whine. Come with some intelligence, as opposed to that Fox Newsism.
But keep attacking!
And where are the rest of the haters? Y'all leaving my boy out there a little bit.
BTW, Sanaa like a muthafucka. That's my fantasy woman. Drives Angel crazy, I'm sure. Did you shake her hand at least?
render,
ReplyDeleteI like your style. And you have moved up the list of favorite people with whom I like to dialoge.
Point well taken. Folks still need to ball even when they get robbed.
render, you deserved a "Ding!" after that post. So I'm gonna do it for ya.
Ding!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletestarnes,
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to steal money out of your children's mouths and euphemistically calling it "justice."
"Crazy" is when a cat thinks a white man will throw his kids under the bus so that a black man can put his wayward sons and daughters in check.
Reparations is nothing but a money shakedown with my children being the practical target. There is no reparations movement outside of a massive money transfer from those that are innocent to those that rely heavily on emotional racial rhetoric.
Since you've been damaged so much by the legacy of slavery, what shakedown amount would suffice starnes?
So this is what David Mills' position as far as the Shoa is:
ReplyDeleteAny current efforts on part of the Jewish people to receive reparations for the crimes committed during the Shoa are illegitimate. The statue of limitations (set by David Mills) having run out.
This is athe classic anti-Semitic position which denies the victims of the Holocaust the sole determination of how they should to be made whole. It is a position that determines that the victims of the Holocaust have no right assign to their descendants the fruits of their victimization based on anti-Semitism.
David. The Jewish victims of Nazi racism had no choice about being on the receiving end of Nazi murder and slavery. No one asked them.
The Nazis and their collaborators active and passive (all being victimizers), as well as their descendants benefited and today still benefit from Nazi anti-Semitism. Every Jew who was wiped out meant that a non-Jew, particularly a German, was able to fill that space of opportunity thus denied to that Jew and his or her children.
It is not up to the German victimizers and their children to determine when reparations to the Jews are "enough". Those victimizers lost that right for themselves and their children when they committed these unspeakable crimes.
And it certainly is not up to you, a, I assume, non-Jew, to determine when these reparations are "enough". You are not the victim here.
You are, objectively, taking an anti-Semitic position.
Look in the mirror and say hi to David Duke.
fisher,
ReplyDeleteYour point is laughable only because you get to decide what days you want to be empowered and what days you want to be victim. And of course, there is no objective limitation as to when such a hustle must end. You want to write yourself an open-ended storyline that allows your hustle to remain unabated. And because you're a proud black nationalist like starnes, you have a difficult time in renouncing the truth of your hustle.
You hittin' that New Year's punch bowl early, Fish?
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "This is the classic anti-Semitic position which denies the victims of the Holocaust the sole determination of how they should to be made whole."
Damn right, the victims aren't the sole determiners of how they get made whole. Everything is a negotiation.
Both sides have to agree on the remedy. That's not anti-Semitism. That's practical politics.
thordaddy,
ReplyDeleteupped your game a little bit. I likes.
"shakedown" that's what reparations represent to you?
Welcome to Black folks' world.
After that, I don't know what else to say beyond what reginald and I have already said.
Come with a reason why reparations is a "shkedown" and we can rap.
Ding!
render...
ReplyDeleteI’m a Ben-Gurion style Zionist. I don’t miss what I never had and I work hard to earn and keep whatever I have.
I’m also an individualist. In that I do not hold all of 20th century Germany or all Germans responsible for the Holocaust. I fail to see why any German born after 1933 or so, should have to pay for something they didn’t do."
Render, it is your right as a Victims to decide how to be or if at all to be compensated for your victimhood.
If you decide not to receive reparations, so be it. If you decide to receive some reparations, so be it, if you decide to receive $200,000,000 per victim, so be it.
No one but you has the right to determine what will make you or your relatives whole. The fact that you lost your entire European branch of your family denied you opportunity, familiarity, family. It left you naked in so many ways. Now whether you are satisfied with that nudity or not is solely up to you. It is NOT up to the Victimizers and their descendants.
If one can pass on property and opportunity to one's descendants, then one can pass on responsibility. If one accepts the inheritance of property and opportunity passed on by one's ancestors, then one must also accept the responsibility one inherited.
It is very simple.
Now I asked you quite some time ago, how would you know that I, with a name like Michael Fisher, am not a Jew?
If I am, are you more qualified than I to determine whether this current or future generations of Jews should receive compensation for the crimes committed during the Shoa?
If I am not, that is if I am a non-Jewish black person, are you in any way form or fashion more qualified than I to make any determination whether past, current, or future generations of black folk should receive compensation for the more than 400 years of the black Holocaust?
Fisher - That was weak. You really need to upgrade your playbook to the 21st century version.
ReplyDeleteYou've got somebody claiming to be a Black man, shilling for David Duke's chosen presidential candidate on your own forum and you come over here to Dave's house to call him names?
Clean your own house first...
=
Since, for the moment at least I seem to be representing the Jewish viewpoint here, and Fisher does not...
You'll find me standing right next to Dave on this issue.
GAME
OVER,
R
David Mills...
ReplyDelete"Damn right, the victims aren't the sole determiners of how they get made whole. Everything is a negotiation."
Moral and practical law does not leave it up to the Victimizer to determine his or her punishment and restitution to the human community.
If someone ran up on you and beat you almost to death that perpetrator has no right to "negotiate" his or her punishment. That person's punishment it determined by law, and that law represents you, the victim and the human community that is being victimized by your victimization.
This is a very basic principle of what is called natural law and is supposed to be the basis of all systems of justice.
You commit a crime, you lose your rights to the extent to which you committed a crime.
If someone accepts the benefits accrued from the commitment of that crime, that someone is guilty as well. It is a very simple moral code. Anything else is moral chaos
starnes,
ReplyDeleteThe practical effect of reparations is clear. Not only is such a movement increasingly immoral, those who advocate it are increasingly immoral. You are claiming that money transfers will help "repair" past injustices. Yet, such a transfer must necessarily damage another innocent individual's future i.e., my children. And the more you advocate for money transfer as a means to correct past wrongs then the more you must accede to the idea that you are damaging another's future.
