the $8 million is just to form a research/study group to determine future reparations.

1/30/2009 8:16:03 AM

well, whatever.

(1) this shit comes up every other year.

(2) we have other things to get indignant about.

1/30/2009 11:38:55 AM

it does and we do. I just thought the timing was equally funny, coincidental and inappropriate.

1/30/2009 2:32:25 PM

tru dat

1/30/2009 3:02:25 PM

The Egyptians owe my people 400 years, they should pay us back.

Oh wait, Egypt is broke as shit now...

1/30/2009 3:06:52 PM

ya i demand some reparations for the egyptians enslaving my Jewish ancestors 3000 years ago.

1/30/2009 3:19:47 PM

Maybe that's why Egypt is smuggling all those weapons into Gaza...if they wipe us out then they never have to pay us back.

1/30/2009 3:23:03 PM

Sure, I come from nothing but Protestant Anglo-Saxon stock going back centuries. Sure, we pretty much ruled the world and oppressed everyone browner than snow. But I guarantee you, somewhere back there, I had a relative who was oppressed by somebody. Let's say the Vikings. Goddamn Norwegians owe me for my great-to-the-nth-power grandfather's hovel, which they burned down in the twelfth century. Pale, longboat-riding assholes.

[Edited on January 31, 2009 at 11:08 AM. Reason : Something about the phrase "goddamn Norwegians" is making me laugh my ass off]

1/31/2009 11:07:29 AM

Dude, I thought you were a history major? 12th century? That is well past the Viking Age. You are talking Norman England in the 1100's.

1/31/2009 11:21:12 AM

^ the 12th century is the period from 1101 to 1200.

1/31/2009 11:29:02 AM

I was a political science major. I pulled a number out of my ass. I apologize sincerely for my most grievous and inexcusable error. What great generosity on your part that you would deign to educate such a humble peasant as myself! Rest assured, that having been permitted to walk away from this heinous faux pas with my life intact, I shall never again make a sarcastic post without doing the appropriate research to ensure its historical accuracy.

[Edited on January 31, 2009 at 11:34 AM. Reason : ]

1/31/2009 11:34:04 AM

https://twitter.com/africanacarr/status/722843143121403906

Institutionalized reparations are emerging as a possible solution to institutional racism.

4/20/2016 8:27:26 PM

The only kind of "reparations" that can be considered even remotely justifiable would be the type of reparations that aim to address obvious disparities, e.g. poor neighborhoods and schools, which do in fact impact black communities disproportionately. Maybe that could be called institutionalized reparations, I don't know.

If it involves any kind of injection of money where the litmus test is race, skin color, or ancestry, that is awful and would set back race relations.

4/20/2016 11:29:39 PM

^ agreed

4/21/2016 12:21:56 AM

^^ agreed. "Reparations" should be directed to infrastructure, schools, and job creation in predominantly black neighborhoods instead of a hand-out directly to people.

4/21/2016 9:53:15 AM

Handouts would work, the problem is knowing who gets handouts. It's been too many generations and people are too spread out for any individual reparation to be at a large enough value to matter.

Freed blacks should have been given money and land when they were freed (that they sometimes were promised), instead many, if not most, had to resort to indentured servitude. Pretty messed up really how the government acted, and this screwed the community in terms of the ability to accumulate wealth.

4/21/2016 5:08:30 PM

Quote :

"Handouts would work"

4/21/2016 6:49:06 PM

Quote :

"the problem is knowing who gets handouts. It's been too many generations and people are too spread out for any individual reparation to be at a large enough value to matter."

4/21/2016 8:09:11 PM

Most often these days, when there is an illegal product that is sold, the people selling the product end up getting harsher punishments than those doing the buying. Take coke for example. Using is what, some kind of misdemeanor? Selling is most certainly a felony if you're selling enough.

Using that same logic, I say we make the Dutch pay for reparations, since they were the pushers who got large farm owners and plantation owners used to the cheap labor that, once put in place, couldn't easily be removed.

Like a drug addiction.

