The MODERN Case for Reparations

[BS Filter]

Juicey Omelette andaronjim Obiwan

Black people built the USA. Trump admits this. Black Americans need Reparations in the form of CASH PAYMENTS.

The federal government made MONEY from free Black labor.

View attachment 429878
Reparations was also given to the HEIRS of the Japanese who we’re interned. So the same should be done for the heirs of Black American slaves

View attachment 429876
The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50,000,000 Black people; therefore repatriations is a modest demand.

You've never been a slave. I've never owned a slave. Go fuck yourself.

 

[Indeependent]

"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

The Jews in Egypt had professions and businesses.
The Jews in Germany had professions and businesses.
The slaves of today were sold by their own families who had nothing, which is why they sold their children.
To have any claim whatsoever, you should have to prove that your family wasn't wiped out in an inter-Tribal war.

 

[alang1216]

"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

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.

Actually, money applied to problems can create change.

Let me add this, what you propose only continues the inequality. I know you mean well, but insuring everybody the same thing when one group was given and still gets an unequal advantage is not going to help.

Money may change some things but will not all things. A middle-aged man who never got the opportunity to attend college will probably never get a degree no matter how much money you throw at him. A young man who grows up without a father will not be the best father to his own children and money won't change that either.

Likewise, we can end some kinds of inequality but economic inequality will always be with us. My family and the Kennedy family are both white but hardly equal.

We can't change the past so I still think the goal is to change the future of children by ensuring that all of them get what they need to get a decent start to life regardless of who their parents are. BTW, I always appreciate honest conversation since I know you mean well.

That middle aged man can finish off his house payment and retire debt, which increases his family's worth thereby reducing the wealth gap. The fatherless black home is fake news. Please stop repeating it. An unwed birth does no mean a woman doesn't have a man in her life. The we can't change the past line you use doesn't make sense. We aren't talking about changing the past. We are talking about not continuing to perpetuate economic inequality. You might not be equal to the Kennedy's but public policy was not created specifically stopping you from competition. And I thank you for intelligently stating your case instead of the standard get a job bullshit I here from the less intelligent whites here.

Ironically it was the GOP that first proposed reparations but that was long ago. No way the GOP or Americans in general will ever send that middle-aged Black man a check. That's the reality in this country. There are many government programs that are targeted at helping the poor, Black or not. That is likely as close to reparations we'll ever see.

Fatherless homes are not fake news, but they are a cultural/economic and not a racial phenomenon. Most unwed mothers are White but Blacks numbers are disproportionately high. Black fathers that cohabit are disproportionately low. They're not very useful but I could provide some anecdotes from my own limited experience to back up my beliefs.

I think that when other groups have gotten reparations and that reparations are paid to Native American tribes annually there is a problem with the attitude of "we won't pay blacks." When descendants of confederate soldiers were getting reparations until at least 2017, these excuses don't have merit. I am black and I am telling you that your opinion on fatherless black homes is fake news. I do think I am more qualified to speak on black families since I grew up in one and had one of my own. You cannot provide enough anecdotes to disprove what I have seen in 59, nearly 60 years of living as a black son to a father living in the house and as a black father living in the house. You have repeated a worn out white lie about "culture" while ignoring instances of black men who raise children that are not theirs and black fathers who raise children without the mom being around. So please do not be white trying to tell a black man about being black.

I'm not sure which opinion you refer to but do you dispute the numbers from the link I provided? Single parent households are hardly unique to American Blacks and I'm glad you never experienced it but the sad truth is you are a minority within the Black community:

In 2014-18, the share of families headed by single parents was 75% among African American families, 58% among Hispanic families, 37% among white families and 21% among Asian families.​

You cannot provide enough anecdotes to disprove the reality.

 

[Indeependent]

andaronjim
22 trillion dollars paid out is more than enough for all those "poor" blacks that are too fucking stupid to take care of themselves. Time to get off the sofa, put down the bong, get a fucking job...Be a citizen instead of a slave....Stop fucking watching CNN......James Earl Jones is ashamed of you retards..

22 trillion dollars were ? Fk you talking about ?

50 years of Wel-Fucking-Fare.

 

[Picaro]

lol the Kerner Report was total rubbish, which is why no one ever took it seriously when it came out. It didn't even rate but two small mentions in Hugh Davis Graham's definitive book on the Civil Right Era. As for 'Reparations', black pols stole it all already, and trying to extort more is just typical black gangsterism and fraud.

The demographic most damaged by slavery was the white immigrant labor that had to work for less at the crappiest and most dangerous jobs; slaves had it easy comparatively, having a high value and weren't risked at dangerous jobs. See Fredrick Law Omstead's travels through the South through Louisiana to Texas and his first hand accounts of how white labor was treated versus slave labor. The Irish are first in line if there are any 'reparations' to be handed out to anybody.

 

[Paul Essien]

Indeependent
50 years of Wel-Fucking-Fare

 

[Likkmee]

Indeependent
50 years of Wel-Fucking-Fare

View attachment 430603

3 hots and cots must be worth something ?

 

[Obiwan]

Indeependent
50 years of Wel-Fucking-Fare

View attachment 430603

Actually, that welfare made it possible for some blacks to get a free ride for their entire lives....

So you got a break!!!!

How about getting a job and repaying us for that little boost we gave you????

 

[Obiwan]

Indeependent
50 years of Wel-Fucking-Fare

View attachment 430603

3 hots and cots must be worth something ?

Now that's a thought....

Are Biden and Harris going to lock them up in record numbers and work them for free again??????

 

[danielpalos]

andaronjim
22 trillion dollars paid out is more than enough for all those "poor" blacks that are too fucking stupid to take care of themselves. Time to get off the sofa, put down the bong, get a fucking job...Be a citizen instead of a slave....Stop fucking watching CNN......James Earl Jones is ashamed of you retards..

22 trillion dollars were ? Fk you talking about ?

50 years of Wel-Fucking-Fare.

After 1929. Proof capitalism is worthless without better regulation.

 

[IM2]

"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

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.

Actually, money applied to problems can create change.

Let me add this, what you propose only continues the inequality. I know you mean well, but insuring everybody the same thing when one group was given and still gets an unequal advantage is not going to help.

Money may change some things but will not all things. A middle-aged man who never got the opportunity to attend college will probably never get a degree no matter how much money you throw at him. A young man who grows up without a father will not be the best father to his own children and money won't change that either.

Likewise, we can end some kinds of inequality but economic inequality will always be with us. My family and the Kennedy family are both white but hardly equal.