Not that it necessarily surprises me that you would sacrifice my kids for yours, but please don't think you can persuade me into adopting some sadomasochistic mentality as many other liberal whites have done.
This is the shakedown, bro.
Fisher – “Render, it is your right as a Victims to decide how to be or if at all to be compensated for your victimhood.”
ReplyDeleteR – umm no. Usually that “right” is reserved for an impartial judge. See Nuremberg Proceedings for further edification.
Fisher – “If you decide not to receive reparations, so be it. If you decide to receive some reparations, so be it, if you decide to receive $200,000,000 per victim, so be it.”
R – As I already stated, those decisions were not mine to make. They were made, for the most part, before I was born.
Fisher – “No one but you has the right to determine what will make you or your relatives whole. The fact that you lost your entire European branch of your family denied you opportunity, familiarity, family. It left you naked in so many ways. Now whether you are satisfied with that nudity or not is solely up to you. It is NOT up to the Victimizers and their descendants.”
R – Funny, I don’t feel unwholesome. Nor do I feel particularly nude. I have all new clothes that came from under the Hanukkah bush. For obvious reasons, I never knew the members of my European family tree, so I don’t particularly miss them. I note the facts of their passing and move on.
Fisher – “If one can pass on property and opportunity to one's descendants, then one can pass on responsibility. If one accepts the inheritance of property and opportunity passed on by one's ancestors, then one must also accept the responsibility one inherited.”
R – Are you responsible for the crimes of your forefathers, or your own father? I don’t think so, nor would I hold you accountable for them, if those crimes exist. We each make our own way in this world; we each pay our own price to survive here.
Fisher – “Now I asked you quite some time ago, how would you know that I, with a name like Michael Fisher, am not a Jew?”
R - I've been to your blog. I suppose you could be a Sammy Davis Jr. type, but I doubt it highly. If you are, you should consider re-writing that entire series of “Acting Black” posts you’ve got running over there, with a little more honesty this time.
Fisher – “If I am, are you more qualified than I to determine whether this current or future generations of Jews should receive compensation for the crimes committed during the Shoa?”
R – Nope. I can only speak for myself, about myself. But I do have a right to voice my own opinions on the matter. Dave said so…
Fisher – “If I am not, that is if I am a non-Jewish black person, are you in any way form or fashion more qualified than I to make any determination whether past, current, or future generations of black folk should receive compensation for the more than 400 years of the black Holocaust?”
R – See previous answer. Is my opinion null and void because of the color of my skin (indentured servitude was colorblind for much of its existence)? If so, what does that make you?
SLICE
&
DICE,
R
render...
ReplyDelete"Since, for the moment at least I seem to be representing the Jewish viewpoint here, and Fisher does not..."
Since you seem to be representing the Jewish viewpoint here and you do not represent the black one, you ought to keep your nose in your Jewish backyard and out of the Black backyard, then.
That is, since you figure I ain't qualified as far as the Jewish viewpoint is concerned, you, by that, your very own criterion are not qualified as far as the black viewpoint is concerned.
So, you shut up about black issues and I ain't gonna say nothing about Jewish issues.
Go Home.
render...
ReplyDelete"Is my opinion null and void because of the color of my skin (indentured servitude was colorblind for much of its existence)? If so, what does that make you?"
You opinion is your opinion, but you are not a victim of racism/white supremacy. Thus you are not qualified to make any determination whatsoever about being a victim of racism/supremacy and the consequences and reparations thereof. David Mills, Deangelo Starnes, Reginald Hudlin, and Michael Fisher are qualified, but you are not.
fisher,
ReplyDeleteYou say,
If someone accepts the benefits accrued from the commitment of that crime, that someone is guilty as well. It is a very simple moral code. Anything else is moral chaos
This is pure demagoguery. Under your moral code, crime has a residual benefit to ALL relatives/ancestors of those particular criminals. This means that the relatives/ancestors of Malvo and Lee are the eternal recipients of residual benefits due to their outlaw relative's crime spree. What reparations must the victims seek from them?
This represents moral chaos because there is no objective end to such a bottomless pit.
By the way, render.
ReplyDeleteWTF is a "Sammy Davis Jr. type"?
fisher,
ReplyDeleteSince starnes didn't answer, maybe you will? What's your shakedown price for being a victim?
Fisher wrote: "If someone accepts the benefits accrued from the commitment of that crime, that someone is guilty as well."
ReplyDeleteHere, Fisher, you just walked chin-first into Jim Collier's elbow.
Looking back on it now, we may consider slavery a "crime." But at the time it was being perpetrated, it wasn't. It was a worldwide practice.
I can imagine nothing more morally chaotic than adjudicating long-ago crimes by modern standards.
Daddy of All White Gods...
ReplyDelete"This represents moral chaos because there is no objective end to such a bottomless pit."
Says a beneficiary of the Black Holocaust...
Mr. Mills,
ReplyDeleteWhat other choice does fisher have? Anything else and his reparations argument falls to pieces.
fisher,
ReplyDeleteYou lack empirical evidence for your assertion. Yet, even if we were to grant you your view, all you have admitted is your willingness to sacrifice my children's future for the benefit of you and yours.
What you can't tell me is why I should be persuaded by your hustle?
Fisher told Render: "So, you shut up about black issues and I ain't gonna say nothing about Jewish issues. Go Home."
ReplyDeleteCome on now, Fish. In the first place, you can't throw nobody out of my house. And everybody is entitled to speak his piece here in the House of Love.
Deeper still, since this reparations notion involves money that is now in the hands of Render -- and all other U.S. citizens, regardless of color -- he's de facto a part of equation.
Everything is a negotiation.
Fish - Who do you think is going to pay those reparations?
ReplyDeleteAmerican taxpayers. Which includes all of us, regardless of skin color, except for the native American Indians, who do not pay taxes.
Your strawman arguement isn't going to work on me. You are entitled to voice your own opinion on Jewish issues and I've never stated you were not.
Who's name is on this blog?
