# Regarding the blacks marching for reparations tomorrow... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 17, 2002, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303 "2002-08-17T05:30:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/21 "2002-08-18T05:35:11Z")
Doh: beat me to the punch… ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/22 "2002-08-18T05:40:59Z")
Er… pardon if I’m wrong… But wasn’t Malcom X killed by the jive-talking turkey on stage, saying those words? You know, Louis F? (His speech used the word “jive”, honest.) I think it’s kind of telling Sharpton stayed away, myself. And it says something that both “hundreds” showed up, and not the “thousands” or “Million” as normal, and that many of the comments are on the welfare system. Basically… boring. Useless. Flavor of the week attention-getting. ---
**Author:** ![Squish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Squish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squish)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/23 "2002-08-18T06:05:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Askia \* > \*\*Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use. \*\* So instead of working 16 hours a day in a coal mine, raising 11 children, and saving enough money to buy a small farm, my non-English speaking, illiterate great-grandfather should have just fired up the crack pipe? C’mon. That argument doesn’t wash, in light of the millions of immigrants who faced the same situations and worked themselves up out of the tenements and the “(insert ethnicity of choice here) section” of American towns and cities. Should I sue the Russian government for causing my grandfather to flee the Bolsheviks? The government of the Republic of Georgia to return my great-grandfather’s farm? ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/24 "2002-08-18T06:27:22Z")
> [@](#): > > “I want to go up to the closest white person and say, ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing,’ and then slap him, just for my mental health,” Charles Barron, a member of the New York City Council, told the crowd. > > … > > “Apologize White America,” said a sign carried by one demonstrator. > > Barron, a self-proclaimed “elected revolutionary,” said if the government did not act swiftly he personally would storm the Treasury Department and take the money for reparations. Source: [http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/ns/story.jsp?floc=FF-PLS-PLS&id=404809893&dt=20020817184300&w=RTR&coview=](http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/ns/story.jsp?floc=FF-PLS-PLS&id=404809893&dt=20020817184300&w=RTR&coview=) Doesn’t really help to build an honest, open frank and objective discussion about it, does it? > [@](#): > > “It seems that America owes black people a lot for what we have endured,” Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan told the crowd. “We cannot settle for some little jive token. We need millions of acres of land that black people can build.” > > “We’re not begging white people,” said Farrakhan, one of several speakers at a rally organizers billed as “Millions for Reparations.” "“We are just demanding what is justly ours.” Source: [http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/08/17/slave.reparations.ap/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/08/17/slave.reparations.ap/index.html) > [@](#): > > “Every other group has been compensated for the wrongs done against them. Africans in America — we are the only ones who haven’t,” said Mungai, who heard about the rally on the radio and decided to join in. Source: [http://www.msnbc.com/news/795573.asp](http://www.msnbc.com/news/795573.asp) Umm, not trying to be mean, sarcastic or demeaning, but don’t Native Americans have first choice here? ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/25 "2002-08-18T07:55:12Z")
Wasnt malcom x shot by a nation of islam member that thought he sold out the cause after he left the orginization ? ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/26 "2002-08-18T10:36:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Squish \* > \*\* > So instead of working 16 hours a day in a coal mine, raising 11 children, and saving enough money to buy a small farm, my non-English speaking, illiterate great-grandfather should have just fired up the crack pipe? > > C’mon. That argument doesn’t wash, in light of the millions of immigrants who faced the same situations and worked themselves up out of the tenements and the “(insert ethnicity of choice here) section” of American towns and cities. > > Should I sue the Russian government for causing my grandfather to flee the Bolsheviks? The government of the Republic of Georgia to return my great-grandfather’s farm? \*\* Squish, I read a post like yours and I honestly wonder: do people actually _read_ my posts and apply my examples logically, or do they throw out flawed counteragruments at me _intentionally_ to see if I’m paying attention? Firstly I did not present an argument. I presented an explanation to help explain why persecution, generational poverty and other factors working in combination (hence, the “+” signs) could lead to drug addiction as a means of escape. Now: your great-grandfather was a white Russian immigrant who _fled persecution_ from a socioeconomic/political Bolshevik revolution to come to America and become a good capitalist. He had enough money to book passage across the Atlantic instead of resettling somewhere else in Europe and enough savvy to get an industrial job at a time when this country needed industrial workers and