8 Million Dollars To Study Reparations For Slave Descendants
by Big Dog on Mar 28, 2009 at 05:14 Political
Congressman John Conyers has introduced a House Resolution (which he has introduced before) to determine if descendants of slaves should receive reparations. The committee will have 90 days to study the matter to see if slavery has had an advese effect on African Americans of today and if the country should issue a formal apology and pay them reparations.
Slavery happened a long time ago and no one who was a slave or who owned slaves is alive. Blacks in this country have every opportunity that whites have to achieve. They are not owned by anyone except the Democratic party and that is of their own doing.
Someone emailed about this and had the following quote (I will not attribute because I don’t know if the author meant for this to be public):
We’re talking about REPARATIONS – monetary payment – as if subsidized housing, welfare payments, affirmative action, set-asides, head-start, Job Corps, and all the rest for the past fifty years were not enough, let alone the hand-outs in the latest “stimulus” bill.
I have to agree with this. The black population gets a number of reparations as it is including all the ones mentioned above. Why do we need to spend 8 million dollars to study an issue that should have been dead and buried a long time ago. I thought the election of Barack Obama was supposed to put race behind us.
I wonder if the ancestors of whites who died in the Civil War, the war that ended slavery, are eligible for payment. A lot of men died in that war and it seems they paid a pretty stiff price. Where do we go from here? Will we pay Indians because of how they were treated? Will we pay Japanese for what happened in WW II? Where do we draw the line? Why is there not 8 million dollars to study other aggrieved groups?
If the US issues an apology my name is not on it. They will be doing it without my consent and they do not have the authority to issue it on my behalf. People apologize for something THEY did wrong. I did nothing wrong. I have never owned anyone of any color nor have I bought or sold anyone. In other words, I have nothing to apologize for.
I also do not want to pay one red cent in reparations. I owe nothing and I intend to pay nothing. My tax dollars support the aforementioned items, all of which are reparations for the injustices done a long time ago.
None of the folks receiving them (or who would receive reparations) did anything to deserve the money. They were not slaves and just because their ancestors were does not entitle them to a damn thing.
My Bible tells me that God does not visit the sins of the father on the son [2 Chronicles 25:4]. If God does not think I should be responsible for the sins of my ancestors then the government has little standing on the issue.
Tags: african american, john conyers, reparations, slavery
For every cent payed due to slavery they should pay 100,000 times that to the Native Americans ancestors. The Indians were forced onto reservations and every treaty made was broken by the whites.With the help of the blacks (buffalo soldiers,a great deal of Indians were massacred. I say no pay let the past be the past and move on.
The only people that deserve reparations (the slaves) all died a long time ago. To borrow a Bruce Campbell line, their descendants only deserve two things – “…jack and s***, and jack just left town.”
I haven’t read the resolution yet, so I want to be clear that I am not defending it. I do want to correct you on one issue. Reparations were paid to the Japanese for what happened during WWII. A bill was passed that was authored by a Democrat and a Republican that was then signed into law by Ronald Regan in 1988. Payments began in 1990 under George HW Bush. I have been fortunate enough in my life to know two of the people whose families received such payments.
Randy, I should have been more clear. There was a resolution some time ago to pay people of Guam for what the Japanese did to them.
In other words, we would pay reparations on behalf of the Japanese.
You see, I would have no problems with those payments if they were going to the people who were illegally held and this was recent. Many of them were alive. I still don’t think families should have been paid and I was against it at the time (no Internet to write on of course).
You may have thought it was fortunate that they were paid but if they were not held then why did they deserve it?
I do not believe in reparations but as someone pointed out here, what about American Indians. They were screwed the most.
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 opened the door for reparation payments to the US citizens of Japanese decent that were interned, or put in concentration camps in the US. I worked at an old bar in Chicago while I was in college that historically was a haven for the influx of Japanese folks to Chicago after WWII. While you won’t find many Japanese people hanging out there today, there were a couple of old guys that used to frequent the place whose families were illegally imprisoned during WWII. One died a few years ago and the other passed just over one year ago. I was very fortunate to have met them and to hear the stories they had to tell. They were true treasures as people and should have their pictures next to the “hero” entry in any encyclopedia.
More should be done for Native Americans too. I don’t think monetary reparations are the right answer, but more should be done to correct that injustice.