4/21/2016 8:57:25 PM

the first page of this thread is rooouuugggghhhh

6/19/2019 1:45:10 PM

just implement UBI and call it even.

6/19/2019 2:41:40 PM

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/06/ta-nehisi-coates-testimony-house-reparations-hr-40/592042/

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s opening statement to congress today

6/19/2019 3:59:10 PM

Quote :

"the first page of this thread is rooouuugggghhhh"

This is a real gem :

Quote :

"HUR All American 17732 Posts user info edit post UNFUCKING BELIEVEABLE. No one alive was a slave nor where any of their parents or grandparents. African Americans should be grateful for the sacrifice their ancestors made for them in order to provide them with a substantially better life than if they were living in Africa where civil wars and diseases like AIDs plague the land. I would say Japs or were interned during WW2 and the remaining remants of the native american population have more of a right for reparations than today's black population. Besides many already receive kind of a form of reparation its called their weekly welfare check. If Obama supports this bill than i would lose all respect for him."

6/19/2019 4:31:13 PM

That's HUR in a nutshell.

6/20/2019 8:54:47 AM

I don't get why people have a hard time connecting the disparity in success of whites and blacks in America to slavery. The argument that no one alive today directly contributed is the laziest of arguments and is unfortunately an all too common of one- Mitch isn't the only one to make this sort of claim.

It's an easy thing to follow. Not every white person had slaves, but it was a means for building wealth in a healthy number of southern families and producing goods for sale and trade by ship merchants in both northern and southern families. This wealth stayed within the white communities and helped foster access to areas of art and education. While there were still poor europeans, or course, as part of slavery, european groups had access to means and had families that remained intact, while Africans did not. While not guaranteed, of course, those who were born poor and white at least had a greater opportunity to move beyond their station because their skin color did not regulate them to slavery.

Once slavery ended, these devices and challenges did not go away, especially since a south that was angry about losing slaves began to establish legal means to continually hold back people of african descent (Jim Crow). This prevents access to generations of education and progressive employment, which those of european descent have had to improve the quality of living for their family's future generations. All of this has a clear impact and none of it is far removed.

Again, even poor whites benefit over blacks because they tend to have more people in their immediate network or a few degrees out, who can help them rise above the social strata in which they entered. Think family who may have means, friends they meet at school who help them get jobs once out of school, a friend's dad from church who is willing to a chance on you because he knows you, etc... Most black people don't have this because the network around them hasn't had the same years of opportunity to reach this level, and in fact where actively held back from doing so for centuries.

This network effect has a secondary impact, because what people see tends to influence what they believe they can achieve. Again, taking poor whites as an example, even they frequently see people who look like them in power or becoming wealthy or a variety of other positives, which reinforces confidence that they, too, can achieve it. Not as much exists there in the black community.

Some of life is about hard work, but a lot of it is about right place and right time. White people are systematically setup to more likely be in the right place based on the networks they have and the opportunities their skin color affords them- if you're very wealthy and always around wealthy people there is a better chance you'll run into someone who can connect you with an opportunity that will make you wealthy. If you only run into one wealthy person, that's a limited opportunity.

Anyway, the connection to slavery and now is pretty easy, without even going SJW on it. It's just a fact. How reparations are handled is another story. I don't giving a large amount of money will help many of today's people of African descent. I'm also not sure how one goes about proving that they are descended from a slave. What I would like to see would be free college tuition to any public universities at which the person is accepted be the reparation. There are problems here, of course, because it doesn't help anyone post college age (mostly) and there is certainly a discrepancy in how black people get into universities, largely based on much of the above. But I think it would be a start that levels one playing field and also helps remove the unequal burden black people pay for student loans.

What means would other people like to see?

6/20/2019 12:36:10 PM

I think a good start would be free childcare, free in-state tuition, and living costs stipend during college for people in families that lived in previously redlined areas AT the time it was redlined. It might not get everyone affected but it would be the easiest to implement since you would just have to prove you or your parents or grandparents lived in a redlined district (which I assume they have official records of where they were) and not that you descended from slaves hundreds of years ago.

6/20/2019 2:01:34 PM