1.Those first enslaved, should get money first. Those who had ancestors in europe who were slave/“serfs” should be first to get reparations(french, english , slavic peoples, germans, etc).
2.Those who were slaves of the Roman empire should be next.
3.Those who had ancestors(of light skin) in the americas when the dark skined indians defeated the light skinned indians, and then enslaved them, to be paid third.
4.American indians who were decended from indians who were taken captive and made slave third.
5.Blacks who were taken slave by other blacks and then sold on the market to end up in the Indies, or the Americas, to be paid 4th.
Decendents of those in communist countries to be paid second from last.
Special races, like the jews who were enslaved several times by different countries, and certain asian peoples who were defeated and enslaved, to be paid last.
Aside from the glaring point that you have provided absolutely no rationale for your rather arbitrary list (since it is clearly not based on either chronology or damages incurred), we should probably point out some facts:
1: There is no reason to presume that Europeans were enslaved “first” or that the peoples you named tended to follow current national lines of organization. At the times when various groups were enslaved in Europe, subsequent migrations and shifting boundaries have made such terms rather absurd. In addition, several of those groups have already achieved their own level of slave ownership, sometimes over the people to whom they were enslaved, so there seems to be no rationale behind this, at all.
2: In the Roman empire, pretty much anyone who was a laborer or a technician tended to be a slave, although the practice of slavery at that time was different in many ways than the chattel slavery to which we are referring in the U.S.
3: You made this up or found it from a source with no basis in reality. Slavery certainly existed among a number of societies in the Western Hemisphere, but silly claims that people waged war or took slaves based on lighter skin are silly. (The lighter skinned peoples always won? I wonder who decided that?)
4: Whatever.
5: I notice that you conveniently ignore those blacks taken directly by white slavers–and you change the history to pretend through implication that chattel slavery (the sort under discussion) was invented in Africa. The reality is that the slavery that existed in Africa prior to the creation of the New World chattel markets was much closer to the sort practiced throughout most of the world, including Europe, and that the chattel slavery that brought Africans to the New World (along with its concurrent trade from Africa to Asian mines) was not created in Africa, although Africans participated in the trade after it was created).
6: The status of people dominated by Marxist regimes does not actually qualify as slavery.
7: Putting these groups at the end, without rhyme or reason, appears to be simple racism. You put various nebulous groups of Europeans first, then Jews and various nebulous groups of Asians last.
Reparations in the U.S. for slavery in the U.S. are almost certainly unworkable. Putting up strawmen against any such plan does not make the plan look bad, only the strawmen. Puttling up strawmen that are historically inaccurate is simply a way to get one’s views dismissed out of hand.
My guess is that Susanann got her Indians confused. There where historical eras in India were lighter skinned invaders enslaved darker skinned natives. But I’ve never heard any examples of it happened in pre-Columbian America.
I have some photos in front of me, it is the “lighter” skinned indians who were defeated and enslaved , according to several indian pictographs in front of me. The lighter skinned indians built a wall accross Peru to keep out the darker skinned indians(still there today) but before they could finish the darker indians went around and enslaved the lighter ones.
Anyways, the point is, the lighter skined indians were enslaved and deserve reparations sooner than those enslaved at a later day, and certainly before any groups who might have been enslaved a thousand or more years later.
I am not against the principle of reparations, per se, as long as no group of people who were enslaved , is not left out in getting a check.
Those groups who were enslaved for longer periods of time, eg, the european(british, french, german, slavic, etc.) serfs and the jews, should get much larger checks.
I am not saying that we should pay each group now, but one at a time, and better methods of payment will be developed as we go thru each group who had ancestors who were enslaved.
E.g, after we pay off the decendents of german peasants who were enslaved as serfs, then we will do better with paying off the decendents of ukranian serfs, then the bulgarians, and so on until we finally end up cutting checks for the blacks and jews.
I put the jews toward the end, although they were one of the earliest groups of people put into slavery, they were also one of the “last” groups put into slave labor camps by the nazis and soviets.
As far as India, then if lighter skinned Indians enslaved darker skinned Indians, then the darker ones also should get reparations.
The important point is, that absolutely no group of any people who were enslaved, for any period of time, should be left out or not get a reparations check !
If slavery was in India, then reparations should be made for those people also.
Equally important to not leaving any decendents of any enslave people out from getting reparations…
…is to make sure that every decendent of every/any slave owner has to “pay”,
…as well as…and no one who had no part of the/any slave trade/practice should have to pay anything.
