we talked about this in my history class. do you think black people should get reparations for slavery?

I actually do think so, and for these reasons.

1. they were PROMISED
2. slavery was an institution that not only displaced a people, but destroyed their culture and history
3. it would help the economy

reparations would cause each person of african descent (about 36 million in america)to get at least $10k. That would lead to new houses being purchased, cars bought, and educations paid for. Small businesses would be started too. And after all, Jews got reparations from the german gov't because of the holocaust, native americans get money for college from the feds, adn Japanese americans too. Slavery wasn't formally apologized for until bill clinton.

I honestly don't give a shit. I wouldn't be complaining if I got some cash, but I'm also aware of the fact that no one in my immediate ancestry was a slave.

Slavery is long gone done and over with. We have a man who is half black representing our country as the president. There's a big difference between slavery and genocide. Everyone in this country can get money for college from the feds depending on their financial situation. The African Americans of today aren't victims of slavery.

We're just victims of the recession like everyone else.

Here's what the generally public (outside of the Black community) needs to understand; many of us aren't hung up on this reparations nonsense. I personally don't feel as though I'd deserve it.

i'm with brandon in that i don't really care a ton at the end of the day. although i do think black people undeniably deserve more than this country has ever given them for their work.

but just for the hell of it

black people should have gotten reparations a long, long time ago. would have made a lot more sense and been a lot simpler to do then. i don't think there's any way to dismiss the fact it was deserved. white people got to enjoy the luxury of building their wealth with free labor, and they've yet to have to pay anything for it. the black community still suffers from fall out of slavery, racism, segregation, ect and a lot of white people, families, companies, the united states in general still benefit from all the free labor they got. the black community has and continues to be f*cked, and if people think that this isn't at least somewhat due to all the set backs and flat out wrong doings we've had forced on us, then i think they're nuts.

there's a lot of problems in the black community, whether it be with identity, family, self worth, economic, education, whatever, that are easily linked back to our treatment. people who disagree with this are either A) in denial or B) ignorant. i don't completely blame them in their ignorance because it's just one of those things that i feel like if you aren't in the black community, you usually don't get it. i think it's really complex in general.

in an ideal world, reparations should be paid out. they already should have. not in the form of a check either imo, but in the form of investing money into the black communities for things like business, education, ect.

i don't believe it's ever gonna happen though. i don't think white people now should have to pay money out for stuff they didn't do. although i do think they should at least acknowledge that their community has had it a million times easier than anyone else here in america. i can't think of any other group here who's oppressed, cheated, killed, beat, forced, or stolen as much as white people here. if they can't even recognize what a gigantic leg up they've gotten and that they still reap the benifits of it, then i don't really know what to say about it. they really just do not get it.


i don't anticipate any white person to agree with me though, or even really see where i'm coming from. i don't think i've ever talked to one about this stuff who did. *waits for michael to jump on me for this statement*

I get it. I just don't bother with the argument. Treating the black community as a charity case only makes racism worse.

It's not that it would be a bad thing, but it would be extremely difficult to pay reparations to every black man in America.

I say no.

well white people have ignored their debts this entire time and i don't think that made anything better. paying what you owe isn't charity imo. i think it's too far past now to do things very accurately, but still. back then, white people had a huge debt and they never will have to pay for the labor they got. it's bullshit, but i guess what can you do.




yeah and i agree. and honestly if it came down to it, i wouldn't want a check. i would want the money to put into the community for scholarships or things like that.

Ok, then you could also look at it like this. While it was terrible for the white people in the past to do what they did. African Americans would never have had such a presence in America if it wasn't for slavery. The opportunities available to African Americans in this country simplely wouldn't be available if slavery didn't exist.



Why would every black man be eligible for reparations anyway. There were roughly 3-4 million african american slaves back in the day. According the U.S. Census Bureau the are 40+ million african americans living in america today. Who's to say who gets what and how much. I believe that there have been many reparations that have already been made to the african americans. In the form of laws, holidays, etc...

i can't see how anyone can make this argument whatsoever. i just never will understand a mentality that we're supposed to in the end thank the white people because now we get to be americans! i don't get it. that's just messed up to me

I understand this, but I don't agree with it.

While 90% of African Americans wouldn't be called African Americans if it wasn't for slavery, there is certainly nothing to thank whites for. Slavery was too much for too long. If it didn't last so long, and there wasn't so much abuse in the system, maybe then your point would be valid.

Tell that to all the people strugling to get a green card. I'm sure they'd be happy to take your citizenship in return for their own.