I've already posted on your blog, and been responded to by the person claiming to be a Black man. That person is still defending David Duke. This is akin to a Jewish person defending Hitler. This is not impossible, but far from understandable (see Norman Finklestein).
Feel free to ban me from your own blog. But I'm an invited guest in this house and you don't have the power to make me leave.
Only Dave can do that.
4.21
IN THE
FORTY,
R
Daddy of All Wite Gods...
ReplyDeleteSince starnes didn't answer, maybe you will? What's your shakedown price for being a victim?
Shakedown price?
Let me see. How do you value the death of a single black women thrown overboard during the 400 years of triangular Atlantic slave trade? How do you value the denial of basic human rights to marry freely, work for the welfare of your children, the stealing of all your labor and that of your ancestors as well as you descendants?
How do you put a value on the psychological training of a human being as an animal?
I would think that if Black folks had received compensation for freely sold labor and been able to establish stable families on land we purchased relative new comers such as you and Render would not possess what you possess now. It would be mine. So by rights the first thing that should be done is to turn over all the wealth accumulated in and on behalf of the people, corporations and government of the United States. In turn we will work something out with the Native peoples to the extent to which they are fellow victims (though the Cherokee et al, since they made their pact with the Confederate Devils can go to hell).
Fish - Sammy Davis Jr. converted to Judaism in 1954.
ReplyDeleteWith or without that conversion, Sammy was a good man. That line was not intended to be insulting.
FLINCH
MUCH?,
R
fisher,
ReplyDeleteAgain, no one is surprised by your stance "to get what's mine." What is surprising is your insistence that your argument is persuasive. It's as though you really believe that white folks will throw their progeny "overboard" even as you rage about a system of white supremacy.
Mills...
ReplyDelete"Come on now, Fish. In the first place, you can't throw nobody out of my house. And everybody is entitled to speak his piece here in the House of Love."
Well I was speaking figuratively, David. If I don't ban anyone from the Assault including loonies like Nulan or our anonymous pet white supremacist, I certainly wouldn't dream of asking you to ban Render or anyone else.
Daddy White God...
ReplyDeleteIt's as though you really believe that white folks will throw their progeny "overboard"
You asked me for the price, I gave you the price. The fact that you don't like the price ain't my fault. I don't like slavery, Jim Crow, and this more refined White Supremacist shit that is going on these days either. So that's my price. You gonna pay up?
Fisher wrote: "I would think that if Black folks had received compensation for freely sold labor and been able to establish stable families on land we purchased..."
ReplyDeleteIf white plantation owners had to pay black workers a wage, Africans wouldn't have been brought to America in the first place. I mean, that was the whole point, right?
With that in mind, I propose a thought experiment: What if the U.S. government, in concert with certain corporations, wrote a reparations check to descendants of African slaves... but only those who agreed to then get out of the country and not come back?
Go to Liberia, go to Haiti, go to Canada, Gambia... anywhere but here. Since you wouldn't be here in the first place if not for that wicked system of chattel slavery.
Those black folks who want to stay in America get no reparations check; their citizenship was paid for by the free labor of their forefathers.
Either a check or continued U.S. citizenship... but not both.
Hell, you might even get a majority of white folks to go along with that plan, and kick in their money gladly.
You wanna balance the books, Fish? That's some book-balancing for you.
Fish - "...a victim of racism/white supremacy..."
ReplyDelete===
Have you ever looked at the anal seepage cesspools of Stormfront, VNN, or a thousand other putrid mucus pits like them?
I have (know thine enemy).
They lump both of us together Fisher, Black and Jew alike, they want both of us hanging from the same damn tree (Leo Frank).
===
Ain't that right Thordaddy? Looking at your blogroll...
CLICK
CLACK,
R
Mills...
ReplyDelete"Looking back on it now, we may consider slavery a "crime." But at the time it was being perpetrated, it wasn't. It was a worldwide practice."
Slavery was considered a moral crime back then (check out your boy Tommy Jefferson) and it is now.
By your reasoning, by the way, the Nazis, having created a "legal" framework for the persecution of non-Aryans did not commit any crimes either.
Fisher wrote: "Well I was speaking figuratively, David."
ReplyDeleteCame off kinda nasty and uncalled-for. That's all I'm saying.
I know we some elbow-throwing muthafuckas, but damn...
Fish - Your 6:51pm?
ReplyDeleteFair enough. I couldn't decide if you were being metaphorical or not.
Not an issue.
CARRY
ON,
R
Fish spake: "Slavery was considered a moral crime back then (check out your boy Tommy Jefferson) and it is now."
ReplyDeleteSo by your reasoning, the royal family of Benin is criminally liable for many thousands of acts of kidnapping?
A brotha goes out to buy some champagne and returns to see a cool discussion devolve.
ReplyDeletethordaddy, try DeAngelo. I'm trying to respect you even though you espouse nonrespectable viewpoints.
The call of the question was, in summation, whether a reparations check would be pyschological damaging to Black folks. The bill referenced in the question discussed a study.
Why the hostility to a study?
Cuz if the U.S. can spend billions on an amorphous "War Against Terror," it can spend some dough on a study to determine how to compensate the victims of slavery.
But like I said in an earlier post, there's this presumption of dysfunction for Black people.
So thordaddy, is that part of our DNA? And why the hostility if not?
Ding!
fisher,
ReplyDeleteThat's the point. I'm not going to pay and your part of the reason why. Your hustle ain't nothing new. Some might say it's older than the system of white supremacy. In fact, it might be the cause of it?
render,
Guilt by association...? That's a weak tactic these days when one's own words are all over the internet to perhaps substantiate your claim. Then again, perhaps not.
thordaddy,
ReplyDeletewhy is it a "hustle" to propose reparations for African Americans?
thordaddy,
ReplyDeleteI have to admit I've had to re-read your posts.
Because you are the type of muthafucka who advocates torture.
And I don't wanna be a victim of waterboarding cuz these posts are all I have to say.
But you reference the "immorality" of reparations. Is it me or does that premise come off as racist?
Keep it going, "homey".
Ding!
