Reparations..?

Question

The topic is argued and quickly dismissed on the notion that "I didn't own any slaves why should I have to pay one cent" or "that was so long ago get over it". Maybe the fact that physical slavery ended, the long lasting effects are still alive and are still very damaging. So I believe that any family that ever got one ounce of free labor should have to pay reparations.

Lets put it in terms that you all might understand.

If I rob a bank and steal $30 million (for example purposes) and am caught 60 years later, Is anybody going to say, "that was so long ago, why won't the bank just get over it"

So although you directly may have not whipped a slave nor have I picked any cotton you or somebody you know has benefited from the slave trade and somebody in my family was likely sold.

Now slaverly was abolished some 400 years ago but the 100's of years of free labor made lots of families rich. Its not that hard to trace most of the affluent families in the us to slavery.

Google makes billions of dollars a year... Yet is know for being one of the best companies to work for, for their generous benefit packages and their gourmet cafeteria... beautiful work campus. All of which cost hundreds of millions a dollars a year to provide. Imagine not having to pay out the couple hundred million... Imagine only having to pay out a fraction of that.. food,water, small housing barracks.. just enough to keep your workers alive and pocketing the rest as pure profit for hundreds of years.

Answer 1

I think you are pursuing this from the wrong direction. As soon as I hear reparations I grab my wallet assuming someone wants into it again.

If this is an idea that is going to fly, then you need to approach it from anther direction. Think back to your US history. The rumors of all freed slaves getting 40 acres and a mule to start life as a free person. Probably would have been a good idea at the time except that most of them had been denied any sort of education and would probably been flimflam-ed out of the grubstake by the inevitable fraudsters that are attracted to wealth.

Take a look at the link below. It is an interesting look the effect accumulating moderate wealth has on subsequent generations. It parallels what we are finding in the newly popular Micro Loans and Micro Grants being used in developing countries.

I think packaging the product this way instead of 'Reparations' could lead to a healthy debate. Sure there are a lot of details that would need to be worked out, but lets talk about it.

Answer 2

Assuming you mean the United States...

1st you said slavery was abolished 400 years ago. Oops, 2007-1865 does not equal 400. The Unites States isn't 400 years old.

What about those arriving afterward, are they to pay reparations?
My family never owned slaves, all here after the fact.
What about the abolitionists, people fighting on the slaves behalf, running the "underground railroad", and so on? Are they to pay reparations?
What about blacks arriving after the fact, are they to be paid?
You'd have to prove there was benefit and to whom. What about the ones who had slave labor and failed, lost money? Do they pay?

"I didn't own any slaves why should I have to pay one cent" is completely valid.

Learn about history. I'm not trying to downplay slavery, I would never do that. But not every slave was treated terribly. Yes it's wrong to have owned another person as property. Some slaves were treated better than indentured servants. Should descendants of indentured servants be entitled? You could also argue that slaves and their descendants have benefited from slavery, living in a part of the world with the highest standard of living today. And if the country as a whole has benefited from slavery then should ALL citizens be required to pay? Who sold slaves into slavery? should they pay?

I understand your position, but it's completely not practical to try to single out those who must pay and to whom.

Reparations would be a catastrophe and lead to another civil war, or a race war.

Slavery continues around the world today. Let's work on that.

Answer 3

The problem is proof. How do you prove a person, or company owned slaves? How do you prove a person has an ancestor that was a slave? You can't just take money from the people you say owe reparations and then divide it among all black americans. That would result in people who had nothing to do with slavery getting money for the sole reason of being black. Also, there is the fact that many minorities, including Asians and the Irish were abused in the ealry years of our country. I understand there are differences in circumstance between those groups but they were used for labor just the same.

Answer 4

I agree reparations should be worked out. I bet someone could get a pretty accurate amount of money that was saved by slave owners, a good estimation anyway. I don't see how it is possible to really come to justice on the slavery that took place.
Also the Indians who's land was stolen, and the genocide that took place for "america" to exist is another huge issue as well. I personally would like to see them have their land back. I'll leave for them.

Answer 5

Sounds good, but what about black slaveowners? Do they have to pay up, also?

WHO?

No, I'm not kidding. In 1860 New Orleans, over over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves.

In 1830 a fourth of the free black slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves.

So tell me, are you going to get your Reparations from everyone who owes them?

