Bakari Kitwana, Huffington Post, April 6, 2009
Dr. John Hope Franklin, the wildly accomplished historian who documented Blacks’ place in the great American story, firmly believed in reparations—the idea that the descendants of slaves in the United States should be compensated for the centuries of free labor that enriched slaveowners and their descendants and the American empire. It is a fact overlooked by the recent flurry of mainstream media coverage commemorating his life work. (He died at the age of 94 late last month.) But it is no small detail.
Consider his response in 2007 to state legislators in North Carolina and Virginia who balked at apologies for slavery introduced by their peers. For him a mere verbal apology wasn’t enough.
“People are running around apologizing for slavery,” he said. “What about that awful period since slavery—Reconstruction, Jim Crow and all the rest? And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor? I think that’s little to pay for the gazillions that black people built up—the wealth of this country—with their labor, and now you’re going to say I’m sorry I beat the hell out of you for all these years? That’s not enough.”
When Dr. Franklin spoke of history, he did so with the definitive authority of an expert who spent over half a century culling through the details. His accomplishments are legendary: distinguished Duke University professor who taught at the University of Chicago and Harvard University (where he earned his doctorate in 1941); author of 20 books; first African American to chair a history dept at a predominately white university; over 3.5 million copies of his book From Slavery to Freedom have been printed since it’s 1947 publication.
{snip}
“There are all kinds of ways you could do it,” Franklin said in a video interview at Duke University, in which he insisted he wasn’t asking for reparations personally—even though he was entitled. “What about scholarships? What about descent places for people to live? Out of the fortunes that were made, you could build a mansion for the descendant of every former slave.”
Others have argued that reparations should be paid directly by the U.S. government, which Harpers magazine (November 2000) estimated at $100 trillion dollars for 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865 with compounded interest of 6 percent. Still others have argued that payments should come from corporations who benefited as well as former colonial governments.
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His careers as a historian and as an activist (he was a researcher for Thurgood Marshall for the Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education case and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma) are well documented. Less known are his day-to-day confrontations with the legacy of white supremacy, subtleties he often related in personal anecdotes:
As a 6 year-old boy, his father’s business in Tulsa was destroyed (luckily his father survived) during the infamous 1921 race riot. As one of the first Black boy scouts in 1927, he was severely reprimanded midway through helping a blind white woman cross the street upon her discovery he was black. In 1995, while in DC to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest award for a civilian, he hosted a party for friends at the Cosmos Club where he was a member and was asked by a white woman to get her coat, even though uniform attendants were present.
{snip}
“They ought to develop some kind of modus operandi that they can do something else—something to absolve themselves of three centuries of guilt from which they are the direct beneficiaries,” he said in a 2007 interview. “How large is the black population now living in abject poverty in this country? How large is the population of blacks who have poor health? Sometimes they inherited the poor health right from their forebears who were beaten and treated like they were animals all over this country.”
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Original article
(Posted on April 8, 2009)
Comments
I always did joke that, since black “intellectuals” were talking up reparations bills in the tens of trillions of dollars, that it was only a matter of a trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
Today, $100 trillion doesn’t seem so astronomical considering the daily proposal of a bailout, rescue, porkulus or stimulus.
Has Dr. Three Names been living in a cave? Trillions have been spent on Africans via LBJ’s Great Society federal welfare programs, countless state, county, and city welfare programs, affirmative action jobs, scholarships, promotions, and university placements, and minority set asides. What do we have to show for it? Even now, given a choice, would any sane person drive through a predominantly black neighborhood at night? Where is the evidence for Dr. Three Names contention that another $100 trillion would change anything?
“People are running around apologizing for slavery,” he said. “What about that awful period since slavery—Reconstruction, Jim Crow and all the rest? And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor? I think that’s little to pay for the gazillions that black people built up—the wealth of this country—with their labor, and now you’re going to say I’m sorry I beat the hell out of you for all these years? That’s not enough.”
It never ceases to amaze me how blacks built America as slaves but as free people, they can’t build their own communities. Maybe half the black population should become slaves to blacks for a period of 20 or 30 years and using their greatness, generate wealth for their black slave masters. When their assigned servitude expires, the black slaves and black slave masters can switch places and the second group of slaves can use their greatness to generate wealth for the first group.
