Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Bla

[_Coggins7]

This is by far the best concise, introductory overview of the core case against reparations I've ever seen.



Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2001

One

There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery

Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?

Two

There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits

The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.

Three

Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others Gave Their Lives To Free Them

Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the slaves? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would ask them to pay (through their descendants) again?

Four

America Today Is A Multi-Ethnic Nation and Most Americans Have No Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery

The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then after 1960. What rationale would require Vietnamese boat people, Russian refuseniks, Iranian refugees, and Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution, Jews, Mexicans Greeks, or Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian and Korean victims of Communism, to pay reparations to American blacks?

Five

The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The Reparations Claim Do Not Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury

The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese-Americans and African- American victims of racial experiments in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in each case, the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the injustice or their immediate families. This would be the only case of reparations to people who were not immediately affected and whose sole qualification to receive reparations would be racial. As has already been pointed out, during the slavery era, many blacks were free men or slave-owners themselves, yet the reparations claimants make no distinction between the roles blacks actually played in the injustice itself. Randall Robinson's book on reparations, The Debt, which is the manifesto of the reparations movement is pointedly sub-titled "What America Owes To Blacks." If this is not racism, what is?

Six

The Reparations Argument Is Based On The Unfounded Claim That All African-American Descendants of Slaves Suffer From The Economic Consequences Of Slavery And Discrimination

No evidence-based attempt has been made to prove that living individuals have been adversely affected by a slave system that was ended over 150 years ago. But there is plenty of evidence the hardships that occurred were hardships that individuals could and did overcome. The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago? West Indian blacks in America are also descended from slaves but their average incomes are equivalent to the average incomes of whites ( and nearly 25% higher than the average incomes of American born blacks). How is it that slavery adversely affected one large group of descendants but not the other? How can government be expected to decide an issue that is so subjective - and yet so critical - to the case?

Seven

The Reparations Claim Is One More Attempt To Turn African-Americans Into Victims. It Sends A Damaging Message To The African-American Community.

The renewed sense of grievance -- which is what the claim for reparations will inevitably create -- is neither a constructive nor a helpful message for black leaders to be sending to their communities and to others. To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood. How are the millions of refugees from tyranny and genocide who are now living in America going to receive these claims, moreover, except as demands for special treatment, an extravagant new handout that is only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others -- many less privileged than themselves?

Eight

Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) - all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a "healing," what will?

Nine

What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?

Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians - Englishmen and Americans -- created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?

Ten

The Reparations Claim Is A Separatist Idea That Sets African-Americans Against The Nation That Gave Them Freedom

Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America's social contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.

For all America's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans -- especially African-Americans.

America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and institutions that have set African-Americans - and all of us -- free.

[_Mr. Coffee]

Aright, I want a rule that says Scooter is NOT allowed to EVER agree with me.


Quite a bit of that I whole-heartedly agreewith...

More added later as I work up a supreme piss off.

[_ajax18]

Excellent! I couldn't agree more. If blacks were prosperous now, they wouldn't be demanding reparations. It's just have and have not, redistribution of wealth. It's also racist. That's right, a special favor, based solely on race! This goes back to my point that the true definition of racism when spoken by liberals is, "Anything negative said or done to a nonwhite person by a caucasian person, but never vice versa."

Segragation of schools is still brought up as a part of our racist past. Yet now when black people want to segregate the schools, somehow this isn't racist?

The deal with minorities is simple. They see that other people have something. They want a piece of it, or in many cases the whole thing. So they have to look for any excuse they can find to say that it belongs to them.

[_asbestosman]

One I thing I believe is required in relationships is to make them at least 60-40 -- for both sides. That is I think that people need to give the other side more benefits than is thought they deserve. Yes, both sides.

I don't care who is at fault. All I care about is what can be done to ease racial tensions. I don't think people tend to be rational when emotionally upsetting things are involved. I don't expect either side to be rational when thinking of the horrors of slavery, racism, the KKK, etc. I certainly don't expect anyone to be fair or rational when it comes to money--especially for those who were born in poverty.

I think that direct repayments are a bad idea because I know that people in general tend to squander money when given to them in large sums--whether white or black. I wish I knew a better solution. I don't claim to know the best solution, but I don't think saying that, "life is pain" for everyone including whites will help. I think even within the black community there are wonderful leaders who have good ideas and solutions that will work. I seem to recall something on the news about Bill Cosby having said some stuff in a black church, but that such things were common there. I think those leaders will more effective than anything we might say, no matter how logical or correct we may be.

