SLAVERY REPARATIONS ( IS IT PAY BACK TIME?)

INSPIRED · (#1 (**permalink**))

Hello , im writng an article on slavery reparations for my uni magazine and i really want to hear what people think.

Do you feel that much of the west is in debt of the victims of the slave trade?

Do you even see there being a case for reparations, considering that all of those immediately involved in the slave trade are dead?, isit too late?

How much do you feel that reparations can do to repair the damage left by the legacy of slavery?

Personally i feel that reparations cannot help, and theres no amount of money that can make up for the loss of lives, dignity and spirit of africans enslaved in America, i'd love to hear the views of those who disagree ( or agree) with me.

CashMoney · (#2 (**permalink**))

Farrakhan, Activists and Educators Set to Convene at Reparations Summit

Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2005
By: Michael H. Cottman

A national coalition of black educators and civil rights activists, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, will convene today in Atlanta to advance a grassroots movement demanding reparations for the atrocities of slavery.

The Atlanta chapter of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) will host a three-day conference at Clark Atlanta University to discuss a collective strategy to attain reparations for blacks. On Saturday, Farrakhan, who has served as a strategic leader for the movement, will deliver a keynote address entitled â€œReparations: Our Case and Our Demand.â€?

Many activists and historians have argued for years that America owes reparations to blacks for the enslavement and forced labor of their ancestors.

Demands from proponents of the movement, which is gaining momentum and national attention, have evolved from solely financial restitution to a broader more complex discussion. The debate is now focused on how to improve the overall quality of life for black Americans by acquiring resources from the U.S. government and corporations that profited from slavery.

Some blacks across the country now say apologies from U.S. companies are not enough, and that vestiges of slavery â€“ widespread discrimination â€“ are apparent throughout the nation.

Critics of the reparations movement maintain it would be extremely difficult to trace each black Americanâ€™s African lineage, determine which blacks would receive payment, and decide who would actually make the payments.

But organizers of this weekendâ€™s conference told BlackAmericaWeb.com they plan to work through the complexities, mobilize their supporters and talk about ways to â€œhealâ€? long-standing problems in the black community. They also have the support of high-profile lawmakers and activists including U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), author Randall Robinson, historian Henry Louis Gates and Farrakhan.

â€œThis is a process of collaboration as we try to strengthen our unity for the reparations movement,â€? Dr. Conrad Worrill, chairman of the National Black United Front, and an organizer of the reparations conference, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Worrill, a leader in the reparations movement for the past 25 years, said the sessions will also assemble black grassroots leaders and members of civil rights organizations to collaborate on ways to move their cause forward through legislation and the nationâ€™s legal system. Worrill wrote a letter to Farrakhan in 2003, he said, asking the Muslim minister to help define the movement.

The conferenceâ€™s organizers will also discuss a national petition drive to present the U.S. Congress with one million signatures from supporters of the reparations movement. The petition, he said, will be delivered in October to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March.

â€œWe already have over 100,000 signatures,â€? said Worrill, who also serves as director of inner city studies for the Jacob Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University.

Mawuli Mel Davis, another organizer of the conference, said discussion over the next few days will focus on expanding the movement, both in terms of ideology and in the numbers of supporters.

â€œWeâ€™re placing reparations in a much broader context,â€? Davis, a defense attorney from Atlanta, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. â€œWe see reparations as a way to impact the future of our children.â€?

Davis said through discrimination in employment, economics, education, the criminal justice system and every aspect of black life, â€œthe vestiges of slavery still exists.â€?

â€œSome see reparations as being about the past,â€? Davis said, â€œbut although itâ€™s grounded in the past, it really speaks to contemporary issues that directly plague our communities.â€?

There will also be discourse this week about seeking reparations from multi-million-dollar corporations that profited from slavery, he said.

â€œThe problems are multi-generational,â€? Davis said, â€œso the remedies must be multi-generational.â€?

Two months ago, J.P. Morgan, the nationâ€™s second-largest bank, acknowledged that prior to the Civil War, thousands of slaves were accepted as collateral for loans by two banks that were later linked to the banking conglomerate.

In a company-wide letter, the New York-based bank apologized for contributing to â€œa brutal and unjust institutionâ€? and announced that it was setting up a $5 million college scholarship program for students living in Louisiana, the state where the events took place.

But Worrill called the $5 million scholarship â€œinsulting,â€? saying J.P. Morganâ€™s offer doesnâ€™t begin to calculate the bankâ€™s profits from slavery over several hundred years.