What's the difference? I'm not saying I'm agreeing with what happened. I don't think that anyone should be enslaved, however there's good that came out of all this and I'm pointing that out.

Sure some good came out of it, but at the expense of freedom and in many cases, life.

I'd rather live in Africa than spend 400 years doing hard work and getting beat for it.

To Brooklyn:
I missed your question earlier. I don't expect the African Americans to thank white people for slavery. That would be ludacris, however letting the whole slavery thing go might be nice. I'm not saying forget history all together. I'm saying recognize that slavery was abolished more than 100 years ago, and the African Americans of today aren't victims of slavery.



In a sense, those people paved the way for future generations. Have you ever been to a third world country? I'd go read up on how unrewarding a life Africa is before you make a statement like that one. Sure there are a few exceptions, however the majority of blacks in Africa are living in real poverty not the USA poverty.

http://cozay.com/

I don't see how giving out $10k to every black person in America would help the economy, especially in the state that it's in now. I understand that you need to spend money to make money, but we've already spent enough.

Slavery was abolished a long time ago. If reparations were going to be given, they should have been handed out then. Nobody from that time is still alive, so why should the current government pay for something they had nothing to do with? The fact is that almost every group of people has faced some sort of harsh treatment or persecution in the past. My great grandparents had to leave Poland because of WWII, and my family has never received any payment from that (nor would we want it because none of us were effected by it).

Plus, how could they possibly find every black person with ancestors that were slaves? Plenty of black people from Africa and other countries have come to America since slavery was abolished. What stops them from claiming they should get reparations, too?

Well said.

They do get reparations. It's called Section 8 housing and Welfare.



That simple ideology, while it's true on an individual level, it is totally not true on a national level.

LOL, well in that case.... Hate Crimes and Affirmative Action. Haha!



Trouble is ill, every dollar we give to our nation gets flushed down the toilet of corruption. They keep giving everything to the Federal Reserve Bank which cannot be audited.... *sigh*

this is why i don't bother trying to have this discussion with white people. it's always something because they're in denial that at the end of the day, they didn't pay their debt. there is no way around it. they owed a lot, and they didn't and never will pay it. it's a bitch move, and it's more of a bitch move when white people act like they have no responsibility in the state of the black community today. what a joke. white people have some responsibility in the poor conditions of pretty much every minority here in my opinion.

slavery was abolished a long time ago, but it's not like everything was all grand once they abolished slavery. i mean white people still held black people down a really f*cking long time after that. i guess people forget that the civil rights movement wasn't that long ago.

it's a bunch of what ifs. nobody knows that i would have been worse off today if my ancestors hadn't been taken away and forced make another people rich. i don't know why people wanna act like if it wasn't for them i'd be dirt poor, naked, starving and living in a hut, as if that's how the entire continent of africa is. it's impossible to compare anyway because we're comparing the current US and the current africa. without the slave trade, we don't know the that US would be how it is today and we don't know that africa would either.

but it's whatever cause like i've said, if you're white, i don't even see a point in arguing with you. especially as long as people want me to be glad for everything that's happened to my family and community i just don't agree with that.


edit
oh i guess i haven't gotten my reparation yet then since i'm not on welfare and haven't known anyone in my family who has been.

I'm not acting like it's not out responsibility. I'm telling you it's not our responsibility. There are plenty of poor white people too. Bad things happen to everyone. This is the most racist thing I have ever seen you say.

i'm not saying white people individually are responsible, i'm saying as a whole, yes i do think the black community is f*cked partly because of the white one. i can't see how they aren't at all at fault.

the white one oppressed the black one for hundreds of years, and then the 1960s comes along and everything is supposed to be fine and well now? i don't get it. how can you f*ck people over for hundreds of years and think they should be recovered in 1/5th of the time. how can you f*ck people over period, and not have any connection to their current problem?

maybe it's offensive to you. it's offense to me to be told i'm supposed to be glad slavery happened, so i guess we're even. i just don't understand when people don't think the black community and white communities problems aren't intertwined.

I think that the general use of "whites" and "blacks" here is narrow minded altogether. The entire act of slavery is a mockery to humanity and I completely understand that in the past, massive amounts of people were enslaved unfairly and not compensated. However, I can, to some extent, understand what Josh is saying by stating that it is not this generation's fault that such atrocities ocurred. How long will the current generation of white people be blamed for our ancestor's mistakes?