Answer 6

Yes. Reparations should be paid to decendants of slaves for the period of enslavement as well as the 100 or so years afterwards until the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960's FINALLY enforced the Civil War Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th)

Q. Why should reparations be paid when there are no ex-slaves living today and citizens today had nothing to do with it?

A. Because everyone is reaping the benifits from the unpaid labor that was done by those who were enslaved. Slaves were the driving force for the profits from the textile industries and 100's of other industries that are profitable today. And even though there are no ex-slaves living today, slaves were not allowed to own property. Their decendants are still here! The property that they enriched is/was passed down to the slave owners heirs, and in many cases is still in the hands of the family.

Q. Why take money from you when you had nothing to do with slavery?

A. Why are you not protesting that "your" money is being used to fund the Iraq war -- or the multitude of other things that your tax dollars go to that you disagree with?

Q. Eric wants us to learn our history and know that people came here after slavery and asks why they should have to pay. He reminds us that people like the Quakers and abolitionists helped to free the slaves -- why should they have to pay. He asks how to know who should be paid. He brings up the fact that "not all slaves were treated badly - and asks if indentured servants should receive reparations.

A. We certainly should LEARN OUR HISTORY. Eric should learn his too. Reparations is about more than being treated badly or having empathy for the slaves -- it is about decades of unpaid labor. Indentured servants typically worked for a benifit -- for a TERM of years. There was also the element of choice in most indentureships.
This was not true with slavery. Slavey was forced, uncompensated, and permanent. And chattel slavery (they kind of property laws that allowed enslaved the children of slaves) was unique. Slavery happened gradually. Any property that was owned by the slaves became the property of the slaveowner. I had an ancestor who had amassed 300 acres of land. When slavery was codified and blacks could not own property -- his property was "absorbed" by the slave owner. I actually walked on this land about a year ago. The land is now in the hands of the slave owners heirs.
And those who think that we cannot identify decendants of slaves are horribly misinformed. Slavery was not that long ago. I only need to go to my Great-grandfather who born a slave in the 1850's and died in 1946. His photograph hangs on my wall today!

Q. "Another" asks about black slaveowners. He seems to think people would be shocked to learn that there were blacks who owned slaves.

A. When one digs deeper into black slave ownership, he is likely to find that most blacks that owned slaves owned family members that they purchased out of slavery. In my research I found a black ancestor who owned a slave. It turned out that the slave was an person who was no longer useful as a slave because of age and infirmity. It was a good way to avoid paying taxes on "defective property."

Almost every other group -- except Blacks have been granted large-scale Reparations. These inclue native American groups, the Japanese Americans and numerous other groups. But when it comes to Blacks, people get defensive -- and all of a sudden its "your" money "they" are after.

I think we need to recognize that Reparations can take many forms -- like property tax relief -- educational benifits (to make up for the denial of educational benifits) -- as well as monetary compensation.

Here is my question - which of the following groups should be compensated for past wrongs?

1. Native Americans - for the taking of land? Which Native
Americans should be compensated?
2. Japanese Americans - for WWII concentration camps
and loss of property.
3. Holocaust Victims.
4. Victims of the Iraq War.
5. Decendants of slaves for unpaid labor, denied property
rights, denied education, denied political participation.

Now dig deep into your psyche. Ask yourself why Blacks are the only group who should not receive Compensation.

Answer 7

Slavery was instituted in North and South America by the Portuguese, who bought or were traded slaves from OTHER AFRICAN tribes. Look to your own ancestors for your war reparations, or look for another easy way to get a check.

Answer 8

which ones , Illinois paying the Mormons for the land that was taken , when they were driven out of the state. all for it.

Answer 9

Its a far more justifiable idea than many people give it credit for. Why people have such immediate and irrational reactions would be an interesting question.

Many of the arguments people used here against reparations are irrational. If we put the situation in another context, most people would think that reparations are owed. Imagine, for example, that the debate was over possible reparations owed by Germany to descendents of holocaust victims. Germans who have had nothing to do with the Holocaust have had to pay reparations to Jews who were never in the holocaust. It is seen as a debt owed by the nation, not by individuals.