Thordaddy:
ReplyDelete[Renders Addendum to Godwin’s Law states that Godwin’s Law is superceded when the party in question actually are Nazi’s.]
In your case, you’re carrying not one, but two blogs that can be linked to neo-nazi and/or other White racists by as little as two degrees of separation, in Auster’s case perhaps as little as one degree.
But if you’re reading Auster’s blog, you already know I’ve said that about him. Repeatedly, and I stand by those words.
DISCOVERY
IS A
BITCH,
R
Render...
ReplyDelete"They lump both of us together Fisher, Black and Jew alike, they want both of us hanging from the same damn tree (Leo Frank)."
No they don't. They consider us the foolish apeish marionettes in the hands of Jewish overlords.
Mr. Fischer, your timing of the arrival of morality vis-a-vis the Atlantic slave trade is off. Trade first. Morality second, and even then at a dribble. I don't really care about TJefferson, but rather the rule of law in place in West Africa, where the 'crime' first occurred.
ReplyDeleteMills...
ReplyDelete"So by your reasoning, the royal family of Benin is criminally liable for many thousands of acts of kidnapping?"
Absolutely. The Empire of Dahomey (Benin)(the Fon) was built on the torture and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Africans. The Dahomey/Fon royals are reported to still be proud of their treacherous role in the slave trade. Without these bastards the Europeans would have had a much harder time of it.
heh...
ReplyDeleteFish, to them I am a Jewish overlord and while I might call you foolish or a marionette, I would never call you "apelike," that just wouldn't be prudent.
===
Gentlemen, (even you thordaddy and fish), I'm out for the evening. It's been stimulating, but it's almost big ball time and I gotta call a woman about some fish...
CYA,
R
render, I really like your style - even when we might disagree.
ReplyDeleteRender...
ReplyDelete"heh...
Fish, to them I am a Jewish overlord and while I might call you foolish or a marionette, I would never call you 'apelike,' that just wouldn't be prudent."
Oh, so what these openly white supremacists advocate is a joke to you?
And how does that make you different from them as far as black folks are concerned?
starnes,
ReplyDeleteIt's a "hustle" because you are asking me to damage mine in order to benefit yours. And since you're black and I'm white then "hustle" seems like an appropriate characterization.
If you believe in the zero-sum game then you must die by it. One man's reparations is another man's violent subjugation. If money is a means of your renewal then taking that money from me is a means of my destruction.
This is why starnes and fisher's hustle is so weak.
"James C. Collier...
ReplyDelete"Mr. Fischer, your timing of the arrival of morality vis-a-vis the Atlantic slave trade is off."
Mr. Collier, you ever heard of Bartoleme de las Casas and the moral grounds upon which he advocated the use of Africans as slaves instead of the natives of the Caribbean?
And when was that?
render,
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be better to use my own words in this age of the Internet? Guilt by association is weak especially when you don't name names.
starnes,
ReplyDeleteI would even advocate waterboarding or worse if it meant saving Harlem or Compton from nuclear fallout. Apparently, you wouldn't?
Mills...
ReplyDelete"Those black folks who want to stay in America get no reparations check; their citizenship was paid for by the free labor of their forefathers."
And who paid for the citizenship of the white folks? The compensated for labor of their forefathers?
You setting up a two-tier system here, David.
m.fisher: you confuse initiating discourse with trailing law, by which we govern our freedoms and seek justice. The morality and laws that reflected a W.African willingness to die to protect their brothers was simply nowhere in sight. I give you in consolation, and with resources in short supply, that selling your competitor was the added moral 'step up', from killing him outright so that your tribe would eat.
ReplyDeleteJames C. Collier...
ReplyDelete"m.fisher: you confuse initiating discourse with trailing law, by which we govern our freedoms and seek justice. The morality and laws that reflected a W.African willingness to die to protect their brothers was simply nowhere in sight."
First off you have not answered my question.
Second, I was talking about the moral laws of the European slave trading nations since you challenged me on those same laws.
Third there were plenty of moral and actual laws against the slave trade in West Africa (e.g. the Bakongo King Afonso and, above all, the Mbundu Queen Nzinga).
m.fisher: I am not challenging that people of the day spoke against slavery, or even made laws, but even so those laws were not worth their paper, evidenced in our mass arrival in the Americas, via the complicity of Africans and Europeans. The litmus test for the rule of law is the willingness to adhere to and defend it, against all comers. Morality is only meaningful inasmuch as it influences laws with bite this side of the discussion with St.Peter. The Queen of England thought slavery was morally wrong but was unable to pass up the profit of it, so what good was her morality? Same went for Africans. Greed trumps morality everyday, and twice on Sunday.
ReplyDeletethordaddy,
ReplyDeleteI don't like to call names.
But ...
you're a racist ass pig.
Deal with that.
Ding!
I got little pissed off, y'all.
ReplyDeleteThat ain't me.
Sorry.
starnes,
ReplyDeleteAgain, you lack adequate evidence for your assertion as you couldn't point to one racist thing I've said. I look forward to your feeble attempts to substantiate your claim.
If there is something you dispute then please bring it forward. You want to stay on topic, but the question by Mr. Mills assumed a check was in the mail. I am trying to convince you that no such check exists, now or in the future, to which you will immorally gain at the detriment of innocent others.
By insisting that personal ill-gotten gain at the expense of another innocent individual is "justice," you undercut your entire argument for the immorality of slavery. You also undercut your entire argument for reparations.
Again, your hustle is weak.
thordaddy,
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna play for a minute.
"Moral" and "hustle" seem to be the basis of your comments.
I asked you to specify.
At least twice during this thread.
So it's "immoral" for slave descendents to be compensated for the unpaid labor headstart white folks got the benefit of?
It's a "hustle"?
Being the competitive person I am, I would be ashamed to get that kind of head start.
My conscience wouldn't allow me to sleep.
So you want evidence of a head start?
Before we get into the sheer avalanche of numbers, do you deny slavery existed?
It's easy to sit back and talk shit when you've had the advantage for so long.
And when you can fool Black folks into talking the same game you're talking, real intelligent ones, that's the true hustle.
Immorality? If your kids can't make it given the head start that they have, that says something about you.