presented them with opportunities – if they were white. He was lucky enough not to be part of an European ethnic minority that would be looked down upon when he hit these shores – like the ‘dirty’ Irish. Certainly, he wasn’t a nigger. So: he could afford to flee, could get work and not be a persecuted ethnic minority in the country he fled to. What else… Assuming you’re correct about your great grandfather’s working hours, a 16 workday was typical for a laborer at that time. Children worked similar kinds hours in farms, fisheries & industrial manufacturing plants until labor laws were revised, as I recall. Your great-grandfather had a job that apparently paid enough enough to support a family of 17 – including his wife, or did he give birth, too? --and buy his own land. If his farm in Georgia was seized before he came to America, I submit that it’s possible he also had a nest egg when he came over here. Not a lot, perhaps. But enough to help him start over. Look, I’m not saying he had an easy life by ANY means, because as I SAID, if you’d actually READ my post, there is an issue of ‘personal responsibility’. Some individuals do have strong strength of character to see them through adversity. But let’s speak plain: he was white man in America and he had choices and opportunities, more than any black man would have had. That he apparently managed this minor miracle of becoming a landowner while simultaneously refusing to learn conversational English tells me quite a bit about the social institutions in this country at that time and how they’d help any man with white skin. Obviously, your family benefitted… you haven’t had the urge to hit the crack pipe lately, I take it? 😃 As for your hypothetical lawsuit, your legal woes are your own concern. Sorry if this post seems too cranky, Squish. But MAN. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/27 "2002-08-18T10:51:25Z")
Squish, re-reading my post that you quoted… I concede, I may have forgotten something. Looking over my examples of persecuted minorities – Native Americans, American Blacks, Brazilain youths, South Africans… I realized they had one other thing in common your illustrious great-grandfather obviously did not went he undertook that ocean voyage. Feeling trapped. So my new equation is… Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use. Again, this is an explanation, not an argument. Certainly not one meant to relieve individuals of personal accountability. ---
**Author:** ![Squish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Squish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squish)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/28 "2002-08-18T11:17:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Askia \* > **Now: your great-grandfather was a white Russian immigrant who _fled persecution_ from a socioeconomic/political Bolshevik revolution to come to America and become a good capitalist.** You’re confusing my grandfather, the priest who fled the Bolsheviks, with my great-grandfather, the horse-farmer who fled the serfs and the Tsar. Sorry I didn’t make that clearer. > [@](#): > > **He had enough money to book passage across the Atlantic instead of resettling somewhere else in Europe and enough savvy to get an industrial job at a time when this country needed industrial workers and presented them with opportunities – if they were white.** Actually, he and his parents and brother fled first to Austro-Hungary. They escaped Georgia by fishing boat across the Black Sea, travelling at night with no lights on on the boat so they wouldn’t be picked up by the patrol. You see, it was illegal to leave Russia without express permission. > [@](#): > > \*\* He was lucky enough not to be part of an European ethnic minority that would be looked down upon when he hit these shores – like the ‘dirty’ Irish. Certainly, he wasn’t a nigger.\*\* _All_ immigrants in the 1890s were looked down upon, discriminated against, and cheated by the WASPs who were here before them. Read a few accounts by those WASPs and note the alarmist tone in regard to the “dirty, uneducated, stupid” East European immigrants and “their strange customs and religious beliefs.” > [@](#): > > **So: he could afford to flee, could get work and not be a persecuted ethnic minority in the country he fled to.** The whole family worked in Austro-Hungary as farmworkers to earn the passage to send he and his brother to America. As far as the work he got, just try for a moment to imagine a young man brought up on a horse farm going underground in a dank, dangerous, filthy mine and never seeing the light of the sun except on Sundays. Just try. > [@](#): > > **Assuming you’re correct about your great grandfather’s working hours, a 16 workday was typical for a laborer at that time. Children worked similar kinds hours in farms, fisheries & industrial manufacturing plants until labor laws were revised, as I recall.** And that makes it all hunky-dorey? > [@](#): > > **Your great-grandfather had a job that apparently paid enough enough to support a family of 17 – including his wife, or did he give birth, too? --and buy his own land.** A family of 13: he, his wife, and 11 children. He and his wife struggled and saved to buy that land, rather than blowing their money on gold chains and drugs. > [@](#): > > \*\* If his farm in Georgia was seized before he came to America, I submit that it’s possible he also had a nest egg when he came over here.\*\* Are you reading your own posts? How does one get a nest egg from a _seized_ farm? > [@](#): > > **But let’s speak plain: he was white man in America and he had choices and opportunities, more than any black man would have had.