We can't change the past so I still think the goal is to change the future of children by ensuring that all of them get what they need to get a decent start to life regardless of who their parents are. BTW, I always appreciate honest conversation since I know you mean well.

That middle aged man can finish off his house payment and retire debt, which increases his family's worth thereby reducing the wealth gap. The fatherless black home is fake news. Please stop repeating it. An unwed birth does no mean a woman doesn't have a man in her life. The we can't change the past line you use doesn't make sense. We aren't talking about changing the past. We are talking about not continuing to perpetuate economic inequality. You might not be equal to the Kennedy's but public policy was not created specifically stopping you from competition. And I thank you for intelligently stating your case instead of the standard get a job bullshit I here from the less intelligent whites here.

Ironically it was the GOP that first proposed reparations but that was long ago. No way the GOP or Americans in general will ever send that middle-aged Black man a check. That's the reality in this country. There are many government programs that are targeted at helping the poor, Black or not. That is likely as close to reparations we'll ever see.

Fatherless homes are not fake news, but they are a cultural/economic and not a racial phenomenon. Most unwed mothers are White but Blacks numbers are disproportionately high. Black fathers that cohabit are disproportionately low. They're not very useful but I could provide some anecdotes from my own limited experience to back up my beliefs.

I think that when other groups have gotten reparations and that reparations are paid to Native American tribes annually there is a problem with the attitude of "we won't pay blacks." When descendants of confederate soldiers were getting reparations until at least 2017, these excuses don't have merit. I am black and I am telling you that your opinion on fatherless black homes is fake news. I do think I am more qualified to speak on black families since I grew up in one and had one of my own. You cannot provide enough anecdotes to disprove what I have seen in 59, nearly 60 years of living as a black son to a father living in the house and as a black father living in the house. You have repeated a worn out white lie about "culture" while ignoring instances of black men who raise children that are not theirs and black fathers who raise children without the mom being around. So please do not be white trying to tell a black man about being black.

I'm not sure which opinion you refer to but do you dispute the numbers from the link I provided? Single parent households are hardly unique to American Blacks and I'm glad you never experienced it but the sad truth is you are a minority within the Black community:

In 2014-18, the share of families headed by single parents was 75% among African American families, 58% among Hispanic families, 37% among white families and 21% among Asian families.​

You cannot provide enough anecdotes to disprove the reality.

On June 8, 2015, Charles Blow wrote an article in the New York Times titled, “Black Dads Are Doing Best of All.” McDonald should have read it. This article takes apart the tale of black fathers not being around for their kids. The issue of unwed births really has no relation to whether 2 parents are around. An unwed birth is a child being born and the couple is not married. That does not mean a man and a woman are not together raising the child. The single mother narrative got destroyed long ago, because a single mother does not mean a man will not be around to influence the child as it grows up. One fantastic example is the story Shaquille O’Neal tells about his relationship with Sergeant Phillip Harrison who raised him with his mother. Finally, the appearance of Barack Obama on the world stage allows me to say once and for all that a single parent family is not the cause of the problem. This article shows that the majority of black children in this country live with their fathers or their fathers are active participants in their lives. In reality, not the convoluted racist mind, a mother and father ARE present in the majority of black homes.

Josh Levs points this out in his new book, “All In,” in a chapter titled “How Black Dads Are Doing Best of All (But There’s Still a Crisis).” One fact that Levs quickly establishes is that most black fathers in America live with their children: “There are about 2.5 million black fathers living with their children and about 1.7 million living apart from them.”

Charles Blow​

A report titled “Fathers’ Involvement With Their Children: United States, 2006–2010,” was published by the Centers for Disease Control in the National Health Report on December 20, 2013. The findings are interesting for those who have decided they can paint black culture in moral terms. Moral terms that 244 years of American history show whites who have decided they can do the painting, refuse hold themselves to. The findings in this study debunk the standard racist white narrative to the point that it is miseducation, misinformation, lies, or whatever word you want to give to the purposeful deception provided to describe a race of people. Some of the findings are as follows:

A higher percentage of fathers who lived with their children under age 5 fed or ate meals with them daily—72% compared with 7.9% of fathers with noncoresidential children. A higher percentage of fathers living apart from their children did not feed or eat meals with them at all in the last 4 weeks—43% compared with 0.8% of fathers with coresidential children (Table 2). Variation by Hispanic origin and race was seen in the percentages of coresidential fathers who ate meals with their children every day. Specifically, Hispanic fathers were less likely to eat meals with their children every day (64%) than were non-Hispanic white (74%) or non-Hispanic black (78%) fathers.

There was a significant difference by Hispanic origin and race among fathers with coresidential children: Black fathers (70%) were most likely to have bathed, dressed, diapered, or helped their children use the toilet every day compared with white (60%) and Hispanic fathers (45%).

A higher percentage of Hispanic fathers aged 15–44 (52%) had not played with their noncoresidential children in the last 4 weeks compared with white (30%) and black (25%) fathers.

Larger percentages of Hispanic (82%) and white (70%) fathers had not helped their noncoresidential children with homework at all in the last 4 weeks compared with black fathers (56%).

• Pew Research estimates that 67 percent of black dads who don’t live with their kids see them at least once a month, compared to 59 percent of white dads and 32 percent of Hispanic dads. Evidence shows that a number of black dads living apart from their kids because of structural systems of inequality and poverty, not the unfounded racist assumption that African-American men place less or no value on parenting. Black and white fathers agree on the importance of being a father who provides emotional support, instills discipline and moral guidance. Black dads are also more likely to think it is important to provide for his children financially.

Single mothers have boyfriends, this seems to be ignored and it should not be.

Now stop trying to use old dumb white stereotypical arguments about the fatherless black family and listen.

In 2011, DEMOS did a study named “The Racial Wealth Gap, Why Policy Matters”, which discussed the racial wealth gap, the problems associated with it along with solutions and outcomes if the gap did not exist. In this study DEMOS determined that the racial wealth gap was primarily driven by policy decisions.

“The U.S. racial wealth gap is substantial and is driven by public policy decisions. According to our analysis of the SIPP data, in 2011 the median white household had $111,146 in wealth holdings, compared to just $7,113 for the median Black household and $8,348 for the median Latino household. From the continuing impact of redlining on American homeownership to the retreat from desegregation in public education, public policy has shaped these disparities, leaving them impossible to overcome without racially-aware policy change.”

Having a man in the house does not change what was created by public policy.

 

[IM2]

lol the Kerner Report was total rubbish, which is why no one ever took it seriously when it came out. It didn't even rate but two small mentions in Hugh Davis Graham's definitive book on the Civil Right Era. As for 'Reparations', black pols stole it all already, and trying to extort more is just typical black gangsterism and fraud.