Do the Democrats stay up all night to see what else they can do to take our money? If blacks would stop blaming the whites and take responsibility for their own actions, they would get somewhere. Killings and drug rates are the highest among blacks and they use poverty as an excuse. Well I was raised in poverty, but completed my education and worked my way out of it. I’m not blaming all blacks, just the lazy ones. I know and have had friends among the blacks.
It is really ironic because the Democrats act like they have the corner on caring for the blacks. The Democrats from the time of the civil war until 1960 blocked every single bill introduced that promoted any form of equality or would give them any of the rights they deserved to have. Now the Dumocrats are going to try and make Republicans and others alike apologize and pay!!!And hdrk05 is right then for every penny paid 100,000 times that goes to Native Americans then.
clinton had gays in the military as his albatross hopefully this is THE ONE’S one.
Every day it is just more craziness. My dad was taken prisoner in the South Pacific by the Japanese during the WWII, he was slave labor in Japan, and practically starved to death, his health was never good after that, and all of his teeth rotted. Everyone has a story. We can’t go around paying people for every injustice known to man, where would all of this stop. The Morman’s were treated badly by the government, where’s their money, the Chinese were used to build the railroad, where is their money, the Irish and Italians were discriminated against, on and on and on.
Oh, I almost forgot, I am a woman and wasn’t allowed to vote, I want reparation!!!!!
First of all can we stop saying Native Americans somehow had it worse than slaves? We’re talking millions of Africans taken from their homes, sent across the ocean and treated worse than cattle while they lived the life of slaves and bred future generations into slavery for around 200 years.
I won’t pretend like Native Americans caught any breaks from the US Government and their treatment should be shrugged off but come on. This is like comparing the Rwandan genocide to the Holocaust. They’re just not that equal in scale.
I don’t think monetary reparations are the answer either but at the core of this issue is the hope that our nation would stop saying things like “no one who was a slave or who owned slaves is alive” but instead to acknowledge that there are mechanisms built into our culture because of slavery that are still having an affect to this day despite obvious giant leaps forward in the last century.
This subject isn’t done justice when it’s compared to things that aren’t equal or it becomes simply a way to suggest blacks are lazy and just want to be paid for something they haven’t earned because they themselves weren’t slaves. Saying we don’t need reparations because the ancestors of slaves live off welfare, public housing and affirmative action is just outright racism and personally I wouldn’t cite such an opinion to back up my idea that reparations aren’t needed.
Your third paragraph addresses the meat of the problem very well.
Slavery’s tentacles reach very far and deep in American culture. Jim Crow laws were born out of the abolition of slavery and there are certainly people alive today that were directly affected by those. Even after we got rid of the Jim Crow laws, the impact of them can still be seen. If you don’t believe me, go to Mississippi and visit ten public schools, then ten private schools. You will notice the difference in racial makeup immediately. This is generational poverty we are talking about, not situational. We should want to study and find solutions to that problem out of nothing more than human decency. But to take the selfish “it ain’t my problem” side just for a moment, it is everyone’s problem. We all foot the bill when poor people go to prison.
I finally read the resolution. I don’t agree with monetary reparations, but the resolution doesn’t specifically mention monetary reparations. It does clearly mention one of it’s goals is to study what types of reparations might be effective.
And come on folks, the mistreatment and the denial of rights for women in our country as well as bigotry and violence toward immigrants and non-Protestant religions also in no way compare in scope or effect to 200 years of slavery in the Americas. Let’s keep some perspective, please.
Why is it that liberals don’t seem to have a sense of humor.
Didn’t realize there was a timeline
This site has published some very treasonous material in the last few months and has put the security of our President in danger. Hoping that the President fails right now is the same as hoping that America fails. I think many of the commentators should be arrested for treason and jailed.
Further, you are a racist, sir. You have proven over and over that you are simply a bigot who hates blacks.
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Hey I’m agnostic, hispanic and republican!
I want reparations too! Hell I hate everybody, you want to put me in jail too, James? I don’t hate blacks, I dislike lazy people that want a hand out…And dude it’s our first amendment( FREEDOMN OF SPEECH) without any death threats, then say/write what ever you want to say!
AMERICA FUCK YEAH!
Randy, when it reads how much and how it should be paid would indicate that money is a consideration.
I agree we have problems in this society and they need to be addressed but I agree that the past is the past and we can’t start paying out money to every aggrieved party or it will never end.
Jim Crow laws, another thing the Democrats gave us.
I do not apologize for something I had nothing to do with. I treat everyone fairly until the show they do not deserve it.
This is a waste of money.
