Thanks so much for the compliment, Askia. You just made my day.
Contrapuntal, I’d say it was time for a dramatic example.
There is a rule – a law, if you will – in our messageboard community about personally insulting fellow Dopers in the Great Debates forum. Attacking arguments is fine, but personal insults are a no-no. The vast majority of the time I choose to follow this rule – as well as all SDMB rules – because it keeps our community clean and civil and a happy place. Also, by NOT calling out fuckwits out as the fuckwits they are I can get my point across, usually, with paitence and maybe a little inventiveness. I maintain have not been coerced into doing so.
Don’t take my word for it: a simple ‘Search’ will reveal I have never been warned by any moderator in any forum in five years and 3,000 posts. The closest I’ve come is t**omendebb’**s advice one page one of this thread and that was just a friendly warning, from like, our neighborhood policeman. Thank you, Officer tomendebb.
So: let’s say, for the sake of dramatic example, mind – that while currently still uncoerced, I were to choose to break this “law.” That – hypothetically – I were to say to someone who disagreed with me… (I will spoilerbox this for tender sensibilities:
YOU SIR, ARE A SHITTY SHITHEAD FUCKWIT AND A CONGENITALLY STUNTED RETARD CUNT WITH MONKEY TOES AND INVERTED CRANIAL ENCEPHALITIS AND BAD BREATH AND RAGING IMPOTENCY AND INDIGO BLUEBALLS. WHY. DON’T. YOU. GET. THAT A LAW IS A STATIC THING THAT CANNOT COERCE ANYTHING BUT LAW ENFORCEMENT – Y’KNOW THE PEOPLE WITH GUNS AND SHIT – DOES??? THEY ARE IN FACT SEPARATE AND LARGELY AUTONOMOUS ENTITIES WITH BALANCED ROLES. HAVEN’T YOU HEARD THE BEGINNING OF “LAW AND ORDER” BEFORE??? IT"S BEEN ON TV A HUNDRED YEARS!!! FUCK, MAN EN[SIZE=7]FORCEMENT HAS THE WORD “FORCE” IN THE MIDDLE OF IT!! WHY - WHY – WHY – DON’T YOU GET THIS, YOU DUMBASS STUPIDASS IGNORANTASS GEEKYASS PUNKASS YUTZ??? WHY ARE YOU STUCK ON STUPID, SON??? STOP LINKING TO INTERNET DICTIONARIES AND USE YOUR ACTUAL BRAIN. GAH!!AAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH! >Bonks head on keyboard.<[/SIZE]
Ahem.
Now, then. Here in my dramatic recreation of something I’d never, ever actually ever do, not even somewhat tongue in cheek manner because I’d been advised against that already, I have clearly broken the “law” in my completely hypothetical and not at all actual example here. I broke it *good. *
Now… tomendebb, in his capacity as “policeman,” (Hi, Officer **tomendebb!) ** if he were to see this, might choose to do his duty and warn me formally, if my recent re-reading of the messageboard rules for no apparent reason just prior to posting this is accurate. He could coerce he, easy. The law cannot.
Any laws are just a code of rules devised to protect society if they follow those rukes. The law cannot coerce. I mean, how? By what mechanism? The words written down in legalese somewhere? How will that affect me, reprimand me, make me submit? Words alone can’t. Not even forceful words. The law may compel. But it is up to living entities to enforce, coerce, reprimand, punish, fine, penalize. The law itself does not do that. Unless a law is regularly enforced, it doesn’t even compel. It just suggests. If people ever talk about how the law protects or serves or forces – they mean the police. The law doesn’t do any of those things.
Being a servant of the law is not the same as being the law, sorry. But people confuse the two all the time.
Police coerce. The guys with authority, guns, bullets, sirens, armor, and big guys and tough gals to smack you around some.
So any company that merely follows the law – willingly – is not being coerced into doing so.
Until they break the law. Until, more accurately, they are discovered breaking the law and the police act on it. THEN any actions the police take would likely be coercive.
First they usually get a firm warning and a chance to comply.
Then if they still don’t comply, coercive tactics are used to get them to comply, or to simply punish. This is of course before the judiciary gets involved and heaps on some more punishment, which is again enforced by the police.