The demographic most damaged by slavery was the white immigrant labor that had to work for less at the crappiest and most dangerous jobs; slaves had it easy comparatively, having a high value and weren't risked at dangerous jobs. See
That is one of the greatest falsehoods that has manifested itself in the discourse about racism in America. For years I even believed that. I remember reading a book titled “Trinity” written by Leon Uris about a fictional hero of the Irish resistance named Conor Larkin. The story detailed the treatment of the Irish from the 1700’s until the 1916 uprising. After reading that book, I was convinced that the Irish had it just as bad as blacks. Yes, the Irish were treated terribly in Europe and when they first came to America. But they were not slaves. Irish historians such as Liam Hogan have made this crystal clear.

“I conservatively estimate that tens of millions of people have been exposed to ‘Irish slaves’ disinformation in one form or another on social media.”

Liam Hogan

From 2015 until 2019, Liam Hogan compiled some 52 different articles debunking the tale of Irish slavery. The intent here is not to denigrate nonracist Irish citizens of this country, but to destroy a popular white supremacist meme that has plagued social media and American culture for years. According to Hogan and other Irish historians in his compilation, the Irish were indentured servants and not slaves. The fallacy in the white supremacist argument lies in the fact that indentured servitude was a contractual agreement made between 2 or more parties. One party agreed that for payment of passage to America, the individual(s) would work for a specified term to repay the cost of passage. To say it was not much better than slavery is simply a lie. Slavery was permanent. Slavery was also generational. If you we born into a slave family, you were a slave. When you had children, they were slaves. There was no 7 years and a headright.

“The tale of the Irish slaves is rooted in a false conflation of indentured servitude and chattel slavery. These are not the same. Indentured servitude was a form of bonded labour, whereby a migrant agreed to work for a set period of time (between two and seven years) and in return the cost of the voyage across the Atlantic was covered. Indentured servitude was a colonial innovation that enabled many to emigrate to the New World while providing a cheap and white labour force for planters and merchants to exploit. Those who completed their term of service were awarded ‘freedom dues’ and were free. The vast majority of labourers who agreed to this system did so voluntarily, but there were many who were forcibly transplanted from the British Isles to the colonies and sold into indentured service against their will. While these forced deportees would have included political prisoners and serious felons, it is believed that the majority came from the poor and vulnerable. This forced labour was in essence an extension of the English Poor Laws, e.g. in 1697. John Locke recommended the whipping of those who ‘refused to work’ and the herding of beggars into workhouses. Indeed this criminalisation of the poor continues into the 21st century. In any case, all bar the serious felons were freed once the term of their contract expired.”

Liam Hogan

Certainly, the Irish did endure difficulties. The general argument in order to dismiss or derail conversations about the treatment of blacks is that everybody had it tough. That is true, but everybody else CHOSE to come to America. No matter what diversion is used, Africans sold Africans to whites. The shipping companies were not owned by Africans. Nor does it appear that the more than 10 million Africans shipped across the Atlantic made any contractual agreement to perform labor in return for passage. So yes, the Europeans that chose to come here with little or nothing did struggle. But the various European ethnic groups had one thing they used to lift themselves up. And they used it to step on others- the race card.

s travels through the South through Louisiana to Texas and his first hand accounts of how white labor was treated versus slave labor. The Irish are first in line if there are any 'reparations' to be handed out to anybody.

Wrong.

The Irish slave story is one of the greatest falsehoods that has manifested itself in the discourse about racism in America. For years I even believed that. I remember reading a book titled “Trinity” written by Leon Uris about a fictional hero of the Irish resistance named Conor Larkin. The story detailed the treatment of the Irish from the 1700’s until the 1916 uprising. After reading that book, I was convinced that the Irish had it just as bad as blacks. Yes, the Irish were treated terribly in Europe and when they first came to America. But they were not slaves. Irish historians such as Liam Hogan have made this crystal clear.

“I conservatively estimate that tens of millions of people have been exposed to ‘Irish slaves’ disinformation in one form or another on social media.”

Liam Hogan​

From 2015 until 2019, Liam Hogan compiled some 52 different articles debunking the tale of Irish slavery. The intent here is not to denigrate nonracist Irish citizens of this country, but to destroy a popular white supremacist meme that has plagued social media and American culture for years. According to Hogan and other Irish historians in his compilation, the Irish were indentured servants and not slaves. The fallacy in the white supremacist argument lies in the fact that indentured servitude was a contractual agreement made between 2 or more parties. One party agreed that for payment of passage to America, the individual(s) would work for a specified term to repay the cost of passage. To say it was not much better than slavery is simply a lie. Slavery was permanent. Slavery was also generational. If you we born into a slave family, you were a slave. When you had children, they were slaves. There was no 7 years and a headright.

“The tale of the Irish slaves is rooted in a false conflation of indentured servitude and chattel slavery. These are not the same. Indentured servitude was a form of bonded labour, whereby a migrant agreed to work for a set period of time (between two and seven years) and in return the cost of the voyage across the Atlantic was covered. Indentured servitude was a colonial innovation that enabled many to emigrate to the New World while providing a cheap and white labour force for planters and merchants to exploit. Those who completed their term of service were awarded ‘freedom dues’ and were free. The vast majority of labourers who agreed to this system did so voluntarily, but there were many who were forcibly transplanted from the British Isles to the colonies and sold into indentured service against their will. While these forced deportees would have included political prisoners and serious felons, it is believed that the majority came from the poor and vulnerable. This forced labour was in essence an extension of the English Poor Laws, e.g. in 1697. John Locke recommended the whipping of those who ‘refused to work’ and the herding of beggars into workhouses. Indeed this criminalisation of the poor continues into the 21st century. In any case, all bar the serious felons were freed once the term of their contract expired.”

Liam Hogan​

Certainly, the Irish did endure difficulties. The general argument in order to dismiss or derail conversations about the treatment of blacks is that everybody had it tough. That is true, but everybody else CHOSE to come to America. No matter what diversion is used, Africans sold Africans to whites. The shipping companies were not owned by Africans. Nor does it appear that the more than 10 million Africans shipped across the Atlantic made any contractual agreement to perform labor in return for passage. So yes, the Europeans that chose to come here with little or nothing did struggle. But the various European ethnic groups had one thing they used to lift themselves up. And they used it to step on others- the race card.

In the north, Irish and blacks competed for the same jobs, or should I say, were relegated to low wage, menial labor. Irish and blacks in the north lived in the same communities. Both groups mixed socially, intermarried and had biracial children. The green was the black when and where no blacks existed.

