…and of course that first sentence should have been marked as a quote from disreputable_1 - bloody codes
Wouldnt history be hilarious if the losers of every war sued the winner over bad treatment in war? Granted they took it too far, but cmon? What would have happened?
Conversion by the sword on trial? The Crusades sued as religious persecution? Jesus lawyers state “his civil rights have been infringed upon”?
Two questions.
-
If general reparations were paid, wouldn’t that mean some black people were paying for their own ancestors’ slavery? I mean, black people pay taxes, too, and that’s where the reparations would come from.
-
My ancestors never owned any slaves nor profited for slavery. In fact, they fought for the Union, and one died. Does anyone owe me anything for that? (Checks accepted with 2 forms of ID).
Interesting question, Marvin.
It would be a nightmare trying to sort out the blacks that were true decendants of slaves in THIS country and those that immigrated to the US after the abolition of slavery. I believe Affirmative Action was a form of payment to blacks, who’s ancestors were displaced by slavery, which now encompasses all people of color NO MATTER WHEN THEY CAME TO THE US. That is wrong.
I had nothing to do with their plight, nor did any of my ancestors, so why should I pay?
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin
This is quite a bold falsehood. Not only could the feds take no action against you, any NAACP suits would have to be based on actual damages as a result of your action.
I’m surprised no one else noticed how utterly wrong this post is. There is no law against discrimination. You can refuse to hire black people if you wish. The only people that cannot are government employers (state and federal), and those who have contracts with the federal government (but this is written into their contract - although a law states that it must be in the contract no one forces them to sign it). The only thing you cannot do is refuse to serve black customers.
Cooper
NO YOU CAN NOT.
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin
You wanna take any bets on that, Cooper?
-Melin
Siamese attack puppet – California
Still neglecting and overprotecting my children
Boy. Sure is a lot of vitriol spilling over here.
Couple o’ points.
StarvinMarvin:
Entirely wrong. We can discuss how much slavery had to do with the Civil War or how much other factors entered into it, but only slavery was an issue large enough to bring it about. (There are numerous threads on this board, several only days or weeks old, that deal with these issues.) If you want to assert that the Union did not initially begin a righteous crusade to free slaves, you will be correct. However, the secession and the firing on Fort Sumter with its aftermath was a direct result of the growing conflict over slavery.
You tell me where they landed and what jobs they took up and we can discuss this. In 1940, few blacks were on welfare demanding handouts either. They were, however, prevented from obtaining good jobs (in preference to white immigrants) and were held in poverty by social (and, in the South, legal) restrictions.
I don’t think that there is any point to offering reparations. Too much time, too many conflicting issues. However, the point that people miss when they claim that “Their ancestors never held slaves.” is that most of the immigrants who landed subsequent to the Civil War were given job preferences over blacks. They also generally arrived in clumps of cultural units that held together long enough for them to acquire political power and to support each other as they boosted themselves out of their initial poverty. Blacks were deliberately excluded from political power (with tools as disparate as total disenfranchisement in the South to “at large” representation to prevent blacks from developing power bases in the wards of the North) and their culture was deliberately assaulted to destroy the social cohesion that would allow them to “bootstrap” themselves out of poverty.
Sentinel’s comments regarding his “Cream” magazine and related issues is just silly. Pick up a copy of GQ. As noted in the thread on BET over in the BBQ Pit, the use of Black, or Ebony, or any other word is a marketing ploy to target an audience. No white person is forbidden to read, watch, enjoy, (or contribute to) any of those periodicals or shows.
Tom~
mea culpa Durno. I don’t doubt the strong feelings many of the individuals in these groups may still feel today. I just don’t believe they came up with the idea of litigation on their own and I apologize if that was not clear. I believe that enterprising members of the plaintiffs bar are pushing these people with promises of huge settlements.
You mention the desire for recognition of the injustice in the form of compensation. Certainly we are all aware of the injustices that occurred (notwithstanding the fringe element that insists such acts never happened). Why is compensation by shareholders of the targeted companies - many of whom were not even born when the injustices took place - the preferred form of recognition?
