Allen C. Guelzo, Christian Science Monitor, July 16, 2009
{snip}
And on the surface, the case for reparations to African-Americans has all the legal simplicity of an ordinary tort. A wrong was committed; therefore, compensation is due to those who were wronged. But just below that surface is a nest of disturbing complications that undercut the ease with which [Randall] Robinson, [Senator] Burris, and other reparations activists have put their case.
1. Who was legally responsible for slavery? Not the federal government. Slavery was always a matter of individual state enactments, which is what made Lincoln’s initial attempts to free the slaves so difficult.
{snip} But there was no federal slave code and no federal statute legalizing slavery.
Nor was slavery confined only to the 11 Southern states of the old Confederacy. It was legal in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey as late as the 1820s. If reparations are what’s in view after an apology, the real target has to be the states; and if reparations are demanded from Alabama, it will want to know why it’s more guilty than other states.
2. Who should be paid? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: the slaves. But the victims of slavery are now long dead; it is the heirs of those victims who stand next in line for compensation. Still, the line is a shaky and complicated one, with the chief complication lurking in the genes of African-Americans themselves.
Slavery was a system of bondage; it was also a system of forced rape and violent sexual exploitation across the old slave South. The mixed-race offspring of slavery were plain to see on every plantation.
And the long-term result is that the average African-American today has been estimated, in genetic terms, to be approximately 20 percent white—and much of that 20 percent includes the genes of the white slaveholders who originally owned his great-grandparents.
By what logic do we pay reparations for slavery to those who, in all too many cases, are literally descendents of the actual slaveholders? And should reparations for slavery include the descendents of those blacks who—like President Obama—did not arrive in the US until after slavery was ended?
3. What about the Civil War? Slavery did not end by evaporation. It took a catastrophic civil war, which cost 620,000 dead—equivalent to nearly 7 million today; it cost $190 billion (in today’s dollars) to wage and multiplied the national debt by 400 percent; and it inflicted a casualty rate of 27 percent on Southern white males between the ages of 17 and 45, the very people most likely to own slaves.
At that time, there was no shortage of racists in the North who insisted that the Civil War was being waged only to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery. But Lincoln knew otherwise, and he charged both North and South with knowing it, too. Slavery “constituted a peculiar and powerful interest” in the South, Lincoln said in 1865, and “all knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.”
The war, Lincoln said, was God’s instrument for the ultimate reparation—every drop of blood drawn with the lash had been paid for with blood drawn by the sword. {snip}
{snip} Yet there is a deep instinct in the American national psyche that bucks at the notion of defining the present by the definitions of the past, which is one reason why reparations lawsuits have so routinely failed.
{snip}
Original article
(Posted on July 17, 2009)
Comments
What about me being of Irish decent.
The African-Americans of today deserve not one red cent from us! They owe us. Of course the media nor Hollywood will ever talk about the White indentured slaves who had it ten times worse than any black slave ever dreamed of. How many little White children lost their limbs and lives due to their slavery? Did little black children suffer that same fate? No.
Good article. Of course history has shown that no matter how unpopular something is the government will find a way of shoving it down our throats (like the war on drugs or benefits for illegal immigrants).
Blacks are already getting reparations in the form of free high-paying jobs thru Daddy White Man. Some of these jobs pay into the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Free education to universities they don’t qualify for. But the thing that’s really overlooked are the free high-paying jobs. If that’s not a slave reparation I don’t know what is. In addition Hollywood is constantly making blacks superheroes while paying them into the millions while a highly gullible (especially white females)audience continues to idol worship them.
In a word — no — there are no living former slaves and no living former slave holders. There is no earthly reason to pay reparations to people who have no idea who or where their ancestors came from. What about the decendents of Southerners who did not own a single slave who lost everything in the Civil War? Where are their reparations?
Blacks DO NOT want money as reparations for anything. Certainly slavery and/or its alleged after effects have absolutely nothing to do with black failure.
They want money, because they can’t earn it legitimately and when they try to get it any other way they wind up in jail.
If reparations are to be paid to anybody, it shoud be to whites from a fund deducted from black paychecks in order to help compensate whites for over a hundred years of black crime, assaults, rapes and robberies, against whites.
One of the myriad of reasons that advocates of the LBJ era “Ungrateful Society” said that we needed to enact it was that blacks needed reparations. $7 trillion thus far, isn’t that enough?
Who (which whites) pays and who (which blacks) gets paid???
