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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on May 28, 2010 20:47:18 GMT
Slavery Reparations ... by Fred Reed On the Web I find that Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, is demanding that whites pay reparations to blacks. It's because of slavery, see. He is joined in this endeavor by a gaggle of other professional blacks. I guess he'll send me a bill, huh? I feel like saying, "Let me get this straight, Hank. I'm slow. Be patient.
You want free money because of slavery, right? I don't blame you." I'd like free money too. Tell you what. I believe in justice. I'll give you a million dollars for every slave I own, and another million for every year you were a slave. Fair enough? But tell me, how many slaves do you suppose I have?
In round numbers, I mean... say to the nearest dozen. And how long were you a slave? Oh. In other words, I owe you reparations for something that I didn't do and didn't happen to you. That makes sense. Like lug nuts on a birthday cake. Personally, I think you owe me reparations for things you didn't do and never happened to me. I've never been coated in Dutch chocolate and thrown from the Eiffel Tower... I’ll bet you've never done it to anyone. I want reparations. Kind of silly, isn’t it? But if we're going to talk about reparations, that's a street that runs in two directions. You want money from me for what some other whites did to some other blacks in another century? How about you guys paying whites reparations for current expenses caused by blacks? Not long ago blacks burned down half of Los Angeles, a city in my country. Cities are expensive, Hank. Build one sometime and you'll see what I mean. Whites had to pay taxes to repair Los Angeles for you. You can send me a check. Now, yes, I know you burned LA because you didn't like the verdict in the trial of those police officers. Well, I didn't like the verdict in the Simpson trial. But I didn't burn my house and loot Korean grocers, or burn down a city. Over the years blacks have burned a lot of American cities: Newark, Detroit, Watts, on and on. Now add in the fantastic cost over the years of welfare in all its forms, the cost of all of those police calls people had to make, for cells and jails and security systems in department stores. I can't live in the capital city of my own country because of crime committed by blacks. Toss in the cultural cost of lowering standards in everything for the benefit of blacks. See what I mean? Now, I'd view things differently if you said to me, "Fred, blacks can't get anywhere in a modern country without education. We know that. We need better schools, smarter teachers, harder courses, books with smaller pictures and bigger words. Can you help us?"
I'd say, "Hallelujah! Hoo-ahh! Not just yes, but hell yes. Let's sell an aircraft carrier and get these folks some real schools and get them into the economic main-stream.' I'd say It partly because it would be the right thing to do, and partly because I'd like to add you guys to the tax base.
The current custodial state is expensive. I'd just love for blacks to study and learn to compete and stop burning places. But is it going to happen?
You may not believe it, but I, and most whites, don't like seeing blacks as miserable and screwed up as they are. I spend a fair amount of time in the projects. Those places are ugly. It's no fun watching perfectly good kids turn into semi - literate dope dealers who barely speak English. It just plain ain't right. But, Hank, what am I supposed to do about it? I can't do your children's homework. At some point, people have to do things for themselves, or they don't get done. Maybe it's time. I'll tell you what I see out in the world, Hank... I think blacks are too accustomed to getting anything they want by just demanding it. True, it has worked for over half a century. Get a few hundred people in the street, implicitly threaten to loot and burn, holler about slavery, and sadly the Great White Cash Spigot turns on.