** A black man in America at that time would have been native-born, would have spoken English (Jeetha didn’t refuse to learn; he was simply unable to. Go on–you learn conversational Russian and/or Georgian. Easy as pie, isn’t it?), would have had no more difficulty finding work as a laborer (which is what a miner was) than Jeetha, work probably have been able to read and write… So, let’s see: > [@](#): > > **Poverty** Yep. > [@](#): > > \*\* + ethnic oppression\*\* Yep. > [@](#): > > \*\* + daily stress\*\* Yep. > [@](#): > > \*\* + personal injustices\*\* Yep. > [@](#): > > \*\* + feeling trapped\*\* Well, he’s not here to ask, but since he told my mother, “You were born poor, you’re going to die poor,” I’d say so. > [@](#): > > \*\* + opportunities to get high\*\* Lots of them. > [@](#): > > \*\* = temporary escape through illicit drug use. \*\* Nope. Substitute hard work and spirituality, plus a perhaps ethnic fatalism that said, “nobody’s going to give you anything for free; you only get what you work for.” ---
**Author:** ![Beagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/85f322/32.png) [@Beagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beagle)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/29 "2002-08-18T11:24:03Z")
> [@](#): > > Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use Ah, then explain this: Wealth + privilege + college + parties + ennui + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use. Drugs are one thing that seem to bring people from all walks of life together. [sub]Mostly in rehab.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![London\_Calling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/30 "2002-08-18T11:24:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose \* > Er, would somebody please 'splain to me how the “Rockefeller Drug Laws” are “racist”, as this website says? Another take to those already offered… I suppose the converse of the ‘Rockefeller Drug Laws’ would be the white, middle-class corporate crimes (for example, defrauding Pension Funds) and for which the tariff often is not a reflection of the damage caused. Should those crimes attract disproportionately “harsh” sentencing – should any crime be ‘disproportionate’ (outside the realm of political expediency in general and ‘the war on drugs’ (sic) in general) ? Maybe if they actually worked but, of course, if increasing tariffs did work in one area there would be pressure to increase all sentencing as the first increase produced results. But then you’d have to increase the original tariff again so it would be once more disproportionate, and then…Finally, maybe you end up with a prison population 800-1000% more than other western societies (US compared with the EU). [“Selected” statistics](http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/1998/25106398.htm): "The number of people in US prisons and jails tripled between 1980 and 1996 to more than 1.7 million. " ---
**Author:** ![London\_Calling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/31 "2002-08-18T11:36:27Z")
Just going to add one more “selected” statistic: “Over 60 percent of prisoners are from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds” – I don’t know all the ethnic groupings but I believe blacks make up about 12% of the US general population. Obviously, the larger the group in a smaller population, the greater is the effect. Also, perhaps this statistic illustrates _longevity_ of sentencing for ‘lesser’ crimes as much as pure numbers of prisoners - the longer someone’s detained, the higher is the overall prison population. - not a statistician. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/32 "2002-08-18T12:07:52Z")
> [@](#): > > the assembly for Millions for Reparations was modest by Washington standards, as the rally filled a small swath of the grassy expanse near the U.S. Capitol. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31363-2002Aug17.html](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31363-2002Aug17.html) This event received a lot of publicity – CSPAN coverage, editorials, SDMB threads, etc. The amount of publicity was disproportionate to the modest turnout. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/33 "2002-08-18T21:00:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Various quotes originally posted by Squish \*\*\* > > ONE: _All_ immigrants in the 1890s were looked down upon, discriminated against, and cheated by the WASPs who were here before them. Read a few accounts by those WASPs and note the alarmist tone in regard to the “dirty, uneducated, stupid” East European immigrants and “their strange customs and religious beliefs.” > > TWO: … As far as the work he got, just try for a moment to imagine a young man brought up on a horse farm going underground in a dank, dangerous, filthy mine and never seeing the light of the sun except on Sundays. Just try. > > THREE: …And that makes it all hunkey-doery? > > FOUR: A family of 13 … He and his wife struggled and saved to buy that land, rather than blowing their money on gold chains and drugs. > > FIVE: …How does one get a nest egg from a _seized_ farm? > > SIX: A black man in America at that time would have been native-born, would have spoken English (Jeetha didn’t refuse to learn; he was simply unable to. Go on–you learn conversational Russian and/or Georgian. Easy as pie, isn’t it?), would have had no more difficulty finding work as a laborer (which is what a miner was) than Jeetha, work probably have been able to read and