I wouldn’t be completely against reparations if I thought for a second it would end blacks complaining and demands but we all know it would do little to improve black status and when the money ran out, the same issues and the same justifications for why the program failed would re-emerge. More demands for more money…
I’ve often said that the best way to destroy blacks is to give them what they want and reparations would do just that. Instead of investing their money in education and their futures, most would spend it on frivolous ‘bling’ and have an all-out spending spree that in the end, would leave them right where they are.
John Hope Franklin was the most tedious bore in any room he occupied. His “expertise” consisted in being the grandfather of the many race naggers on the scene now. Their loyalty bolsters what would otherwise be empty chatter into the realm of “received wisdom.”
“There are all kinds of ways you could do it,” Franklin said in a video interview at Duke University, in which he insisted he wasn’t asking for reparations personally—even though he was entitled. “What about scholarships? What about descent places for people to live? Out of the fortunes that were made, you could build a mansion for the descendant of every former slave.”
Decent places to live? What about the billions shelled out on Section 8 vouchers and housing projects which come to resemble shelled out war zones? I’m sure the designers of these complexes didn’t design them with barren landscaping, broken out windows, and garbage strewn all over the places.
Others have argued that reparations should be paid directly by the U.S. government, which Harpers magazine (November 2000) estimated at $100 trillion dollars for 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865 with compounded interest of 6 percent. Still others have argued that payments should come from corporations who benefited as well as former colonial governments.
Ok, let’s now deduct for room and board, the cost of welfare, cost of educating incorrigible kids, cost of locking them up from adolescence to senior citizen, ad nauseum. I would think they would owe us a check.
I wonder how much of “Dr.” Franklin’s academic material was outright plagiarized? The very fact that Africans even exist on the North American continent should be cause for them to celebrate, not demand anything.
John Hope Franklin is pushing the idea that every White infant who is born is born guilty…guilty of being White. And what follows for the millions of humans born Nartive Born White Americans would be a massive transfer of wealth from White Americans to blacks and legalized massive racial discrimantion. Hispanics and asians no doubt want to get on this gravy train also.
But here is something to think about. If and when Native Born White Americans become an ever dwindling racial minority within the borders of America, blacks,hispanics and asians will be able to codify their grievances into law. In other words it will be the law of the land to transfer White wealth to blacks,hispanics and asians. There will be nothing you can do about this for the day will arrive-if the demographic trends continue.
“Franklin: Apologies are not enough. Give us more cash.”
Why?
I mean eventually every black recipient would be flat broke with nothing to show for it.
No, the best bet for blacks is their own state or homeland in Africa. Blacks have no business trying to compete with the other races of the earth. They are just not far enough along the evolutionary path to compete in a civilized society.
Of course, having their own state won’t solve their problems either, because no matter how much monetary aid and support they get their state also will be a failed one eventually.
What is to be done with these people? Living a primitive existence in Africa is their niche in life at this point. Rather than pushing them into civilization in a rush, it needs to be done very deliberately and slowly over a period of about a thousand years.
They just aren’t competitive enough. That’s why their leaders love communism so much and heap so much praise on Castro, like the Black Caucus that just visited Cuba. In a totalitarian regime people do not earn positions, they are appointed to them, so ability means very little in far too many instances.
What this caucus doesn’t know evidently is that there are reports coming out of Cuba that involves the usual black whining about not enough opportunities for blacks, so apparently even communism has to set some kind of minimum standards to keep the vast majority of these people from botching up positions they couldn’t handle.
The “Black Problem” will be argued and written about by historians for centuries to come.
Maybe Blacks should seek reparations from the African states who’s tribes were prominatent in the slave trade. Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal etc… Slavery started in Africa. The native chiefs dealt in the local slave trade for eons before the first European traders showed up. The only reason the slave trade ended was because Europeans forced the African to stop buying & selling each other. But it would be pointless to seek reparations from nations that don’t have the cash. Maybe a deal could be reached: Reparations paid out but only to those Blacks that agree to return to Africa. And I think you could get most of them to return for no more then $100 billion. In the longterm it would be worth the cost when you compare the savings gained by being rid of a large anti-social population. As long as they are in America they will be demanding reparations for one injustice or another but ignoring the destruction they have wrought upon once great cities like Detroit or Saint Louis or the damage the have done to public schools systems where they are the majority.