Those who never had any ancestors who owned slaves, will not have to pay anything!! Only those who owned, captured, or dealt in slavery.
Decendents of slave owners, slave traders, etc. WILL have to come up with the cash to pay those they enslaved.
Someone will have to come up with some sort of fomula to calculate how much each group of decendents of slaves is to get , based on length of captivity, etc.
Also a way to calculate how much the decendents of slave holders are to pay, based on how long they had slaves, how many slaves they had, etc.
Those who “dealt” in the slave trade, such as the Dutch, Spanish, etc will also have to pay, even if they themselves did not actually own/keep people in slavery.
White “trailer trash” * are * better off than blacks of similar financial condition. Having white skin confers benefits that white people take so much for granted that often they don’t even acknowledge it. Poor blacks are saddled with lables that whites generally are not. Some people see them as potential criminals, regardless of their behavior. Whites are given more of a benefit of the doubt. Blacks are stereotyped as lazy and immoral. A white person can stop being “white trash” the moment they get a good job and move to a nicer neighborhood. A black person will always be black, and as wealthy and successful as they become, they will always be seen as a black person first.
I read a story not too long ago about a black buisnessman. After work one evening, he stepped onto an elevator with an elderly white woman. He said she cringed back, apparently expecting to be robbed. She did not see the buisness suit and briefcase-- only the black skin.
Even highly successful blacks are treated differently than whites. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a book review in which the book’s writer was described as a “black author.” I’ve yet to see one which says, “white author of . . .” Condy Rice is praised for being articulate and well dressed. I’ve never seen anyone make much of how articulate or nicely dressed a white woman politician is.
Blacks have been victims of racism since their ancestors stepped foot on this continent. Yes, it’s getting better, but we still have a long way to go.
**
As a historian, this attitude is amusing. Not too long ago, when the tables were turned . . . well, never mind.
**
Antecdotal evidence is not proof of anything, as you should well know.
It can be extremely difficult for black students to try to get into college. First of all, black schools often have poor educational standards. For a student who can’t afford prep courses or tutors, they might not have all of the knowledge that they need. While colleges want minority students, they’re not always willing to forgive a lack of education in order to admit them. Secondly, if no one in the family, or any of their peers have gone to college, often times students don’t know what tools they will need.
Add to this their financial considerations. Full-ride scholarships for those who have average academic preformance or those who have no athletic ability are as rare as hens’ teeth. Paying living expenses, buying expensive texts and paying the tuition difference can be nearly impossible for those who have no financial support from home. My husband who had both scholarships, and financial support from his family still had to work two jobs in order to go to college. He had the advantage of being extremely smart, so the lack of study time didn’t affect him as much as it might have others.
Although you won’t acknowledge it, the opprotunities AREN’T just there for the taking. Your espoused social Darwinism should teach you that: there must always be an underclass. Survival of the fittest means that there must always be those who do not “survive.” I’m just one of those who thinks that your race shouldn’t almost automatically put a person in the latter class.
Yes, most people do have to struggle to achieve, but when you have an added disadvantage, it’s sometimes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Simply put, people treat blacks differently than whites, and if you disagree with that, you’re living in a dream world.
Whites and blacks do not start out on equal footing. If they did, you’d be right. To hell with them. If they didn’t succeed despite the same opprotunities, then it would be their fault entirely. But that’s not the case.
We aren’t talking about global reparations, Susanne.
We’re talking about reparations for stuff DONE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Land o’ the free. Home o’ the brave.
Your argument basically boils down to this: I’ll pay the blacks reparations if all the other oppressed groups that have ever existed on the face of the Earth get reparations too.
Guess what? The US had no part to play in the enslavement of Native Americans by Native Americans. It had no part to play in the enslavement of Jews or Slavs or Asians or Romans. It had no part to play in the caste system in India. But it had a giant role in the creation and maintenance of American slavery.
You’re having a blast digging up things from ancient times, but American slavery didn’t happen thousands of years ago. Just a few decades ago, former slaves actually existed. If it was 1903 instead of 2003, then you better believe reparations would be owed to SOMEBODY. Your argument wouldn’t mean squat then. It doesn’t mean squat now.
Do you mean other countries had more to do with slavery in this country than our own country did? Where did you conjure that up? Slavery was still alive and well years after the trans-atlantic slave trade was banned, which indicates to me that the US was perfectly able to keep slavery going without any foreign assistance. If I’ve misunderstood your point please clarify.
