I agree....Actually, money applied to problems can create change.Does anyone really believe that ten generations of oppression can be erased in a single generation? I think the past is written in stone and nothing can change it. What we must do is ensure everyone has a decent start in life: a home, a family, food, health care, and education. There is no magic bullet that money will bring."It's no secret that Jewish people were enslaved by Egyptian Pharaohs to do backbreaking labor building monuments and the pyramids. In the spirit of reparations, it would seem logical that Israel should demand reparations from Egypt to atone for their original sin. I believe this claim is every bit as valid as the current call for reparations for Black slavery in America. If you disagree, state clearly why Israel's claim would not be valid."
Silly season never ends in this forum. I know what is coming and it's going to be the same crazy from the same people.
The MODERN Case for Reparations Pt.1
“What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget--is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it. It is time now to turn with all the purpose at our command to the major unfinished business of this nation. It is time to adopt strategies for action that will produce quick and visible progress. It is time to make good the promises of American democracy to all citizens-urban and rural, white and black, Spanish-surname, American Indian, and every minority group.”1.
Kerner Commission Report
. Now before I go any further, let us review some definitions from Merriam Webster.
Definition of fact: 1 a: something that has actual existence. b: an actual occurrence. 2: a piece of information presented as having objective reality. 3: the quality of being actual. 4: a thing done. b archaic: action. c obsolete: feat
Definition of opinion:1 a: a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter. 2 a: belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge. b: a generally held view. 3 a: a formal expression of judgment or advice by an expert. b: the formal expression (as by a judge, court, or referee) of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based.
Definition of delusion:1 a: something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated. b psychology: a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also: the abnormal state marked by such beliefs. 2: the act of tricking or deceiving someone the state of being deluded.
Definition of empirical:1: originating in or based on observation or experience. 2: relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory. 3: capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment. 4: of or relating to empiricism.
I present these definitions because so much of racism is based in delusions, yet it has been shown that if something is said often enough and not challenged, people will believe it whether true or not. This has been the foundation on which racism has been built. Consistently throughout this thread. you will be shown examples based on something that has actual existence, originating in or based on observation or experience, relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory, and capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experience.
On July 28, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. The more common name for this is The Kerner Commission. This commission was tasked to answer three basic questions pertaining to the racial unrest in American cities: What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again? It is common knowledge how this commission deemed that two separate Americas existed, one for whites, the other for blacks.
On February 26, 2018, 50 years after the Kerner Commission findings, the Economic Policy Institute published a report evaluating the progress of the black community since the Kerner Report was released. It was based on a study done by the Economic Policy Institute that compared the progress of the black community with the condition of the black community at the time of the Kerner Commission. Titled “50 years after the Kerner Commission,” the study’s central premise was that there had been some improvements in the situation blacks faced but there were still disadvantages blacks faced that were based on race. These are some of the findings:
African Americans today are much better educated than they were in 1968 but still lag behind whites in overall educational attainment. More than 90 percent of younger African Americans (ages 25 to 29) have graduated from high school, compared with just over half in 1968—which means they’ve nearly closed the gap with white high school graduation rates. They are also more than twice as likely to have a college degree as in 1968 but are still half as likely as young whites to have a college degree.
The substantial progress in educational attainment of African Americans has been accompanied by significant absolute improvements in wages, incomes, wealth, and health since 1968. But black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers, African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites, and the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family.
With respect to homeownership, unemployment, and incarceration, America has failed to deliver any progress for African Americans over the last five decades. In these areas, their situation has either failed to improve relative to whites or has worsened. In 2017 the black unemployment rate was 7.5 percent, up from 6.7 percent in 1968, and is still roughly twice the white unemployment rate. In 2015, the black homeownership rate was just over 40 percent, virtually unchanged since 1968, and trailing a full 30 points behind the white homeownership rate, which saw modest gains over the same period. And the share of African Americans in prison or jail almost tripled between 1968 and 2016 and is currently more than six times the white incarceration rate.2
Following up on this, Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute wrote an op ed published in the February 28th edition of the New York Daily News entitled, “50 years after the Kerner Commission, minimal racial progress.” It had been 50 years since the commission made their recommendations at that point, yet Rothstein makes this statement: “So little has changed since 1968 that the report remains worth reading as a near-contemporary description of racial inequality.”3 There is a reason little has changed.
The commission recommended solutions based on the following 3 principles: 1.“To mount programs on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems.” 2.”To aim these programs for high impact in the immediate future in order to close the gap between promise and performance.” 3.“To undertake new initiatives and experiments that can change the system of failure and frustration that now dominates the ghetto and weakens our society.”4
With all due respect, I do not believe the members of the commission truly understood the real size of the problem. As of today, principle number 1 has yet to be met. In order for a societal problem to be solved, there must be a will consensual among all to solve the problem by any means necessary. Not by a half measure here and a half measure there. Principle number 1 was to create programs equal to the dimension of the problem. That’s a laudable goal, but the dimension of the problem in 1967 was 191 years of denied income, education, housing and wages. What series of programs could be proposed to a nation where half the people believed that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice?”
As a result of this study the commission identified 12 `grievances common in the communities they visited: “1. Police practices 2. Unemployment and underemployment 3. Inadequate housing. 4. Inadequate education 5. Poor recreation facilities and programs 6. Ineffectiveness of the political structure and grievance mechanisms. 7. Disrespectful white attitudes 8. Discriminatory administration of justice 9. Inadequacy of federal programs 10. Inadequacy of municipal services 11. Discriminatory consumer and credit practices 12. Inadequate welfare programs.”6
Americans would be hard pressed to say the grievances presented by the commission do not still exist. Martin Luther King called it over 50 years ago. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” Had Johnson spent the billions he wasted in Vietnam on programs suggested by the Kerner Commission, many of the problems blacks face today would be reduced or eliminated. The Kerner Commission report is perhaps the finest government study done on race in the history of this nation. As I wrote earlier, there is a reason why Rothstein came to his conclusion. We are now more than 50 years past the Kerner Commission findings. There has been little progress because at no level of government or society has America met even the first principle of the Kerner Commission.
“To mount programs on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems.”This was 1968 and the second study that concluded: So little has changed since 1968 that the report remains worth reading as a near-contemporary description of racial inequality.” was done in 2018. Reparations are not about slavery.
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), pg.1. http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf
Janelle Jones, John Schmitt, Valerie Wilson, “50 years after the Kerner Commission,” Economic Policy Institute, February 26, 2018, 50 years after the Kerner Commission: African Americans are better off in many ways but are still disadvantaged by racial inequality
Richard Rothstein, “50 years after the Kerner Commission, minimal racial progress.”, New York Daily News, February 28, 2018
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), pg.2. http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), pg.7. http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), pg.7. http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), pg.9. http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf
Lester Graham, The Kerner Commission, and why its recommendations were ignored, Detroit Journalism Cooperative, The Kerner Commission, and why its recommendations were ignored | Detroit Journalism Cooperative
Additional readings:
National Research Council 1989. A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society | The National Academies Press.
Gunnar Myrdal, Richard Sterner, Arnold Rose, An American dilemma : the Negro problem and modern democracy, First edition, New York : London, Harper & Brothers, [c1944] https://ia800503.us.archive.org/32/...ndModernDemocracy/AmericanDelemmaVersion2.pdf
So quit crying, GET A JOB, and start applying that paycheck toward your bills!!!!!