Again: the law doesn’t coerce. Police do.
It is a useful distinction because police also have the option of NOT using force, even in the face of blatant rule-breaking, if they maybe want to keep things off the books and let someone off with a warning. (Hi, officer tomendebb. How YOU doin’? Working out?)
Oh, shit it’s not tom. It’s Lynn Bodoni. Or is that TubaDiva? I’m so screwed.
This will be my last word on this particular subject. These dramatic examples take a lot of me.
Thaaaaaaaaaaaaank you.
You’re a gas. You really are. I suspect it may be because you really have nothing to say other than “nuh uh.” To coerce is to compel by force or threat of force. The threat of force is contained within the law. Any actions constrained or compelled by that threat were coerced. I have no idea why you are clinging to this fiction that a physical confrontation is a requirement of the definition. Make up all the definitions you want, but you have provided nothing other than your own say so to counter the numerous cites and examples I have given. Perhaps you should spend less time on dramatic effect and more on actual content.
Contrapuntal. Okay, I took my best shot. I still don’t believe for a minute any written law is actually coercive – I don’t care explicitly the consequences are spelled out – but I think it’s fair to say we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.
Thanks for thinking I’m a gas. I’m not sure I’m be talking to me, dramatic effect or not!
Askia, Hippy Hollow is a homage to my hometown of Austin, Texas. Now, I’ve never… erm, partaken in some of the activities that it is well-known for (well, to be honest, not voluntarily), but it is indicative of why I love Austin for all its weirdness and eccentricity. Plus it’s a shout-out to all Austinites, who are well aware of H.H.'s reputation…
I’m not a hippy by any stretch of the imagination, though I’m a fan of bellbottom jeans. “Hollow” has significance as well, as it is a word in one of my favorite albums from one of my favorite bands. I know, it’s a stretch. I guess I should be “Hatful of Hippy Hollow.” Plus I like how it sounds.
I just noticed that “Hippy” and “Hollow” start with the same letter, like my name IRL. Spooky…
I’ll be back to discussion mode soonish.
Oh, Driver8? Take a break, you’ve been on this shift too long. I was feeling ya 'til the end of your post.
[Moderator Hat ON]
Askia, I don’t care if you are “innocently” talking to yourself, posing spoilered hypotheticals or indulging in theoretical rhetoric where you insult posters in a manner that gee whiz you would NEVER EVER do for real…DON’T DO IT HERE. This is an official warning.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
And, that, ladies and gentlemen, is coercion.
Ah, well. Once in five years ain’t bad. LOL.
I’d agree with you that laws (abstract notions, written documents) can’t coerce. But those laws are the guidelines used to communicate what they (the federal government, in this case) will compel by force - coerce. I’d point out that laws that aren’t actively enforced lack any coercive nature. I don’t see the exaggeration, much less an eggregious one.
Forgiven. I have read the thread, not too much of what I suggested had been covered (or at least, clearly communicated, not that I fared any better).
Assuming the pdf linked by monstro above generally aligns with your thoughts on reparations, riddle me this: When viewing the “wealth gap”, why is it appropriate to compare African-American’s today with “white” America, versus Africa (specifically, from where slaves where orginally uh, shall we say, coerced)? Wouldn’t you would want to answer, “how well off would the claimants be if the defendents (or their predecessors) had not committed any crime against humanity?” Why is that not the standard?
FWIW, I am sympathetic to the issues raised in that piece, and would agree that many of the issues represent pressing problems that must be addressed. I just struggle to understand the reparations argument and get hung up on a few points. The piece even acknowledges some of them - it just doesn’t go on to address them. I reserve the right to bring up others, but for brevity, I’ll keep to one for now.
I won’t comment on the first part because I promised myself I wouldn’t go there. I had my fun, I got my ass smacked. Back to good behavior.
I also need to apologize to Contrapuntal for being a raging jerk. Don’t forgive me, don’t even try to understand me. It was stupid of me to do so.