write… > > SEVEN:\*\* [On feeling trapped] \*\*Well, he’s not here to ask, but since he told my mother, “You were born poor, you’re going to die poor,” I’d say so. > > Nope. Substitute hard work and spirituality, plus a perhaps ethnic fatalism that said, “nobody’s going to give you anything for free; you only get what you work for.” \*\* Let me preface this by saying that your earlier apology is unnecessary as the confusion was entirely mine. Your post was clear: it was my hurried reading that led me to think your great-grandfather and grandfather were the same person. While that does undermine some the historical and time-specific aspects of my argument, it no way effects its core truths: both your ascendants were white men, Russian immigrants or no, and were less discriminated against, and always had the power to leave. Blacks in THIS country, as a whole, could not and/or did not migrate from the South until after the Great Depression. Their lot was bitterer, their options few. ONE: Please be careful regarding use of absolutes such as “all,” as they tend to weaken your argument. As for WASP alarm regarding East European immigrants: I’ve read accounts by Ellis Island immigrants. I’ve read up on anti-Semitism. I know the Ku Klux Klan targeted immigrants, too, particularly at their height of power in the 1920s. But none of it, in no way, matches the sheer intensity, or size of the violence, vitriol, mockery, abuse, hatred, stereotyping, injustice, condescension and/or utter disain toward blacks, Latinos and Native Americans and other dark-skinned people. Show ME dead Russians lynched from trees; show me a list of epithets for Russian immigrants as lengthy or hurtful as “nigger”; show me flyers for some some travelling 19th century Russian minstrel shows and maybe I’ll change my mind. TWO: Hmm. I’m also picturing him facing the threat of respiratory illness and cave-ins, to name two things you forgot. Again: I never said your great-grandfather didn’t have it hard. But please due me the courtesy of acknowledging the dangers, threats, discrimination, physical violence your ancestors _never_ faced because of their white skin. Try to acknowledge the need some – not all – persecuted minorities might feel in needing to escape it by turning to drugs. Try it. THREE: No, it makes it typical of that era. Many people in my family line had it hard, too. It’s okay if you do not to feel the same outrage I feel considering the historical injustices. But it’s not okay to equate your ethnic group’s history and mine as if they were essentially the same, that we shouldn’t demand what we feel is owed us. Our histories were fundamentally not the same. It required three amendments to the constitution to just equate black men on par with white men (at least on paper); another for Native American citizenship and a fifth for sufferage for women. This country has done some repugnant injustices over the long centuries to benefit white men and I appreciate the demand for reparations even if it doesn’t happen. FOUR: Thank you for the correction. I made a mistake in math by adding the 16 hour workday instead of the 11 children. As for your other statement, I do not appreciate the glib ethnic stereotype “gold chains and drugs,” indeed!). We were talking about drug addicts. Drug addicts don’t buy gold. FIVE: I speculated that your ancestors may have used any savings they had (hence the nest egg), taken valuables to barter with later, and sold anything else not nailed down in order to raise the money to flee. I should have clarified this. SIX: Any number of historical references will reflect that, even when training and experience were equitable, black men did not earn as much as white men for the same jobs in the 19th centuries and much of the 20th. Similarly, I’d always assumed that in America, black miners were not hired to work in the mines until later in the 20th century because of racial discrimination. Feel free to challenge this notion. SEVEN: I thought your great-grandfather didn’t speak English. 😃 The bitter admonishments of family elders should always taken be taken with caution as well as consideration. My great-grandmother once told my mother, “Trish, whatever you do in life, don’t ever trust no white man.” To wit – no matter what he SAID, his ACTIONS as a young man indicated he did _not_ feel trapped, that he had hope for the future, that he desired a better life for himself. If he attained a plot of land to call his own, he might have been poor, but he was a white man in America with his own property, so he certainly wasn’t as poor as some. Say, a downtrodden nigger. ---
**Author:** ![japatlgt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df705f/32.png) [@japatlgt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/japatlgt)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/34 "2002-08-18T22:02:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by grendel72 \* > \*\*Ummm… Medgar Evars wasn’t assassinated in your world? Malcolm X wasn’t assassinated? \*\* X was assasinated by political rivals who were black. [http://www.cmgww.com/historic/malcolm/bio.html](http://www.cmgww.com/historic/malcolm/bio.html) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2002, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/35 "2002-08-18T22:37:06Z")
My great-grandfather, Jakob Salaman came over from Poland-illegally, I might add, to escape being conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. I believe he always claimed to have “stowed away.” He came from a little village in the Carpathian Mountains, Seczawnica, and later worked in the