Do whites, whose ancestors had nothing to do with slavery, have to pay up???
Do blacks, whose ancestors WERE slave owners (very common), still get paid???
If wealthy blacks like “Opra and Shaq and Denzil and Lebron” had ancestors that were slaveowners, do they still get paid???
What about whites and blacks, who are recent arrivals to this country and their ancestors had nothing to do with slavery???
What about the trillions in reparations we have already forked over(head start, title 1, affirmative action in education and job hiring, section 8 subsidized housing, subsidized health care, free school meals, welfare…) If millions of blacks get paid, do we still have to fork over these entitlments???
Good grief…I cannot believe this nonsense is still even being discussed. High profile whites are so terrified of being called a racist if they oppose this extortion.
Given the crime rate, I would say quite a few people have already received their reparations.
This article, while being against reparations, is still clearly full of liberal lies and false facts. It accuses those that saw the Civil War for what it was(a power grab by the federal government) as racists. It falsely claims that most of the the thousands of Southern men killed in the war were most likely to own slaves, when it was the mostly the poor that fought and died in the war, not wealthy plantation owners. It also repeats the lie that slavery consisted of systematic forced rapes against the slave women. While there most likely were rapes, it’s been well documented that most men in America at that time found Blacks repulsive. It’s much more likely that some slave women offered sex with their owners or minders in the field to get special treatment or favors. Women have always used sex as a tool for their advance throughout history and I’m sure that Black slaves were no less sexualized than Blacks currently are today.
An interesting book everyone should read is “The Real Lincoln” by Thomas Dilorenzo. He argues that the slavery issue was not the real agenda of the Civil War. Most people are pretty clueless as to Lincoln’s real views on race.
How true! I have often seen blacks say to whites “Your ancestors raped my ancestors”. Yet the actual fact is, those white slave owning rapists, were really “their” ancestors.
Am I the only who fins this business about the “average African-american” being 20% White complete nonsense? While I have no doubt there were unfortunate couplings between Black Slaves and Whites, be they masters of whomever, the scale of that activity would have to have been well beyond the realm of historical fact and believability to legitimately achieve a 20% average White claim across all American Blacks.
I am of French Huguenot extraction, my people suffered for hundreds of years in a similar fashion to the Jews under Hitler, why cant I claim a sovereign or two ? I guess it amounts to the same reason as the poster of Irish extraction above, we are white.
As such we know our fate is in our hands and not in an event t happened nearly 200 years ago.
Peter K.:
Where did the first wave of mulatto babies come from at about the time of the WBTS? I’ll give you a hint — well paid Union soldiers occupying the South after the war, and recently freed black slaves who all of a sudden had nothing. You fill in the blanks. It has nothing to do with sadistic slave holders.
My father tells me that one of my ancestors in my direct male line was kidnapped in Ireland at the age of five and sent to the new world as an indentured servant (ie, slave). Does this mean I will get reparations too?
When this idiocy comes up, we should always ask about if the descendants of blacks who owned slaves in the ante-bellum south (William Johnson, Natchez Miss., etc.) should be exempt from getting reparations? It’s interesting how most people have never heard anything about black slave owners. I wonder why?
The same question should be asked of American Indians owning slaves. What should be the status of American Indians who owned slaves as far as paying reparations?
Tom Iron…
This might be a dumb question, but if someone claims to be “a descendant of slaves,” isn’t he openly stating that if it weren’t for slavery, he wouldn’t have been born?
Adolf Reed an independent thinker-and Black American-wrote about the reparations scam several years back. I am sure you can find what he wrote on the internet. Reed is an intetesting character. He is a bona fide independent thinker with a sociaist orientation on economic issues. He id a much more intellectual honest than Sowell and Williams. I would also recommend that you read what he wrote to Barack Obama.
To Mark above:
I have read “The Real Lincoln.” And you are correct. The media and academia will never teach the real Lincoln, who didn’t want somebody like Obama to hold office or sit on a jury. Slavery, as you probably know, didn’t become an issue unti 2 years after the war started. Lincoln made it an issue when, even Northerners were growing tired of the deaths of soldiers and civilians. The war was all about economics. When even, Lincoln advisers told him to let the South go, he said that he would never let the South go. The revenue from the South was huge.
It was about economics and money. Slavery was just an aside. After all, didn’t LIncoln say if he could save the Union by freeing all slaves, he would and if he could save the Union by freeing none… There is a plaque in the basement of the Lincoln Memorial that has that particular speech written on it. Which is why it’s in the basement of the memorial!!!