Thing is, whites don't much buy it any longer. Most recognize that what once was a civil-rights movement has become a shakedown game. Few people still feel responsible for the failings and inadequacies of blacks. Political correctness keeps the lid on -- but everyone knows the score... Which scares me, Hank. On one hand, blacks hate whites and incline toward looting and burning. (The whites you hate are the ones who marched in the civil-rights movement. Ever think about that?) On the other hand, whites quietly grow wearier and wearier of it. Not good, Hank. On the third hand (allow me three hands, for rhetorical convenience), blacks keep demanding things. As I write, you demand reparations for slavery. Blacks in Oklahoma (I think it was) want money for some ancient race riot. Other blacks reject the Declaration of Independence. Blacks in New York hint broadly at burning and looting over a trial, yet more demand the elimination of the Confederate flag, and the federal equal opportunity apparatus, which means blacks want to sue Silicon Valley for not hiring nonexistent black engineers. That's a lot of demanding for one month, Hank. What happens if whites ever say, "No"? Now, how about you? You've got a cushy job up there at Harvard, and you can hoot and holler about what swine and bandits whites are. I guess it's lots of fun, and you get a salary for it to boot. But don't you think you might do blacks more good if you told them to complain less and study more? For example, if you want blacks to work in Silicon Gulch, the best approach might be to find some really smart black guys, and get them to study digital design ~ not Black Studies (as you teach). That's how everybody else does it. It works. Then blacks wouldn't feel left out, and racial tensions would decline. Sound like a plan? Just out of curiosity, how many hours a week do professors of Afro-American Studies spend in the projects, encouraging poor black kids to study real-life sho-nuf subjects? __________ As you will recall, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Harvard professor who got arrested by Cambridge Police a while ago. Fred Reed was a police reporter for one of the large Washington newspapers. He now writes a column which can be Googled ~ "Fred on Everything.”
Fred published a weekly online column in which he got to say the things his editors would never, ever have let him write in the paper. His stuff is iconoclastic and various articles have probably offended everyone... regardless of political orientation. So, with the warning that "This is definitely not politically correct," here comes Fred…
Fred wrote the above essay regarding the failings of a system and a culture. He elegantly describes the mood of many Americans and he does so without prejudice.
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Post by beez0811 on May 28, 2010 23:09:06 GMT
I like that article! Many of the people whining about slavery and extreme radical racism against Blacks are younger than me! Making a big deal about race instead of looking past the color of one's skin causes racism. White people aren't the only racists out there. There are plenty of Blacks that are racist.
What about my reparations? I'm Irish, so my ancestors waaaay on down the line might have been slaves! /sarcasm
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Post by mouse on May 29, 2010 8:23:46 GMT
reparation...mmmmmm and how will they get reparation from the blacks involved in the slave trade...what about the other slave trades that have existed will there be reparation for the slaves desendents from islam..the romans..the chinese in fact lets bring it up to date..let the japanese pay reparation to the korean and chinese they enslaved last 19th century..the germans will have to pay reparation to the russians and slavs...the russian pay reparation to the gernams and slavs etc more importantly what would reparation achieve..NOTHING...just more dislike more hate and to those getting the reparation what would it achieve....just money in the pocket of one generation and the loss of a stick to beat ole whitey with
now if reparation were in better schools and oportunities i wouldnt have a problem...but again would it actually achieve anything..i think not...the mindset has to change before change will take place and right now the mindset of some is victim and victims who enjoy being victims will never atain sucess
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Post by Ben Lomond on May 31, 2010 15:58:22 GMT
I suppose it never occurs to the blacks that if it were NOT for slavery (and I am not defending that vile practice) most of them would not have been born to black parents in America, but in some mud hut in Nigeria and the like? The blacks in the USA should thank their lucky stars that in most cases their parentage can be traced back to slavery. Were it not for that fact, their lives would have been a lot poorer.
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Post by Ben Lomond on May 31, 2010 16:08:01 GMT
Incidentally, I think that Reeds article is spot on!!!!
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on Jun 1, 2010 9:25:54 GMT
I'd like reparations from the Romans, the French, the Germans, the Scandi Viking types and all the other folks wot have been nasty to my people over the last several thousand years. I'd also like financial compensation from black folks for the role of Royal Navy in enforcing the banning/stopping of the slave trade. I might even have an ancestor or two who fought for the North in the American civil war, so I'd like some cash for that as well, seeing as it ended US slavery. I'll be back with some more completely outrageous and unjustified demands for free cash later. Ta. AH
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Post by iamjumbo on Jun 1, 2010 12:27:09 GMT
the whole imbecillic idea is just further proof that all the education in the world can't prevent abject stupidity when one is determined to be stupid
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Post by sesley on Jun 2, 2010 12:15:12 GMT
what about claiming compensation for the ancestors of children off Victorian industriousists who used them as cheap slave labour in the mills and down the mines,that sif any of them survived injurys and death from the dangerous conditions. Most of us in some way have been lsaves to the industrialists anyway,working long hours for small wages,having too,to support needy dependant familys,making the share holders richer.I ma sure the Americans now are happy to be in America rather than Africa without the riches they now have.