coke ovens in Greensburg PA. Said coke ovens owned and controlled by the heirs of Henry Clay Frick, a real bastard if ever there was one. Fortunately, Jacob came over AFTER the bloody Homestead Strike of 1892, after which Frick was assasinated. Ever read about the Homestead Strike? You might wanna look it up. Jacob Soloman was a drunk until the day he died. So I guess addiction has nothing to do with race. **Askia** , what you are doing is using a little technique known as _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_. (Did I spell that right?) Look, no one is saying that your ancestors didn’t suffer, slavery is NOT directly responsible for John Doe becoming addicted to coccaine. > [@](#): > > Please be careful regarding use of absolutes such as “all,” as they tend to weaken your argument. As for WASP alarm regarding East European immigrants: I’ve read accounts by Ellis Island immigrants. I’ve read up on anti-Semitism. I know the Ku Klux Klan targeted immigrants, too, particularly at their height of power in the 1920s. But none of it, in no way, matches the sheer intensity, or size of the violence, vitriol, mockery, abuse, hatred, stereotyping, injustice, condescension and/or utter disain toward blacks, Latinos and Native Americans and other dark-skinned people. Show ME dead Russians lynched from trees; show me a list of epithets for Russian immigrants as lengthy or hurtful as “nigger”; show me flyers for some some travelling 19th century Russian minstrel shows and maybe I’ll change my mind. Show me an event that wiped out 6 million blacks in death camps. I’m watching the History Channel, and they’re having an entire day devoted to the Holocaust. Here’s a little tip: playing the “More Oppressed Than Thou” game doesn’t make one popular around these parts. It also is a game one is bound to lose. ---
**Author:** ![Squish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Squish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squish)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2002, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/36 "2002-08-19T00:20:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Askia \* > **SEVEN: I thought your great-grandfather didn’t speak English. 😃** He didn’t. My mother grew up–in America–speaking only Russian. If you’re not willing to see that others have suffered, I can’t make you. Also, I personally feel that your arguments are insulting to those black and Hispanic people who did work hard and make their way out of poverty. But, that’s neither here nor there, really. Back to the OP. You said: > [@](#): > > **This country has done some repugnant injustices over the long centuries to benefit white men and I appreciate the demand for reparations even if it doesn’t happen.** Who is going to pay? The descendants of immigrants who had nothing to do with slavery? The black descendants of black slave owners? The “government,” which gets all its funds from the people? Not to mention the implicit unfairness of taking money from a person barely struggling to get by and depositing it into the pockets of someone better off just because the second person’s ancestors had it bad. ---
**Author:** ![Squish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Squish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squish)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2002, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/37 "2002-08-19T00:25:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Guinastasia \* > \*\*Here’s a little tip: playing the “More Oppressed Than Thou” game doesn’t make one popular around these parts. It also is a game one is bound to lose. \*\* :o Thanks for the reminder, Guin. I apologize. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2002, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/38 "2002-08-19T01:19:23Z")
Well, think about it-it’s an endless game. Someone brings up African slavery, next person counters with the Holocaust. Then someone mentions women under the Taliban, someone else brings up the Inquisition, then someone talks about the persecution of the early Christians, etc. It’s an endless cycle. ---
**Author:** ![grendel72](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/91b2a8/32.png) [@grendel72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grendel72)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2002, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/39 "2002-08-19T01:25:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by japatlgt \* > **X was assasinated by political rivals who were black.** That is true. I had misread the question as claiming no black leaders other than MLK had been assasinated, certainly I would disagree with the statement that “the white man” killed many black leaders- assasination is always done by individuals. I take strong exception to the tone of many speakers at the rally yesterday, but I take equally strong exception to the tone of people like the OP of this thread who insist that it’s all about a “pay off”. Injustice was done, everyone living in this country deels with the repurcussions of slavery on a daily basis. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2002, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303/40 "2002-08-19T02:04:41Z")
It is unclear to me what reparations could be had that aren’t being dealt with by liberal programs, NAACP, and other groups and programs set up to try and correct the disparity blacks have historically faced. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-blacks-marching-for-reparations-tomorrow/124303.md?page=3)