In thinking about reparations, I arrived at this thought: blacks are the only group of people that can say more than 500,000 people died to free them from their situation. Not the Irish, not the Chinese, not the Mexicans. Why does that not suffice? Because 500,000 dead cannot be cashed in at the bank.
I do not get into the “should we” part of the reparations thing. We should not,
Are people crazy? Pay off distant relatives for something that happened hundreds of years ago? I say ALL people who were actually Plantation Slaves should get a little something, all others Wake Up You Greedy Ghetto Lottery Fools. What do you call all the Welfare and Affimative Action you have been given over the years? Isn’t that Reparations Enough?
I’m certain somewhere in my family tree must be some Egyptian blood, therefore I demand reparations from the Blacks for “their” forefathers having enslaved “my” people in Africa. Fair is only fair.
There isn’t enough money in the world to satisfy the demands of the blacks. They don’t want money. The ultimately want the white man’s DNA. They want a free blonde girl for every black male. Think I’m crazy? 100 years ago the idea of a black president would have been laughable. The concept of affirmative action for non-whites would have been dismissed as lunacy. But here we are. Mark my words, some day soon it will be illegal for a white man and a white woman to marry and have a child.
It was inevitable that the subject of the Old Egalitarian Reprobate, the 16th President of the United States, and the first Emperor of the Egalitarian Universalist Economic Determinist Empire of the North American continent.
My opinion on the matter is this: A lot of people think that Abraham Lincoln was a true blue racial egalitarian. A lot of people think that Lincoln was a white supremacist at heart. Each side trucks out their evidence.
They’re both right, and they’re both wrong. The answer is that Abraham Lincoln was a typical whoare politician who would say anything to anybody to get them to like him. See also: Kerry, J.F., King of the Ketchup Bottles.
However, I don’t judge a person by his words, I judge him by his actions, and the disparate impact of his actions. The net consequence of Abraham Lincoln’s lifetime is the total and complete opposite of white supremacy, it is the installation of racial equality is the de facto national myth of the United States.
Anonymous:
That the average black will waste his or her reparations money on bling is well known not only to us, but also the black civil rights establishment. That is why they come out and say they don’t want reparations money going to blacks themselves, instead they want it to be used for “nation building,” i.e. a permanent slush fund for kooks like Cornell West, Angela Davis, Quanell X, Al Sharpton. They do get creative in trying to explain it away, they say that if average blacks get the reparations checks, all sorts of PTSD style flashbacks about the racial memories of slavery will overtake them, and they will bling out their checks in grief.
Slavery in America was started by the DUTCH in New Amsterdam at the same time as the Spanish started bringing slaves to the south.
The writer, apparently White judging by his last name, points out that some blacks’ ancestors came to America after slavery was abolished. He also points out, correctly, how a sizeable minority of blacks have White genes as well as black.
What he did not do, and this is a huge factor, is mention the fact that many, many European-Americans’ ancestors did not come to the U.S. until after slavery was ended, the same as the case with some blacks. The later waves of Germans and Irish; the huge inpouring of Russian Jews, Italians, Poles, Scandinavians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all had no contact with slavery, or any “blame” deserving for the establishment or operation of it as an American institution.
How could reparations be set up in such a way that their descendants didn’t wind up having to pay their “share” of a “debt” they never incurred? Or would the theory behind reparations legislation be, “If you’re White, you’re guilty”?
Reparations as a theory is a sham and a shakedown, just another way to pick the pockets of the White majority who never OWNED slaves, to benefit blacks who never WERE slaves.
My Grandfather died in 1989 at the age of 92. He was an avid lifelong student of history.When I was a child and started showing interest in anything and everything written ( comic books, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe etc…) he allowed to read some of his Grand Fathers journals. Hand written pages , newspaper articles and American History books which were printed in the 1870’s. A lot of it revolved around the Civil War.If there is anything of which I am convinced; it’s that this war was fought over States rights. Slavery was an issue; but not the main issue.
“Yet there is a deep instinct in the American national psyche that bucks at the notion of defining the present by the definitions of the past, which is one reason why reparations lawsuits have so routinely failed.”
But the lawsuits will not fail when America has a non-white majority. The soundness of the arguments do not matter, only demographics. And it will not only be blacks who find a reason to get their hands on the cash, but Mexicans and Hispanics, too. There is no end to the white mans crimes, and no end to what we must pay.