If anyone deserves reparations, it’s the middle and working class white Americans who had nothing to do with slavery, who never wanted blacks here in the first place, and who have suffered the brunt of “diversity,” and all so elitist white traitors can feel good about themselves as they go to sleep in their ivory towers.
The reparations can be paid for by the descendants of rich white families who brought the blacks here, and they would include many limousine liberals who throw fellow whites under the bus for the minorities’ benefit.
“Others have argued that reparations should be paid directly by the U.S. government, which Harpers magazine (November 2000) estimated at $100 trillion dollars for 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865 with compounded interest of 6 percent.”
Apparently Afro-American History doesn’t teach that the U.S. Govt. only came into existence in 1776. Which would mean that the U.S. Govt. inherited & tolerated slavery for the first 89 years of its existence & then freed them.
I pointed this out in a comment to an article in The Final Call a while back. The author responded by e-mail & basically agreed but thought we ought to pay anyway because North America was settled by White Europeans.
I especially like the part where they overlook the main role of local African slave kingdoms which started the African slave trade(do a Google search for Dahomey, Oyo, Ashanti & Swahili to list a few.)but they don’t want to talk about that. Why? Because the Africans know it was the custom then. Today is another day!
Please! Let’s take donations to pay for ads letting them know they are free.
the idea that the descendants of slaves in the United States should be compensated for the centuries of free labor that enriched slaveowners and their descendants and the American empire.
“Free labour”?
And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor?
What about the enormous wealth built over decades by white serfs in Europe? I believe I shall be lodging a complaint with the British Royal Family that the labour of my ancestors has been exploited by the feudal system!
“People are running around apologizing for slavery,” he said. “What about that awful period since slavery—Reconstruction, Jim Crow and all the rest?
Is there any “African-American” alive that was even a slave at any point in his/her lifetime?
How large is the black population now living in abject poverty in this country? How large is the population of blacks who have poor health? Sometimes they inherited the poor health right from their forebears who were beaten and treated like they were animals all over this country.”
He forgot how much better do “African-Americans” have it over their fellow compatriots both in the “Hispanic” Americas (largely ignored by government and society, with heavy implict skin colour discrimination) or sub-Saharan Africa (slavery, interethnic/civil warfare, HIV/AIDS - take your pick)?
sbuffaloalone wrote:
I’ve often said that the best way to destroy blacks is to give them what they want and reparations would do just that. Instead of investing their money in education and their futures, most would spend it on frivolous ‘bling’ and have an all-out spending spree that in the end, would leave them right where they are.
Most of those in “academic” positions who demand trillion dollar reparations packages add this caveat (paraphrased): If the typical black person received a prorated check for reparations that is inevitably a large amount, he or she would be so traumatized by merely the sight of the check, and all those suppressed trans-generational nightmares of the legacy of slavery would come rushing back up into their consciouses, they would react by wasting the money. Instead, the best course of action is to bypass individual prorated distribution, and instead invest the money in large chunks for nation building and intellectual development.
Translation: The Cornell Wests and John Dope Franklins of the world know like us AmReners about the black propensity for bling and frivolity, so the reparations money should be a cornucopia for black “intellectuals” like West and Franklin.
If you deduct the billions paid to black programs from the 60s till now we would probably be close to even.Mr. Franklin sends a great message to blacks that they sould never work to get ahead until whitey ponys up for the work of their fore fathers..
“And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor?”
If blacks were half as good at building things as they were at destroying them, this might be true. Every time I view the inner-city I’m amazed by the destructive abilities of these people. If they can’t steal it, they’re just as happy smashing it.
Even more amazing is the liberal wringing over how the cities can be saved. The cities will only be saved when the blacks leave. Every reader here knows it, but billions and billions are continually poured into these once great cities, all the while never mentioning race.
Why can’t these people see what we here know is obvious?
$100 Trillion in Zimbabwean dollars. Done!
The Dr. is right. I support him.
Only a reservation I have. Poor America, poor Whities, how would we be able to survive without them: the great thinkers, high scientists, hard abd talented workers, in short - the salt of the earth.
No need to worry. Just wait for inflation to hit Zimbabwe-style and I’ll give him a trillion myself.
“I think that’s little to pay for the gazillions that black people built up—the wealth of this country—with their labor, and now you’re going to say I’m sorry I beat the hell out of you for all these years?”