James, I have never called for harm to Obama and have specifically stated that this is not an appropriate way to resolve differences. Hoping his plans fail is not the same as hoping America will fail if one believes his policies will cause America’s failure in the first place.
The only money mentioned is the $8,000,000 for the Congressional Commission, not reparations themselves. The resolution doesn’t really give specifics on how this commission will operate, so I really can’t support it. Whether or not you personally had anything to do with slavery or anything that slavery led to is a moot point though. You pay for it’s consequences, every day, still.
Liberals have become very scary people, and they are ruining everything this country stands for, personally I am sick of it, if you don’t agree with them you are called racist, just enough!!!! that is what ruins reading a site like this one, there must be a certain talent for misreading or reading into every statement, and everything has a victim, real or imaginary and there are boogey men everywhere according to the liberal, just stir the pot and see what comes up. I personally do hope that Obuma’s agenda fails, so my country will survive, so make that into something evil, that is how you guys operate, but in the end we all lose!!!!!
1.Please define what a “liberal” is. Is it anyone who disagrees with what you say?
2. If President Obama’s agenda fails, the American economy fails. There really isn’t much more to it. If you hope that President Obama fails so you can put someone else in the White House in 4 years who isn’t a “liberal”, whatever that means, either you don’t grasp how much damage is going to be done to this country in the meantime, or you don’t care that America will be destroyed.
In otherwords, hoping that President Obama fails makes you unpatriotic, IMO, and in the same camp as those who hoped that President Bush would fail in fighting terrorism after 9/11.
Sorry for the delay in answering you, but I have a job. A liberal is one who NEVER takes responsibility for his/her actions. A liberal is one who wants to stifle FREE SPEECH, something our forefathers died for. A liberal is one who wants GOVERNMENT to take over every aspect of our lives (aka communish). A liberal is one who will put up with all kinds of so called free speech, including smut to its most evil end, but will not allow a conservative Christian to speak his/her mind. A liberal is the most intolerant person on planet earth. These are just starters……..!!!
To hope that our President fails right now is similar to saying on 9/12/2001 that you hope that President Bush failed in fighting terrorists. I would have considered such a statement treasonous back then, and I would consider it treasonous today.
We are in an unprecedented economic crisis right now, and if our President fails, the country goes into a long time Depression that we will not come out of. So yes, if President Obama fails, America fails, at least economically. And if she fails economically, the rest will follow.
One more thing. A liberal is a fascist, such as whenever Ann Coulter or David Horowitz, or any other conservative appears on a campus stage to give a speech, they constantly shout them down and throw stuff at them, and make their life a living hell, if not downright dangerous, that they have to have a hundred guards around them, and then stopping their free speech. A liberal is one who never debates an issue, but always attacks personally. A liberal is one who can’t stand allowing people having their yard signs out, and will vandalize them or just get rid of them.
Or maybe saying the troops had lost, they were terrorists, they were uneducated, and they were killing innocent people…
It all depends on your point of view. I happen to think if he is successful with his policies it will mean America has failed because it will end in disaster. You can support that if you want but I don’t believe what he is doing is the right thing so I will not support it.
I support Obama but not his plans….
I usually agree with you but the man and the actions are the same.
In addition, spreading conspiracy theories and lies such as that the President is some foreigner and not a real American (i.e. suggesting he was born in Kenya) incites many who will want to do harm to our President.
There is not a shred of real evidence to suggest that President Obama was not born in Hawaii. He has produced a birth certificate that has been validated by Hawaiian officials. This suggests to me the primary purpose of spreading this rumor is to paint the President as a foreigner and not a real American, and thus incite people to do harm against a “foreigner” who has “usurped” the Presidency.
As usual, your facts are wrong, if that is what you are quoting, but that also does not come as any surprise.
No birth certificate was shown. A Certificate of Live Birth was shown. Hawaii will not even let people use that for certain transactions. The real birth certificate has place of birth, mother and father, doctor’s name and all kinds of other stuff. The official said there was a document on file that complied with the law. The law at the time allowed foreign births to be registered in hawaii.
Obama’s grandmother said he was born in Kenya.
If he was born here he could clear it up by releasing the real birth certificate. He has spent nearly a million dollars to keep it hidden.
I don’t know what it says but until I see it he is suspect. A usurper, if you will.
And questioning this is not inciting harm against him.
First of all can we stop saying Native Americans somehow had it worse than slaves? We’re talking millions of Africans taken from their homes, sent across the ocean and treated worse than cattle while they lived the life of slaves and bred future generations into slavery for around 200 years.