Anonymous, quick of the mark at 6 45.pm. you said:
” a famine caused by the English loyal to the Kings and Queens of England, to purge Ireland of loyal Roman Catholic Irish”.
The rap’arations scam always assumes white guilt/blame/sin is obvious and must be repaid in coin to the sinned upon. It is a mistake to begin with this bogus premise regarding african value.
For centuries before europeans even knew of the dark continent, the africans tribes enslaved and sold to arabs and then to europeans whatever african tribes subtribes or lineages they could capture. What they could not sell they sacrificed to the ancestors as messengers for favors in the spirit world, being animists and believers in witchcraft and spells.
The africans and free coloreds citizens in the american south owned, purchased on the slave block auction slaves, hired them out, and sold them like cattle in the slave economy.
Colored man was a term of respect in the south, even 60 years ago.
Reparations begins with restitution.
The economic and social costs of removing a tribal people from african cultures into a peasant teckie potential land and european peoples is the first account due.
The basic costs of purchase in african tribal slave selling centers, the middle passage transportation cost and lost profit due to disease deaths, and the costs at docking for storage and auctioning before final sell, and the southern social costs of birth to death social and economic care on the plantations and smaller slavestock owners, and
surely the costs of the human livestock stolen and slaughtered by invading hordes from the north, and property devastated, and lives ruined and culture destroyed:
Yes, just after the basic costs paid will rap’arations be considered.
And payment will be tax income based:
all african european mixtures will pay a genetic tax of 500% of the amount of Europid DNA, they possess, to level the playing field and income advantage redistribute
— Spartan24 wrote:
Thank you. I’ll take it a step further. You cannot punish someone RETROACTIVELY and force them to pay reparations for something that was perfectly legal AT THAT TIME. That is contrary to all principles of justice.
Those people (who owned slaves) were considered perfectly respectable and law-abiding. The government — and even the churches — offered no objection and did not condemn them. Even free blacks owned slaves! In fact, slavery is mentioned, without condemnation, in the Bible and the Koran and other religious books. For ages, it was considered quite normal and went unquestioned.
Furthermore, it was a practice found in many cultures around the world. It was the white countries, in Europe and America, that first developed arguments against it and resolved to suppress it. That was a first in history. Non-white countries strongly resisted this. Even in much of the rest of the (non-white) world today, slavery is still treated rather casually as no big thing.
— RJS wrote:
…………………………..
I heartily agree with you. I don’t even like having such a discussion.
Why? Because it gets us used to the whole idea. It’s a way of getting us broken in to a notion that should not be treated seriously in the first place — a notion that should instantly be dismissed as totally outrageous and preposterous and not deserving of another word or thought.
[The story] repeats the lie that slavery consisted of systematic forced rapes against slave women. While there [probably were some] rapes [human nature being what is is], it’s well documented that most men in America at that time found Blacks repulsive.
It’s much more likely that some slave women offered sex to their owners or minders in the field to get special treatment or favors. Women have always used sex as a tool for their advancement throughout history…”
Thank you! I’m glad you brought that out. That’s an important point, and very true. Another point to be made is that a plantation was a business, one entailing a large investment, and it was in the interest of the owner to keep the business functioning smoothly. Slaves on the plantation had their own families and a settled family life. They weren’t sold or families broken up except in cases of extreme need. Raping, beating, or otherwise abusing the employees is not going to be done by any sensible businessman who wants to get the maximum out of his investment. Nor would he tolerate anyone else doing this to his employees. Whether slaves or employees, it just wouldn’t make any sense. It’s not practical, and it’s not good business.
“They don’t want money. The ultimately want the white man’s DNA. They want a free blonde girl for every black male.
One hundred? Make that fifty. Even fifteen!
On a related note — the reason whites should not pay back blacks for the slavery in American history is because in those days, black slaves were better fed than most whites.
I’ve been reading a 19th century diary from a British civil servant named Anthony Trollope, and he argued against emancipation because the slaves, in captivity, were guaranteed three square meals a day, and the average white farmer in England seldom ate that well, even in freedom. If I find the exact quote I will post it, but the fact remains, he had no reason to lie — there was no political correctness for him to worry about in the late 1800s.
It is intolerable that blacks should have such a one-sided monopoly on the debate, so I’m telling you now — a hundred years ago, your white ancestors had it worse than blacks.
However, most of us are too proud to demand handouts.