Hmm, I notice not a single call in this nasty little diatribe for blacks to return to Africa. I wonder why? I mean, if I were in the house of someone who beat me constantly I would want to leave at the first opportunity.
Just another proof that blacks have absolutely no shame.
It’s so laughable when Blacks claim to have generated so much wealth and prosperity for Whites in the US. Their presence in this country has harmed us economically, not helped us.
It’s true that Africans can’t compete with Europeans and Asians.
I’ll often hear a black person say, with beaming pride and a look of “See?” on his or her face, that the human species started in Africa, as if that makes them the greatest race on Earth, because they’re more pure, or something.
Actually, it very well might mean something that’s not so good. The ancestors of Europeans and Asians faced certain hardships in leaving Africa — different climates, crossing mountains and deserts, building homes in hostile places — that very well might have “improved” them as the new races came into being. The humans who stayed in Africa didn’t face these challenges, so they’ve stagnated. I think this way of looking at things goes far to explain the condition of Africa today.
Speaking of which —- I’ve often wanted certain things from the past to come back to the world again, but pirates weren’t one of them. And yet, the world faces pirates once again, and who are they? Black Africans. It’s as if that people is just [i]incapable[/i] of any kind of rational progress.
Let’s say the nightmare comes true, and reparations are paid.
Who exactly gets them? The descendants of slaves alive at that moment in time — [i]or all descendants of slaves forever more[/i]?
Can you [i][b]imagine[/b][/i], in your wildest, most horrible nightmare, the result of that?
If each newborn descendant of a slave gets a check, automatically, for say $100,000 or whatever — I’d conservatively estimate that 90% of black women of child-bearing age will commence to have a baby every nine months in order to get as many payments as they can. It would probably be common for black women to have 20 or 30 babies in their lives.
This wouldn’t be irrational. If having a baby meant a big payment, wouldn’t you?
“I wouldn’t be completely against reparations if I thought for a second it would end blacks complaining and demands….”
Absolutely! That’s what has always been my contention regarding reparations: If it costs 100 million tera-trillion, pay it! But there would have to be two incontestable, incontrovertible provisos: Blacks would emigrate back to Africa—with our wealth, humblest, most abject apologies and best wishes—and then leave us the hell alone.
I think that’s the primary solution to consider for most poisonous situations. If money will make it absolutely, positively go away, pay it, no matter what it costs.
This notion that black labor built “America” and “the American empire” is nothing but a crock — a pipe dream of civil rights militants who think they’ve found another way — the most profitable way yet — to shake down the White folks.
Blacks tilled the fields of plantations and built public structures in the South. In other parts of the country, traditionally there have not been enough blacks to do a significant part of the manual labor. And in the North in the years after the Revolution blacks living there were “free people of color” who had to be paid to work just like anyone else.
If any significant segment of the population really does deserve “reparations” for uncompensated labor, you could probably make a better case for Irish immigrants of the 19th Century.
We the public need to speak up instead of letting officials speak regarding reparations for blacks after all it is taxpayers’ money. Reparations are based on myths generated by blacks so as to get more endless free handouts. It is part of life on this planet that inferior genes are used by superior genes for a greater economic purpose. The blacks will never stop asking for handouts/reparations if they sense any weakness of giving in. Any free handouts/reparations will absolutely be wasted on drugs, trinkets, etc. and the blacks will be back demanding for more. It is a never ending rat hole to keeping throwing money at blacks in the hope that eventually their lives will be self supporting. The blacks in this country are so pamper. They have been conditioned to expect free handouts. Blacks as in Africa after trillions and trillions of handouts are no better than if they never received free handouts. The few blacks that are considered successful would have done so even without affirmative action/special treatment. And they are ones who truly want to be recognized that they were successful on their own merits.
How about reparations for the many millions of white victims of black criminals? How much should a victim of rape be entitled to? How about the family of a murdered white father?
I see two 3 dangers with reparations:
1) it would avoid YET AGAIN!! the grim task of accounting for how much has ALREADY BEEN SPENT trying (and failing) to raise blacks to white levels of ability.
2) It would reinforce the myth that the US “oppresses” minorities rather than offering them unprecedented levels of opportunity, thereby adding to the rage, resentment, and paranoia that are destroying the black community.