The U.S. government's first reparations plan to compensate blacks for the legacy of slavery was to give each black person 40 acres and a mule â€“ a broken promise to many former slaves shortly after the Civil War ended in 1865.

Davis, a managing partner with Mawuli Davis & Associates, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that todayâ€™s gathering â€“ and the evolution of the reparations movement â€“ is a significant, historical campaign that has far-reaching consequences for black Americans.

â€œWeâ€™re still questioning our own humanity to this day,â€? Davis said.

â€œIf we donâ€™t make the demand for reparations," he said, "weâ€™re saying to our ancestors who suffered in those fields, to those ancestors who were lynched, that weâ€™re still not willing to acknowledge our own humanity, and if we donâ€™t recognize our own humanity, no one else will. This is a cause worth fighting for.â€?

Parris · (#3 (**permalink**))

INSPIRED wrote:

Quote:

Hello , im writng an article on slavery reparations for my uni magazine and i really want to hear what people think.

Do you feel that much of the west is in debt of the victims of the slave trade?

Quote:

I'd say yes......we should find the people that were slaves and pay them for their years of work without compensation. In America, how many slaves do you think we would find?

Do you even see there being a case for reparations, considering that all of those immediately involved in the slave trade are dead?, isit too late?

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No, I do not see a case for repiartions

How much do you feel that reparations can do to repair the damage left by the legacy of slavery?

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Little or nothing to repair the damage of slavery.

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Personally i feel that reparations cannot help, and theres no amount of money that can make up for the loss of lives, dignity and spirit of africans enslaved in America, i'd love to hear the views of those who disagree ( or agree) with me.

This above statment makes is clear that you have changed from arguement based on merits to one based on emotions.

A few points

- Only a tiny minority of Americans today have an ancestor who was a slaveowner. Prior to and during the Civil War, the great majority of the U.S. population was located in the northern states, where slavery did not exist.

- In 1860, the total population of the U.S. states where slavery was outlawed was about 19.5 million. The free population of the South was 7.5 million. This means that among Americans today who had ancestors living in the United States during the time of slavery, most of those ancestors lived in northern states, and are thus completely innocent of slavery. In fact, many of those northerners were abolitionists and detested the institution of slavery.

- Even more significant is that the vast majority of Americans' ancestors did not even live in the United States during the time of slavery. They immigrated here long after slavery was abolished.

- Great waves of immigration took place long after the Civil War, particularly around 1900, as well as the most recent decade. In fact, since 1870, more than 78 million people have immigrated into the United States, versus a small fraction of that prior to 1860. Everyone can all agree that the more-than 45 million Americans of Latin American and Asian descent are completely unrelated to the U.S. slavery experience, since almost all of their ancestors immigrated to the U.S. long after slavery ended, most of them in recent decades. And of the very few people of Latin American or Asian origin who were U.S. citizens during the time of slavery, it is safe to say that very few of them, if any, were slave owners.

- What about Americans of European descent? If "guilt" is determined by one's ancestors being slave owners, then Americans of Italian, Polish, Slavic, Scandinavian, Greek, and other descents can be sure they are completely innocent; their ancestors immigrated to the U.S. long after slavery ended. Even the vast majority of Americans of Western European origin are innocent; their ancestors came here after the Civil War as well.

- Another significant point is that millions of black Americans did not even have ancestors who were U.S. slaves. More than a half million Africans emigrated to the United States in recent decades. And many if not most of those immigrants have children, bringing the total number of African Americans whose ancestors were not enslaved to at least a million, probably more. Assuming slave reparations were paid to all blacks, that constitutes many, many people who would be entitled to reparations whose ancestors were not even slaves.

-It may come as a surprise to many that during the pre-Civil War period in America, whites were enslaved, too. And this does not simply refer to voluntary indentured servitude. From the 1600s until the Civil War, whites were frequently kidnapped or captured in Europe, and sold into slavery in the Americas. Should they get reparations as well?

- The notorious "middle passage" endured by Africans - the Atlantic crossing of slaves from Africa to the Americas - was indeed terrible, with death and disease ever present. But conditions on board ships transporting Europeans to the Americas were equally terrible. Both voluntary and involuntary emigrants were confined below the decks in crowded, disease-ridden conditions with insufficient food or water. "There is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror ... so that many die miserable," according to a German passenger on one of the ships.

For the entire two- to three-month voyage, white slaves were typically never permitted to go above deck. They were crammed together in holes, in chains. In fact, deaths on ships coming from Europe equaled or exceeded deaths on ships coming from Africa. According to historian Sharon V. Salinger, during the 1700s the mortality rate for black slaves was 10 to 20 percent, versus 25 percent for white slaves. Should they get repartions as well?