Any white person that can't kick ass under this system should be ashamed as a failure.
A nonwhite person kicking ass is a genius.
If I could make up the rules and enforce the made-up rules, I'd be a baad rich muthafucka, too.
The fact that this is even a debate demonstrates the genius of nonwhite folks.
Ding! to thordaddy.
render,
ReplyDeletelike your style.
But ...
what's your beef with Finklestein?
Ding! to you.
Happy New Year, Folks!
ReplyDeleteNow,
James C. Collier...
"I will vote for slavery reparations when someone shows me a law, either in Africa or the US, that was broken, and how the injured entities, as in the case of tribes, endure today. Otherwise, we are revising history with today's moral [emphasis added] and legal standards, and that just don't work in our constitution.
And then...
"The Queen of England thought slavery was morally [emphasis added] wrong but was unable to pass up the profit of it"
Thus, according to you, Sir, today's moral standards were very well yesterday's moral standards.
However, on balance all of that is irrelevant to the issue anyhow.
M.Fisher: I agree. Rather than using exceptions that prove nothing, I like long-term averages, in k years. Both the technology achievement and rule of law indices of the UN Development Program peg SubSAfrica at the absolute bottom of the planet, consistent with the persistence of every malady of environment and mankind, including slavery from within/out. I submit that blacks are not better off feeling a special debt owed based on enslavement behaviors that were typical to their context at the time. and Happy New Year to you too!
ReplyDeletestarnes,
ReplyDeleteSlavery existed and stills exists. In fact, if one is a believer in modern evolutionary theory then it was almost certainly your African ancestors that invented the practice and carried on with its exploits for thousands of years before any white system of supremacy.
So now you are attempting to capitalize off an immoral practice brought forth by your ancestors. There is no explanation as to why your account of history is so narrow and myopic other than to suggest that you're running some kind of hustle.
In addition, you inexplicably suggest that setting up a system that advantages your own is immoral. Could you elaborate further on that?
You ask,
So it's "immoral" for slave descendents to be compensated for the unpaid labor headstart white folks got the benefit of?
Especially immoral if it was indeed your ancestors that not only invented the practice, but sold your ancestors into slavery. It seems that if you want to be consistent, at a minimum, you should be advocating for those riches from the sales of your ancestors. Is this a part of the starnes and fisher argument?
Secondly, can you give empirical evidence for this "headstart" my kids have enjoyed at the expense of starnes, the eternal victim?
hordaddy,
ReplyDeleteDeAngelo, muthafucka! DeAngelo!
Talking in broad, sweeping terms like "immorality" and "hustle" doesn't advance the argument.
The empirical evidence exists right now.
The problem for you seems to be the existence of Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking trailer park folks.
And I ain't talking FEMA trailers.
With the headstart slavery gave YOUR ancestors, answer me why you ain't doing some Bill Gates shit?
Or are your balls that small?
Ding!
starnes,
ReplyDeleteI don't drink beer and your retorts are falling well short of anything that would allow me to respond. If you think your ill-gotten gain at the expense of an innocent other is moral then we have different definitions of morality.
You continue to want to play eternal victim yet make no acknowledgment of the fact that your ancestors almost certainly invented slavery and then sold your fellow brothers and sisters for a profit. Are you looking to dig into that profit?
Why does your recount of history start so late in the game? If my children are direct beneficiaries of slavery then you have no one else to thank and/or condemn than your long lost ancestors. They made your eternal victimization possible and yet you want to deny it with all your heart and brains. Unfortunately, some of us are more honest about historical transgressions.
Halftime, like a muthafucka!
ReplyDeletewhoredaddy, I like you in a perverse sort of way.
You tell me why "reparations" is an immoral concept, and I'll launch stats.
It seems it's me and you - toe-to-toe, at this point.
A'ight, homey?
Back to the Rose Bowl.
Ding!
Dave -
ReplyDeleteWow, thangs been poppin' since I last posted. Does that mean NO ONE here had plans for New Years?
Anyway, in your last post to me, you asked if me getting that money would elevate my feelings of self worth. Uh, yeah, I would be worth more, and that ALWAYS makes me feel good.
Furthermore, when bringing up WEB DuBois and the Niagra crew you pose this false choice between personal responsibility and getting what's mine to get ahead.
I've "done the right thing" my whole life. So have you. You keep trying to tie this thing back to black folks being "worthy". Not only are most black folks good, hard working people, that's not the point. Hell, if I steal money from a crackhead, that's his money. He doesn't need to detox for me to owe him.
As for why it wasn't an agenda item back then - damn, if are goals aren't different now, that would be truly pathetic. It's the 21st century! It's a different playing field!
As for "the rules", well, clearly there are none. However, I think a well managed large infusion of cash into the black community would be good for black people, good for the country and good for the world.
Where do we get the money from? Didn't we just trick off a trillion dollars fighting an unwinnable war that doesn't even provide cheap gas? Where did THAT money come from?
starnes,
ReplyDeleteOn what grounds, in this particular case, is a money transfer, i.e., reparations, flowing from my children to starnes, moral?
You have to first lead with two suppositions:
1. My children, by way of their whiteness, are eternally guilty.
2. Starnes, by way of his blackness, is eternally victimized.
This is basis for your entire argument yet both are self-evidently false. You are neither God nor does a belief in evolution allow such conclusions.
So what exactly is the basis for your "justice?"
In addition, if we are to concede that you are a "victim" and my children are "guilty" then you must accede to the fact that your ancestors are almost certainly the root cause of this debacle. Meaning, your victim status is the making of your own people with my children being nothing more than an involuntary by-product.
Your claim for reparations is immoral because you lack consistency, forthrightness and pick and choose which aspects of history will help you secure what you believe you are entitled to.
Reparations is an immoral pursuit because you are knowingly attempting to damage an innocent other in order to profit for yourself. Can I be any more clear?
Thordaddy, I take umbrage with your slander that Africans 'invented' slavery. This is wrong. Slavery came to the more quickly advancing societies of Eurasia, rather than Africa. Get that shit right, or don't be surprised that you catch the racist label. And for the record, I don't give a damn who the first slaver was - there is no point to be made except to keep shit stinking.
