Reperations..........

[lazs2]

mt... my 'teachers" were nuns and they never had to dress down the class or justify anything.
lazs

[Wotan]

We all know this is how it starts. The proffessional racial blackmailers beg and make enough noise that over time people start taking them seriously. Then the checks start and they they get bigger and bigger.

The government takes enough money from the citizenry already. When some thing as silly as this starts folks who know its bs need to get loud and let those who would give these charlatans a blank check know that if they are going to get on their soup box then they will be shouted down.

If you wanna give away your money then get out your check book and send it to your local oppressed decendents of slaves club. Jesse Jackson and crew extort enough money from corporations and the like already. They use the money for other things (paying off a mistresses and love children).

Nothing is stopping those of you who feel "guilty" for slavery or how the descendents of slaves were/are or have been treated from giving away your money. Feel free to absolve your guilt with fat personal check.

Those of us who dont feel guilty for anything and never owned a slave or  never made a black person get up from a lunch counter arent going to be blackmailed. If you want or expect money from the citizenry for something they werent responsible for  and attempt to use the government to get it then folks will voice their opposition.

Now to attempt to shut these folks up by using the word "racist" only works on folks who feel guilty. Throw it around all you want it still wont get you a dime.

As for the American Dream and all that as long as every citizen has equal protection under the law then its up to each each individaul to find his/her dream. But when folks attempt to change the law to their limited benefit its up to everyone to stop them. Now I am sure you will bring jim crow or slavery but it was the responsibility of those directly affected to seek relief from those who were directly involved. Coming to folks decades later, folks whos ancestors werent even a part of this country and expect them to pick up the tab for nothing they had to do with is wrong.

[batdog]

Does this have something todo w/That Vanilla Ice guy?


xBAT

[Animal]

Originally posted by batdog
Does this have something todo w/That Vanilla Ice guy?


xBAT

I demand reparations for Vanilla Ice.

[Wotan]

one thing MT. When these guys speak of reparations they are talking about direct compensation for slavery itself.

You mix up jim crow and the conditions of blacks since 1865. I think that the justification for affimirmitive actions and other types of social programs were to remedy or atleast make some minor recompense to those who suffered. Thats a different issue then paying "wages" and punitive damages for slavery.

I may be wrong since all I hear is sound bites and read short clippings in the news paper about "reparations".

If you want things to get better it seems to me that demanding that a generation of folks who had nothing to do with slavery pay the bill would be the wrong way to go. You cant expect to right the wrongs of Racism by holding a people who had nothing to do with it responsible. In fact, do you think it could actually make things worse?

Or is this "just about the money"?

I know what the Jacksons and Sharptons and the proffessional race baiters think. Its the money.

[midnight Target]

Cool I had nuns too. I guess mine were meaner.

[Dago]

I try not to be bigoted against any race of people, but rather judge people individually.  It isn't easy for anyone to do, and like it or not, every race of people are racist in ways.

What irriatates me about the reperations issue is that scum like Faracon (horribly bigoted troublemaker), Jesse Jackson (hypocritical lieing cheating scum) and Al Sharpton (attention seeking blowhard) stand up and pretend to represent "their people".  I certainly wouldn't use the term "Reverend" for any of these people, they are not persons of God, they are scamming, power and attention seeking liars.

Why doesnt the Black community rise up and tell them to crawl back into their holes?  Why don't they choose leaders who have good hearts and will serve the communities of Black citizens instead of their own selfish desires?

Reparations is the latest attempt to hold an issue up that the Black community can use as a solidifying issue. Greed appeals.

Hitler wanted an issue to rally the German people, he held up the Jews as the cause of all the problems facing Germany in the late 30s, early 40s.  Its not the issue itself, but rather give the people a scapegoat or greedy rallying cry.  Jackson, Faracon and Sharpton do exactly the same.

dago

[Sandman]

David Horowitz said it best:

TEN REASONS WHY REPARATIONS FOR BLACKS IS A BAD IDEA

One



There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery



Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?



