Follow up question on Black Reparations?

Question

As a follow up to my question on reparations

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aom8tO8e8dgxQTjwdr52BA_sy6IX?qid=20060710133111AApUma8

I am curious about how the amount of any reparations would be determined. It looks like in an overwhelming amount people are against them but I want to get deeper into the opinions of people that are FOR them. How would we actually calculate them? It's easy to just say "yeah they deserve them". It's completely another to actually think through the process of awarding them. I think when you look at it that way it seems very impractical to even consider.

Points to consider:
1) Mixed racial heritage
2) Mental anguish and suffering varies per individual
3) History of slave ancestry per family

Should all African Americans receive the same lump sum?

What if they jump cam to America within the last decade vs. a family that has been here for 200 years?

Should the payment come from Government funds? Educational credits?

Should each white family pay different amounts based on thier percentage of involvement in slave history?

P.S. I'm against them.

Answer 1

First, there is not a single former slave alive today. If there were they would certainly be due just compensation for their labor, but the ancestors of atrocities do not deserve compensation in any way. As a precedent for this point of view, from the last century, let us look at how the compensation of slave labor during the holocaust of World War II has been handled. The thousands of people that survived that inequity are being compensated by both the government of Germany and by the companies that gained from their forced labor, and rightfully so. But their children have no inherited right to collect for the uncompensated labor of their parents. Certainly the grandchildren and great grandchildren of American slaves never experienced the appalling life of slavery, and therefore, like the children of Jews and others enslaved in Germany 50 years ago, they have no claim for themselves.

Secondly, blacks do not have a monopoly on living in poverty in this country. According to the latest census data approximately 30 percent of blacks and whites live in poverty. Hispanics unfortunately have an even higher percentage living below the poverty line. All this current day poverty can not be attributed to a disgusting institution that was ended 150 years ago. It can however be attributed to present day governmental policy. There should be a monumental effort made by the government, at all levels, to get all Americans out of poverty, but a policy centered on only one race is just as wrong as slavery was.

Thirdly, slavery could not have existed without the complicity of black Africans who supplied most of the unfortunate humans that were sold into this dreadful condition. It was not just whites that kept this retched institution going for over 200 years. In addition, there were over 200,000 white Americans that paid the ultimate retribution during the Civil War, when they gave their lives to end slavery. The reparation debt owed to slaves was paid a long time ago when the North won the Civil War and freed them.

Answer 2

We will never get reparations as long as we are classified as minorities and looked at as only hoodlums and consumers. And whats with the go back to your own country. who brought us here? And in return, the Native Americans should be the ones telling all of us to go back to their own country. It's amazing how ignorant people still are in 2006. If we get any reparations, hopefully it's in a term of class instead of money.
JUST A NOTE- Mexicans aint the only ones border hopping, but i guess since they have brown skin unlike all the brits, greeks, russians, and italians, it's a major problem......

Answer 3

Perhaps one way to award them would be through a National Slave Museum in our Nation's Capital. This would allow everyone to understand what they went through and see the situation through the eyes of a black person instead of the eyes of the white man that wrote the history books.

Answer 4

they dont deserve them. how can you pay a son for the work of his father. this may seem symplistic. the only jews who claim reparations from ww2 are the ones still living. and no one is entitled to take my tax dollars and pay someone for something that happened 150 years ago

Answer 5

Plane Ticket.

Answer 6

sorry but i had to say something about the monkey knife fights in a gage .two monkeys a gage and two knifes .THE monkeys would drop the knifes and pick bugs off one another lol i hope you realize this.lol
I really liked this answer to the liberal question

Answer 7

22 million slaves exist today in africa. reprations are a joke.

Answer 8

oh please - you need to find other things to occupy your time.