experiment rather. grr
The title of the bill explicitly states that it is to “study reparation proposals”. The explicitly defined purpose of the act includes the statement that it “is to establish a commission to… recommend appropriate remedies.” Remedies which explicitly include “compensation to the descendants of African slaves.”
If you were telling the truth, the bill would be called “Commission to Study the Impact of Slavery on African Americans Act” and sections 2.(b)(5), 3.(b)(7)(C) and 3.(b)(7)(D) would not exist.
I don’t think it’s a matter of believing there was no effect, I think “the majority”, by which I think you mean “everyone not of visibly African descent” know damn well there was an effect. I think a lot of them just don’t care since it doesn’t affect them personally. Which in some ways is worse, in my opinion, because I think you should care about how other people are treated.
(bolding mine)
I suggest you read HR 40 again. I have provided the link here. I can only imagine how you parsed the 9/11 Commission or the Warren Commission.
- Honesty
I’m sorry, did he somehow misquote the title of the bill as stated in the first sentence?
That’s not the title of the bill-That’s what Honesty thinks the bill should be about.
Thank you.
I don’t see a problem. Nor do I see how the committee’s “purpose of the bill is help enable taking money from whites, asians and hispanics to give to blacks.” (Grumman’s words). It is such a gross oversimplification of what the bill aims to do. Basically, what you (or Grumman) want is a study to be done but no recommendations to be laid after the fact. I can’t think of any U.S-led commission, committee, or inquiry that doesn’t give recommendations. Can you?
- Honesty
??? ???
You stuck it in the title of the thread.
The bill propsoes we
“establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery”
This is unneeded. We are all agreed that slavery in it’s 19th century form was bad. We do not need further study, yet the bill claims “sufficient inquiry has not been made into the effects of the institution of slavery on living African Americans and society in the United States.” Like hell there hasn’t been. There are thousands upon thousands of papers on the subject.
We should not, otherwise, examine reparations for slavery in a monetary form, anyways, because we already take into account that in some cases Americans with African heritage have been put into a poor situation and we already use that as a reason to give them financial support. Just because we also realize other people can be in a bad situation by other causes, does not mean we have ignored those people and those causes.
This is just another way the people, or some of them, have figured out how to vote themselves money.
Who will pay? Why, everybody. Is everybody guilty of slavery? No. Are all African Americans victims of slavery? No. In fact, many of the people I assume will get paid will be paying the increased taxes to pay themselves, and that makes no sense.
Every post-civil war African immigrant will be claiming instead to be a descendant of a slave.
heck I am white, and one branch of my family came from the south–that might mean I have some African American blood, though I am white. Shall I pay myself reparations?
As I have recounted in another thread, another branch of family were abolitionists and very active in abolition and some even died in the civil war fighting to end slavery, so my ancestors have made reparation for slavery with their lives and the very core of their beings. How are they or me responsible for slavery?
Now, on the other hand, the government paying out to people who are victims who are alive today is different–but they are not victims of slavery–they would be victims of 14th amendment violations.
But there are lots of other victims of government violating rights–look at the crap in the criminal justice system. Again, I do not see why a nation of “equality” only looks at one group to make justice with, and ignores other groups we know exist.
Therefore I might support a commission to study all violations of rights done by the government in the United States, but then, oh the horror, we’d have to be looking at the violations done to straight white men, too, and we all know that that is not allowed.
You’re suggesting you study what you already know, to a very near conclusive degree? if it cannot be denied–what would the study hope to achieve?
Those recommendations could include reparations:
Section 2)b
(5) recommend appropriate remedies in consideration of the Commission’s findings on the matters described in paragraphs (1) and (2); and
(6) submit to the Congress the results of such examination, together with such recommendations.
It’s not about who is guilty. It’s not even about who ‘deserves’ reparations. It’s about the fact that, due to actively white supremacist policies of the US government and local governments that date all the way from the country’s birth to recent decades, black people have been systematically prevented from taking part in a fair economy of labor and property through the vast majority of US history (please read Coates’ article if you haven’t yet).
The example of Germany and reparations for the Holocaust is a good comparison, even if it is not a perfect one. But reparations made Germany stronger. I’m still not certain I actually support reparations in the US – I’d have to see what it would actually entail (and I strongly oppose any reparations scheme that have been suggested in other threads that would seek to separate black people from the country!). But the federal government, and state and local governments, should absolutely recognize and publicize their contrition for the myriad policies that lasted into the Civil Rights era and beyond that were put in place to prevent most black people from taking full part in a market economy.
That would be a good start. Once all these policies are recognized and acknowledged, then we could start to look at solutions meant to reverse their effects.
As others have noted, you yourself brought up reparations in the thread title to discuss this bill. So it’s a valid response.
The title of the bill is the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. But somehow it’s not about reparations. Even though the guy who wrote it says it is. But what does he know?
Clearly this is an important matter to you…
He didn’t say he knows how much slavery has impacted present-day African-Americans. Should we have stopped investigating the effects of tobacco consumption once we found out there was a causal link to lung cancer?
Let me ask you this: if (D) was removed from the bill, would you support it?
I happen to think reparations are (now) a goofy idea. Determining what effects slavery and Jim Crow had or have on African-Americans is not, particularly in light of the purported difficulty in ascertaining such matters. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of people arguing that affirmative action is bad policy because we won’t know if it has worked or because we cannot compute the effect of societal discrimination. Justice Powell’s plurality opinion in Bakke is a good example.
No, what I want is for the study to not be done, since it’s a redundant waste of taxpayer dollars. Failing that, I want the study to be done without the objective being to create a racist law giving preferential treatment to people based on their distant ancestry.
Do you think the fact that for most of American history, such laws and policies existed, continues to have any significant effect on things today?