The government should compensate any person who suffered under Jim Crow. The compensation should come from the state, local, and federal levels. Any person that can show he was affected by these racist policies should receive at least $1,000,000 and probably 10x that amount. People were treated as less than human and it is time to compensate them while they are still living.
This is not like slavery reparations. Many of those directly abused are still alive.
Is this even a serious OP?
What is so special about Jim Crowe? Should everyone who has suffered unfairly at the hands of the government recieve a million dollars? If not, then why not? The government has treated many Americans unfairly? Should everyone wrongly convicted of a crime automaticly get a million dollars? How about men who were forced to serve in Vietnam? Should the disabled veterans of the illegal war in Iraq all get a million dollars? If not, then why not? Who exactly gets a million dollars and why?
Yes. People who suffered under state sanctioned abuse should be compensated. We only get one life .
Vietnam, Iraq, and wrongful conviction were bad judgment. (Mostly) Jim Crow was a systematic effort by the government to deprive people of their human and civil rights.
I’ve always thought there was a better case for Jim Crow reparations than for slavery reparations, for the reason the OP gives - many of those who suffered under Jim Crow laws are still alive.
I’d be interested, though, in seeing arguments of why those who were affected by Jim Crow are as deserving, or less deserving, of reparations than the Japanese-Americans who were interned during WWII.
I think there’s one group in particular that definitely deserves reparations: as part of Virginia’s “massive resistance” to integration, Prince Edward County in Virginia shut down its entire public school system from 1959 to 1964. (“Private academies” were created for white students.)
If there’s an argument that students who involuntarily missed five years of their primary and/or secondary education took a big hit in their preparation for life, I’d be interested in hearing it. Ninth grade can be pretty hard if you missed out on grades 4-8.
Can we, or have we, give reparations to those Japanese Americans that were put in internment camps?
The survivors of the internment camps received $20,000 in reparations in 1988. Does the OP believe they should receive an additional $980,000 each?
At least that amount. How would you take foe me to strip of all your rights and lock you up without due process foe as long as I like?
Give everybody a million dollars. That’ll solve the economic crisis, too.
And where does this money come from? That’s right: ME! The American taxpayer of today!
I didn’t turn 18 until Reagan was in office. I wasn’t even BORN YET yet when the Civil Rights movement changed everything in the 1960s.
So are you saying that I – and my hard-earned tax dollars – should be used to compensate someone for something that happened ten and twenty years and more before I was even born??
What about the 100 million other Americans who have been born SINCE the year 1968? Should they be forced to pay – through taxes – too? Even though they didn’t do anything?
What about (the few) African-Americans who benefitted from or participated in Jim Crow laws? Should they be forced to pay too?? There weren’t many, but how would you even sort that kind of thing out??
What about African-Americans who arrived in America SINCE 1968?? My neighbor is a naturalized U.S. citizen who came here from South Africa in 1999. He’s black – and marks “African-American” when asked about his ancestry on the census and also on tax forms. But should he be compensated for things that happened in this country, twenty-five years before he moved here? Millions of other “black” people have moved to the U.S. since 1968. They weren’t even here to suffer under Jim Crow laws. Should they be compensated, similarly?
What a joke.
Only those that prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they were affected should get compensation.
As for not having been born, when the government gets sued for violating the terms of contract the tax payers did not violate the contract. Are you suggesting the government can do whatever it wants and never have to pay?
The Gub’ment, my friend, is the PEOPLE.
The individual PEOPLE who caused Jim Crow (the congressmen and women, governors and senators from America’s history) are largely either DEAD or LONG DEAD by now. At the very least, they’re not even part of government anymore and are NEAR DEAD.
“The government” of today is comprised primarily – actually almost entirely – of people who weren’t even elected until the 1970’s or after.
Yes, PEOPLE of the government should be held accountable for their actions. Which is why Nixon faced impeachment in 1974. Which is why Clinton was impeached in the 1990s. Which is why countless governors, senators, and congressmen and women have appeared before the House Judicial committee and many have gone to jail, fined, or both. For their actions. And held accountable.
But saying that a taxpayer like me (born since 1968) should have my taxdollars re-allocated by Congress (elected since 1968) to make its way into the wallet of every African-American citizen alive and living in America pre-1968. . . well you can see that your idea is DOA.
So if the government decided to stop paying WWII veterans their benefits, the only people that could be sued would be the government actors from WWII who made the benefits promises?
Sued . . . for what? For passing legislation that was legal at the time (and still is) and then acting upon said legislation (and still are)?
If you don’t like the law, work to change the law.
You can’t “sue” a law: you change it.
You can sue the people who wrote the law, you can sue the attorneys who helped write the law, you can sue almost any individual involved with making any legislation or law. So by all means, if you can find anyone alive from 1946 who helped write the G.I. Bill and such, by all means look them up.
And while you’re at it, look up any business owner from 1865 who didn’t give my great, great, great, grandfather a job because he was Irish. If they’re still alive, I’d love to have a word with them!
Yes.
When people join the military they are told they will get certain benefits like medical care for injuries received in war. Today it is contracted for (maybe it wasn’t in WWII), are you saying that veterns have no right to collect on these contracts if a later legislature passes a law saying they will not honor the contracts?
Or state employees that contracted for penions. If the state did not fund the pension fund, are the workers only able to sue the individual state workers that did not fund the fund?
I don’t see how a government could function if any citizen could sue a member of Congress for doing their jobs. In fact, I would love to see any examples of individual politicians being sued because they voted in support of legislation that became law. I’m not a lawyer so maybe there’s a whole bit of legal history I’ve been missing out on.
Odesio
Is Iowa’s obligation to pay contracted for state worker’s pensions purely voluntary? If the state stopped paying black pensioners, would the black be unable to collect their pensions from Iowa? (I would assume they could get an injunction to stop the discrimitory practice, but are they unable collect their lost pension payments?) Would the black pensioners have sue the individuals who stopped the payments, even if the individuals did not have the means to pay?
The issue if suing may be a little off base. I not suggesting this be done through the courts. It should done through a law passed by Congress under the 14th amendment that creates a reparations board and fund.