Eric asks about those arriving afterwards. Using the situation of Germany paying reparations to relatives of holocaust victims, it is obvious that if the burden is owed by the nation, it will be paid in taxes, and those taxes will be collected from all citizens of the nation. If a person immigrated to Germany after the Holocaust, a portion of their taxes would still be taken to repay the moral debt of the holocaust. So yes, people voluntarily arriving to a country can be said to voluntarily take on the debts of that country. There is a moral precedent for this (as seen in the holocaust example) and an economic precedent (as seen in the fact that new immigrants have as much an economic responsibility for the national debt as natural born citizens.)

"What about the abolitionists, people fighting on the slaves behalf, running the "underground railroad", and so on? Are they to pay reparations?" - Again, if we use the German example, yes, even those who resisted the Nazis or whose ancestors resisted the Nazis still had to pay their taxes after the war, and a portion of these taxes went to repay the debt of the holocaust.

"What about blacks arriving after the fact, are they to be paid?" - This precedent also exists. Germany was forced to pay reparations to the state of Israel, but not all Israeli citizens were victims of the holocaust. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_reparations An argument could be made that even blacks arriving after slavery still suffered as a result of the institutionalized racism of slavery. Even if they had not been slaves, slavery had helped to entrench a racism which afflicted blacks for generations. So a case could be made for reparations for institutionalized racism, not just for slavery, and even if reparations were for slavery only, the Israeli example shows that it is not unreasonable to recompensate a whole group of people when individual recompensations can be impractical.

"You'd have to prove there was benefit and to whom. What about the ones who had slave labor and failed, lost money? Do they pay?" -You don't have to do this at all. Again, you are thinking about individualized reparations which would be practically impossible. Generalized reparations along the lines made by Germany to Israel would be both possible and morally justifiable.

"I didn't own any slaves why should I have to pay one cent" is completely valid." - Only if you thik that Germans who didn't participate in the Holocaust would have a justifiable objection to their money being paid to Israel. Most people wouldn't find this a plausible objection because (as I cannot emphasize enough) it is a national debt, not a personal one.

"not every slave was treated terribly. Yes it's wrong to have owned another person as property. Some slaves were treated better than indentured servants. Should descendants of indentured servants be entitled?" Again, this is only an objection if you insist on a completely accurate and personalized reparation system where it is calculated to the last cent exactly how much blood from slaves each person has in them and how badly these slaves were treated. This is obviously not possible; only a general reparation is possible (as in the holocaust example.) Holocaust reparations did not take in to account exactly how badly each person was treated. Some Jews presumably were treated a lot better than others (whether they had kind people to hide them, or were able to hide their ethnicity, etc.) Nonetheless this didn't and should not have stood as an objection to reparations.

"You could also argue that slaves and their descendants have benefited from slavery, living in a part of the world with the highest standard of living today." Sure. And if I abduct a poor child from India tomorrow and bring them to the US against their will, and force them to work for me until they turn 30 before working to get them citizenship, you could argue that they have benefitted from the kidnapping and forced servitude. They are now an American citizen, and even if they have to work minimum wage jobs (since I denied them an education as well) they are better of than they would be begging on the streets of Mumbai. Even if they are better off, I still owe them a lot for what I did to them. Furthermore, there is a strong objection that the reason why Africa is so impovershed is because of slavery, kidnappings, genocide, and colonialism.

"And if the country as a whole has benefited from slavery then should ALL citizens be required to pay? Who sold slaves into slavery? should they pay?" -Actually, as the holocaust example shows, a country does not have to benefit. Germany certainly didn't benefit from the Holocaust. Yet all citizens still had to pay, not just those who were active in the holocaust.

"I understand your position, but it's completely not practical to try to single out those who must pay and to whom." -Agreed. This is why a generalized form of reparations, maybe following the model of holocaust reparations, would be more practical. In any case, if the discussion moves to the practical level, then we have agreed that we should at least research possible options.

"Reparations would be a catastrophe and lead to another civil war, or a race war." There is no reason to think this. Even if this were true, who would be the ones starting the war? It is doubtful it would be those who benefit from reparations. Most likely it would be those who are being forced to pay reparations. If you believe that the general population would revolt over being forced to repay a population their country kept in slavery for decades and which then suffered insitutionalized racism for another century, you have a very low opinion of the genral population. I would hope that most people would not resort to violence to avoid paying taxes, especially taxes that are going to repay a grave moral wrong.

Answer 10

No way