“Am I the only who fins this business about the “average African-american” being 20% White complete nonsense?”
I spent three weeks in Africa during college; If you went there, you’d believe it too.
There’s a reason they call it the “dark” continent.
No reparations without repatriation.
Hi - This approach misses a much bigger issue and one that is hard to define. Reparations within the US and then external to The US
It’s patently ridiculous to go back to past injustices and try to correct them. It’s called history. It’s not perfect because people aren’t perfect. My ancestors were Lithuanian. So I guess the ancestors of the Teutonic knights who raided and killed Lithuanians for being pagan instead of christian should cut me a check? Get real.
As long as blacks get reparations payments with confederate money I have no problem paying reparations.
SWP (stupid white people) don’t understand that they are already paying “reparations.”
It happened when Barry decided to “spread the wealth” around and return the wealth to “its rightful owners.”
This was simply code for “let’s take the rich man’s money, (aka whitey) and give it to the welfare class (aka blacks and other minorities) in the form of handouts, bogus stimulus and next, ‘free’ health care.
Reparations? Done deal.
Al Gator
“On a related note — the reason whites should not pay back blacks for the slavery in American history is because in those days, black slaves were better fed than most whites.”
You are more correct than you know. There are a few “facts” that people don’t want to talk about.
The reason slavery died faster in the north than the south had nothing to do with “enlightenment.” It had everything to do with the fact that slavery was becoming obsolete.
I was a farmer. I know the importance of not mistreating your farm implements. This may sound impersonal, but a slave was a farm implement. A very expensive one. You needed to feed him, clothe him, put shoes on his feet and roof over his head. To realize your investment, you had to make sure that he was in good health. Even in the early 19th century, doctors were expensive. You could mistreat him if you wanted to, but think, if you paid $1,000 dollars for a tool, (a fortune in those days) why would you mistreat it?
Now, on the other hand, immigrants from Europe (who flooded the Northeast in the 1820’s until the 1850’s) where far cheaper. You paid them next to nothing. You didn’t need to feed, house or clothe them. Once they left for home, which you didn’t need to provide, they were on their own. And if you were in the coal regions of West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, you actually could make money by forcing them into debt at your company store and company houses!
Some other nice “factoids”:
The third largest slave owner in South Carolina was a man named Williams. He was constantly being dragged into court for violating South Carolina’s laws against slave breeding. Mr. Williams was a black man. There were not an insignificant number of black slave owners.
Most of the native American nations routinely bought and sold black (and white) slaves. How much do they have to pay?
Black slaves were rounded up and sold by black mercenaries. How much do they have to pay?
It was widely reported (I can find the report if pressed) that as many plantations went bankrupt, the slaves took over the plantation with money that they had squirreled away from black marketeering. Basically, they ran the farm and left the white owner at the top as the figure head. They did this to prevent the farm from going under and them being scattered to the winds. Who pays ‘reparations’ to the decedents of these people?
Many questions, not enough truth.
Only people totally addled would believe that white men largely had to rape black women in order to obtain their sexual favors.
ghw…
“(Re reparations) I don’t even like having such a discussion. Why? Because it gets us used to the whole idea.”
I’m not sure I agree. I know a couple who is so liberal that they contribute to the SPLC, and even that couple is dead-set against reparations.
A big fight over reparations might be just the thing to show people that, as my family said, “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.” It might open people’s eyes to the whole travesty of “civil rights.”
On the other hand, you could be right. (I haven’t talked to that couple lately, and perhaps the poor idiots have already changed their mind!)
31 — Arcadian wrote at 9:53 PM on July 18:
Anonymous, quick of the mark at 6 45.pm. you said:
” a famine caused by the English loyal to the Kings and Queens of England, to purge Ireland of loyal Roman Catholic Irish”.
“I agree in part with the sentiment of what you are saying, but not the facts. The Irish Potato Famine was caused by imported diseased Mexican potatoes, it was not some heinous scheme by the English to purge Ireland of her Catholics. To support my statement, not for the first time do I offer the following verifiable facts:”
Aside from the bad potatoes and the stubborness of the Irish people about other food, etc., some of your facts could use clarifying. I have traveled Ireland extensively in the past and am somewhat familiar with the history thereof. Overall, England used Ireland and beggared them over and over for eight hundred years. Literature from the Potato famine show that English Parlementarians did not want to spend any money to help the starving Catholic Irish and the Protestant landlords (usually) took the opportunty to foreclose on many small tenant farms, enriching themselves. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions - I forget the numbers just now) died in ditches. Many were told to “go to hell, or Carnamarra,” a very stony, windswept part of Ireland north of Galway, where they starved to death, out of the sight of “descent people.” But disease and sickness had a large part in the death toll as well. Also, the workhouses that the UK set up in Ireland were cruel and harsh, many workers escaped them only to die later.