- The African American historian Shelby Steele points out that issue of white slavery has been suppressed in America because there probably was a time when whites, ashamed of this fact, wanted to suppress it. "But now it's probably blacks who want to suppress it," said Steele. "Those who are grounded in the idea of black victimization may feel that this weakens their argument."

-Following is an excerpt from a 1939 article in Philanthropist titled "White Slaves":

"A very large proportion of the slave population in the South are but slightly colored, and many of them are so nearly white as to require the closest scrutiny to detect the fact of their having the first drop of African blood....Color is becoming every day less and less a test by which to determine the fact of human chattelship."

No Reparations for Whites or Blacks

The African American historian Shelby Steele points out that issue of white slavery has been suppressed in America because there probably was a time when whites, ashamed of this fact, wanted to suppress it. "But now it's probably blacks who want to suppress it," said Steele. "Those who are grounded in the idea of black victimization may feel that this weakens their argument."

http://www.nlpc.org/

PaRrIs

Phantom Major · (#4 (**permalink**))

Parris id jiust like to say while i can, that you are a VERY smart guy, smarter than the average 'brother'. But anyway, i dont understand why we keep banging on 'bout slavery. ASk any white person on the streets if they thought the slave trade was good. They will ALWAYS tell you they hated it. If nobody thought it was bad then why did their white ancestors abolish it? Only a very very small amout of whites have ancestors who were involved with slavery especially here in england where slavery wasnt even big anyway. I have met so many guys here on these boards who talk about slavery and like it was them that suffered and like it is still happeneing today, which it is not. and they h8 at the whites because they see it as their fault, even though they were not even around and dont even have ancestors who were involved.

The brothers here were came to england before slavery (as nurses long ago) and only a very small amount of slaves were brought here and was quickly abolished by the english. I doubt barely any black peeps have ansetors who were slaves because after WW2, Britain was beggin' for immigrants to come ere, and the majority of blacks here are from the influx.

Parris, yes i do think we try to suppress the fact that white slaves were used just as black slaves were, thats just the way we are. I think 'we' make a bigger deal out of slavery than the whites do.

Parris · (#5 (**permalink**))

I think that many of us, and I used to do it aswell, have gotten so used to look outside as for the reason why we CAN'T.

We have gotten so ushed to being the victims and we can't see anything else.

We think they we, of all the people on earth, throughout all of history, are the only people who have suffered, as if we have a premium on pain.

We don't. We also want to point the finger at Europeans and slavery as why we should hate them, yet...we ignored the fact that AFrican were the FIRST to sell slaves, and to add insult to injury slaves were sold to Europeans for SPICES...but we are to ignore this fact.

Or they will say "Well you can't blame all of Africa, because it was only a small portion of AFricans".....if you point out the same "Well you can't blame all whites because if was only a small portion of whites" they will tell you its not the same.

They tell you that we can't suceed, that we can't compete, that we can't learn.....and then in the same breath want to tell you how strong we are.

Hmmmmm...........

Until we stopp looking at them, and start looking at us, we will never reach our full destiny as a people. Saying that we should take much of the responsibility for out own actions is VERY unpopular, it removes the "other" and shows us to be the ones who can fix our problems.

And think you for the compliment.......but you do know the BTUB (Blacker Than You Brigade) is going to attack you for it.

PaRrIs

INSPIRED · (#6 (**permalink**))

[align=center]Hi i see all of your replies but it seems that you're just quoting other resources, what do you as people think. you sound like robots with your quotes. This isnt a court case, damn.[/align]
[align=center]Can i be devil's advocate and remind you that reparations have been paid for other causes. e.g. holocaust, and the U.S. has paid Japan reparations for discrimination against the japanese during vietnam.[/align]
[align=center]Also, as i believe it, the reparations movement isnt asking for money from individual peoples, its from governments i.e. the national treasuries that would have no doubt benefited from it. why do you think america became such a big economy?, call me a cynical but i believe slavery had a little to do with it.[/align]
[align=center]and to dismiss slavery as a thing of the past is ignorant. the lagacy of it still lives on for example through rascim.[/align]
[align=center]( having said this i still dont agree with reparations) Opinions speak louder than facts. does anybody here personnaly feel short changed by slavery?[/align]

Phantom Major · (#7 (**permalink**))

Parris wrote:

Quote:

I think that many of us, and I used to do it aswell, have gotten so used to look outside as for the reason why we CAN'T.