This is not about assigning guilt and innocence, Hank. Framing the discussion in these terms perpetrates the crybaby notion that “the mean ole blacks are trying to gang up on the innocent whites”, which ironically is as much about wallowing in victimhood as the mentality that reparation naysayers ascribe to their opponents.
Reparations is about compensation. If you total my car, asking you to pay for the car’s value is not an act of vengeance. It’s about recouping losses from the party most responsible for incurring those losses. I don’t go out seeking compensation from other people who have wrecked other people’s cars; I seek compensation from you because you’ve wrecked my car. And neither do I seek compensation from the person who sold you the car you were driving when you wrecked into mine, because they aren’t responsible for the wreck. You are, because you took it upon yourself to plow into my little ole Hyundai with your Chevy. So why am I going to go to Fred’s Car Dealership asking for him to pay for your wrongdoing? That makes no sense.
by Bryan Ekers
Of course, and this is valid. This actually is one of the few points that has sticking power; most everything else is a strawman. However, taxpayer innocence (which is always brought up in these discussions) has nothing to do with what you’ve brought up. “But my ancestors weren’t even over here during slavery!” means jack shit, if you look at all the hundreds of things taxpayers have had to pay for that were incurred a long time ago.
We have to think “globally” in reparations because injustice was not limited to the United States, and slavery was instituted in this land by “other” countries . In fact, slavery in the united states was instituted here by Britain, Spain, africa, Holland etc. It was the United States which “ended” slavery. It was Britian which created it.
Those who instituted slavery in america, who dealt in the slave trade, who owned slaves, who traded in slaves, will have to pay the reparations, regardless of what country they were in at the time.
Those to blame, have to pay. I dont care what country you are from, and there are to be no excuses nor exceptions or ways out for those who did these nasty deeds. You are not exempt from paying the reparations which you owe if you are british, spanish, or african.
There is no need to attack “me” personally, by talking about me “paying”.
FYI, I have no ancestors who were slave holders, nor who were in the slave trade, or had any part of it. Therefore, I am out of it as far as paying anything.
I am pretty objective on that basis since I have no responsiblity in the matter. I am just an interested bystander who wants to see justice done, and reparations made.
I can see that those who do have ancestors who owned slaves can be defensive, and may not want to pay, but that is their problem, their guilt, not mine.
Lastly, there is no reason at all why reparations should be made only in one country. The slave problem was a world wide problem, and was caused by many nations and many peoples, all of who are to blame, and all of who are to pay.
The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son… Ezekiel 18:20
Point being, affirmative action is a legit compensation for discrimination, which addresses the point from Bryan Elkers and seconded by you with the face, that the actual victims of a practice should be the ones who get the compensation.
Slavery was paid for by the Civil War, as old Abe Lincoln pointed out:
Given the massive destruction caused by the Civil War, I think the above was in fact done. Asking for reparations now dishonors the memory of those who died to give the slaves their freedom. Sherman tried to get each freed slave forty acres and a mule, but couldn’t. It’s too late for that now. We should deal with the present, and the present only.
Reparations is about justice. Payback. Make no mistake about it.
Those who are guilty must bear the full cost of their misdeeds and their cruelty.
No innocents are going to have to pay anything.
If your car is damaged today by some person in your state, there is no reason why I should be the one to pay you.
If a teenager on your block commits vandelism on your neighbors house, there is no reason why you should have to pay your neighbor if you had nothing to do with it.
It would make no sense for innocent people to pay for what the guilty have done.
You will never see, nor should you see, any reparations coming from the general treasury funds, from a national budget that decendents of slaves themselves put money into.
Reparations will never happen anywhere in the world as long as the guilty try to shift the blame on the innocent.
Our only chance for reparations, and our only chance to get justice, is to get damage payments from the guilty, and from those who profited from slavery.
No one expects any decendent of a union soldier, a soldier who had no slaves, a soldier who was against slavery, a soldier who may have died or been injured, and who actually fought in battle and risked his life freeing the slaves to pay anything in reparations.
That would make no sense.
Decendents of soldiers who freed the slaves, and decendents of those who supported the army who freed the slaves(northern taxpayers) will not have to pay anything, nor should they.
The union soldiers already paid a great price to free the slaves, no one is to take that away from them, or their decendents.