“In the early years of immigration the poor Irish and blacks were thrown together, very much part of the same class competing for the same jobs. In the census of 1850, the term mulatto appears for the first time due primarily to inter-marriage between Irish and African Americans. The Irish were often referred to as Negroes turned inside out and Negroes as smoked Irish. A famous quip of the time attributed to a black man went something like this: "My master is a great tyrant, he treats me like a common Irishman." Free blacks and Irish were viewed by the Nativists as related, somehow similar, performing the same tasks in society. It was felt that if amalgamation between the races was to happen, it would happen between Irish and blacks. But, ultimately, the Irish made the decision to embrace whiteness, thus becoming part of the system which dominated and oppressed blacks. Although it contradicted their experience back home, it meant freedom here since blackness meant slavery.

An article by a black writer in an 1860 edition of the Liberator explained how the Irish ultimately attained their objectives: "Fifteen or twenty years ago, a Catholic priest in Philadelphia said to the Irish people in that city, 'You are all poor, and chiefly laborers, the blacks are poor laborers; many of the native whites are laborers; now, if you wish to succeed, you must do everything that they do, no matter how degrading, and do it for less than they can afford to do it for.' The Irish adopted this plan; they lived on less than the Americans could live upon, and worked for less, and the result is, that nearly all the menial employments are monopolized by the Irish, who now get as good prices as anybody. There were other avenues open to American white men, and though they have suffered much, the chief support of the Irish has come from the places from which we have been crowded."

Once the Irish secured themselves in those jobs, they made sure blacks were kept out. They realized that as long as they continued to work alongside blacks, they would be considered no different. Later, as Irish became prominent in the labor movement, African Americans were excluded from participation. In fact, one of the primary themes of How the Irish Became White is the way in which left labor historians, such as the highly acclaimed Herbert Gutman, have not paid sufficient attention to the problem of race in the development of the labor movement.

And so, we have the tragic story of how one oppressed "race," Irish Catholics, learned how to collaborate in the oppression of another "race," Africans in America, in order to secure their place in the white republic. Becoming white meant losing their greenness, i.e., their Irish cultural heritage and the legacy of oppression and discrimination back home.”

Art McDonald, Ph.D., “How the Irish Became White”​

 

[IM2]

"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

The Jews in Egypt had professions and businesses.
The Jews in Germany had professions and businesses.
The slaves of today were sold by their own families who had nothing, which is why they sold their children.
To have any claim whatsoever, you should have to prove that your family wasn't wiped out in an inter-Tribal war.

Sometimes it's necessary to shut a dumb white man's mouth with a dose of realty.

ALL RISE!
The Honorable IM2 will deliver this evenings text.
Tonight's Lesson:

How 400,000 Africans turned Into 4 Million Black American Slaves.

When people start talking about race, there are just some simple realities that cannot be denied. If you are white and don't like how you are portrayed, start thinking about how unpleasant it really is for us who are not white to be portrayed as weak inferior people who got conquered by a supposedly superior race and culture. It is not a pleasant subject. For this to end we all must face the unpleasantness.

"The idea that the South fought a war so that it could be left in peace to have slavery merely within its settled boundaries is sometimes voiced as a cherished myth today, but it does not fit the facts on the ground, nor did anyone think so at the time. Quite the contrary: the war was fought over the expansion of slavery."

Ned & Constance Sublette, The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry​

The doctrine of Partus sequitur ventrem comes from the system of civil law established in Europe. The term is latin for; “That which is brought forth follows the belly.” This principle pertained to personal property or chattels. Partus sequitur ventrem determined the legal status of children born by slave women in the America as well as other English or European colonies In colonial law, the partus doctrine justified enslavement, making chattels or personal property of the indigenous people of the Americas and of the Africans imported to various European colonies.

In the American colony, this doctrine established both de facto and de jure slavery for all children born to female slaves. Partus sequitur ventrem exempted the father from his obligations to children he fathered by slaves which opened up the ability for slaveowners to have their way with enslaved women. Because the biological father had no paternal responsibility to children born to a slave woman, the slaver was provided the right to profit from exploiting the labor of children born to slaves. It gave the slaver the ability to sell children by taking them away from their biological parents and disconnected biological fathers who were slaves from children those men fathered with slave women.

Despite the claims of Africans selling each other, the doctrine of Partus sequitur ventrem does not appear to be a part of the system of African slavery. I don’t write this to absolve or excuse Africas role in providing start up slaves to various colonies but neither am I going to waste words explaining or defending anything against the excuse whites in America have used in order to diminish what was done here sanctioned by American law.

The major problem with the excuses is that America had every chance not to implement slavery. We are told how the so-called founders of this country created the way to end slavery when they wrote the constitution. Many will cite the fact they made the importation of slaves illegal by 1808 as evidence. But refusing to stop importing slaves did not end the slaving business in the United States. What it produced was an original American industry-slave breeding.

"During the fifty-three years from the prohibition of the African slave trade by federal law in 1808 to the debacle of the Confederate States of America in 1861, the Southern economy depended on the functioning of a slave-breeding industry, of which Virginia was the number-one supplier."

Ned & Constance Sublette, The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry​

You see, if America had continued to import slaves, it would have diluted the market thereby driving down the costs of slaves. Slave sellers could not have this. So instead of the truth, we are told that “our nearer to God than thee” founders in all their benevolent glory, looked towards a future whereby slavery would be no more. According to some, the so-called founders had a dream whereby little black boys and little black girls would no longer be enslaved because of the color of their skin. This is the story we are supposed to believe. However, reality does not show that.

“In fact, most American slaves were not kidnapped on another continent. Though over 12.7 million Africans were forced onto ships to the Western hemisphere, estimates only have 400,000-500,000 landing in present-day America. How then to account for the four million black slaves who were tilling fields in 1860? “The South,” the Sublettes write, “did not only produce tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton as commodities for sale; it produced people.” Slavers called slave-breeding “natural increase,” but there was nothing natural about producing slaves; it took scientific management. Thomas Jefferson bragged to George Washington that the birth of black children was increasing Virginia’s capital stock by four percent annually.”

Ned & Constance Sublette, The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry​

To be blunt, America had slave breeding “factories” where slaves were forced to breed. I call them factories but in most cases they are described as farms. These “farms” generally had at least a 2:1 female to male ratio. In some states, slave production was the number 1 industry. Virginia led the nation in slave production and PRESIDENT Thomas Jefferson was one of the main producers. The slave breeding industry has been hidden and left out of the annals of American history. This was done on purpose.