3) It would reinforce the black fairy tale delusion that whites owe them something, that they should not have to work for a living because their ancestors “created all the wealth owned by white people.”
Here is my counterproposal:
1) We demand a FULL COST ACCOUNTING of all efforts to assist black Americans to become competitive (AFDC, AA, housing, etc.) Those that are ineffective or counterproductive will be ended.
2) We DEMAND that an accurate, objective, warts-and-all account of US history be taught to EVERY US schoolchild, INCLUDING the transgressioins of OTHER societies - like African ones.
3) Until the black community reduces black crime levels to those of the white majority, white Americans have the right to live in segregated communities. Prisons must be segregated to stop mass black-on-white prison rape.
“Out of the fortunes that were made, you could build a mansion for the descendant of every former slave.” Look at those former slave states today. The states with the highest percentage of blacks today are the poorest, not the richest, in the union. Mississippi is poor BECAUSE of the high percentage of blacks in the state. Historians, real historians, have shown that owning slaves back in the day was terribly inefficient financially. Blacks complain of centuries of unpaid labor while it has been shown that providing for an entire family for (mostly) the labor of the buck male is a losing proposition financially.
“And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor?”
Given the amount of crime perpetrated by blacks against whites every year, I’ve decided I believe in reparations. The real question here is, how much were blacks planning on paying me?
Slaves were paid reparations before Lincoln was shot. Lincoln purchase Liberia for them. Enough said.
1619 to 1865? Since the bulk of this period was as British colonies, just invoice them. I’m sure they’ll be happy to remit.
How much do black elites such as professor Franklin owe Native Born White American workers? After all, Franklin and all of his black elite friends are have been favor for years of flooding America with post-1965 nonwhites scab workers. Every time he voted for a democratic president, he voted for the mass transfer of wealth from Native Born Whie Americans to the superich. And now the black elites have imposed a anti-white Kenyan bigot upon Native Born White Americans hell bent upon importing millions more post-19654 non-white scab workers. How much?Quite a lot.
There are irreconcilable differences beteen blacks and Native Born White Americans.
Alex Haley’s “roots” series did much to reinforce the negative untruths about the “slave trade”. Not being an apologist for slavery, it is still necessary to point out certain “facts” that are uncomfortable on their face, but nevertheless true.
Blacks DO NOT deserve ANYTHING in the form of reparations. This is a way for them to scam the system, yet again. I never owned a slave, and don’t intend to own any. My ancestors might have owned a few, but they were well cared for. What my ancestors did, and what I do are two completely different things. I have not benefitted from their ownership of slaves. And I will not be guilt-tripped by a bunch of self-hating liberal fools. I have always worked for a living. Everybody else needs to work for their’s also. The past is like this once-great country, it is dead. It is time to bury the dead and move on.
One thing they won’t mention is the fact that lots of slaves were actually treated well. They could go to the church of their choice on Sunday, some no doubt were educated by their masters. In fact, some of them fought for the Confederacy…they were loyal to their masters. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
When you get right down to it, aren’t most people nowadays slaves? Have to work for a living. Only difference is, people generally get to choose where to live.
As I’ve heard someone point out, blacks should go to Africa and see where they would have been had it not been for slavery. They have it made over here. They’re free to completely destroy themselves over here, and we get to pay for it.
I’ve been to plantations in the house and have seen preserved slave quarters. You know what? They were no worse than anything white pioneers lived in during that same era.
What’s striking is that an ‘accomplished historian’ can be completely illiterate in sophomore level economics. Most social science departments are usually in the same building on campus. Did Franklin ever even rub elbows with an economist during his career?
Somebody should also send Bakari Kitwana a copy of ‘Economics for Dummies’ if he thinks keeping slaves is free labor.
If you wanted to talk about economic stimulus, reparations might be a way to go. Sure, a few blacks will use to money to invest in a home, go to night school, send their kids to college or something else to improve their lot in life, but for most it would be a spending spree. All of the money would quickly end up in the hands of whites. Like someone else on here said, if this would shut blacks up, it might be a good idea. However, it would just be giving a mouse a cookie.
when you are in an argument about slavery, you lose, just say i dont know anything about slavery, thats ancient history and has nothing to do with conditions in 2009. Quit apologizing for slavery, or trying to justify it, it had nothing to do with you, nor anyone alive today. as long as they can keep the slavery issue in front of you, they shackle you with guilt. unleash the shackle of shame they are trying to put on you.
