What is with the "reperations" fiasco? Why do Black people think ALL Americans owe them something?

Question

I am the product of 2 immigrants ... I am an American citizen, but why the hell should I have to "pay" reperations to blacks because of something I had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with???? Is it just because my skin tone is white??? What do ya'll think????

Answer 1

I have to agree by saying that the past is now over. We are not responsible for what our ancestors did before us. We can only continue to improve and become one with all. The color of our skin should never be an issue. The truth is there is prejudice every where for one reason or another. Our own kind kills our own kind in any color of skin. We fight among ourselves, our own families. We walk around with a chip on our shoulders like the world owes us. And please, I don't speak of all! What about women? We are constantly being targeted in every area. We have to stop pointing fingers and get real. Only we have the power to change this world. If everyone takes one step towards something positive for the world, that's millions of positive steps, don't you think that would be an obvious difference. At the rate we are going, our civilization will not survive! What does that leave for our children, nothing but a broken world! By the way, not all of us were part of the slave trades so why should we be penalized for someone elses dirty deeds. If you're going to point a finger, make sure you point it the right direction, especially if this is about righting the wrong! Do it right if you're going to go there.

Answer 2

It's realy easy to tell a group of people to get over hundreds of years of slavery, oppression and drgadation, when you are not a member of that group. Yes, you are the child of two immigrants, so you were not apart of the slave trade directly. However, your parents were given the treatment, jobs, and wages that blacks should have been receiving as well. Perhaps your parents came to this country and worked hard for everything they have today. That's great!!!! Meanwhile, blacks were working just as hard, if not harder than your parents were, by force, and for free. Reparations is not about GIVING the African-American community anything. It's about showing an attempt to repair, or hell even acknkoledging a gross injustice for the descendants of slave. We are OWED some type of attempt to make us whole. If the slave had been paid an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, we would not have the slums and ghettos that we do now. Freed slaves were thrust into society with no education, no money and no hope. Poor begets poor - the black community never stood a chance. But hey, that's not your problem, your the product of immigrants, how the other races are treated in this country aren't your concern. Just stay out of the black neighborhoods at night and your good. Besides, reparations will never be paid, there's too much to figure out as far as who's entitled. Reparations would just set the black race back any way.

Answer 3

Katrina Browne, the white Episcopalian filmmaker, is finishing a documentary about her ancestors, the DeWolfs of Bristol, R.I., the biggest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She screened it for Episcopal Church officials at the June convention.

"A lot of white people think they know everything there is to know about slavery — we all agree it was wrong and that's enough," Browne said. "But this was the foundation of our country, not some Southern anomaly. We all inherit responsibility."

The key part of her statement is that responsibility is INHERITED. No one that is black today was in bondage, but we should at least be able to inherit the reparations due to our ancestors. And I don't mean giving a check to everyone who can prove they are an eighth black or something like that. Reparations money should be placed in minority communities that have poor education conditions and where urban businesses are in need of help. There is no way to tell who qualifies as black or white. But the thing is that the government would rather leave this giant scar on this country rather than try and fix it because of people like you. And you are right to feel the way you do, but until reparations are given out, this will remain an issue that alienates and angers blacks in America.

Answer 4

Because some idiot thinks that the ills facing the African-American community can be solved by dumping a whole bunch of money into it, money stolen from the rest of us. And they somehow think that that will make those who already are racist towards blacks any less racist? If anything, it will make even more racism in this country; what's to stop the majority from then saying" Hey, you got your slave money, so now go f**k yourselves!"

The argument that America was built on the backs of slaves is absolute garbage, considering that America was not built by the agricultural South but by the industrial North, which got its labor force from the immigrant population. If anything, the immigrants and their descendants deserve reparations.

Answer 5

It's a tough situation: On the one hand, you can clearly document how slavery and the hundred years or so of Jim Crow Laws (1880's-1960's) negatively impacted the black community. http://www.nps.gov/malu/documents/jim_crow_laws.htm - On the other, white people here today did not all benefit from slavery and should not have to pay.

The government definitely owes blacks something, what exactly, I don't know. It doesn't necessarily have to be monetary, but some type of formal acknowledgement of the inhumane treatment of people, many who are still living today, is in order. The government benefited from this brutality and they should seek to make restitution for the evils it had allowed.

Regardless of what the outcome is, the final responsibility for self preservation lies with each individual black person.

Answer 6

The belief is that you ancestor benefitted from black slavery or laws that prevent blacks from doing something they could.
Like when the Gold Rush happened blacks couldn't pan for gold unless they were slaves for a white person. So we got nothing.
When this country was being built we were offered free land to live on and eventually sell 2 years later.
Lets say your ancestors got free land and built a huge house that is still in your family today. My ancestors never got chance. All we had was music and art.

Oh you do know that the USA cuts checks to Native Americans and Asians, who were prisoners during WW2.

Answer 7

The African American community is not the only ethnic group trying to get money, so are the American Indian tribes. Which do you think deserve it most, if it all? Frankly, I believe we should let the Indians out of their confinements and let them walk among the rest of us and that neither deserve any money for what our American ancestors may or may not have done to them. I'm not proud of what my European ancestors did to either group, but they did it and now we are ALL here, so live and let live. Just my humble opinion.

Answer 8

My ancestors were not in the US during slavery. Slavery has been going on for thousands of years. You do not hear about Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc asking for reparations. Blacks were enslaved by blacks in Africa BEFORE the trade in America. Get the money from Africa.

Answer 9

I don't feel i'm owed any thing. I love being black in America and am quite thankful of those slave drivers of the olden days. By any chance do ya know when they'll be cuttin those checks tho? =)

Answer 10

It may have something do do with what you could say "crimes against humanity" in its pass. Are these "black" people born because there ancestors wanted to live in Amierica or where they products of your pass then you enslaved them?