After reading how this was done it becomes very easy to see why. There are just some wrongs that cannot be excused by the belief that holding past generations to modern standards is wrong. Basically, the slave breeding industry manufactured human beings to be sold into labor.

According to the Sublettes, 400 to 500,000 slaves landed on the shores of what is now America. By 1860 there were 4 million slaves living here. The importation of slaves was made illegal in 1808. So from 1808 until 1860 the number of slaves increased by at least 1,000 percent. If we allow for the Africans selling each other, Africans would be responsible for between 400 to 500 thousand slaves. What about the 3.5 million additional slaves? Africans did not create them. Whites did this through forced human breeding for business and for pleasure. “Africans sold each other into slavery”, says the racist.

It just didn't happen like that.

 

[IM2]

22 trillion dollars paid out is more than enough for all those "poor" blacks that are too fucking stupid to take care of themselves. Time to get off the sofa, put down the bong, get a fucking job...Be a citizen instead of a slave....Stop fucking watching CNN......James Earl Jones is ashamed of you retards..

22 trillion dollars was never given to black people.

 

[alang1216]

"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

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.

Actually, money applied to problems can create change.

Let me add this, what you propose only continues the inequality. I know you mean well, but insuring everybody the same thing when one group was given and still gets an unequal advantage is not going to help.

Money may change some things but will not all things. A middle-aged man who never got the opportunity to attend college will probably never get a degree no matter how much money you throw at him. A young man who grows up without a father will not be the best father to his own children and money won't change that either.

Likewise, we can end some kinds of inequality but economic inequality will always be with us. My family and the Kennedy family are both white but hardly equal.

We can't change the past so I still think the goal is to change the future of children by ensuring that all of them get what they need to get a decent start to life regardless of who their parents are. BTW, I always appreciate honest conversation since I know you mean well.

That middle aged man can finish off his house payment and retire debt, which increases his family's worth thereby reducing the wealth gap. The fatherless black home is fake news. Please stop repeating it. An unwed birth does no mean a woman doesn't have a man in her life. The we can't change the past line you use doesn't make sense. We aren't talking about changing the past. We are talking about not continuing to perpetuate economic inequality. You might not be equal to the Kennedy's but public policy was not created specifically stopping you from competition. And I thank you for intelligently stating your case instead of the standard get a job bullshit I here from the less intelligent whites here.

Ironically it was the GOP that first proposed reparations but that was long ago. No way the GOP or Americans in general will ever send that middle-aged Black man a check. That's the reality in this country. There are many government programs that are targeted at helping the poor, Black or not. That is likely as close to reparations we'll ever see.

Fatherless homes are not fake news, but they are a cultural/economic and not a racial phenomenon. Most unwed mothers are White but Blacks numbers are disproportionately high. Black fathers that cohabit are disproportionately low. They're not very useful but I could provide some anecdotes from my own limited experience to back up my beliefs.

I think that when other groups have gotten reparations and that reparations are paid to Native American tribes annually there is a problem with the attitude of "we won't pay blacks." When descendants of confederate soldiers were getting reparations until at least 2017, these excuses don't have merit. I am black and I am telling you that your opinion on fatherless black homes is fake news. I do think I am more qualified to speak on black families since I grew up in one and had one of my own. You cannot provide enough anecdotes to disprove what I have seen in 59, nearly 60 years of living as a black son to a father living in the house and as a black father living in the house. You have repeated a worn out white lie about "culture" while ignoring instances of black men who raise children that are not theirs and black fathers who raise children without the mom being around. So please do not be white trying to tell a black man about being black.

I'm not sure which opinion you refer to but do you dispute the numbers from the link I provided? Single parent households are hardly unique to American Blacks and I'm glad you never experienced it but the sad truth is you are a minority within the Black community:

In 2014-18, the share of families headed by single parents was 75% among African American families, 58% among Hispanic families, 37% among white families and 21% among Asian families.​

You cannot provide enough anecdotes to disprove the reality.

On June 8, 2015, Charles Blow wrote an article in the New York Times titled, “Black Dads Are Doing Best of All.” McDonald should have read it. This article takes apart the tale of black fathers not being around for their kids. The issue of unwed births really has no relation to whether 2 parents are around. An unwed birth is a child being born and the couple is not married. That does not mean a man and a woman are not together raising the child. The single mother narrative got destroyed long ago, because a single mother does not mean a man will not be around to influence the child as it grows up. One fantastic example is the story Shaquille O’Neal tells about his relationship with Sergeant Phillip Harrison who raised him with his mother. Finally, the appearance of Barack Obama on the world stage allows me to say once and for all that a single parent family is not the cause of the problem. This article shows that the majority of black children in this country live with their fathers or their fathers are active participants in their lives. In reality, not the convoluted racist mind, a mother and father ARE present in the majority of black homes.

Josh Levs points this out in his new book, “All In,” in a chapter titled “How Black Dads Are Doing Best of All (But There’s Still a Crisis).” One fact that Levs quickly establishes is that most black fathers in America live with their children: “There are about 2.5 million black fathers living with their children and about 1.7 million living apart from them.”

Charles Blow​

A report titled “Fathers’ Involvement With Their Children: United States, 2006–2010,” was published by the Centers for Disease Control in the National Health Report on December 20, 2013. The findings are interesting for those who have decided they can paint black culture in moral terms. Moral terms that 244 years of American history show whites who have decided they can do the painting, refuse hold themselves to. The findings in this study debunk the standard racist white narrative to the point that it is miseducation, misinformation, lies, or whatever word you want to give to the purposeful deception provided to describe a race of people. Some of the findings are as follows:

A higher percentage of fathers who lived with their children under age 5 fed or ate meals with them daily—72% compared with 7.9% of fathers with noncoresidential children. A higher percentage of fathers living apart from their children did not feed or eat meals with them at all in the last 4 weeks—43% compared with 0.8% of fathers with coresidential children (Table 2). Variation by Hispanic origin and race was seen in the percentages of coresidential fathers who ate meals with their children every day. Specifically, Hispanic fathers were less likely to eat meals with their children every day (64%) than were non-Hispanic white (74%) or non-Hispanic black (78%) fathers.

There was a significant difference by Hispanic origin and race among fathers with coresidential children: Black fathers (70%) were most likely to have bathed, dressed, diapered, or helped their children use the toilet every day compared with white (60%) and Hispanic fathers (45%).

A higher percentage of Hispanic fathers aged 15–44 (52%) had not played with their noncoresidential children in the last 4 weeks compared with white (30%) and black (25%) fathers.

Larger percentages of Hispanic (82%) and white (70%) fathers had not helped their noncoresidential children with homework at all in the last 4 weeks compared with black fathers (56%).

