Most whites aren't millionaires, either. So you have some point? Are you suggesting that the US taxpayer be dunned to make instant millionaires out of the previously identified group of blacks? Before blacks were brought to this country as slaves, Native Americans were used as slave labor. Any suggestions? (Blacks were considered superior slaves because Native Americans were more likely to let themselves die than be chattel labor or be denied their freedom.)
My point is what I wrote. If most Blacks are millionaires then the economic wealth gap whites enjoy goes away.
No. I am suggesting the US pay what is owed to the descendants of those enslaved due to the US allowing chattel slavery. Isnt that what we are talking about?
Not all Native Americans were Black so I dont understand the deflection?
What makes you think it would be reinvested into
Herein lies the crux of our dispute: Two specific problems I can see with your proposal to dun modern day taxpayers: Millions of people today who were not participants in nor responsible for the actions of thie government at a time when slavery was an acceptable practice worldwide. (Slavery is still rampant in some places on this planet, even to this day.) The same government that worked to criminalize and eliminate the practice of slavery, even to the point of destroying the nation through armed conflict, if necessary. Do you disregard the lives of whites sacrificed in the bid to eliminate slavery and negate their sacrifices?
The second is: you are not asking for fair and equitable payments made by the descendants of those who owned slaves to those descendants of slaves held in this country. What you are asking for is a big KaChing! payout funded by big government coffers filled by totally innocent persons in sums to be determined by anyone "qualified" for retribution for a condition that ceased to exist, legally, in this country well over 100 years ago. Even if it were equitable for the sons to pay for the sins of their fathers, where is there any justification to force payment for anyone's sins by the innocent?
I am sorry if your great- or great-great-grandparents suffered slavery. But I will offer no personal apology because my forebears played no part in holding or trading slaves.
But supposing such reparations were to be paid to qualified persons, please explain how you believe that money would serve to improve the economy of the black community?
Doesnt matter if modern day people are responsible or not. Again its the US's debt to pay and they pay that with tax dollars. Slavery existing or having existed elsewhere has absolutely nothing to do with this. The US didnt go to war to end slavery. It went to war to keep the south from leaving. We know this because the enslaved were not freed in the Union states until later.
Its our right to go after direct descendants at a later date and time we determine. Whites dont dictate to us when and in what order we should sue for reparations.
The justification is that they are part of the US that benefited from and legalized chattel slavery.
You dont have to offer any apology. Any apology would be hollow and condescending in light of the economic gap that you dont want to address and refuse to believe in.
That money would instantly close the economic gap if paid. Not only that it could go to fund Black K-12 schools and bolster the HBCU's currently in existence. Basically it would be another Black Wall Street before jealous whites burned it to the ground. If you need to understand how money can change a community look at the history of Black Wall Street and other like Black communities before whites destroyed them.
So people should be forced to pay for the crimes of their forbears?
In your last paragraph why do you think reparations would go to any of that? Look at what happens with the typical lottery winner.
Yes they should if they profited from those crimes and others suffered because of those crimes. However, thats not what we are talking about. The US is paying the debt not those individuals. The US is responsible and complicit in those crimes due to the legalizing of chattel slavery.
Not sure what lotto winners have to do with my point? I think it would go that way because its been discussed in the Black community and the consensus is exactly what I stated.
There probably isn't a single person living who doesn't have ancestors who committed 'crimes' which caused others to suffer. Whether or not they have profited from the crimes of their ancestors is debatable, of course.
Is there a point at which reparations for slavery would no longer be valid, because too much time/too many generations would have passed? It's currently about 5 generations since the abolition of slavery, if you judge a generation by 30-year increments. At this point, you would have people getting reparations for things done to their great-great-great grandparents. Perhaps that is perfectly acceptable. Would it be fine after 10 generations? 20? Is the time limit (if any) the same for any crimes worthy of reparations, or is it different for each circumstance?
Lottery winners would be a similar situation in which individuals come into a large sum of money suddenly. I assume that is the comparison Coyote was making.
There is a consensus in the black community about how reparations would be used? There are something like 40-50 million blacks living in the US, how many would you say have agreed on how reparations given to individuals would be spent?
