Explain to me slave reaprations and why is it important to some African-Americans. This is not a racist?

Question

question. Understand this, please . This issue is so divisive. Yet some people think that i and other Americans owe them soemthing that no one living today have control over. No racist epithets please!!!

Sorry for spelling the word is reparations..

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

I agree no one should be held responsible for the acts of ancestors or others.

On the other hand, if some people today are in a better relative position as a result of a legacy of slavery, then it's not really a punishment; it's a setting right. There are descendants of plantation owners who have inherited wealth made possible only by slavery. Discrimination left over from slave days benefitted lots of people at the expense of black people in the competition for jobs and education. Just because the majority race got used to all these incremental benefits does not mean it is a punishment to lose some of them, because they never had any moral right to them in the first place. It just means putting things back into a more fair state.

And the idea that the US should deduct money for the cost of ending slavery is ludicrous and totally illogical. The US wrongfully enabled slavery to exist for a couple hundred years; fixing your own horrendous mistakes is not something you are allowed to bill for.

Answer 3

Yes it is racist.

I think reparations could be given, however, we should deduct the heavy cost the US paid to free the slaves before we hand out any money.

Shouldn't we compentsate the families who lost loved ones in the war to free the slaves? Where is there compensation?

To expect, after over a 100 years, all americans to pay the price of the oppresion of a small few rich folks just isn't fair.

I guess I would support reparations but only to those who were enslaved. If any of them are still alive, perhaps they deserve something.

Answer 4

Such honesty and courage is what is lacking in dissipating the smoke screen. This issue is debated only in private quarters; everybody is afraid to be labeled racist. If one is not racist, than no need to worry about what a stranger thinks.There is a misconception about the reparation issue. It doesn't mean giving x amount of $ to us , it simply means repair the wrong done to us by removing the road blocks that make our progress next to impossible
N.B. Nobody died to free slaves, that is another fraud, another disinformation perpetrated by the intellectual elite. The civil war was never about freeing salves. Rather it was the usual fight for control of mean of production. Since slavery was the predominant one generating enormous wealth in the south and industry was upcoming in the north, thus inssued the war. Nobody ever gave up privileges without putting a fight

Answer 5

No , i hear ya. I or you owe them NOTHING! I wasn't there , nor were you - when the slavery issue took place. My parents and grandparents were not there either. African Americans of today were NOT there either , so what do THEY want money for?! Everyone has decided that we should not revisit the slavery thing , and anything else is just keeping it going. Maybe they should do like the Indians and open THEIR OWN casinos, i don't know the answers , i'm just saying that I'm not paying for anything i wasn't a part of.