I get that by saying that, I might get lumped into this "white" group of people that folks like JC can't seem to discuss this issue with. I'll respect that, but I'm not going to lie and say that I don't think that it's unfair. Of course I disagree with anyone who says or thinks that "black community and white communities problems aren't intertwined." All communites, regardless of what race or minority are intertwined. We're in a huge melting pot, after all. I just believe that we, as a group shouldn't be held accountable for actions performed generations ago.

Having said all that, I'm not opposed to reparations. I don't agree with the sentiment that if the concept of white people today being blamed for crimes committed by white people a long time ago.

i don't either, and i've said that from the beginning.

All good, JC. Just giving an additional perspective (even it the end result is the same).


Edit, on a completely goofy note, I'm drinking this:



Not terribly funny, but I had a bit of a giggle because of this particular conversation.

no i know what you mean. and my use of "white" is narrow, i won't even bother denying that. i think you know enough about me to know how i am and how i'm not in the end.

i guess just understand that when i talk about this subject with white people, my experience is that i usually end up getting told that i should be thankful anyway because now i'm living the good life in america. i duno really.

then you're in good hands.

Are you insane? Do white people as a whole need to come out with a formal apology? The country has given your people an entire month in reverence to the hardship your people endured. We've taken as much responsibility as we can. Slavery ended in the 1860's. You can live in the past or you can look to the future. It's up to you.


There are African American people in power all around us. It's pretty clear your race is recovering and doesn't need the help of any more "reparation". Affirmative Action, Hate Crimes, Walfare, Section 8... good grief. How much more do you believe is needed to have a "fair" shot at life. Are you saying white people need to take responsibility for our actions and hand out another "crutch"? I don't feel bad for African Americans because I'm not a racist. I don't think they need anything because I believe they're capable of doing just as much as white people.

I'll say it again, as I have said it before. The African Americans of today aren't victims of slavery.

You bring up some well-reasoned points, Rebecca. I know I'm just a white boy who can't possibly comprehend racial prejudices either, but there are a couple points on the issue that are worth discussing:

1. If reparations were paid, how do you calculate the value of the "lost wealth" of American slaves and their descendants? I'm not arguing that the value is miniscule; but rather that it's so large that you can't really expect the government to pay the full value, because it's probably in the tens of trillions of dollars, and maybe even higher. The exact value is probably impossible to calculate. There's no doubt that America's economic success is due in a large part to slave labor, but how much is the question.
2. America wasn't even a country until 1787, meaning that it inherited the institution of slavery from European nations. America is still responsibly for perpetuating slavery, but nations like England, France, and the Netherlands are responsible, too. So the full value of slavery can't be borne entirely by the US -- several European nations would have to "pay up", too. But even this raises some problems: France, for example, has gone through a few iterations of government since the 1700s, so the French government now is not the same French government that is responsible for slavery in the Americas. Likewise, a lot of agricultural products from the South were exported to European nations, so European nations definitely bore the fruit of American slavery.
3. What about whites whose ancestors were abolitionists or fought in the Northern Army during the Civil War? Are they responsible for slavery, even though their ancestors paid a price to free slaves? (And if you want to argue that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, you're on shaky ground: South Carolina's declaration of independence, for example, specifically discusses slavery as a reason for seceding from the Union.) What about northern whites, who owned no slaves? I'm not arguing that the North didn't profit from slavery, but at least northern states forbid slave labor, and most, if not all, prohibited slaves from being imported or transported through their borders.
4. Along with #3, it's important to note that although the government legalized slavery, not all whites supported slavery. Take, for example, Charles Darwin: he abhorred racism and the institution of slavery, and the motivation behind his study of evolution was to prove that all human beings descended from a common ancestor and thus were equal, regardless of skin color. So it's unfair to characterize all whites as blatantly racist slave owners; in fact, even in the 1800s, less than 2% of American whites owned slaves, and there were a lot of people fighting to make slavery illegal. Even in the late 1600s, a number of Dutch slave owners freed their slaves and gave them land on what is now Manhattan, so some whites found slavery to be wrong even then.
5. What about African nations? African slaves were often captured and sold to whites by other Africans. Should African nations be considered partly responsible for the slave trade, as well?
6. Not every Black American is a descendant of a slave, so how do you "prove" such a lineage and decide who gets reparations in the first place? The problem could be solved by investing, as JC suggests, in black communities, but that solution might not be acceptable to everyone.

I'm mostly playing Devil's advocate here. Like Rebecca, I'm not necessarily against reparations, but I think that the issue is much more multi-faceted than some posters are making it out to be.