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Post by sadie1263 on Jun 2, 2010 14:07:58 GMT
What about the fact that many tribes in Africa participated in the sale of people to slavers? Either from rival tribes or for all sorts of reasons..........shouldn't they be held responsible also?
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 2, 2010 15:39:31 GMT
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Post by Big Lin on Jun 2, 2010 15:41:20 GMT
One of the great myths of the slave trade is that it was only whites doing it to other whites.
There were LOADS of whites who were sentenced to slavery in America and the West Indies including a distant relative in my family.
When will THEY be given reparation.
Secondly, whites DIDN'T just turn up off the coast and grab the nearest blacks they could see and do a quick runner.
Blacks were SOLD to the whites by their BLACK rulers.
Actually, on the whole - even the BLACKS admitted this at the time - WHITE slaves were treated WORSE by their American and West Indian owners than black ones were.
It's just another scam and another guilt trip.
When are these morons going to admit to their OWN faults and failings?
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Post by Big Lin on Jun 2, 2010 15:46:48 GMT
what about claiming compensation for the ancestors of children off Victorian industriousists who used them as cheap slave labour in the mills and down the mines,that sif any of them survived injurys and death from the dangerous conditions. Most of us in some way have been lsaves to the industrialists anyway,working long hours for small wages,having too,to support needy dependant familys,making the share holders richer.I ma sure the Americans now are happy to be in America rather than Africa without the riches they now have. Dead right, Sesley!
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Post by june on Jun 2, 2010 21:25:42 GMT
I'm not sure any sensible person seeks reparation - but I guess it's always good for a bit of publicity
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 2, 2010 22:21:34 GMT
June - The guy making these claims is the chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University, perhaps the top college in America. Obama and George Bush both graduated from there.
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Post by sadie1263 on Jun 3, 2010 2:42:16 GMT
Just how exactly is giving money supposed to make up for it anyway? Does that make it all go away? Erase it? Make them feel better? So money fixes everything....is that what we are going to continue to teach everyone? How does anyone prove completely that they are direct descendants of slaves? Is there paperwork?
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Post by june on Jun 3, 2010 6:41:47 GMT
June - The guy making these claims is the chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University, perhaps the top college in America. Obama and George Bush both graduated from there. I know and what a lot of attention he's getting. I wonder if he has a book or paper out.........
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 3, 2010 16:06:27 GMT
Here is a quote from an article in the Wall Street Journal written by Professor Gates: "Given this remarkably messy history, the problem with reparations may not be so much whether they are a good idea or deciding who would get them; the larger question just might be from whom they would be extracted. So how could President Obama untangle the knot? In David Remnick’s new book “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,” one of the president’s former students at the University of Chicago comments on Mr. Obama’s mixed feelings about the reparations movement: “He told us what he thought about reparations. He agreed entirely with the theory of reparations. But in practice he didn’t think it was really workable.” About the practicalities, Professor Obama may have been more right than he knew. Fortunately, in President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader who is uniquely positioned to bridge the great reparations divide. He is uniquely placed to publicly attribute responsibility and culpability where they truly belong, to white people and black people, on both sides of the Atlantic, complicit alike in one of the greatest evils in the history of civilization. And reaching that understanding is a vital precursor to any just and lasting agreement on the divisive issue of slavery reparations." Here is a link to his article: www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html?pagewanted=allBriefly, he sees several groups having responsibility for slavery: Blacks in Africa who captured and sold them; Europeans who bought them from Africans, transported them to the new world, and sold them there; and slave owners in the new world (Cuba, Virginia, Maryland, Jamaica, etc.) who bought them. His focus is on how to extract payment for reparations from all those groups. He just assumes that reparations are owed.
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Post by Big Lin on Jun 3, 2010 16:08:49 GMT
June - The guy making these claims is the chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University, perhaps the top college in America. Obama and George Bush both graduated from there. Ah, they let anyone in those places these days! No doubt he got in on an affirmative action programme!
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