But the basic blame for the Irish Potato Famine rests with the policy of the Roman Catholic Church, whose policies encouraged large families amoung the poor and uneducated. I note that such is still the policy of the RLC and is a major factor in the Latin American invasion of North America as well as the harbinger of larger disasters to come that may make the Irish Potato Famine look like a minature dress rehsersal.
12 — Anonymous wrote at 1:22 AM on July 18:
“How true! I have often seen blacks say to whites “Your ancestors raped my ancestors”. Yet the actual fact is, those white slave owning rapists, were really “their” ancestors. “
I really doubt if very much rape actually occurred. Just as a woman today will date or do the casting couch for an advantage, slaves knew that they could get privileges and better positions if they gave sex to their master. I am sure that the actual few that did have sex with their slaves (it was looked down on socially and there were colonial laws against it as well)they at least pretended to be thrilled and excited about it. My guess is that they really were. (I have had enought Black women try to suduce me in my life to know that they really like White men, but once you don’t go for them, they resent you). But just try to imagine a White slave master raping a screaming, protesting slave who then goes about her duties sullen and conspiring! That slave would have been sold off or even killed. Like most fabricated nonsense around the slave period of American history, common sense and actual records could easily dispell many popular notions and assumptions.
41 — EuroTexan wrote at 12:01 PM on July 19:
“No reparations without repatriation.”
Now, there is a slogan that this “atheist” will say “Amen!” to.
Should Blacks get Reparations? NO! (I think that the statue of limitations has long run out).
“judging from how all the largesse from the civil rights era was wasted on long-rusted Cadillacs and abandoned housing and all, we can figure that the X dollars will be p****d away in an orgy of spending, whoopee and mayhem. What then? White America will have “Reparated”, and then the same sorry blacks will be still whining about discrimination and white racism.”
Exactly!
Reparations would be just like the Reagan amnesty of illegal aliens in 1986. It was supposed to be a one-time thing that would settle the matter and close the subject for good.
Oh, sure! How long did it keep them satisfied? Now the illegal crowd is back, larger and more demanding than ever, looking for more of the same. It would be the same thing with reparations.
Paying “reparations” is a form of blackmail, just a better-sounding word. And it is known that blackmailers, once they succeed, always come back for more.
Actually, Spain did not engage in the slave trade. It contracted out this trade to other countries. (See the Asiento.)
In the history of slavery, asiento refers to the permission [contract] given by the Spanish government to other countries to sell slaves to the Spanish colonies between the years 1543 and 1834.
Initially, Portugal dominated the slave trade. Before the official asiento in 1595, the Spanish fiscal authorities gave individual asientos [contracts] to merchants, primarily from Portugal, to bring slaves to the Americas.
The earlier asiento period ended in 1640 when Portugal [then under the Spanish crown] revolted against Spain… the Spanish [later] returned to Portuguese and then Dutch interests to supply slaves. Later in history, Britain and Holland dominated this slave trade.
“But the lawsuits will not fail when America has a non-white majority. The soundness of the arguments do not matter, only demographics. “
Whoever brings the most pressure to bear, wins!
In reference to the following statement by Mr. Guelzo:
“Slavery was a system of bondage; it was also a system of forced rape and violent sexual exploitation across the old slave South. The mixed-race offspring of slavery were plain to see on every plantation.”
This charge has been bandied about since the founding of our country, and used by political opponents of no less than George Washington,himself.
The old liberal trick —- when you can’t an argument based on facts, immediately resort to slander. And even the great George Washington faced down such personal attacks on a regular basis.
Regarding Slavery, there is a video on You Tube about current Black Slavery in Africa, where Blacks, and Arabs, enslave other Blacks. It is called “Slavery in Mauritania”. Notice that the NAACP is mute on the subject.
Reparations should be paid by Blacks to White America, for the wholesale destruction of our Cities, and Towns, where Blacks hold a sizable amoount of the population, or exceed that of Whites.
One viewing of “Detroit Ghost Town” on You Tube, or at the web site for the Council of Conservative Citizens will completely disgust you. It was very difficult to watch.