I’ve like to request to any passing moderator that the entire spoilerbox in my “dramamtic example” post be deleted – since everything contained there was really uncalled for and obviously not fit for this forum. Cantrapuntal was a good sport about it but there’s no reason for any passing eyes to see how “witty” I was.
Y’know, a very strange vague feeling has come over me rethinking my posting behavior for the last couple of hours, something that might even be described as “vague shame.” To celebrate my rediscovery of this lost part of my conscience and general civility, I’m gonna take the rest of the evening off of the SDMB and go practice being less of an ass.
Back later.
The answer is simple, but I’m still glad you asked the question, AZCowboy.
You would compare the descendants of slaves to “white” America, not Africans, because the descendants of slaves are American, not Africans.
If you looked at my face, you’d see the influence of three groups: west African, Native American (Blackfoot, possibly Cherokee), and Irish-Scottish. I’m black because of the one-drop rule and because I self-identify as black. But being black does not make you African. By comparing my standard of living to a west African today, you are saying I’m essentially an African immigrant. Clearly I am not (I’m on the right, btw.)
How does this relate to your question? Well, by saying to black people “Ya’ll are better off here than ya’ll are in Africa. What gives?”, you are denying that a part of them–and for some us, a big part of them–is actually European. Shouldn’t black Americans compare their status to Great Britons along with Nigerians, to be fair?*
For those of us who don’t have Euro heritage, it is still a strange question to ask. Black people toiled on this continent for hundreds of years. They are more American than most white Americans simply because their ancestors were here longer. They don’t deserve the patronization of being compared to a homeland they can’t even claim stake to (I have no idea where my people are from, for instance). They deserve to be compared to fellow citizens who were able to reap the benefits of full citizenship by birth.
We will never know how damaging the slave trade was to Africa. Consider the fact that whole communities were “harvested” and shipped transatlantic. Millions of people were shipped in the Middle Passage. Many researcher say tens of millions of people were shipped. We don’t know how things would have turned out for Africa if those people had been left alone.
Finally, it’s easy to sit back and point to an impoverished Africa and say, “Black people here are better off than over there.” But what if Nigeria was a first-world country, the richest country in world? Would the descendents of slaves have even more reason to sue the federal government? Would you be more willing to cut them a check? I don’t think the poverty or the wealthiness of Africa matters one bit to a discussion about reparations for full-blooded Americans. What about you?
*I’m aware that even more admixture has occurred post-Emancipation. Hence, another reason why I think reparations will be quite difficult to distribute (and thus, argue for practically). Should a person with one black parent get the same compensation as a person with two black parents–both of whom are actually 1/16 “slave-owning white”? Would it be possible to distinguish the two?
Just for the record, you’d have been just as screwed if I had gotten here before Gaudere. This is not an additional warning, just a mild comment that the staff does tend to be in general agreement regarding policy and enFORCEment and that there was a fairly clear difference between the activity on the first page, in which I attempted to head off bad feelings, hijacks, and similar unpleasant events, and the activity on this page.
Have a nice posting career.
I wrote this in an old thread that answers your question:
"As soon as African slaves started having babies on American soil, we were no longer dealing with Africans. We were dealing with Americans. Why would you compare the plight of an American with the plight of an African? Would it not make more sense to compare the plights of countrymen if you were trying to make an analysis of who came out on top?
“And as hard as it is for a lot of people to process, the slaves were not just African in a heritage-sense, either. They had white blood, too. So if you had a biracial slave, does it make sense to say that slavery was a good thing for him because if not for it, he would be over in Africa fighting malaria and eating hand to mouth? In reality, if you view the scenario without the blinders of racism (not to imply that you are a racist, ElJeffe), you’d rule that it’s a stupid thing to say. Such a statement ignores the fact that half or more of that slave is as white as the man who screwed his mama, which therefore makes him in this case very unlucky to be a slave. Because if it wasn’t for slavery, he could have been a rich man eating roast beef every Sunday. He could have been a lawyer, a teacher, a farmer, or a doctor, and his children could have been those things, too. But instead, because of reality, he is only destined to be someone’s property. So is his children and their children.”
In short black != African.
I understand and admire your reasoning. If you wish to revisit it, I’d be happy to continue. If not, I understand that too.