I have a little more to add to this discussion.

Black people were never the only slaves.

oh cool, a whole month. i feel better now. slavery ended in the 1860's, black oppression didn't, the white people weren't done being racist yet!

yeah my race is recovering, i'm not saying it's not. i'm saying it's silly to expect people who've been pushed down for hundreds of years to make a complete turn around from it in 50. i've already said i don't believe in paying reperations out unless it was in the form of investing money into education and what not. i don't think anyone needs to mail me a check. i don't think any of my white friends need to give me a jar full of money so we can be even. i am living in the future.

i do agree with michael ( you're pretty good for a little old white boy ) it's a very complex situation and there's a million different things to go into it. this is why i don't think it will ever happen, there isn't any way to go about it it doesn't seem like. like i said, it should have been done a long time ago. it wouldn't have been near as complex if they had just paid up then.



what other group in america are you talking about?

Again, what do you expect? Do you want me to acknowledge that African Americans need a crutch for things to be fair because of the sins of our forefathers. No, I refuse to further racism by suggesting they need some kind of crutch for fairness in present day America.



In that case I agree with you, you cannot expect a race of people who have been oppressed for 100's of years by not only American's by the natives of their own country to make a complete turn around within 2 generations, however you also cannot give them so many advantages in the sake of fairness that when they do in fact equalize they have unfair advantages other races.

Serious?...

Native Indians? The Chinese? Mexicans?...

I wasn't specifically talking about America, but if you ae, then Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics.

I'm not exactly sure who which group 9001 was referring to, but Native Americans, Chinese Women (sold into prostitution), and several other immigrant groups.

http://americanhistory.suite101.com/articl...the_only_slaves

http://innercity.org/holt/slavechron.html

I'm not posting this to trivialize the slavery of African Americans however, I do think that there are groups out there that get a scant amount of recognition and lived through terrible slavery conditions.

Edit: And damn, not only has my grammar and spelling been atrocious in this thread, I posted this after two others basically posted the same thing. :x

shrugs, i don't need a cruch. and i agree that they don't need to be given advantages to the point of it being unfair. i don't think it's wrong that they've gotten advantages or things like affirmative action though. i mean it's not our fault some people have to be forced into not being jackasses to other races.




serious about what? asking what group he was referring to? then yeah, i was serious in my asking him to be less vague.


edit: chill out everyone. i'm not disagreeing with 9001, i'm just asking what he was talking about

^ I wasn't been non-chill, I was trying to answer your question. heh

no worries. people misunderstood my question.

I was being chill. And I answered your question.
Stay up Tama's ass.

i know. i wasn't calling you non chill

Do you think that there will ever be a point in time where the races of the world have equalized and affirmative action can be removed? Eventually affirmative action will become an unfair advantage to "minorities". As they won't be minorities and will instead be accepted members of society.

yes. sometimes, a lot of the times, i think that time has already come. i don't feel like i need it. of course, then i always hear stories and stuff about employers and others still being racist and wonder if we still need it. i don't know. i don't think i need that kinda help personally. i don't want it becuase i'd like to think i'll be qualified enough on my own.

even when we remove it for race though, i still think we'll need it for gender. i think we need it for gender more now than anything.

Fuck no.

good debate

Perhaps, but let's leave that to another argument. For the sake of this argument say we're speaking about affirmative action for race as this topic doesn't refer to gender at all.

I couldn't agree more with your last statement.

Sure when the White Race is no longer... mixing of races.

I'm just keeping it simple.

Because if we went after the government for every offense done they would have to pay off every hispanic, asian, jew, german, russian, polish, and so many other groups of people for the bullshit the American Government did back in the day.

Better?

Haha, that's going to take some time. Most people are attracted to people similar to those they've grown up with because they know how to deal with and understand those types of individuals. In an all white family you tend to be raised by all white parents and have all white siblings. It'd be much easier to instill the idea that all races are equal in the youth of America.

I don't like this debate at all. I'm just going to bow out of it and hold onto my personal beliefs. This is just one of those subjects that causes issues. As a Black man, I don't want anyone taking pity on me because of what happened before my time.

I certainly don't treat my Jewish friends like that, and I'd like that same respect. This bullshit talk of reparations becomes a battle between the selfish and the stingy; both sides just look ignorant.

yeah, you come off less like spam in the debate.



same

I can't quite say "SAME" as I'm a white guy, however I do agree. If I were a minority I wouldn't want pity for something I didn't live through either. Peace.