Posted by Question Diversity at 5:44 PM on April 8
No, No! Your first paragraph is more to the point;
“I always did joke that, since black “intellectuals” were talking up reparations bills in the tens of trillions of dollars, that it was only a matter of a trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.”
Blacks have no idea of how much money they are talking about - that’s the truth of it. They just know that there hasn’t been enough money printed to compensate them for having ancestors who were once slaves - as if no one else has ancestors who were slaves.
And don’t commit the same intellectual error; 9 trillion is a huge difference from 100 trillion. In fact, there is not that much money in the world. (Although Zimbabwe has printed a 100 trillion dollar banknote).
K:
If reparations are to be paid because of slavery, it should be to the descendants of antebellum poor white Southerners. The slave system precluded the development of a borgeoise middle class (i.e. they owned their own economic factor, not a “working middle class” employee), because slaves were free labor to do whatever needed to be done. In the antebellum South, if you were white, you were either to the plantation born or dirt poor, almost no in between. Slavery was the reason.
I wonder why we’re even giving this guy the time of day. Whatever perceived wrongs whites did to blacks has been repaid many times over through welfare. They’re better off living here than in Africa. I wish they would go there.
I’ve often said that the best way to destroy blacks is to give them what they want and reparations would do just that.
That’s funny. Kind of reminds me of Chapelle’s bit about what would happen if blacks were given reparations checks (which they were lined up around the block to cash at the liquor store). THey blew it all on Escalades, jewelry and cigarettes by the truckload.
A Wall Street reporter noted “Wow! These people just can’t wait to give all this money right back to us!”
Most of the places where America’s ‘enormous wealth’ was ‘built up’ didn’t have many blacks at all. In fact, most places had NONE. I suspect Dr. John Hope Franklin was too stupid to comprehend that blacks were a tiny minority in America, and so could have had little impact on the economy as a whole.
And the very fact that Franklin speaks of wealth as having been ‘built up’ tells me he has no real understanding of what wealth actually is. Certainly, he did not grasp the more ephemeral aspects of wealth.
Having grown up in a heavily black region, I’m here to tell you that dealing with black labor was a pain. I grew up hearing “Never tell them what NOT to do. Only tell them what TO do. Otherwise, they’ll remember it wrong, and do exactly what you told them not to do.” And it was true. One of our best and most beloved tractor drivers burned down a wooden bridge, because my uncle told him NOT to burn the weeds by the bridge. That incident finished bankrupting my Grandfather. That’s only one example: most of my family lived their entire lives coping with this sort of thing.
The Ark-La-Miss Delta, a tri-state area with some of the deepest and best topsoil in the world, is one of the nation’s poorest. Most of that poverty is due to blacks and their high birthrate. Anonymous 10:14 is right. White farmers were, and are, in the fields, right beside their labour. White men usually worked themselves to death at an early age. That certainly was the case in my family. White women, even aristocratic ladies, grew fruits and vegetables, as well as the ornamental gardens upon which much of their social status was based.
In my family, and among those we knew, ladies worked in their gardens from sunup until noon. Afternoons, they’d change into nice dresses and read their books. But the point is that much of the labor done in the South was done by whites. My mother and grandmothers thought nothing of digging a ditch, if a patch of ground didn’t drain to suit them. I know, because I’d help. No one talked about these things: but then, most everything one did back then was something one didn’t talk about.
White male plantation owners generally worked from sunup until well after dark. They mostly died young.
The cruel white Antebellum slave owners who were waited on hand-and-foot were generally flashy new money (rich white trash). There were subtle racial and cultural differences between them and the Norman English/Sephardim/Huguenots/Viking Scots who were the majority of Southern landowners. The flashy new rich lost everything after the war, and lacked the resilience and skills necessary to rebound after the bad times.
Dr. Franklin’s body of work apparently was one big salad of absurdities: but I’d like to comment on one aspect. TRILLION? Did this buffoon understand how immense an amount a trillion dollars is? I doubt it. I remember reading about an award-winning black teacher who had absolutely no ability to comprehend percentages (you know, like ten is ten percent of one hundred). I really do think that Franklin had no idea what a stupendously immense sum it was that he was proposing.