Monstro, thanks for the reply. If I may…
You clearly wouldn’t be claiming reparations due to your Irish-Scottish heritage (and likely not native American - perhaps another thread). To simplify the complexity this issue introduces, let’s assume a “pure” slave descendent - a person whose entire family tree has roots in slavery. If any person is due reparations, this person is.
But isn’t their American citizenship a direct result of the crime? Was it likely they would have become citizens, if not for the crime? Was it a negative, that their ancestors were stripped their national identity and culture? Or was it a positive, that their progeny had the opportunity to eventually grow up in one of the most economically advanced countries? Net net, despite the despicable nature of the crime to the slaves, were their (non-slave) descendents actually benefited, ironic as it might be? Are you better off?
No. It isn’t their European heritage that is the basis of their claims.
Alot of the rest of your post takes on an emotional appeal. I’m interested in the legal arguments that support reparations.
We don’t know how things would have turned out for Africa if those people had been left alone, but we don’t know alot of things. We could get a team of economists to make estimates though.
Perhaps not more reason to sue, but I would better understand their argument for the value of the reparations.
I think it might. I think it could go to the legal basis of calculating damages. While I understand the damage that would have been claimed by former slaves, I’m not sure their descendents have the same legal basis for damages. Or if you are going to use the “wealth gap”, at least.
American as a direct result of the crime. If we are trying to undue the harm of the crime, why isn’t it appropriate to go back to the situation that existed before the harm was committed and estimate what would have happened if the harm had not occurred? Isn’t that the normal process for civil courts? Aren’t the antecedent events potentially mitigating?
The shakedown I referred to was the law itself. Companies are dammed if they respond to it and damned if they don’t. If, as you suggested, it’s intended as the groundwork for future lawsuits then there is a serious reason for companies to pull out of Chicago. CEO’s don’t respond well to a lot of red tape bullshit.
There are other ways the law can be used for political purposes. It could be used by the city as a way to discriminate on contracts based on compliance or the frivolous law suits that follow. There is no positive result of this law for businesses and as it becomes part of the national consciousness it will hurt the city’s image as a place to conduct business in.
Just a comment to say that rules enforcement here is not coercion. Mesaured responsive force is never coercive. We signed up here voluntarily, agreeing to abide by the rules. Breaking the rules is a breach of contract. Warning and banning are responses to that breach. Breach is a coercion.
Lot of “shoulds” in there. As I’m sure you know, the issue of slavery was discussed thoroughly in committee before the final version of the Declaration of Independence was drafted. Arguing, as you seem to be doing here, that the Constitution that legalized slavery should never have included slavery in the first place is a non-starter: “Yeah, but it did. Next?” is the court’s response, and is the only response proper to ex post facto arguments.
If “Next?” then makes you form a higher court to study crimes against humanity, that’s also a loser, I think. The Nuremberg trials obviously issued stiff sentences to individuals still living at the time, for specific acts that they committed. If the U.S. goes on trial for being mis-formed under racist law in the 18th century, any International Court will realize how long the docket of potential complainants they will have to deal with, since other countries have also committed numerous crimes against humanity since the U.S. was formed.
I’m not sure where you’re going with this. In either venue, the U.S. Supreme Court or some international body, you have no one who seems to think you even have standing for arguing your case. This is to say nothing of the impossible problems with determining who is, and who is not, a plaintiff in this case, and who is and who is not, a defendant --the idea of determining that by ethnicity is seriously flawed, and will almost certainly include numerous people who, sadly, are genetically both descendents of slaveowners and slaves.
And I appreciate how you’re emphasizing that my opinions (and yours) don’t mean much in this purely legal context you’re positing. You’d have to know me to understand how the idea of tearing up my ACLU card and applying for NRA membership is absurd–my point was that if someone like me is at the point of even considering such a drastic response, then millions of Jethroes who are already NRA members aren’t likely to take such a ruling without shots being fired. Practical concepts like “Such a ruling will create massive civil unrest” and “the economic consequences of such a ruling would be ruinous” often acccompany judicial decisions on far lesser matters, so I don’t think the courts are completely removed from the practical world I’m describing. You’re right that my personal opinion is inconsequential–but the opinions of millions of people who feel far more strongly than I do (no doubt including that of most of the justices on the Supreme Court) often does influence the court’s rulings.
