People say reparations are unfair?

Question

Because the people who were enslaved are no longer here
and the people who did the enslaving are no longer here.

My family emmigrated from Italy and poland, and were oppressed by fascism and nazism in Europe.

I expect nothing from the Germans, Italian Government or cosa nostra that most likely did the looting and opressing of my great-great grandparents.

The question is:

If slavery was considered oppression of the INNOCENT (which it was), are these reparations expected, not from guilty parties, but from INNOCENT people who had nothing to do with this oppression. Is that the point here?

Answer 1

Very good, i commend you on hitting it on the head.
This is just another way to scam money for nothing.
Guess who would get the biggest cut...............
Fat Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson.
I think there has been enough Welfare paid to make up for any money they think they are owed.
Hey, let's not forget Affirmative Action, where being black gave them the right to jobs by color before qualifications were considered. how many very qualified people were refused jobs so blacks could get a hand up in the world.
and the other side of that, could not be fired when they didn't, or couldn't do the job they were hired to do.
Or else the company got sued by NAACP.
Reparations, yeah right.

Answer 2

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 3

My husbands family immigrated from Ireland, they were treated very unfairly when they got to the United States because they were Irish.

At one point in time we ALL had some form of injustice.

Why is only one race allowed to cry victim?

Look at the Japanese Americans who were put into camps right here in the United States during World War II, I don't hear them demanding compensation the last 60 or so years. Like I said, everyone can look into their past and see some form of injustice that their ancestors had to go through.

Answer 4

I like pizza!