ReplyDeleteJames Collier,
ReplyDeleteMy assertion was qualified. Meaning, if one believes in modern evolutionary theory then one must accept its logical conclusions. Are you a believer in MET? If so, then your umbrage doesn't hold much weight because the theory almost certainly suggests that the origination of slavery paralleled the emergence of man in the heart of Africa.
If you are not a believer in MET, then the origination of slavery as a particular practice makes all the difference in assessing these modern claims of guilt and victimization.
Either way, if we are to assess the arguments of starnes and fisher then it must be known as to what unknown understandings they bring to this debate.
And correct if I'm wrong, but how does suggesting that your ancestors invented the practice of slavery a racist remark? Please explain in something other than you don't like my conclusions?
Anon/Reginald wrote: "As for 'the rules', well, clearly there are none."
ReplyDeleteHence, it's a negotiation. Which means if you can't cop, it ain't yours to have. And the only way you gon' cop is to convince the majority (a.k.a. Whitey) to un-ass those trillions.
How's it going with that? Because black partisans are a long, long way from convincing any but the most radical white folks that reparations is just.
Hence, my original premise: the cultural damage done by believing black people are owed money by white society. Because the deeper you believe that, the more you must resent Whitey for not agreeing and acquiescing... thus further marginalizing blacks from the political and intellectual mainstream of American life.
"However, I think a well managed large infusion of cash into the black community would be good for black people, good for the country and good for the world.
"Where do we get the money from? Didn't we just trick off a trillion dollars fighting an unwinnable war that doesn't even provide cheap gas?"
You know what's funny about this? Paragraph 2 disproves Paragraph 1. The Iraq War is fresh evidence that throwing a trillion dollars at a problem doesn't necessarily fix it. And might fuck it up more.
Why, then, this almost religious faith that a "large infusion of cash" will be the salvation of black America?
You said in one of your first comments, Reg, that it takes generations to learn the science of money, and how to invest it and all that stuff. Would Reparation Check Day be but the first step in a generations-long evolution of black folks as economic players? Best possible scenario... and black folks still be lagging.
And even then, I bet the black-nationalist impulse would still be to face the possibility that the fault lies not in our scars but in ourselves.
^ I meant to say: the impulse would still be NOT to face the possibility, etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteWow! Is New Year's Day the shit or what?
ReplyDeleteMy personal #1 team, USC, just proved how baad they were!
Michigan put on a good show, too.
whoredaddy,
1. if your children think like you, our society doesn't have chance.
2. we don't feel sorry for ourselves. we just want justice.
I'm tired of body-slamming you though. And Hawaii is on the tube.
So I guess we're going to have agree to disagree.
starnes,
ReplyDeleteYou don't want "justice." You want a payout. You ain't fooling anyone. Reparations as a movement doesn't mean anything without the payout.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteSo hundreds of years of unpaid Black labor didn't give these muthafuckas a head start?
Love the Chocolate City quote, but you're coming off like an apologist, brotha.
But we can agree one thing. The theft can't be quantified. And so a check can't be written because the amount can't be filled in.
The point of HR 40 was a study to come to a determination.
Now do you oppose the study?
Ding!
whoredaddy,
ReplyDeleteis you that synonym for Rush or Bill O'Reilly?
I, DeAngelo, doesn't need a payout.
But fuck money. There's a blood debt owed.
Now can you get to that? And are you willing to pay with the children you like to throw in this mix?
Ding! to thordaddy.
starnes,
ReplyDeleteYou're exposing yourself now. Sure, there are some pathetic white folks susceptible to your hustle, but I'm just not one of them. No reason to revert to some primitive state because you can't con all of us. I think that's what we call a "hater."
thordaddy,
ReplyDeletePoint taken. No more insults.
Georgia is KILLING Hawaii.
We can agree to disagree.
But the point about blood debt stands.
I take the nicety back, thordaddy.
ReplyDeleteWhen are you going to explain the "immorality" and "hustle" of my position?
"Hustle" presupposes there is no validity to the position.
Have you, as a white person, benefitted from the headstart slavery has provided you?
If not, what does that say about you and your intelligence or ability?
Ding! Jerry Quarry.
Thordaddy, I'm still against reparations for reasons given, but I'm tired of you throwing around that 'your people invented it' shit and are the 'root cause of this debacle' argument. You disarm your point when you slip in shit like its invisible. Internal slavery stuck when societies could feed and control the captured, and this occurred around the Fertile Crescent long before still-starving-today Africa.
ReplyDeleteThe question was thus "Isn’t it psychologically and culturally damaging for black people to walk around believing that the American society owes them money?"
ReplyDeleteDavid, you then continued as such:
"Because the deeper you believe that, the more you must resent Whitey for not agreeing and acquiescing... thus further marginalizing blacks from the political and intellectual mainstream of American life."
David, if blacks are marginalized from the political and intellectual mainstream of American life ("further marginalized") what color is the political and intellectual mainstream of American life?
Dave, if you're saying "hey, she's not going to give me her phone number, so to hell with her she ain't cute anyway", that's a little different.
ReplyDeleteBut I have learned the hard way that the cute girl often goes out with the guy who has the balls to ask her out.
So if you see another hit on her with weak game, do you say "I got no shot" or do you figure out what the winning scenario is and put it in action?
Because everyone successful person I know does the latter. There's a difference between daydreaming and pre-visualization of success.
Of course shit is hard. No is giving away money. But what isn't hard?
And yes, even with the money, there's still a host of problems in our community. But those problems will have to be addressed anyway. But money gets you better doctors.
starnes,
ReplyDeleteIf your ancestors original condition was one of slavery and now it is one of freedom then it seems that you have received the genuine head start. And because my ancestors were not slaves and have been free then what head start have I really received? Your burdens have been somewhat alleviated as mine have remained the same or grown greater. Not only am I responsible for my own, but now I am responsible for starnes and his own. Again, what is the head start you speak of?
james collier,
You can tire all you want, but someone brought the practice of slavery into this world and if you're a secularist with a belief in modern evolutionary theory then one has little recourse when talking about reparations, payouts and "blood debts" especially as a black man descended from Africa.