Two



There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits



The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.



Three



Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others Gave Their Lives To Free Them

Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the slaves? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would ask them to pay (through their descendants) again?



Four



America Today Is A Multi-Ethnic Nation and Most Americans Have No Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery



The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then after 1960. What rationale would require Vietnamese boat people, Russian refuseniks, Iranian refugees, and Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution, Jews, Mexicans Greeks, or Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian and Korean victims of Communism, to pay reparations to American blacks?



Five



The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The Reparations Claim Do Not Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury



The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese-Americans and African- American victims of racial experiments in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in each case, the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the injustice or their immediate families. This would be the only case of reparations to people who were not immediately affected and whose sole qualification to receive reparations would be racial. As has already been pointed out, during the slavery era, many blacks were free men or slave-owners themselves, yet the reparations claimants make no distinction between the roles blacks actually played in the injustice itself. Randall Robinson's book on reparations, The Debt, which is the manifesto of the reparations movement is pointedly sub-titled "What America Owes To Blacks." If this is not racism, what is?



Six



The Reparations Argument Is Based On The Unfounded Claim That All African-American Descendants of Slaves Suffer From The Economic Consequences Of Slavery And Discrimination



No evidence-based attempt has been made to prove that living individuals have been adversely affected by a slave system that was ended over 150 years ago. But there is plenty of evidence the hardships that occurred were hardships that individuals could and did overcome. The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago? West Indian blacks in America are also descended from slaves but their average incomes are equivalent to the average incomes of whites ( and nearly 25% higher than the average incomes of American born blacks). How is it that slavery adversely affected one large group of descendants but not the other? How can government be expected to decide an issue that is so subjective - and yet so critical - to the case?



Seven



The Reparations Claim Is One More Attempt To Turn African-Americans Into Victims. It Sends A Damaging Message To The African-American Community.



The renewed sense of grievance -- which is what the claim for reparations will inevitably create -- is neither a constructive nor a helpful message for black leaders to be sending to their communities and to others. To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood. How are the millions of refugees from tyranny and genocide who are now living in America going to receive these claims, moreover, except as demands for special treatment, an extravagant new handout that is only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others -- many less privileged than themselves?



Eight



Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid



Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) - all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a "healing," what will?



Nine



What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?



Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians - Englishmen and Americans -- created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?



Ten



The Reparations Claim Is A Separatist Idea That Sets African-Americans Against The Nation That Gave Them Freedom



Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America's social contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.



For all America's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans -- especially African-Americans.



America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and institutions that have set African-Americans - and all of us -- free.

That said... use terms like "those people" and don't be surprised if you get generalized as a bigot.

EDIT: Oh toejam... are liberals allowed to agree with David Horowitz?

[Modas]

Near as I can tell, my ancestors came from Poland and Yugoslavia in the early 1900's.  My polish half farmed, the Slavanian half mined iron ore in Northern Minnesota.

Last time I checked, none of them owned slaves, and I wasn't born yet.  Guess that leave me out too.



 What a load of crap.....  Nothing like shriking resposibility and doing something for yourself to improve your situation.  There are enough "handouts" out there arleady to help people down and out.  Trouble is, most are too lazy to go and get it.

[Sandman]

Reason #4, Modas.

[midnight Target]

EDIT: Oh toejam... are liberals allowed to agree with David Horowitz?

That'll cost you 2 liberal demerits and your ACLU card for 1 week.


Now DON'T let it happen again!

[Sandman]

What do I lose if I think affirmative action is a load of crap?

[GRUNHERZ]

I dont think this reparations thing will get anywhere, however I do find the idea intrguing as I am Slavic - my people were enslaved so much throught history the very institution of slavery was named after us.  So all you bastiges owe me some money, now.....

[Sandman]

I can't recall anyone in my family ever owning a Slavic.

Do they do yard work? Do they eat a lot?

[AKIron]

Figured you for a closet conservative Sandman.

http://www.inettek.com/sounds/give.wav