• Pew Research estimates that 67 percent of black dads who don’t live with their kids see them at least once a month, compared to 59 percent of white dads and 32 percent of Hispanic dads. Evidence shows that a number of black dads living apart from their kids because of structural systems of inequality and poverty, not the unfounded racist assumption that African-American men place less or no value on parenting. Black and white fathers agree on the importance of being a father who provides emotional support, instills discipline and moral guidance. Black dads are also more likely to think it is important to provide for his children financially.

Single mothers have boyfriends, this seems to be ignored and it should not be.

Now stop trying to use old dumb white stereotypical arguments about the fatherless black family and listen.

In 2011, DEMOS did a study named “The Racial Wealth Gap, Why Policy Matters”, which discussed the racial wealth gap, the problems associated with it along with solutions and outcomes if the gap did not exist. In this study DEMOS determined that the racial wealth gap was primarily driven by policy decisions.

“The U.S. racial wealth gap is substantial and is driven by public policy decisions. According to our analysis of the SIPP data, in 2011 the median white household had $111,146 in wealth holdings, compared to just $7,113 for the median Black household and $8,348 for the median Latino household. From the continuing impact of redlining on American homeownership to the retreat from desegregation in public education, public policy has shaped these disparities, leaving them impossible to overcome without racially-aware policy change.”

Having a man in the house does not change what was created by public policy.

There is no denying or excusing what the US has done and continues to do. One that affects families is certainly the mass-incarceration of the past decades, breaking apart families. It is easy to agree on these things but much harder to agree on a solution. I'd guess that the majority of Whites have little or no interaction with Blacks on a daily basis and therefore don't feel responsibility or sympathy for their history or future. That is slowly changing as Blacks are given more housing and employment opportunities but it has a long way to go. Economic segregation is tough to overcome, certainly has been for me.

 

[Obiwan]

So IQ2 is still here trying to get free money....

Maybe we should give him a free education, where he can get a job at McDonald's (which does hire retards) and actually do it without fucking it up!!!!

 

[IM2]

"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

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.

Actually, money applied to problems can create change.

Let me add this, what you propose only continues the inequality. I know you mean well, but insuring everybody the same thing when one group was given and still gets an unequal advantage is not going to help.

Money may change some things but will not all things. A middle-aged man who never got the opportunity to attend college will probably never get a degree no matter how much money you throw at him. A young man who grows up without a father will not be the best father to his own children and money won't change that either.

Likewise, we can end some kinds of inequality but economic inequality will always be with us. My family and the Kennedy family are both white but hardly equal.

We can't change the past so I still think the goal is to change the future of children by ensuring that all of them get what they need to get a decent start to life regardless of who their parents are. BTW, I always appreciate honest conversation since I know you mean well.

That middle aged man can finish off his house payment and retire debt, which increases his family's worth thereby reducing the wealth gap. The fatherless black home is fake news. Please stop repeating it. An unwed birth does no mean a woman doesn't have a man in her life. The we can't change the past line you use doesn't make sense. We aren't talking about changing the past. We are talking about not continuing to perpetuate economic inequality. You might not be equal to the Kennedy's but public policy was not created specifically stopping you from competition. And I thank you for intelligently stating your case instead of the standard get a job bullshit I here from the less intelligent whites here.

Ironically it was the GOP that first proposed reparations but that was long ago. No way the GOP or Americans in general will ever send that middle-aged Black man a check. That's the reality in this country. There are many government programs that are targeted at helping the poor, Black or not. That is likely as close to reparations we'll ever see.

Fatherless homes are not fake news, but they are a cultural/economic and not a racial phenomenon. Most unwed mothers are White but Blacks numbers are disproportionately high. Black fathers that cohabit are disproportionately low. They're not very useful but I could provide some anecdotes from my own limited experience to back up my beliefs.

I think that when other groups have gotten reparations and that reparations are paid to Native American tribes annually there is a problem with the attitude of "we won't pay blacks." When descendants of confederate soldiers were getting reparations until at least 2017, these excuses don't have merit. I am black and I am telling you that your opinion on fatherless black homes is fake news. I do think I am more qualified to speak on black families since I grew up in one and had one of my own. You cannot provide enough anecdotes to disprove what I have seen in 59, nearly 60 years of living as a black son to a father living in the house and as a black father living in the house. You have repeated a worn out white lie about "culture" while ignoring instances of black men who raise children that are not theirs and black fathers who raise children without the mom being around. So please do not be white trying to tell a black man about being black.

I'm not sure which opinion you refer to but do you dispute the numbers from the link I provided? Single parent households are hardly unique to American Blacks and I'm glad you never experienced it but the sad truth is you are a minority within the Black community:

In 2014-18, the share of families headed by single parents was 75% among African American families, 58% among Hispanic families, 37% among white families and 21% among Asian families.​

You cannot provide enough anecdotes to disprove the reality.

On June 8, 2015, Charles Blow wrote an article in the New York Times titled, “Black Dads Are Doing Best of All.” McDonald should have read it. This article takes apart the tale of black fathers not being around for their kids. The issue of unwed births really has no relation to whether 2 parents are around. An unwed birth is a child being born and the couple is not married. That does not mean a man and a woman are not together raising the child. The single mother narrative got destroyed long ago, because a single mother does not mean a man will not be around to influence the child as it grows up. One fantastic example is the story Shaquille O’Neal tells about his relationship with Sergeant Phillip Harrison who raised him with his mother. Finally, the appearance of Barack Obama on the world stage allows me to say once and for all that a single parent family is not the cause of the problem. This article shows that the majority of black children in this country live with their fathers or their fathers are active participants in their lives. In reality, not the convoluted racist mind, a mother and father ARE present in the majority of black homes.

Josh Levs points this out in his new book, “All In,” in a chapter titled “How Black Dads Are Doing Best of All (But There’s Still a Crisis).” One fact that Levs quickly establishes is that most black fathers in America live with their children: “There are about 2.5 million black fathers living with their children and about 1.7 million living apart from them.”

Charles Blow​

A report titled “Fathers’ Involvement With Their Children: United States, 2006–2010,” was published by the Centers for Disease Control in the National Health Report on December 20, 2013. The findings are interesting for those who have decided they can paint black culture in moral terms. Moral terms that 244 years of American history show whites who have decided they can do the painting, refuse hold themselves to. The findings in this study debunk the standard racist white narrative to the point that it is miseducation, misinformation, lies, or whatever word you want to give to the purposeful deception provided to describe a race of people. Some of the findings are as follows:

A higher percentage of fathers who lived with their children under age 5 fed or ate meals with them daily—72% compared with 7.9% of fathers with noncoresidential children. A higher percentage of fathers living apart from their children did not feed or eat meals with them at all in the last 4 weeks—43% compared with 0.8% of fathers with coresidential children (Table 2). Variation by Hispanic origin and race was seen in the percentages of coresidential fathers who ate meals with their children every day. Specifically, Hispanic fathers were less likely to eat meals with their children every day (64%) than were non-Hispanic white (74%) or non-Hispanic black (78%) fathers.