And ya know, there’s another more-or-less black man giving away trillions of our tax dollars right now. I think they have trouble with decimal points and percentages.
The most sickening part of this whole thing is the attitude: “Our ancestors suffered terribly … let’s try to cash in on it!”
As a 6 year-old boy, his father’s business in Tulsa was destroyed (luckily his father survived) during the infamous 1921 race riot.
And how many white (or Korean) owned businesses have been destroyed in race riots by blacks? I’m sure a lot more than the other way around.
There are I believe well under 100 million white families in the United States. $100 trillion of reparations means that each white family has to cough up one million dollars. Does your family have a million dollars to give to some blacks?
Dear old Mr. Franklin lived to be 94 years old. It would be imprudent of me to speculate how many years he would’ve lived in the paradise of his home continent, no?
And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor? I think that’s little to pay for the gazillions that black people built up—the wealth of this country—with their labor…
The enormous wealth? Talk to Lincoln, Grant and Sherman about that. Ask them where that wealth went. For a century following the Civil War the South was the poorest part of the country by far. Their infrastructure was destroyed. The motivation of blacks, who won’t work unless absolutely forced to, was gone.
Even before the war the South wasn’t as wealthy as commonly depicted. The North had far more miles of roads, more miles of railroad tracks, and infinitely more factories - factories, roads, and tracks built and manned by whites. “There’s not a cannon factory in the whole South,” as Rhett Butler observed in “Gone With the Wind.”
and now you’re going to say I’m sorry I beat the hell out of you for all these years? That’s not enough.
Franklin didn’t have the hell beaten out of him. The people who were beaten are dead. The people who did the beating are dead. Franklin should’ve been damn glad there was a statute of limitations, because given the lousy history of Africa he’d have had plenty of his own ancestors’ sins to atone for.
What about descent places for people to live?
They’d be cockroach-ridden in a month.
Out of the fortunes that were made, you could build a mansion for the descendant of every former slave.
Yet another black guy who doesn’t understand math or economics. This is a supposed academic who’s making not solid, historical arguments but silly ad hominem.
Others have argued that reparations should be paid directly by the U.S. government, which Harpers magazine (November 2000) estimated at $100 trillion dollars for 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865 with compounded interest of 6 percent.
In 1996 I recall seeing an estimate of the entire value of all the assets in the United States, and it was right around $100 trillion. Blacks were about 13% of the population then and, coincidentally, were only about the same share at the time of the Civil War. Assuming (laughably) a proportional share of the wealth that would put the overall worth of the United States at $770 trillion.
I’m not a descendant, as far as I know, from the slaves of Jefferson and all the other Virginia aristocrats, but I’m not over the exploitation of their contemporary fellows, and I don’t see why their descendants—many of whom were black—should get over it either. So I’m not impressed by him claiming that contemporary blacks should get over it.
There’s something very, very small about a man (or a people) who obsesses over ancient, historical mistreatments, as if they weren’t going around everywhere. It’s like the Arabs who keep on yammering about the Crusades.
1. If an entire race of people can inherit blame for their ancestors (a small small portion of their ancestors) crimes, they should inherit credit for the benefits their ancestors have provided. Anti-biotics, indoor plumbing, mechanized agriculture, I could go on but you get the point. “white contributions” to the world more than make up for “white crimes.”
Well, next PETA will be suing for reparations for all of the countless hours worked by horses that went unpaid. How many trillions have they worked without compensation?
My,my,my,haven’t we advanced. And now the new administration is prepared to grant amnesty so it will be easier to traffick in human labor. How noble,how uplifting,I am moved to tears.Why they won’t even have to learn English! Reminds me of what Hitler said concerning the slaves in the conquest of Russia. “They will only learn enough German to read the road signs to prevent them from being run over by our trucks.” Got to go. My eyes are tearing up again at the thoughts of this magnanimous, humanitarian, wonderful , government.
I wish some of you here would stop putting a positive spin on slavery. It is really disgusting. Slavery is an evil institution. So is wage slavery which thousands of Northern Whites exprerienced a few decades before and decades after the civil war.
My oppostion to post-1965 immigration policy is based upon my oppostion to wage slavery. My opposition to wage slavery is based upon my opposition to chattel slavery.