We don’t have to think “globally”. We can isolate crimes and prosecute them separately. Africans sold Africans–one crime. Europeans bought Africans and shipped them overseas–another crime. Americans bought these Africans and forced them and their future generations to labor without pay–another crime.
Some black Americans–as Americans, remember–want their government to pony up to THEIR responsibility first. Just as you can charge a drug dealer separately from the drug user or drug supplier, you can sue a single government separate from the other governments that are also guilty.
But as you with the face stated, other countries were not conceived under the pretense of liberty and justice for all. It seems to me that if you’re going to get any compensation for past wrongdoings, a country with these kinds of ideals is your best choice.
They won’t have to pay or do anything. Even if the US paid reparations, that does not mean other institutions have to do shit.
This is crazy logic, Susanann. Let me get this straight: only the Americans that owed slaves should pay reparations, but if you’re British, Spanish, or simply live on the African continent, you owe reparations?! WTF.
I did not attack you. I was simply distilling your crazy-ass argument into a one-sentence statement.
If you currently live in the US of America, then you have benefited from slavery. And that benefit came to you free of charge.
As has been said earlier, this is a dumb argument. You have paid for a lot of things that you “had no part of”. That’s what a citizen does.
American slavery is over and done with and all the slaves are dead. That’s makes everyone essentially innocent.
So who is the “guilty” that you’re talking about? Who are the innocents?
I wish you would stop portraying yourself as a proponent of reparations. Not if you’re going to be dragging out this old tired line and all the others you’ve presented. You not only make yourself look like an idiot, but you do an injustice to the sound arguments that can be made for slave reparations.
You do have to think, and prosecute globally, else each individual you sue, will shift the blame to others not on trial.
An international tribune, or a world court, possibly handled thru the UN and the World Bank, can handle it, and bring all guilty paries to trial and justice.
The amerians who are decendents of slaves would then not be able to say that it was the british and spaniards who were at fault and such a system was in effect at the time of the inception fo the country.
I am all for reparations, but as I said, I want all peoples who were enslaved to get reparations, not just one group, or just a few groups to get reparations.
As far as your other comment, decendents of union soldiers, or other people who had no connection to slavery(such as myself) should not pay anything. An international court can determine who was at fault, and not punish those who actually opposed or ended slavery. ( NO reparations bill/trial will ever get passed if you try to make innocents pay for the crimes of the guilty).
This has got to be the richest statement as of yet. Yes, the Union fought a war that eventually led to the end of slavery (keep in mind that that was .NOT the original intent of the war). Yes, millions of dollars and lives were lost in the process. But how does that loss address the billions of dollars stolen out of the pockets of slaves in the form of unpaid labor?
To return to an analogy: If you wreck my car, totalling it beyond repair, the fact that your car got totalled in the process does not compensate me one iota.
To use an another analogy: If you drive a steak knife all the way through my hand, you still carry responsible for my injury even if you remove the knife. I don’t stop bleeding and hurting simply because the knife isn’t there anymore. You will not be clear of wrongdoing until you compensate me for the consequences of your actions.
Originally posted by Susanann
We have to think “globally” in reparations because injustice was not limited to the United States, and slavery was instituted in this land by “other” countries . In fact, slavery in the united states was instituted here by Britain, Spain, africa, Holland etc. It was the United States which “ended” slavery. It was Britian which created it.
Well, Britain abolished slavery within the British Isles in 1807, and in the Empire as a whole in 1833, so I have to disagree with the idea that “it was the United States that ended it”.
quote from Lissa:
“I read a story not too long ago about a black buisnessman. After work one evening, he stepped onto an elevator with an elderly white woman. He said she cringed back, apparently expecting to be robbed. She did not see the buisness suit and briefcase-- only the black skin.”
From the same post…
“Antecdotal evidence is not proof of anything, as you should well know.”
I will leave it up to you guys to consider whether Lissa’s anecdotal evidence is more valid than everyone else’s.
The United States came into being in 1776, whatever was here, was here because we were a british colony, and because of british law. The United States did not create slavery, it was a british institution that we were saddled with by our previous rulers.
Slavery was here in 1776 because it was a “british” institution.
The United States ended slavery, starting immediately in some states, and in all states by the 1860’s.
Slavery existed in the world for thousands of years.
Slavery existed in the americas for hundreds of years, because of the british and spanish. It took barely 80 years for the United States to completely end it everywhere in this country, pretty quick in the total scheme of things.