Can you be sure that if the Union Army had distributed 40 Acres and a Mule with unprecedented efficiency that today’s African-Americans would not be disadvantaged still? That reparationists would not be arguing “Okay, but what we needed was 80 acres and 2 mules, at least” or that they wouldn’t be able to claim that in the context of post-Civil War America they needed police protection more than any number of acres and any number of mules, and that without that police protection, lingering racism has blighted their descendants’ lives?
This isn’t how the courts work, and I think you understand that. They offer compensation to viable plaintiffs, they punish defendants for misdeeds they have done themselves, they order that laws be changed from this day forward, but they don’t revisit the past and declare do-overs.
Because Africa does not matter here. I see it’s time for more analogies here.
Let’s say I kidnap a child from an abusive home that is entrenched in dire poverty and force the kid to work on my farm. Civil proceedings are brought against me (as well as criminal, but we shall table that for now) after the kid grows up and is able to run away from me. Should the judge consider that the kid would have otherwise grown up in an abusive household, and therefore is not entitled to much money because of “mitigating antecedent events”?
Of course not. The money that is owed to the kid is no more and no less than the cost of the child’s freedom and the cost of the work that the kid rendered, plus punatitive damages that the court will inflict on me to teach me and the rest of society a lesson. The child’s status before my crime should have no bearing on the damages awarded. A child abducted from an affluent household should be viewed by the court in the same manner that a child abducted from the projects is.
It’s insulting to say to the descendants of slaves “Slavery is a good thing cos otherwise yall would be in hot ass Africa living in mud huts with flies crawling over your eyeballs.” (I’m not saying you’re saying this, AZ, but your question inevitably leads to this statement.) First of all, saying that is to assume that Africa would have remained the same had it not been for slavery, which is folly. Secondly, its to overlook the fact that the slaves were not just African; they were white and Indian as well. So to say that a slave and his descendants are better off than his African counterpart is to completely dismiss the other ethnic groups that make him who he is. It epitomizes the insanity of the one-drop rule.
No, its their descendancy from American slaves that is. Again, this isn’t a black vs. white issue.
Let’s go back in time, though. If it were 1850, would that be a fair thing to say to me? Remember: my Irish-Scottish and N. American ancestry would have done nothing to protect from slavery. I would still be an unpaid laborer, working in someone’s kitchen or picking cotton from someone’s field. I would be as much an unpaid laborer as Kunte Kente, straight outta Africa.
I don’t understand why I couldn’t claim reparations. Most of my ancestors were black–and presumbly slave. I don’t see why having non-black ancestry makes a claim on reparations null-and-void. Especially given this country’s insane “one drop rule”.
(Remember now: Askia and I are two different people. I believe that if reparations are going to be meted out, it should be for uncompensated labor and denial of civil rights. Not for crimes against humanity or something as abstract, as is Askia’s position.).
Listen to yourself. The crime wasn’t just in the kidnipping. Most slaves in US slaves did not experience the Middle Passage. For most slaves, their hell began the moment they popped out of their mother’s womb, on American soil.
The Declaration of Independence was written up more than a hundred years after the first slaves were brought to this continent. The moment the US became the US should have been the moment all the slaves were set free, because suddenly the system became one built on the concept of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for all men.
The federal government’s crime was that they betrayed their own words and allowed slavery to exist for almost another century. I don’t hold them accountable for the Middle Passage (they abolished imported slaves in 1808 IIRC). I hold them accountable to the people who were born here under the US flag.
Again, this a moot point. The moment people are born in this country, they should be under the protection of the US Constitution, regardless of how their ancestors got here. Slaves were not under the protection of the US Constitution for arbitrary, unjust reasons.
Please listen to how you sound, AZCowboy. This is a ridiculous argument, and it’s actually offensive because it makes it sound as if black people did not deserve to earn their citizenship here just as easily and fairly as white Europeans did. (Not to say that it was all easy and fair for all Europeans, but it was, on average, easier and more fair than it was for blacks).
