Reparations

Post Reply New Topic

Irish tenant farmers were also sold into slavery by their British landlords, so you'd best speak with HRM or the PM of the UK about your case.

Right on all counts. However, the basic argument still stands. "Reparations" to the descendents of African slaves in America has no practical basis, especially when one considers how many descendents of those slaves are "white", how many descendents of the slave-owners are "black", and how many people alive today are descendents of both slaves and slave-owners.

How to sort them out?

Would the reparation be proportional to the "blackness" of the individual?

Would the remission be proportional to the "whiteness" of the individual?

Would a person who is of equal parts slave and slave-owner ancestry get nothing?

I don't believe americans of irish descent deserve reparations. The point I was trying to make, very poorly at that, is where do you stop. Every group at some time, expect possibly WASP males, has faced some level of discrimination. Perhaps a better example would have been women. For the majority of american history women were treated as personal property, not given basic rights and severely discrimated against. Today, you can show that woman do make less than men for the same job, at least in the US. So it can meet your point above. So does every women deserve reparations also?

The first recorded person to hold an african slave in main land america was a man by the name of Anthony Johnson. Anthony himself was an african man (Angolan). Maybe his descendants should pay reparations, he started it.

I'm fairly certain WASP males have faced discrimination in the past... especially those living in Catholic countries several centuries ago. Or living in Zimbabwe a few decades ago. I'm sure if I looked I could find far more...

I would say it depends upon the special cases. So in my country you have a equal situation with jews. They were forced to lieave the country by Nazis and many also were killed. Their property usually was stolen in various ways. I agree with you. I am not responsible what my grandfather did, and I dont need to be punished for it. But if there is proof that some property (As example, many art obejcts as pictures or statues .... were stolen.) is not inherited rightfully to me, I dont see the punishment. If I had worked for something myself, and then the loan or what I have bought myself for the loan was taken from me, I would felt myself punished. But something that I inherited from my parents, that was not their belonging, as it wasnt it my grandfathers, never was mine, because people can only inherit something to their children, if its theirs. If they inherit something that doesnt belong to them, then it wasnt my property from the beginning, even when I dont know of it, and I also dont loose anything by giving it back to the correct heir, because I never worked for it myself to acchieve it, so the time I worked for it is not lost.

Its the same with money in my eyes. So if I inherit and have a profit of something, that only exists, because someone else was forced to create it without him having a benefit, and it still exists, in my oppinion he has a right to this creation. Be it a company or a land. If a farm or a company is profitable, then those that worked and created this farm or company have a part of its profit. Normally this is done by a loan contract between owner and workers. If the owner refuses to do such a contract with his workers, and forces them instead by violance to make his farm profitable, and he refuses to share them their rightful part on the created profit they worked for it is stolen money. Money I dont own, becaus I have stolen it by force from others, I cant rightfully inherit. Simply because I only can inherit the stuff that is mine, not someone elses stuff. So from my oppinion, if you can proof that someones still profits from stolen money, that isnt his/her own, it is ok, when he is forced to give it back to the owners or a group, representing the rightful owners of the money. I dont see it as punishment on a person, because its only about money or property, that isnt his anyway. From my oppinion you cant punish someone, by taking something, that doesnt belong to him.

But I think with money and companies, it is much harder to proof everything then pictures. So normally you have old registers, where you can explore who was an origin owner of a picture or a statue. So if 1918 a Jonash Seitzmann bought a specific picture, that gets lost around 1941, and is found again 70 years later in the living room of another owner, that has no explanation how this picture came here ( or didnt know anyway that it was precious) and has no bill or document that declares him as the rightful owner, its pretty easy that the picture has been stolen from the origin owner Seitzmann, that was the last one that has been declared as rightful owner, and belongs righfully to his heirs.

So property is easy, but to give back stolen profit seems for me a bit harder, because you also would have to think of, that a stolen profit gets reinvested, so as example you need to discuss if the rightfull owner only has a right on the stolen profit that belongs to his inherit itself, or if the profit that was made with the help of the stolen profit, also belongs to him and so on....

"Reparations" is a political non-issue, and religion is not about to get involved. That leaves the realm of philosophy to address this topic. However, as Stephen Hawking, the author of 'A Brief History of Time' once said, "Most of us don't worry about these questions most of the time ... Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments ..."

< Link to Article >

I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Hawking. Philosophy has failed to address the most vital aspect of the entire "Reparations" discussion, which is "Why Bother?"

There simply is no need for "Reparations", except in the minds of those who are seeking yet another government-sponsored handout.

I can honestly say none of my forefathers on either side of my family were slave owners or Confederates. My Dad's people, Russian Germans, had arrived in America in the 1860's, not long after the Civil War had ended, and had taken part in the settlement of the American west. My Mom's people had come directly from Germany to live in Chicago in the 1890's. To be sure, it can be argued that my paternal side had taken part in the great American genocide of Native Americans, as they had homesteaded land in the Dakota territories that had just recently been stolen from the Sioux - but that's a different story.
My wife's family is another story - on her mother's side had been southerners and slave owners. By this logic, my wife, and by extension, our daughter, are somehow guilty of something they personally had no hand in. If any jackass wants to send a bill to my wife and child to pay for reparations, I'll send it right back, empty of a check, and having been used as toilet paper.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

WOW!
I would have thought you'd love the opportunity to be wracked with guilt over being part of a southern slave owning family by marriage.
How I've misjudged you.

This is simple. Today, no damages resulting from pre-1865 would ever be awarded by any court. There's no one alive with standing to sue under our laws, and no one alive guilty of inflicting slavery-related damages on anyone else. No money should be voluntarily paid via negotiations simply because one side has absolutely zero legal leverage.

Was slavery wrong? Absolutely. Should the slaves have been compensated? Morally, yes. Legally? Probably not so much - wrong as it was, those who owned slaves did so legally.

Have the descendants of slaves suffered damages? Perhaps, but only in an indirect sense - it could be argued, for instance, that if my grandfather was a slave for most of his life, he accumulated less wealth over his lifetime and had less money to pass along to my father, who had less money to pass along to me, and so-forth. But for anyone alive today to establish a direct relationship between someone being enslaved pre-1865 and demonstrable, specific damages that they've suffered is basically impossible. Its a huge, layered mess of "what ifs?"

They should have been compensated by those that wronged them.

Go down three generations or more. No slaves and possibly the descendants of slaves and the descendants of those who stole or bought them Should descendants inherent the moral claims or penalties of their forebears?

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 13 Apr 2013, 1:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If you've consistently read my posts, you'd find I don't believe in collective guilt, nor do I assign responsibility for wrong doing to innocent descendants.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

And now for the elephant in the room:

Where does the pursuit of justice end and a bunch of crackheads looking for an excuse to be handed money for their next fix begin?

Many of us couldn't care less, actually. The only ones still pushing for reparations are Jesse Jackson and his ilk. They are a dying breed, and not taken seriously by the majority of black people in this country.

No one's going to steal money from the hard working white man, and give it to us lazy blacks to pay for our reparations, don't worry. ~_~

Hard working white men? I resent that!
Trust me, I'm one of those "moochers" Romney bitched about, because my family has had to stretch out a hand from time to time for help. The gall for the poor to actually want to eat!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Hey, much better than being stereotyped as a crackhead, amongst other things.



Pick yourself up by the bootstraps, Kraichgauer! This is America, we don't give no hand outs here! If you starve, it's because you just didn't work hard enough.

Compassion? What's that?