There was a significant difference by Hispanic origin and race among fathers with coresidential children: Black fathers (70%) were most likely to have bathed, dressed, diapered, or helped their children use the toilet every day compared with white (60%) and Hispanic fathers (45%).

A higher percentage of Hispanic fathers aged 15–44 (52%) had not played with their noncoresidential children in the last 4 weeks compared with white (30%) and black (25%) fathers.

Larger percentages of Hispanic (82%) and white (70%) fathers had not helped their noncoresidential children with homework at all in the last 4 weeks compared with black fathers (56%).

• Pew Research estimates that 67 percent of black dads who don’t live with their kids see them at least once a month, compared to 59 percent of white dads and 32 percent of Hispanic dads. Evidence shows that a number of black dads living apart from their kids because of structural systems of inequality and poverty, not the unfounded racist assumption that African-American men place less or no value on parenting. Black and white fathers agree on the importance of being a father who provides emotional support, instills discipline and moral guidance. Black dads are also more likely to think it is important to provide for his children financially.

Single mothers have boyfriends, this seems to be ignored and it should not be.

Now stop trying to use old dumb white stereotypical arguments about the fatherless black family and listen.

In 2011, DEMOS did a study named “The Racial Wealth Gap, Why Policy Matters”, which discussed the racial wealth gap, the problems associated with it along with solutions and outcomes if the gap did not exist. In this study DEMOS determined that the racial wealth gap was primarily driven by policy decisions.

“The U.S. racial wealth gap is substantial and is driven by public policy decisions. According to our analysis of the SIPP data, in 2011 the median white household had $111,146 in wealth holdings, compared to just $7,113 for the median Black household and $8,348 for the median Latino household. From the continuing impact of redlining on American homeownership to the retreat from desegregation in public education, public policy has shaped these disparities, leaving them impossible to overcome without racially-aware policy change.”

Having a man in the house does not change what was created by public policy.

There is no denying or excusing what the US has done and continues to do. One that affects families is certainly the mass-incarceration of the past decades, breaking apart families. It is easy to agree on these things but much harder to agree on a solution. z I'd guess that the majority of Whites have little or no interaction with Blacks on a daily basis and therefore don't feel responsibility or sympathy for their history or future. That is slowly changing as Blacks are given more housing and employment opportunities but it has a long way to go. Economic segregation is tough to overcome, certainly has been for me.

True, but when you look at what has gone on, blacks have always been mass incarcerated. I think it's important for whites to understand that most of the public policies that have created the problems were implemented by whites. And that our history is mainly due to poor decisions made by whites. Sorry to say that to you but this is the truth.

For example the decision made by 9 white men in 1897 still impacts us today. Whites living today benefit from this decision. More later...

 

[IM2]

So IQ2 is still here trying to get free money....

Maybe we should give him a free education, where he can get a job at McDonald's (which does hire retards) and actually do it without fucking it up!!!!

The money would not be free and it's apparent that I am far more educated than you.

 

[Obiwan]

So IQ2 is still here trying to get free money....

Maybe we should give him a free education, where he can get a job at McDonald's (which does hire retards) and actually do it without fucking it up!!!!

The money would not be free and it's apparent that I am far more educated than you.

Actually, you're entirely right that the money wouldn't be free....

It would be taken from whites (based on their race), and given to blacks (without legal proof that they are actual descendants of slaves, meaning that the distribution would also be based entirely on race)....

So the SCOTUS would immediately throw your scheme in the garbage since it's illegal to base laws on race....

Of course, you could try to take the steps to try to make racial discrimination legal again in order to get the money, and see where that gets you!!!!!

 

[Picaro]

lol the Kerner Report was total rubbish, which is why no one ever took it seriously when it came out. It didn't even rate but two small mentions in Hugh Davis Graham's definitive book on the Civil Right Era. As for 'Reparations', black pols stole it all already, and trying to extort more is just typical black gangsterism and fraud.

The demographic most damaged by slavery was the white immigrant labor that had to work for less at the crappiest and most dangerous jobs; slaves had it easy comparatively, having a high value and weren't risked at dangerous jobs. See
That is one of the greatest falsehoods that has manifested itself in the discourse about racism in America. For years I even believed that. I remember reading a book titled “Trinity” written by Leon Uris about a fictional hero of the Irish resistance named Conor Larkin. The story detailed the treatment of the Irish from the 1700’s until the 1916 uprising. After reading that book, I was convinced that the Irish had it just as bad as blacks. Yes, the Irish were treated terribly in Europe and when they first came to America. But they were not slaves. Irish historians such as Liam Hogan have made this crystal clear.

“I conservatively estimate that tens of millions of people have been exposed to ‘Irish slaves’ disinformation in one form or another on social media.”

Liam Hogan

From 2015 until 2019, Liam Hogan compiled some 52 different articles debunking the tale of Irish slavery. The intent here is not to denigrate nonracist Irish citizens of this country, but to destroy a popular white supremacist meme that has plagued social media and American culture for years. According to Hogan and other Irish historians in his compilation, the Irish were indentured servants and not slaves. The fallacy in the white supremacist argument lies in the fact that indentured servitude was a contractual agreement made between 2 or more parties. One party agreed that for payment of passage to America, the individual(s) would work for a specified term to repay the cost of passage. To say it was not much better than slavery is simply a lie. Slavery was permanent. Slavery was also generational. If you we born into a slave family, you were a slave. When you had children, they were slaves. There was no 7 years and a headright.

“The tale of the Irish slaves is rooted in a false conflation of indentured servitude and chattel slavery. These are not the same. Indentured servitude was a form of bonded labour, whereby a migrant agreed to work for a set period of time (between two and seven years) and in return the cost of the voyage across the Atlantic was covered. Indentured servitude was a colonial innovation that enabled many to emigrate to the New World while providing a cheap and white labour force for planters and merchants to exploit. Those who completed their term of service were awarded ‘freedom dues’ and were free. The vast majority of labourers who agreed to this system did so voluntarily, but there were many who were forcibly transplanted from the British Isles to the colonies and sold into indentured service against their will. While these forced deportees would have included political prisoners and serious felons, it is believed that the majority came from the poor and vulnerable. This forced labour was in essence an extension of the English Poor Laws, e.g. in 1697. John Locke recommended the whipping of those who ‘refused to work’ and the herding of beggars into workhouses. Indeed this criminalisation of the poor continues into the 21st century. In any case, all bar the serious felons were freed once the term of their contract expired.”