“I really doubt if very much rape actually occurred.
Reparations?
Is that a joke?
Pray tell where would the money come from? Don’t look now, but we’re broke and in danger of having our currency collapse.
You know, the biggest problem today is that there are too many people who are in denial or they are afraid to face the truth.
This empire is finished. It’s over. Our destiny has been set in stone. Gradually, incrementally, beginnng very soon, over the next few years, we’re going to have riots and fighting in the streets.
And isn’t it apropos that we will be down to third world levels as another of many failed black run governments, right along with Zimbabwe, South Africa, Detroit, and Atlanta?
There’s one possible explanation for the 20% figure of white blood that North American blacks are said to have. I’m NOT going to state for a fact that this is true,but the explanation does have the virtue of making a certain amount of sense.
If anyone here has ever read the Flashman series of books,you might remember the episode where the hero(?) was shanghaied into being an unwilling passenger on a slave ship bound for West Africa,and from there to points west.
I realize that it’s fiction,and not to be relied upon as a serious source,but the author of the series did a lot of research,and his books are very heavily end noted about events which really did happen,so I find the idea plausible.
Anyway,the premise was that female slaves bound for the American continents were made available to the crewmen of the slave ships during passage. NOT just as recreation for the crew,either-the idea seems to have been that if impregnated,the female captives would bear offspring that were half white,and therefore more valuable,due to an increase in intelligence.
Like I said-it isn’t verifiable,but the concept really does make sense. Figure half the women were impregnated this way (just pulling a figure out of the air),then the resulting children are placed among the general slave population and in a couple of generations,you get the 20% number for white ancestry.
Another possible explanation that hasn’t been brought up is the intra-continental slave trade. This is something about which I know nothing at all,but slavery existed in Central and South America at the same time as it existed in North America,and for some time after the institution was eradicated at gunpoint in the Confederacy.
Was there much,if any slave trading going on between Brazil and the United States? And in Brazil (or any other of the South American countries at the time-I use “Brazil” as a kind of generic term),were the laws or social constraints against interracial relations? If there weren’t many constraints,and if any significant number of slaves were traded from South America to North America,that could also account for some of the 20% figure.
Reparations should be given with one string attached. Anyone accepting the money must renounce their US citizenship and be returned to the African country of their choice (with no return), at taxpayer expense of course. I would agree to $10K per family member up to $100K plus free passage. My guess is we would break even in 5 years. This plan would also inject much needed capital into the African continent. A fact even liberals could get behind. At a minimum, it would reduce the moaning and groaning about non-existant racism in the US. Music to my ears.
This is silly, of course they should not receive reparations. The Black Americans living here now were never slaves. They didn’t suffer at all in fact. There are plenty of them receiving fiancial assistance of some kind. Why should we have to pay for something we didn’t do. Today’s Americans had nothing to do with slavery.
Yes! Reparations. It’s about time I got paid for the property of my ancestors that was taken from them by the government!
Seriously, how come no one ever talks about that aspect of it?
“Nor was slavery confined only to the 11 Southern states of the old Confederacy.”
Of course, there were slave states that never did join the Confederacy, including Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware. Slavery also existed in West Virginia (which was admitted as a slave state during the Civil War), prior to that state being created from several counties of Virginia, and in the District of Columbia (until 1862). Slaves were still owned in New Jersey at the time of the Civil War. (In fact, New Jersey voters rejected ratifying the 13th Amendment at the end of the Civil War.)
Slavery existed almost two centuries in British America….long before the Federal Government even existed, so it is difficult to blame the Federal Government for slavery when the same Federal Government abolished it in the remaining slave states.
In fact, ALL states of the Federal Union at the time of the Civil War had lawful slavery during their history. (The only possible exception was Maine, which had lawful slavery when part of Massachusetts, but slavery was abolished in that state before Maine was admitted as a state.) Many of the states that fought the Civil War on the Union side had only abolished slavery a generation before the Civil War.
No doubt, had the Civil War not been fought at all…..the remaining slave states would have abolished slavery by action of the state legislature (or the courts, or the voters), just as the other states had already done.
60 — Anonymous wrote at 2:47 PM: “The premise was that female slaves bound for the Americas were made available to crewmen of the slave ships during passage. NOT just as recreation for the crew! The idea seems to have been that if impregnated, they would bear offspring that were half white, and therefore more valuable….
