Reparations For Slavery Are Unworkable - And Unjust
Boston Globe,
by
Jeff Jacoby
Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect,
4/2/2019 6:40:57 AM
REPARATIONS FOR American slavery are a misbegotten idea, unworkable and unjust, but every now and then they come back into vogue as a political talking point. In 1969, the radical civil rights activist James Forman made headlines when he seized the pulpit of New York´s Riverside Church and issued a "black manifesto"demanding $500 million in reparations for African enslavement. Thirty years later, Randall Robinson, founder of the black social-justice organization TransAfrica, revived the reparations movement with his bestselling book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. Now progressive Democrats, or at least some of the ones running
Reply 1 - Posted by:
HammerDax56 4/2/2019 6:51:32 AM (No. 20808)
Some of us don’t take kindly to using the word ‘laudable’ in the same sentence as William Tecumseh Sherman.
24 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
F15 Gork 4/2/2019 8:13:06 AM (No. 20806)
Didn’t we already dump about 7 trillion down the welfare rabbit hole since LBJ’s Great Society? Seems like they’ve got this reparations thing backwards. The descendants of slaves should be paying us back.
36 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
millstream 4/2/2019 8:20:46 AM (No. 20805)
The concept of reparations keeps the "Black Privilege" meme alive and stirring the democrat voters.
13 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
NancyD 4/2/2019 8:26:43 AM (No. 20807)
Serious question.. How come we would have to pay reparations to people who were not slaves?
Just asking...
22 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
udanja99 4/2/2019 8:47:41 AM (No. 20796)
#2, it’s closer to $23 trillion.
Now that we have DNA testing to track one’s ancestors, I think that we should use it to find out which American blacks came from which Afircan tribes, then find out whose ancestors sold whose ancestors into slavery and let blacks pay reparations to each other.
39 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
BarryNo 4/2/2019 8:53:01 AM (No. 20801)
I´ll consider reparations for slavery, only for people who have personally been slaves, and from people who were their owners.
I will NOT pay for other people´s crimes.
40 people like this.
visit any civil war cemetery. We’ve already paid.
35 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
bighambone 4/2/2019 9:44:05 AM (No. 20800)
Slavery reparations are being used by the leftist and liberal Democrat candidates to hype up the low information Black vote in keeping with their identity politics schemes. Reparations to Black people who never have been slaves is never going to be allowed by the vast majority of Americans who had nothing to do with slavery, and are not about to pay to carry out such a partisan Democrat political scheme.
25 people like this.
Their reparation is that they get to live in the greatest and freest country in the world rather than existing in a tin roofed shack in some West African kleptocracy where they have to subsist on $5 a month.
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
21 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
red1066 4/2/2019 10:19:16 AM (No. 20788)
Last I read #2. The Great Society has cost the American taxpayer over 20 trillion. I don´t know what time period that amount covers or if they´re still counting, but an article I read some years back mentioned the 20 trillion dollar amount. Seems high, but not unrealistic.
9 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
bigfatslob 4/2/2019 10:49:57 AM (No. 20792)
I never owned a slave and you never picked cotton on a plantation end of argument.
Reparation is the carrot the moneymakers dangle in front of ignorant people who believe the promise of more freebies from the evil white folks.
I´m not the white master and you ain´t Django Unchained.
11 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
Strike3 4/2/2019 10:58:08 AM (No. 20804)
So is affirmative action, suffering people in Congress who are dumber than rocks, lowering the bar for college entry for a certain class and placing actors in movies who can barely speak English.
20 people like this.
Read the 14th Ammendment. Section 4
9 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
joew9 4/2/2019 11:37:53 AM (No. 20798)
I´m owed reparations.
My ancestors didn´t own slaves. They were share croppers and picked their own cotton. And when the cotton was ready the yankees manipulated the market so my ancestors got screwed on the price. Then the British offered more for cotton than the north was willing to pay so my ancestors saw a way to get enough money to finally buy shoes. But the US government levied tariffs so the poor farmers of the South were forced to continue to sell their cotton at oppressive prices to the north. The statistics are that only a thousand or so Southerners owned all the slaves. So why did the rest of the Southerners bother to fight in the civil war? It wasn´t so they could buy slaves. It was so they could buy shoes.
In the 50´s and early 60´s in grammar and high school I was taught this history with many details. Today there is no mention of it and the civil war was only about slavery. History has been rewritten.
Considering what was done to my ancestors including: many being murdered by the union army including women and children, decades of carpetbaggers and their confederates stealing the land, and my great great grandfather being shot in the back of the head because he wouldn´t sell to a carpetbagger.(The hired assassin got paid two bits and the carpetbagger took the house.) Frankly I think I´m owed reparations.
27 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
padiva 4/2/2019 11:53:43 AM (No. 20799)
More than just slavery, I thought the Civil War was about states´ rights.
16 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
snowoutlaw 4/2/2019 12:19:23 PM (No. 20795)
Those that held slaves should be the ones that pay so the Democrat Party should pony up what ever they think is best, just don´t ask for other people´s money.
6 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
ginadee 4/2/2019 12:24:47 PM (No. 20791)
#2, you took the words right off of my keyboard. My sentiments exactly.
15 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
Franz 4/2/2019 2:41:42 PM (No. 20802)
The time for considering reparations is long, long past.
The ancestry of most of the people living here today does not go back to 1865.
11 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
BooneBoy 4/2/2019 4:00:05 PM (No. 20793)
I am all for Reparations; $10,000 per family! And those who accept one dime of Reparations will be moved to any African country of their choice. They can not return to the USA even for a visit.
11 people like this.
I am so tired of HR 40 rearing it´s ugly head in every election. Trust me, I have no white guilt. When you find a living slave or slave owner, let me know.
We have long paid reparations not only thru Affirmative Action, but the Pigford extortion.
2 people like this.
Below, you will find ...
Most Recent Articles posted by "Pluperfect"
and
Most Active Articles (last 48 hours)