This was taken off http://www.danielpaul.com entitled “we were not the savages,”
The number of our Peoples who died, and in many cases who are still dying, because of the European invasion Columbus initiated, is incalculable. The closest number one can estimate, when taking into consideration that the slaughter started in 1492 has continued to a certain degree to this day, is several hundred millions. And, the vast majority of the millions who are the remnant of the original great civilizations that once prospered across the two continents, live a poverty stricken existence. Edward Cornwallis, the Province’s eighteenth century blood thirsty British colonial Governor, who participated in an attempt to commit genocide–He, and his Council, on October 1, 1749, decided to try to exterminate the Mi’kmaq indigenous to what is now Canada’s Maritime provinces. The method chosen by them to try to realize their inhuman goal was to issue a Proclamation offering a bounty of ten pounds (British money) for the scalps of the people, including women and children. On June 21, 1750, perhaps because the scalps were not coming in fast enough, they issued another proclamation upping the bounty to fifty pounds.
The slaughter that he is referring to continueing on to this day is Native Americans dying on reservations due to poverty, high rates of heart disease, diabetes, drug addiction, mental illness and suicide and make no mistake about it they were put on the reservations in the hopes they would die off. So Adam why don’t you tell my family all about how they haven’t had it so bad but you know what even my family and relatives wouldn’t work to subvert this country after what has happened to them.
Victoria:
Those that died by government policy and still die to this day are a tragedy of course but the vast majority of Native Americans died from disease spread from people coming over from other parts of the world. That’s nothing to shrug off but to act as if the European “invasion” purposefully caused several hundred million deaths I think is without evidence.
If you go back and read what I wrote you’ll see I said no such thing like the Native Americans “haven’t had it so bad” so save your outrage. I think they did have it bad. But did they have it as bad as the Africans captured and bread into slavery for 200 years and their ancestors who lived as second class citizens for many, many years after the end of slavery? I still don’t think so.
Just realized I wrote “bread” into slavery. Nice. 😉
You people don’t know what you are talking about, ever lived near a reservation and know anyone who lives on one. Drugs and alcohol, and mother’s checks is what keeps them there
“Slavery happened a long time ago and no one who was a slave or who owned slaves is alive. Blacks in this country have every opportunity that whites have to achieve. They are not owned by anyone except the Democratic party and that is of their own doing.”
Is this a joke? I mean, if they’re going to give reparations, wasting $8 million to study if they’re going to give reparations is illogical on its face. But your response is equally laughable, and illogical.
And slavery didn’t happen a long time ago. For the most part African descendants were still basically enslaved until the 1960’s. Where afterwards they were promptly jailed. What your quoted friend also fails to realize is, WHITE PEOPLE are the main recipients of all those social programs.
86% of African Americans are employed, 91% in 2001.
75% of African Americans live ABOVE the poverty level.
11% of African Americans who live below the poverty level are not eligible for public assistance or any social program.
14% [or 5,292,000] of African Americans are below the poverty level are are eligible for public assistance, however 3,000,000 of those are jailed and don’t receive public assistance, leaving 2,292,000 eligible for public assistance.
There are over 50 million white people on public assistance. There aren’t even 50 million African Americans in the United States.
[data from the : 2006 U.S. census]
Funniest Post I’ve ever seen.
It is very easy to say white people are the largest recipients of the money but that is raw numbers. When you use percentages of total population, a much more accurate way to measure, you might see something a lot different.
I also reject the idea that blacks were still slaves in the 60s.
And if the numbers are accurate then why are they crying about white oppression? If one believes these numbers then there are no problems in the black community and they do not need Obama to buy them gas and houses like Peggy the Moocher. What percentage of white people is that 50 million?
The 3 million in jail are on public assistance, the assistance that it costs to put them in jail.
Look, I am only pointing out the obvious. We do not need to pay reparations. Slavery happened a long time ago and if we pay blacks for what was a legal practice (no matter how objectionable) then we need to pay women who were not allowed to vote, Indians who were slaughtered so the white man could take their land and on and on.
Now, let’s also get this straight. Blacks from Africa captured the blacks in Africa and sold them into slavery. What role do those blacks have in this? Also, the descendants of slaves have it much better today than they would have if their bloodlines had remained in Africa. One only needs to look at that country today to see that.
Well said, that is exactly my thought
Carla, That is my play on “we support the troops but not the war” meme.
I support Obama but not the policies….