Slavery was not positive for black people. Period. If it hadn’t been for slavery, we don’t know how successful black people in America would be right now. They could be the Model Minority right now–like the Jews or the Asians–if they had been allowed to migrate over here voluntarily and accumulate wealth like everyone else did.
You are attaching a fake happy ending to a very long, sad story.
Better off than what or whom, AZCowboy? If it wasn’t for slavery, I WOULDN’T BE HERE. Better than an African? Why am I going to compare myself to an African, when I am a full-blooded American?? Isn’t it easier if I compare myself to YOU, another full-blooded American?
If it was 1850, who would I be better off than? Would I be better off than you?
You don’t understand their claims very well, if you think this is about heritage rather than the betrayl of the federal government.
I love this! Basically you shoot down my arguments because they make you feel as well as think.
What are you arguments based on? They certainly aren’t based on logic and rationality. “Compare Americans with Africans” is certainly not a very cerebral statement.
What would economists be able to say about the current status of Africa if the slave trade had never existed? That’s like saying economists would be able to convincingly reconstruct the current status of Mexico if Spain hadn’t colonized there. Economists do not have time machines.
Wouldn’t it be a great deal easier to speculate what would have happened to black people if there had been no slavery in the US? All we have to do is look at white people and other immigrants to get an idea of how damaging that history was. We don’t even need an economist to do this.
I don’t understand why you can’t see it now. I don’t understand why you can’t see how harmful 300 years of slavery were, coupled with almost a century of second-class citizenship. Black Generation Xers are the first in their families to have been born free. My parents can’t say this, because they were born in a time when the Army was still segregated, when most black people could not vote, most black children were warehoused in inferior educational facilities, and black people all across the country were paid less than whites doing the same jobs. If it hadn’t been for ANY of that, then black people would be doing just as well–if not better–than the mainstream population. To suggest they wouldn’t is to say that history does not matter and that black people are inherently inferior. I know for a fact that neither of those things are true.
I think if it was 1905 (and we were operating under a fair system), the descendants of slaves would have any easier time getting claims. I do believe in a statute of limitations, but I’m not ready to say that it doesn’t make sense for descendants to ever seek their inheritance, if they feel it was unfairly denied to them. And for the descendants of slaves, it was. The federal government DID promise slaves compensation following the CW, and it did not follow through with this. This compensation would have represented wealth–which could have easily been passed down to descendants. If my parents had been promised land from the federal government, it would be my duty and responsibility to hold it accountable even after my parents’ died.
Unfortunately black Americans did not have the respect or clout to fight the federal government in 1905.
So while I’m not joining pro-reparations people on the front lines, I understand why they are fighting. A real promise was made by our government that was not kept. I think the federal government needs to be called to the carpet for that. I would hope that everyone would hold their government to the same standard.
Your argument only sounds good to you because the US is wealthiest country in the world. It ignores the strong possibility that it’s the wealthiest country in the world because its exact foundation was built on the backs of people who received no compensation. That you continue to ignore this is striking.
But I’ll play along anyway with one last example:
Let’s say someone kidnaps and tortures you for ten years straight. You manage to escape and recuperate well enough to write a rivveting account of what happened. You get a book deal and earn millions of dollars on the talkshow circuit, etc.
One day, you find out that the cops have nabbed your kidnapper.
Should your kidnapper go free because you’re financially better off than you were before he tortured you? Is his crime mitigated by your success? Do you owe him thanks? What would you do if he told you you did?
Your argument bothers me so much, AZCowboy, because it could have been easily used to deny actual former slaves of compensation. I can’t abide any arguments like that because I feel there is no doubt former slaves were owed something.
I can’t respond to you right now, p.r.r., because I’m busy at work. Maybe I’ll have time to address your post later.
If anyone doubts that the federal government promised compensation to slaves, they need only turn to the First Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1984:
Emphasis mine.
The slaves did not get this. Nor did their descendents.
Apology accepted. For the record, I find you to be a quite a sharp guy who has a way with words. I like hangin’ with folks like that. Also, I suspect we would agree more often than not on Great Debates kind of issues. We just ended up on the opposite side of this one.