Did blacks from Africa introduce slavery or not? I don't think this is a question that can be brushed aside when talking of reparations and "blood debts."
David, let's put this thing in practical term. No offense. But this is your statement:
ReplyDelete"Because the deeper you believe that, the more you must resent Whitey for not agreeing and acquiescing... thus further marginalizing blacks from the political and intellectual mainstream of American life."
In practical terms you, David Mills, who believes that it is "psychologically and culturally damaging for black people to walk around believing that the American society owes them money" are a black TV screen writer and in practical terms Reginald who believes that it is not "psychologically and culturally damaging for black people to walk around believing that the American society owes them money" is the black President of a TV network.
No offense, David, but, bottom line, who has to pitch a story to whom?
Therefore, who is further away from the mainstream (power center) of American life? Who is more marginalized?
Is it you, black TV screen writer or Reginald, the black President of a TV network?
Do you think that was an accident?
"Power concedes nothing without a demand". Frederick Douglass.
There is nothing in that statement that says "A just demand alienates from power (mainstream)."
No it was not an accident.
In practical terms, the Hudlins are where they are because they, as far as I recall, did not hesitate to make just demands.
It was the same with the late George Jackson, the same with Dick Griffey, the same with Clarence Avant, and the same with yours truly.
It has been my experience that certain white folks do not respect black people who fail to make a just demand. They may not like it, they may grumble about it, they may try to trick us, but they know that at some point in time they are going to have to do business with us, the black people who make just demands.
They do not have to do business with people who make no such demands. And why should they?
The only time they do do business with people that do not make just demands is when other such people pop up that do make such just demands.
Thus even if you became president of a TV network tomorrow and could pitch stories to yourself, you would only be in such a position because someone else black has made a just demand.
And it is here where lay the the answer to your question, the answer being.
"Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand".
That doesn't mean that you have to be impolite in making the demand, but as long as it is just, the demand ought to be made. Once made, you'll see results.
Thordaddy - Whereas you seem smug to reject reparations as some form of payback for your view of African invention of slavery, I reject reparations simply because slavery was not invented but was rather a spontaneous common result of competition for survival, deserving of no special status. There is no place for racism to hide in my logic - not so sure with yours.
ReplyDeletefisher,
ReplyDeleteWhat's the "just demand," bro...? That I sacrifice my children's future so you can get yours? Silly me, but that sounds something like insanity especially in regards to the system of white supremacy you keep talking about.
If you're given a payout then how legitimate are your claims of white racism? Likewise, if such a system exists than how can a payout from whitey benefit you?
james collier,
I'm not following you. If slavery emerged as a byproduct of the earliest evolution of man (African man) then how in the reparations movement does such knowledge factor? Apparently, it doesn't. Why not though?
Georgia like a muthafucka!
ReplyDeleteFolks talked that Hawaii shit.
Just the same as thordaddy.
It's looking like a shutout.
This one's got the juice of a dead grape until you answer why a study's a bad idea, Dave.
Give this topic life, or let's move on.
And thordaddy all you can do is come out the corner for more shots.
thoraddy,
ReplyDeleteam i the threat?
or your inadequateness?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletethordaddy...
ReplyDelete"That I sacrifice my children's future so you can get yours?"
As one can see, the criterion here is not justice but the future of his children, be that future ensured by injustice or not.
What makes you "white", Thordaddy?
fisher,
ReplyDeleteYou're more than welcome to articulate in what way my children's future is "ensured by injustice" due to my lack of handing you money?
As for what makes me white...? It has to be the black man's hustle you're trying to pull off.
How about you give me money based on the principle that you asked it of me, first? I mean, if a dude just gives you money based on some slick-tongued demagoguery then you have to be hard-pressed to turn away his request for the same?
fisher and starnes,
ReplyDeleteThe one argument neither of you will broach, because it requires you to accept the notion that your pursuit for reparations is inherently immoral, is the fact that you must harm before you prosper.
There are, of course, consequences to such a frame of mind. In order to give it morality, the thing harmed must be guilty and the chance to prosper must seem more than speculative.
Not only does this toxic ideology condemn an entire race, it does so eternally. In addition, it provides very little empirical evidence that any significant money transfer will have the desired effect, namely, bring the black community on par with the white community.
So obviously, only the most self-hating and economically ignorant white person would be susceptible to this message. Or, just rich white liberals. LOL!
In short, you are doing exactly what you accuse the slave masters of doing. Yet, you don't seem to care whether such an action will have the same repercussions. After all, we will only be following the principles you espoused.
ReplyDeleteYoung, ignorant blacks that follow your racial screed may be doing much more damage than they ever could imagine all because the racial demagogues did little to teach real history.
If you think taking a man's money through racial hucksterism and to the detriment of his children and family will have nothing but positive effects then you're a second-rate hustler. Only a fool would buy that snake oil. Sounds like you think you have a lot of fools to sell to...?
As for what makes me white...? It has to be the black man's hustle you're trying to pull off.
ReplyDeleteWhat made you "white" before you ran into Deangelo's and my "hustle"?
"Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand."
ReplyDeleteBut the demand itself concedes power to the other side. Hence, the psychological harm of black folks walking around believing that they're owed money. (Or, worse, a "blood debt.")
I think I have illustrated why reparations for slavery is an unjust demand. (Your great-great-great-grandparents suffer; you wanna gets paids.)
So this is what's wrong with Conyers's proposal of "just a study," DeAngelo. To waste time studying what we already surmise is an unjust demand, it just adds to the pyschological and cultural distraction of black folks believing that if only Whitey would do us right, then things would be better.
Whereas the power to make things better resides only within black people ourselves. Reg doesn't have his gig because somebody Mau-Maued the Man. He's got his gig because his parents embraced and passed on to him the values of education, law-abidingness and work.
We're coming to the end of this discussion. Nothing to be said on either side that hasn't been said already.