Besides the aforementioned postings explaining facts about slavery and the living standard of American blacks verses their brethren that remained in Africa what needs to be mentioned is the current cost of blacks in America.
The black population of the United States is a huge burden the the rest of society. Just the amount of money required to incarcerate millions of black criminals is far more than any benefit provided now and in the past. When you factor in the trillion dollars wasted on failed social programs and education just for blacks since the sixties there isn’t any doubt they are a burden.
How about the cost of entire cities such as Detroit who were abandoned after forced school integration ? If you factor in hidden costs of all forced race neutral pricing such as insurance the costs paid by whites to cover black excesses are much higher.
To be fair I think an additional tax should be imposed on all blacks to partially compensate for the burden on the rest of American society. Twenty-five percent might begin to cover their costs.
Who cares? No money left anyhow, and believe me, “blacks don’t know how to make money or a civilization.”
The only things blacks have is what someone has given them.
Many posters noted this black professor’s reckless bandying of colossal figures and/or his general lack of intelligence. But I’m surprised that none of the 55 comments so far have picked up on this:
Dr. John Hope Franklin…firmly believed in reparations—the idea that the descendants of slaves in the United States should be compensated for the centuries of free labor that enriched slaveowners and their descendants and the American empire.
Shall we right all the wrongs of history? Shall we go back and adjust the wages of all those who were underpaid, give pensions and social security (retroactively) to the descendents of those who had none? Etc.
And how far shall we go back with this campaign for correcting history? Only a century or two? Why not go back a thousand years and pay those medieval serfs who labored for naught? Why not make modern Italians pay for the slaves their Roman ancestors captured in Gaul and Britain?
The world has always been full of injustice, but all we can deal with is the present. What’s done is done, the past is past. And no one presently alive suffered or is guilty of anything.
The world has always been full of injustice, but all we can deal with is the present. What’s done is done, the past is past. And no one presently alive suffered or is guilty of anything.
Well said.
I’d like to return to Franklin’s absurd $100 Trillion reparations figure, though. A study back in 2007 - a study conducted before the current meltdwon - pegged the entire wealth of the entire world at only $98 trillion. I think that number is far too low, considering that the GNP of the US alone is $14 trillion. But even if it’s off by an order of magnitude, even if the actual wealth is $980 trillion, Franklin’s suggestion would give American blacks, a group with remarkably low human capital and with famously poor work habits, anywhere from 10% to 100% of the world’s wealth though they only account for 0.65% of its population.
What share of global wealth does Africa control? Perhaps 1%, maybe? It’s rich in natural resources but nothing else. Not a single one of the 500 largest countries in the world is in Africa - yet Franklin thinks America’s 40 million blacks are entitled to $100 trillion.
Once again, even before the Civil War the American South was not much wealthier, per capita, than the North - if it was wealthier at all. And all of the United States’s competitive advantage lay in the North’s industrial might - might built by whites.
$100 trillion in reparations?
Here’s a worthwhile visual: the HQs of the largest 500 companies in the world . Notice that only one inhabited continent lacks any HQs.
Wally:
Whatever prosperity black slavery created for their owners was wiped away by the Union victory in the War Between the States. Reparationistas are gabbering on about insurance companies that insured slaves, but once slavery ended, there was no need for such insurance policies.
Not a single one of the 500 largest countries* in the world is in Africa
Should read “companies.”
Reparations for Blacks won’t go anywhere. The Mexicans and Orientals and Moslems won’t stand for it.
“Reparations for Blacks won’t go anywhere. The Mexicans and Orientals and Moslems won’t stand for it.” - schholtaecher
Unless they find some way to get an exemption!
If blacks are in fact owed reparations, it is the long-dead slaveowners who owe them. By all means, dig their bones up, cart the skeletons into court, and sue them.
The destruction wrought by the advancing Union armies - typified by Sherman’s march to the sea - destroyed much of the wealth slavery had created in the South, a largely nonindustrialized agrarian state quite unable to compete in history’s first genuine industrial war except in the bravery of its men and the brilliance of its generals.
Not a single one of the 500 largest countries* in the world is in Africa
This is because the countries are continually breaking up into “Emerging African Nations” EACH of which is entitled to be a member of the U.N. and EACH recieve EQUAL financial aid and military/political support from the U.S./U.N. for their respective ‘Heads of State’ ala Zimbabwe.
