Reparations...should we pay?

Great Debates
1

I have often heard of Reparations and the movement by decendents of former slaves to be paid damages for what their ancestors went thru. Should the US government be made to pay for not only what happened after the US was formed, but before as well? I have read many websites that claim damages going back 500 years!! (http://www.ncobra.com/ncobra_info.htm)

Is it fair to make the American taxpayer foot the bill for something we were not responsible for? Hell my family didn’t even get to this county until 1930! Why should I pay for something I had no responsibility for? And what about Americans whos families were here then but didnt own slaves and fought to abolish the practice?? Should they also be made to pay?

And since when does sufferage=money? What ethnic group (if you go back far enough) cannot claim to have been put down by another? If I can show that 2000 years ago my family was enslaved by say…the Egyptians…would they then owe me money now?

I would dearly love to get some other opinions on this issue, because I fail to see any validity in this idea at all, and would love to hear what a pro-reparations person would have to say.

2

Not that I agree with reparations, but the gov’t pays out monies to people all the time. The 9/11 families got money from the gov’t. Did you have any hand in the hijacking? The US paid monies to the Japanese who were interred during WWII.

Anyway, I don’t think that is the argument to be made. The more relavent questions might be:

  1. Were reparations due upon emancipation?

  2. Did the Civil War (with it’s many dead) constitute “reparations”?

  3. Has so much time passed that reparations are no longer relavent or practical.

3

I have no problem with the govt helping people out who need it regardless of the color of their skin. For 9/11 people lost jobs, spouses etc…things that brought in income for them. Basically what the govt did was give them “up front welfare” to help out. I have no problem with that at all.

As for the Japanese, correct me if I am wrong, but that is for the actual person interred, not for their descendent. Which I have no problem with.

4

Should we pay? No.

5

This topic has been done to death on this board.

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