That's not to say I always bendover for others. I look at my options and consider the consequences. What price am I willing to pay to ease racial tensions? I honestly don't know. Furthermore, even if I'm willing to pay a certain amount, I do not think it fair to force others to pay as well. And yet, somehow I still think it's worthwhile to live in a country that forces people to cough up tax money against their wills and sometimes increases the amount one must cough up.

[_Sam Harris]

Cog, get over yourself. Who said even the majority of Blacks want reparations?

I was born free. I have the right to tell folks I don't like to bite me. I admire my ancestors for what they endured to get me here, but most of them are resting in God's arms, no amount of money given to me can make up for the peace they now have.

What type of money would I recieve anyway? The hundred dollar check I got at the beginning of Bush's reign, masking as a "tax break", but in reality a cheap bribe for the hell he's put us through?

I had this discussion 7 years ago when it was hot back then.

Keep your money. Dish your respect. I work hard just like you, and in some cases harder. What I get I want to earn, even if it takes a long time. Which is why I have such trouble at work, I prefer my nose not to get any more brown than it already is...

[_Coggins7]

Cog, get over yourself. Who said even the majority of Blacks want reparations?


What was that Angela?

What type of money would I recieve anyway? The hundred dollar check I got at the beginning of Bush's reign, masking as a "tax break", but in reality a cheap bribe for the hell he's put us through?

Please don't pretend you understand economics...


Keep your money. Dish your respect. I work hard just like you, and in some cases harder. What I get I want to earn, even if it takes a long time. Which is why I have such trouble at work, I prefer my nose not to get any more brown than it already is...


Tell this to Dr. Phil, not to me...

[_Coggins7]

Aright, I want a rule that says Scooter is NOT allowed to EVER agree with me.

This saith the Lord...

[_Yoda]

Aright, I want a rule that says Scooter is NOT allowed to EVER agree with me.

This saith the Lord...

LOL!

To quote the movie, "The Ten Commandments",

"So let it be written....so let it be done!"

;)

[_Sam Harris]

Cog, get over yourself. Who said even the majority of Blacks want reparations?


What was that Angela?

What type of money would I recieve anyway? The hundred dollar check I got at the beginning of Bush's reign, masking as a "tax break", but in reality a cheap bribe for the hell he's put us through?

Please don't pretend you understand economics...


Keep your money. Dish your respect. I work hard just like you, and in some cases harder. What I get I want to earn, even if it takes a long time. Which is why I have such trouble at work, I prefer my nose not to get any more brown than it already is...


Tell this to Dr. Phil, not to me...

Cog Ditz,

The problem here is that you have few friends on this board, and someone pointed out that wart on your face which is yoru blatant bigotry. In order to justify yourself, and to displace responsibility for your own actions, you have pulled up an old and played out argument. You have no idea about the subject on which you are speaking. All you can do is scour the internet to find old articles to bost your sagging morale. There are few in the Black community who want reparations. But since you're too high and mighty to talk to us, you wouldn't know that. You could at least come up with something recent, like Imus (who I don't think deserved to get fired for saying what many a black person says daily), or even "Kramer's" issues (mom and I didn't think he deserved to be burned in effigy, we just laughed and figured he'd lost his mind...must see SouthPark episode).

Your quips about Dr. Phil are so telling, you have nothing but personal attack songs and old articles to contribute to this board. You even had to put this in the off topic board, because obviously, it's only really a topic for you.

That mirror is scary, isn't it?

[_Coggins7]

Cog Ditz,

The problem here is that you have few friends on this board, and someone pointed out that wart on your face which is yoru blatant bigotry.

Yes, that was from a Leftwing fascist named Scratch who has no intellectually substantive respose to anything I say, other than slander. Typical, actually...

In order to justify yourself, and to displace responsibility for your own actions, you have pulled up an old and played out argument. You have no idea about the subject on which you are speaking. All you can do is scour the internet to find old articles to bost your sagging morale. There are few in the Black community who want reparations. But since you're too high and mighty to talk to us, you wouldn't know that. You could at least come up with something recent, like Imus (who I don't think deserved to get fired for saying what many a black person says daily), or even "Kramer's" issues (mom and I didn't think he deserved to be burned in effigy, we just laughed and figured he'd lost his mind...must see SouthPark episode).

However, there are many who claim to speak for the Black community to are supportive of reparations, and they are they who have access to a politicized media, who are they who decide which black people are really "black" (i.e. leftist) enough to be taken seriously.