Another point to note is that there were — especially at first, up until about 1660 (when the religious wars in Europe abated and white slaves/refugees became fewer) — many white slaves in America as well as black ones. In fact, there might have been more whites until then. There was no legal distinction between white and black at that time. For example, 30,000 Irish orphans were shipped to the West Indies in 1640 and sold into slavery. These early slaves inter-bred, producing a first crop of mulattoes. [Btw, as an interesting aside, this was actually advantageous for them, in survival terms, as it helped their offspring from falling victim to lethal tropical diseases such as yellow fever and malaria which would have wiped out most pure whites.]
An explanation, which I think is a good one, is that some of those first race-crossed mixtures (who were favored as domestic servants) were employed in the master’s Big House as butlers, footmen, etc. These half-white domestic slaves had charge over all the other slaves, the field hands, etc., and without a doubt they exploited their authority to take full advantage of the other blacks. Surely, they would need no encouragement for this, and the other blacks would not object either, appreciating the attention from someone who was considered higher class and who could grant them favors. The master would not have interfered with this process, as it was considered “improving” the slave population. [I have heard exactly the same thing from Latin Americans, btw, so this was quite common and accepted there. It was considered highly desirable.] Thus, it was the mulattoes (and mestizos) who happily produced a large crop of mixed-breeds, not the “master” of the house himself ….
“Another possible explanation that hasn’t been brought up is the intra-continental slave trade. This is something about which I know nothing, but slavery existed in Central and South America at the same time as it existed in North America…. Was there much, if any, slave trading going on between Brazil and the United States? And in Brazil (or any other of the South American countries), were there laws or social constraints against interracial relations? ”
Slave trading with Brazil? Not that I’ve ever heard of. I doubt it very much. They weren’t in the same economic/political sphere as North America. There would have been little or no connection between them.
But, were there constraints against inter-racial sexual relations in the South American colonies? Very few, if any! It was pretty standard practice there, far away from puritanical North America. [Just look at their mixed populations today!] And the same applied throughout the Caribbean too. Certainly, there was a large commerce existing between the West Indies and North America during colonial times. Slaves were definitely being brought here from the West Indies.
“Of course the media nor Hollywood will ever talk about the White indentured slaves who had it ten times worse than any black slave ever dreamed of.”
Comment #2
Blacks don’t deserve a red cent as Pat Buchanan argued forcefully in a recent article. However, your comment is completely unsubstantiated and hyperbolic. We should be better than this. The level of discourse at Amren has declined in general, becoming as shrill and anecdotal as Human Events or some such run-of-the-mill patriot redneck site.
I posted this to comment on the apology for slavery where ‘reparations’ was mentioned. It’s even more applicable here.
‘Reparations’ The first time I heard this word and found out what it meant, I have to admit that I thought it was the silliest thing I ever heard. The very idea that I and my kind would have to give more than we already give the these ferel beings was beyond belief. That was a few years ago. Now, it’s not so silly given all the recent events.
How can so few that give little demand so much? If we could ever summate all the contributions of the American black race from slavery to now, the results would be interesting. That’s including whatever inventions, contributions to the arts, sciences and pholosophies etc. and add that to the damage/deaths of the Civil War, crime, social services used (WIC, welfare, etc) incompetence in undeserved jobs, degradation of professions that had to include them etc,. I think the result would be a giant negative number and we would be owed the reparations.
I can promise this much, I’ll either stop paying taxes or move to another country before I give one dollar more than what’s already being stolen from me to give to this ‘race’. Racist? Nah, I not anti-black, just pro-White.
The world’s on fire and we had better wake up soon while we still have the power. The fact that we are still hearing this term in higher volumes is an indicator that we are losing ground.
Reparations – cool! Who pays whom?
While we’re at it, my forebears were enslaved by the English. Who pays me?
“There was other food available, eg the Maize, but the Irish people wanted potatoes. Needless to say they ate other foods when they had no choice.”
As far as maize, it required special milling. The Americans were familiar with how to mill corn because they learned maize cultivation and processing from the Indians who had milled it for centuries.
68 tobeornotobe: I eat corn on the cob, no milling required.
Americans learned milling from Indians? People who were familiar with windmills and waterwheels learned from people who mashed their grain with mortar and pestle?
The real potato problem was monoculture, the planting of a single type of crop. Most Irish potatoes were of one variety, which proved to be very susceptible to a particular disease. The Germans at the same time were planting a dozen varieties, most of which survived that same disease. There’s a lesson for modern American agriculture there.