Will money make the pain go away?
I see this as just another example of the ethos that exists today whereby any and all injustices equate to monetary compensation. This, more than anything in our society, is responsible for the pathetic victimization culture.
I’m sorry, this just looks and smells like a money grab.
tomndebb, would you mind expanding on this or providing a reference?
Thanks.
As a white guy, I fully agree that I owe millions of dollars in reparations to black Americans. And I fully intend to pay up the millions I owe, honest. But black folks will have to wait just a bit. You see…
I’m Irish, so I figure I’m entitled to several million dollars from the British. AFter all, the British stole my ancestral homeland and mistreated my ancestors. I’v started a campaign to get 10 million dollars from Tony Blair, and I promise to give the money to COngressman John COnyers as soon as Tony pays up. Of course…
I may have to wait a while, because Tony told me his ancestors were Saxons, and he has his own mega-billion dollar lawsuit against Jacques Chirac. You see, the French Normans stole England from the Saxons, and oppressed the Saxons terribly, so Tony is demanding a few billion dollars in reparations from France. So, as soon as TOny gets the money from the French, he’ll give it to me, and I’ll give it to COngressman COnyers. I swear. PRoblem is…
Jacques Chirac has his own multi-trillion dollar lawsuit against the Italian government. See, the Gauls of ancient France were conquered and exploited by the ancient Romans for centuries, so CHirac feels the Italians owe centuries of reparations to France.
So, fear not, black America! As soon as ITaly pays off France, and France pays off England, and England gives me my multi-million dollar settlement I’ll give the money to COngressman Conyers. Whaddya say? Deal?
There have been two specific contributing factors to a disrupted black culture. The first, of course, was slavery, in which marriages were arranged and broken at the whim of the slaveowner, interrupting whatever normal family patterns might have been brought over from Africa. In contrast to any other immigrant group who arrived and remained in family structures (or who sent a breadwinner ahead to America to be rejoined by the family after employment was secured), for well over 150 years, many blacks grew up with no expectation that either a nuclear or extended family was ever to be counted upon–since a bad crop or a bad temper could lead to them being sold separately. (This has not been true of the entire black population; it has been true of a sufficiently large segment of that population to cause fragmentation within the society.)
After slavery, itself, the two most effective means of preventing black social progress were lynchings and riots.
Lynchings were most often found in the South, were often prompted by perceived “disrespect” of whites by blacks, and were used, quite effectively, as a terrorist weapon to make sure that no black person wished to “stand out” by effort or success and, thus, become a target for violence.
Riots most often occurred in the North where whites and blacks competed for the same jobs in an increasingly industrial society. (A separate category of riots did occur in the South (and West), with small, villages or towns being effectively destroyed or the inhabitants chased out by local whites, jealous of the blacks’ relative prosperity. The movie Rosewood portrayed one of these events. (The movie had many more deaths than the original event, but the black citizens were forced to abandon all their property and flee into poverty–and Rosewood was not an isolated event.)
While lynchings could be a spur-of-the moment event, many of them were planned and advertised, with papers running columns explaining the “need” for the lynchings and railroads actually putting together special trains to carry the crowds to the events.
Riots were nearly always spontaneous.
In the cases of both lynchings and riots, it was fairly typical for the police to ignore the proceedings (or, in the case of the northern riots, to disarm any blacks they encountered in the interests of “safety” while allowing the whites to go unchallenged). (In the Detroit riot of 1943, the whites reacted against a black housing project being built near a white neighborhood. They invaded a black neighborhood and killed 25 people, suffering 9 deaths, themselves. The police arrested only black citizens (for defending their own neighborhoods).)
Throughout the lynchings and riots a common theme was expressed: a black who was considered too successful was a target. In the Springfield, IL riot, the two men who were killed were a barber who had established himself as a solid businessman (defending his shop from being burned) and an elderly, retired gentleman who had been praised in the local papers as a good citizen (dragged from his home and lynched in a schoolyard).