Liam Hogan

Certainly, the Irish did endure difficulties. The general argument in order to dismiss or derail conversations about the treatment of blacks is that everybody had it tough. That is true, but everybody else CHOSE to come to America. No matter what diversion is used, Africans sold Africans to whites. The shipping companies were not owned by Africans. Nor does it appear that the more than 10 million Africans shipped across the Atlantic made any contractual agreement to perform labor in return for passage. So yes, the Europeans that chose to come here with little or nothing did struggle. But the various European ethnic groups had one thing they used to lift themselves up. And they used it to step on others- the race card.

s travels through the South through Louisiana to Texas and his first hand accounts of how white labor was treated versus slave labor. The Irish are first in line if there are any 'reparations' to be handed out to anybody.

Wrong.

The Irish slave story is one of the greatest falsehoods that has manifested itself in the discourse about racism in America. For years I even believed that. I remember reading a book titled “Trinity” written by Leon Uris about a fictional hero of the Irish resistance named Conor Larkin. The story detailed the treatment of the Irish from the 1700’s until the 1916 uprising. After reading that book, I was convinced that the Irish had it just as bad as blacks. Yes, the Irish were treated terribly in Europe and when they first came to America. But they were not slaves. Irish historians such as Liam Hogan have made this crystal clear.

“I conservatively estimate that tens of millions of people have been exposed to ‘Irish slaves’ disinformation in one form or another on social media.”

Liam Hogan​

From 2015 until 2019, Liam Hogan compiled some 52 different articles debunking the tale of Irish slavery. The intent here is not to denigrate nonracist Irish citizens of this country, but to destroy a popular white supremacist meme that has plagued social media and American culture for years. According to Hogan and other Irish historians in his compilation, the Irish were indentured servants and not slaves. The fallacy in the white supremacist argument lies in the fact that indentured servitude was a contractual agreement made between 2 or more parties. One party agreed that for payment of passage to America, the individual(s) would work for a specified term to repay the cost of passage. To say it was not much better than slavery is simply a lie. Slavery was permanent. Slavery was also generational. If you we born into a slave family, you were a slave. When you had children, they were slaves. There was no 7 years and a headright.

“The tale of the Irish slaves is rooted in a false conflation of indentured servitude and chattel slavery. These are not the same. Indentured servitude was a form of bonded labour, whereby a migrant agreed to work for a set period of time (between two and seven years) and in return the cost of the voyage across the Atlantic was covered. Indentured servitude was a colonial innovation that enabled many to emigrate to the New World while providing a cheap and white labour force for planters and merchants to exploit. Those who completed their term of service were awarded ‘freedom dues’ and were free. The vast majority of labourers who agreed to this system did so voluntarily, but there were many who were forcibly transplanted from the British Isles to the colonies and sold into indentured service against their will. While these forced deportees would have included political prisoners and serious felons, it is believed that the majority came from the poor and vulnerable. This forced labour was in essence an extension of the English Poor Laws, e.g. in 1697. John Locke recommended the whipping of those who ‘refused to work’ and the herding of beggars into workhouses. Indeed this criminalisation of the poor continues into the 21st century. In any case, all bar the serious felons were freed once the term of their contract expired.”

Liam Hogan​

Certainly, the Irish did endure difficulties. The general argument in order to dismiss or derail conversations about the treatment of blacks is that everybody had it tough. That is true, but everybody else CHOSE to come to America. No matter what diversion is used, Africans sold Africans to whites. The shipping companies were not owned by Africans. Nor does it appear that the more than 10 million Africans shipped across the Atlantic made any contractual agreement to perform labor in return for passage. So yes, the Europeans that chose to come here with little or nothing did struggle. But the various European ethnic groups had one thing they used to lift themselves up. And they used it to step on others- the race card.

In the north, Irish and blacks competed for the same jobs, or should I say, were relegated to low wage, menial labor. Irish and blacks in the north lived in the same communities. Both groups mixed socially, intermarried and had biracial children. The green was the black when and where no blacks existed.

“In the early years of immigration the poor Irish and blacks were thrown together, very much part of the same class competing for the same jobs. In the census of 1850, the term mulatto appears for the first time due primarily to inter-marriage between Irish and African Americans. The Irish were often referred to as Negroes turned inside out and Negroes as smoked Irish. A famous quip of the time attributed to a black man went something like this: "My master is a great tyrant, he treats me like a common Irishman." Free blacks and Irish were viewed by the Nativists as related, somehow similar, performing the same tasks in society. It was felt that if amalgamation between the races was to happen, it would happen between Irish and blacks. But, ultimately, the Irish made the decision to embrace whiteness, thus becoming part of the system which dominated and oppressed blacks. Although it contradicted their experience back home, it meant freedom here since blackness meant slavery.

An article by a black writer in an 1860 edition of the Liberator explained how the Irish ultimately attained their objectives: "Fifteen or twenty years ago, a Catholic priest in Philadelphia said to the Irish people in that city, 'You are all poor, and chiefly laborers, the blacks are poor laborers; many of the native whites are laborers; now, if you wish to succeed, you must do everything that they do, no matter how degrading, and do it for less than they can afford to do it for.' The Irish adopted this plan; they lived on less than the Americans could live upon, and worked for less, and the result is, that nearly all the menial employments are monopolized by the Irish, who now get as good prices as anybody. There were other avenues open to American white men, and though they have suffered much, the chief support of the Irish has come from the places from which we have been crowded."

Once the Irish secured themselves in those jobs, they made sure blacks were kept out. They realized that as long as they continued to work alongside blacks, they would be considered no different. Later, as Irish became prominent in the labor movement, African Americans were excluded from participation. In fact, one of the primary themes of How the Irish Became White is the way in which left labor historians, such as the highly acclaimed Herbert Gutman, have not paid sufficient attention to the problem of race in the development of the labor movement.

And so, we have the tragic story of how one oppressed "race," Irish Catholics, learned how to collaborate in the oppression of another "race," Africans in America, in order to secure their place in the white republic. Becoming white meant losing their greenness, i.e., their Irish cultural heritage and the legacy of oppression and discrimination back home.”

Art McDonald, Ph.D., “How the Irish Became White”​

lol well, the the 'Race Relations' forum has always been treated as a fantasy fiction forum by you black racists.