Why would the govt need to be responsible for reparations when plantation (non govt) owners and profit seeking individuals were buying and selling enslaved victims?
Should we, the people, pay for the tortured trauma inflicted by individuals over 155 yrs ago? Should the taxes paid by recent naturalized citizens (immigrants), as an example, who had nothing to do with our past history, be utilized for reparations?
Didn’t the govt pay an enormous cost for the war that ended slavery? Didn’t the fatalities of thousands of Union soldiers who forfeited their lives limit future economic and financial means for their families?
Didn’t my ancestors, among them a Colonel, pay with his life, leading the charge in a battle at the Spotsylvania Courthouse, after having been previously severely wounded during another battle, with his horse shot out from under him?
Why doesn’t anyone realize it’s not the govt that terrorized enslaved people for over 200 (1600s-1865) yrs, it was an imperialistic system of aristocracy, made up of unethical, greedy, selfish, abusive, sadistic, immoral individuals who fought a bloody war to keep their way of life.
It was defeated at the irreplaceable cost of lives and limbs and former emotionally intact soldiers. There’s no recompense for their loved ones who lost so much that lifted up and ensured the security of freedom for millions of people.
Thank God that horrible old south anti-liberty system was erased and will never exist again.
Reparations are a lie. Them dems are playing African Americans for fools. They have been talking about this for years. Where’s the plan? Where’s the bill? Where’s the vote? It’s a bad joke.
Insurance companies, many of them still extant, profited off the insurance of slaves. Banks, many of them also still in existence, profited off the use of slaves as loan collateral. Transportation companies, mist of them financed or secured with public bonds, also profited from chattel and corvee slavery. Some of these organizations have since merged, forming enormous integrated cartels.
They profited from slavery, which means they profited from stolen inheritance, and can and should be rightfully pursued for the recovery, plus interest and damages, of that inheritance.
Reparations.
(To be fair, a better case could be made for Aetna or NY Life, but IIRC the Vigneron wealth was New England shipping money, which was largely inseparable from the slave trade.)
Then your issue is with your lame assed democrats who are happy just to talk about it. What’s wrong with your people? Tell them to stop lying to you and do something. You are being played like a fiddle.
Back to the plantation metaphor. DEMs promise all of those things they can’t possibly deliver, but it keeps the minorities voting for DEMs. Why change what is obviously working?
95% of the wealth of the United States has been built since 1865. Maybe we should charge former slave owners for holding our economy back. . . including the Africans that sold those slaves.
Seriously, reparations have been paid since the 30’s when we started this welfare state crap. Isn’t it odd the people bitching the loudest for reparations are the ones that have been living off of the tax payers for generations now?
No. Reparations are a joke. A very small percentage of white people in this country have linage that can be traced back to slave owners and they want to charge ALL white people as if they directly benefited? I grew up with nothing and my grandparents migrated here in the early 1900’s. I had to help my father paint to make ends meet as a kid. I only owe my parents and my family. Everyone else can kiss my rear.
Reparations are a lie. Them dems are playing African Americans for fools. They have been talking about this for years. Where’s the plan? Where’s the bill? Where’s the vote?
They have had years to develop something and they have not. You are being played. Why don’t you hold your do-nothing party accountable?
Why do people believe that democrats want to offer a reparations plan? Has anybody seen any actual evidence that they do? How many years of talk does there have to be until people figure out its just talk? Why are we debating a non existing plan? They lie.
I don’t agree. Welfare is most definitely a repayment. Tax payers handing money to people that didn’t earn it.
Where the hell did I say paying for forced free labor is a joke. Show me a guy that was a slave and I’ll be on his side to grant reparations from the guy that had him enslaved. The sad truth is there is slavery in the United States today but for some reason, no one wants to fight it. Instead of focusing efforts on ending sexual slavery in this country, people won’t stop whining about what happened 155 years ago.
Explain to me why I owe a dime to the great, great, great, great, grandchildren of an actual slave. I didn’t have a thing to do with slavery, none of my family had a thing to do with it. As a matter of fact, my family has a history of BEING slaves, both in Russia and in Germany. In this country, we don’t require people to pay for the sins of their relatives.
My issue, such as one exists, is to explain how reparations might be feasible to collect.
It is another matter, and more complex, whether reparations can be fairly and effectively distributed, especially given the resentment politics which have currently seized the governing party and its base, and which have driven them overtly towards white supremacist positions.
That you may not personally “owe” a dime to any one, specific descendant of an enslaved (and, historically Black person) has nothing to do with whether or not that person was deprived of the inheritance of the labor and stolen wealth of her forebears.