Thordadday: I contend that slavery was not invented anywhere, but rather was/is a milestone that each society passes through (hopefully), as part of its evolution. It is natural, like eating, sleeping, and farting. But as with passing gas, or homicide, we also evolved rules for it. You accuse others of trying to guilt 'whitey', and I agree, but you are no different in assigning blame/guilt to Africans for slavery and using this as support of rejecting their arguments. Pot calling the kettle black, so to speak.
ReplyDeletenice finish David. good run.
ReplyDeleteDavey Dave,
ReplyDeleteyou a baad dude.
Thanks for the opportunity and forum.
The best way to end a round is to agree to disagree.
I got my next question lubricated and primed.
Let me know when to drop it.
Jerry Quarry, my hands hurt from beating that ass.
Ding! Round over. Good job, Dave.
Mills...
ReplyDelete"He's got his gig because his parents embraced and passed on to him the values of education, law-abidingness and work."
First, what's "mau-mauing" according to your definition?
Secondly, your statement above says that the parents of those black folks who do not have a gig "like Reginald's" did not or did not sufficiently pass on to their children the values of education, law-abidingness, and work.
Which would suggest that your parents did not do quite as good a job as Reginald's (or mine, for that matter).
The fact is, however, that neither I, nor my co-student, Warrington Hudlin, got into Yale because of the educational, work, and law-abidingness both of our parent's undoubtedly imbued us with, but because the black community made just demands. Else Yale would've been flooded with black students for centuries because the vast majority of black people have always striven to inculcate their children with the understanding that they need to be educated, work ten times as hard as a white person, and abide by the law, (even when the law was unjust - if only to survive).
But the demand itself concedes power to the other side.
Power is power. Either one has it or one doesn't. The fantasy that white folks collectively do not possess power in this country or on this planet is the first step to preventing non-white people in general and people of African descent in particular from acquiring autonomous power and the establishment of a system of justice.
wow,
ReplyDeletea few punches thrown after the bell.
But good blows they were, fisher.
I like your style, brotha.
Interesting thread. I've been on vacation so just seeing all this.
ReplyDeleteLet me, for the record, toss out a couple of bombs for and against reparations:
1. AGAINST
All those white folk with "hidden" black blood and/or quadroons and octoroons passing for white who have benefited from the system of whiteness would all of sudden pop up and admit their DNA and make a mockery of the relief sought to those who suffered, and there would be no way to stop that tide. Some food for thought.
An argument against the practical, but much more of a problem that where the money comes from, IMHO.
2. FOR
The real important period of history to study in terms of harm to modern day black folk is not slavery, but the 60-70 years after slavery - but with serious focus on the first 14 of those years during Reconstruction.
All those things, Dave, that you ask of Black folks -- up you mighty race, hard work, businesses, capital formation -- all that was done in a major way. As many or more Black congressmen then than now. More black banks then than now - on and on.
Since then, every major attempt of Blacks to succeed as a group has been thwarted. Entire black towns in the West burned to the ground. Railroads re-routed so as not to bring supplies or dollars to mostly black towns. Black farms being taken - today. Black soldiers not allowed to fight in combat and win the mental victory of honor fighting for their country. Redlining as a federal law. Blacks unable to participate in Homesteading or qualify for post WW2 loans. $1 a wekk insurance scams. The list goes on and on.
40 Acres and a Mule is more than a concept. Land ownership (or the lack of it and policies directed toward black folk to limit us from it specifically) is at the very heart of the discrepancies between Black and white wealth. Most white families have wealth and access to capital because of inheritance, most of that coming from housing bought with federal assistance after WW2 in programs for which black were ineligible or unfavored. We got screwed in a much more lasting and impactful way far after the free labor business.
Forget about slavery, it's the hard working black folk of the first half of the 20th century and last 20 years of the 19th who couldn't catch a break no matter how much they tried or believed in uplift and education. They deserve reparations for institutional racism.
Should I get reparations? No. Should my Mama and all her generation and those before who are still living? Abso-fucking-lutely. Even if it's just free health care and tax relief or no interest home loans.
Only Anonymous because I can't remember my freakin' password.
fisher and starnes,
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't broach the inherent immorality of your reparations pursuit, either. Put this thing to sleep and devise better schemes to uplift your fellow black man. At least devise a scheme that doesn't purposely destroy before any promise of restoration.
e money,
ReplyDeletegood catch on the folks during the immediate aftermath of slavery.
I guess that's why there was so much lynching.
(larry merchant commentary after the bout.)
Just have to add one postscript:
ReplyDeleteWhen the British abolished slavery, the British government did pay reparations... to the owners, for the loss of their property. Now ain't that a bitch?
Mills...
ReplyDeleteJust have to add one postscript:
When the British abolished slavery, the British government did pay reparations... to the owners, for the loss of their property. Now ain't that a bitch?
Yeah, and Haiti had to pay reparations to France for kicking their slave-masters out in 1804, reparations which were not paid of until 143 years later, in 1947.
^ Damn, Fisher. I did not know this.
ReplyDeletePayment to slaveholders for the loss of their 'property' seems jacked-up under today's moral standards, but was consistent with laws on the books at the time. This is why revisionism only works in the movies.
ReplyDelete^ Except, Jim, that the very abolition of slavery would seem to acknowledge that the status of Africans as "property" was illegitimate. Why then reward those "property"-owners beyond what they were rewarded for all that free labor?
ReplyDeleteSounds to me like a pay-off for political peace... or something. I'd like to explore the realpolitik of reparations to slave-owners.
D: You and I might think change of law implies proof of illegitimacy, but this is not the case. If the death penalty, by example, is banned or unbanned through moral influence, prior instances of it do not become unlawful or even immoral. Rather, the change of the law is simply society changing its mind, not to fix the past, but to better the future. Changing laws is not the same as repairing 'damage' from laws broken, I suppose. This reminds us that laws are minimum functions (generally) and limited tools.
ReplyDeleteMills...
ReplyDelete"Damn, Fisher. I did not know this."
Well, you think Haiti's poverty was an accident?
Imagine Israel paying reparations to Germany for 143 years because Germany's privilege of killing and enslaving Jews was violently removed.