The fairly clear message throughout the U.S. between 1880 and 1960 was that a black person had no right or business being successful.
Tom~
Astorian
I think your suit is too cheap, since the suppression, murder and theft stated in the 1500s under Henry Tudor. Can we increase that amount?
Uh, MISTREATED is too mild a word. Did the Germans MISTREAT the Jews?
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin
disrep:
disrep, you seem to argue that compensation demands are somehow unfair to the shareholders who bought their shares after the slave labour had been abolished. I think I have to disagree: If you buy into a company, it’s because you trust said comapny to be succesfull and want a bit of the proceeds, right ? OK, if the company actually owes at least some of its success to the fact that it could conscript slave labour 50 years ago, then the company (including its current shareholders) is under a moral obligation to share some of the wealth generated with the people involved. The shareholders could’ve decided to invest in other companies.
Of course, some reasonable time limit must be put in place - but as long as the people who were actually slaving for the company are still alive, it’ll be hard to deny that their demands are somewhat justified.
Norman.
Worrying is the thinking man’s form of meditation.
Methinks TomnDebb is looking to be a politician by ignoring FACTS and HISTORY and trying to become the flag-bearer of the “Look at us we suffered, now pay us Trillions”.
Your attempt to mislead the thread reading public is completely atrocious. You fail to recognize that in a war of money and interests, slavery was of benefit to both sides economically, but could only be used as a weapon by one side. Your lack of expertise on an subject of military strategy shows in this commentary of yours. The timing of the Emancipation Proclamation blatantly shows it to be a POLITICAL sympathy move, to regain support for a war being lost. Ala Russian Army in Chechnya. They only blurt out the big wins to the news, the horrendous losses are lost and forgotten. The “worldly” deed of stopping the illegal acts of Chechen rebels is what they say they are their fighting for. As many know its about not looking weak, and not letting a small agricultural state secede and do so successfully.
Before you become the arbitrary re-writer of history sir/madame please educate yourself on the topic, and know the whole story. Your sympathies with the plight of the African Americans and the illusionary history you propose have clouded your memory on history as it really happened. Might I also remind you that slavery was introduced to the colonies by the British, why don’t they foot the bill for slavery and its ancestors misdeeds? Because they aren’t a cash-cow and blindly sympathetic to any group that moans and cries loud enough.
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. "
Jonathan Swift
You haven’t a clue what you are talking about, Marv.
Look up the secession declarations for the various Confederate states. Most of them give the preservation of slavery as a reason for leaving the Union.
Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.
Elmer J Fudd
Millionare- who failed to use a penny for educating himself
The declarations were made in an attempt to find ANY reason to substantiate a basic desire to desolve any Union and association with the Federal government of the North. Slavery was chosen since it was believed to be DEVISIVE and wouldnt be arguable.
If you wanted a divorce and your SO didnt, would you pick the WEAKEST argument to get your future ex wife to leave, or would you say ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you could to hurt her and make her want to leave you alone? Thats how nasty the climate was during the writing of those papers.
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. "
Jonathan Swift
Do you wish to define what that “basic desire” was spurred by? The desire of the Confederacy was to disassociate itself with a country that had elected an anti-slavery party (The Republicans) to power.
Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.
Let me just sidestep the frothers here…
Tom, I agree with what you’re saying, but wasn’t the “Separate-But-Equal” business set up pretty much so that blacks would stay well away from whites (except when they were wanted as Pullman porters, etc.)?
If a black man were able to gain an education , what was keeping him from becoming a successful doctor, lawyer, accountant, merchant, or businessman within the black community?
Uke
The desire was for laws and taxes to be of equal interest and benfit to North and South and for the Interests fo the South and its way of life to be represented.
This wasnt done, they were ignored, over-taxed, imposed upon, and in the end, pushed too far.
Had they had the resources and the cash flow the Federal Government had, they would have won the war. This statement is based on the fact, they fought for a cause, with heart, and with all they had. Even as it was,if not for a few mistakes, they still would have taken many victories. Gettysburg is all that saved this Union from disolving. Fact.
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. "
Jonathan Swift