And while it can certainly be argued that the public infrastructure and much private equity of this country represents the grown wealth of these ill-gotten gains, the first step is to get folks like yourself to see why and how millions of natural born Americans have never been able to use that rightful inheritance to protect and pursue their economic and political autonomy.
How do you know people on welfare didn’t “earn” it?
Slavery exists in the form of prison systems. I always fight for that.
Great-great grandchildren. My great great grand mother was born into slavery In 1860 Virginia. My great grand mother was born in 1885. My grandmother in 1915.
Not too far back for me.
You could pay it through your tax dollars. Or lack there of. Give descendants no federal taxes for their lifetimes. No money out of your pocket.
Of course it does, you’re talking about taxing ME. That said, most people receive little or no inheritance so that logic is just silly.
You’re not going to convince me of a lie. Isn’t going to happen. Know why? Democrats for generations have been stealing generational wealth from us in the form of Social Security. What happens when someone dies at 62 after putting 15.3% of their income into SS/Medicare since they were 18? Yup. Absorbed by the system. Really hard for me to get on board with Democrat proposals of restoring generational wealth accumulation when they’re actively stealing generational wealth by design. That said, most people won’t inherit a lot of money from their parents. This idea that the lack of labor in the 1800’s led to poverty in the 2000’s is just idiotic. Know what leads to poverty? Single parent households. Not finishing high school. Not working. Every time we suggest this, we’re racists, even though it impacts the white community exactly the same as other communities. The difference is, single parent households are less common in other communities than the black community. Fix that and I guarantee that the rest will fall in line in short order. Complaining about what happened in the 1800’s and blaming it for your problems isn’t going to fix anything.
My grandparents came to this country without a penny in the early 1900’s. The left nothing to my parents but the work ethic they instilled into them. My parents will leave me nothing (I’ve been paying $800 a month for 12 years now to keep them in a decent quality of life, my brother is matching it) but they certainly left me with a healthy work ethic. My kids stand to inherit quite a bit but that’s because I’ve invested a fair amount of money over the years. My labor had little to do with wealth accumulation beyond giving me the capital to invest. For instance, I saved money and bought a house for $122,000. I put 20% down, $24,400 about 5 years ago. I made some upgrades and I’m selling that house for $165,000. My net profit will be around $30,000 total + what I paid on the principle and made off of rent in the past 5 years. While the government will manage to screw me out of about a third of that, I’ll still net $20K off of a $25K investment in 5 years… there is NOTHING stopping any American from doing the same thing. Hell, my step son went to prison a while back and he got out 1.5 years ago. He’s working two jobs and he’s saved $30K already and he’s ready to buy his first house. If he can do it working at Willies and working for another place that pays him $12 an hour, why the hell can’t anyone? He works a ton of hours, he pays his rent and he has taken advice and saved a ton of money because he has a goal of owning a rental home. Do that 10 times and all of the sudden, your net cash flow per month is $3,000 + the amount you pay to principle, + the appreciation on the houses you buy… THAT is how you build wealth, not whining and crying about how gubmit didn’t pay your great great great great great grandpa for being a slave… stop making excuses as a community and the problem will sort itself out.
Were just black people slaves? All races get welfare and it’s extremely harmful if it isn’t extremely short term. How do I know they didn’t earn it? Exactly what do you do on welfare to earn it? That’s the entire point, you need help… did they pay taxes in originally? Maybe… but I’d say most on welfare are likely to have paid little to no taxes in the past.
Prison isn’t slavery, it’s prison. Don’t want to go to prison? Don’t murder, rape, steal, etc. Prison is punishment, not slavery.
Ever meet your great great grandmother? You’re probably around 55-60? Think about how far back that is. She was 5 when slavery ended, hardly a slave at that point. Now, think about a 20 year old kid today… born in 2000. Back it out and say each parent was 25 years old when the previous generation was born…
20 year old: 2000
Mother: 1975
Grandmother: 1950
Great Grandmother: 1925
Great Great GM: 1900
GGG GM: 1875
GGGG GM: 1850- - - here’s the first slave and she was 15 when it ended. If she lived to 100, the grandmother of a 20 year old today was born the year she died.
If you weren’t a slave, you deserve nothing. I’m sorry, I don’t get to pay for the sins of people in 1865, nor do you get to benefit from the grievances of that time.
Here’s the really fun part: Our government made slavery illegal and fought a war to end it. That broke from centuries of tradition among human beings. The Germanic tribes were slaves to Rome. Egyptians were slaves. You can seriously go back and find slaves in everyone’s past if you go back far enough. There comes a point where history is history and it’s necessary to look to the future to progress. You cannot get where you’re going if you won’t take your damn eye off of the rear view mirror.