We have gotten so ushed to being the victims and we can't see anything else.

We think they we, of all the people on earth, throughout all of history, are the only people who have suffered, as if we have a premium on pain.

We don't. We also want to point the finger at Europeans and slavery as why we should hate them, yet...we ignored the fact that AFrican were the FIRST to sell slaves, and to add insult to injury slaves were sold to Europeans for SPICES...but we are to ignore this fact.

Or they will say "Well you can't blame all of Africa, because it was only a small portion of AFricans".....if you point out the same "Well you can't blame all whites because if was only a small portion of whites" they will tell you its not the same.

They tell you that we can't suceed, that we can't compete, that we can't learn.....and then in the same breath want to tell you how strong we are.

Hmmmmm...........

Until we stopp looking at them, and start looking at us, we will never reach our full destiny as a people. Saying that we should take much of the responsibility for out own actions is VERY unpopular, it removes the "other" and shows us to be the ones who can fix our problems.

And think you for the compliment.......but you do know the BTUB (Blacker Than You Brigade) is going to attack you for it.

PaRrIs

Quote:

Remember how the jews suffered far farmore than blacks did. The jews were treated worse, men women children, babies worked as slavesfor the nazis and then were executed, by means of disease, starvation, exaustion or lethal gas. These people were white and it was more recently than slavery. Some of the people who did this to the jews are probably still alive today, walking free.

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We still need to grasp the fact that 'we' did not suffer and probably neither did any of our ancestors. (I dont know about yours). I would also like to boldly say that there is a difference between black and white culture. When a black person says or does something wrong or negative,they do not hold every single black person that has ever lived responcible, and they understand that (or think) that every single one of us are individuals.

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When a white person does something wrong or negative black people (or the black people on these boards anyway) fail to interpret the action as a single incident done by one white man, and instead think that every white person is identical and so therefore every white man must pay.

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We need to start seeing each other the way they (or the majority)see us. Us individuals. For example we call other blacks brother or sister, even though they have no relation whats so ever.

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I'm not attacking my own race. Im just saying that the black people here should stop being so negative and start to move forward...

Le Moor · (#8 (**permalink**))

Phanthom Major at first i was going to respond to your posts. After reading all of your posts i decided against it...........

Hogwash · (#9 (**permalink**))

Ask any person today why the Africans had to go through slavery? There simple response would be that that Africans at the time were weak and unorganized, and thus Dutch, protÃ©gÃ©es and Spanish ships took them way to the new worldâ€¦found by our â€œfriendâ€? Mr. â€œColumbusâ€?.
:P
[size=3][font="Times New Roman"]

ChubbiChix · (#10 (**permalink**))

INSPIRED wrote:

Quote:

Hello , im writng an article on slavery reparations for my uni magazine and i really want to hear what people think.

Do you feel that much of the west is in debt of the victims of the slave trade? Yes they are in extreme debt to blacks in general because America was built on the wealth made from slaves labor and products. This is the only reason why america and white people are so rich today because our ancestors died building their wealth. Black people are in povety today because our ancestors where busy making money for white people rather then their communities.

Do you even see there being a case for reparations, considering that all of those immediately involved in the slave trade are dead?, isit too late? It is a case because every black person you see today in america has ancestors that where once slaves so don't the decendents inherit the reparations? So what there dead, the holocaust was really only a 70 year difference from slaveryand they paying them all kinds of money. Thats why the UN gave palestine to the Jews. If they can do all that for the Jews, they can help us out since they did do this to us andis still affecting ustoday?

How much do you feel that reparations can do to repair the damage left by the legacy of slavery? Well the mental damage of white supremecy is so severe that no amount of money can teach us love for ourselves and our true history. The money could only really be used for programs to help the advancement of black people or in businesses that will generate even more money for these programs.

Personally i feel that reparations cannot help, and theres no amount of money that can make up for the loss of lives, dignity and spirit of africans enslaved in America, i'd love to hear the views of those who disagree ( or agree) with me.
The money can help since its so many black people and latinos too in america that are living in severe poverty andsome of our schools systems are shitty. The money could go towards privately own black schoolsthat have excellent and accurate education, better health stuffor to businesses that will generate more money for the community and jobs.

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Personally, I believe we definitlydeserve it but we will never get it ever and if they do break us off a crumb, thats a fraction of what they took from us. We better offnot waiting for that to happen and just do our own thing. The only way we can ever get whats truly owed to us is by takingit because white people and others will not just hand it over to us because they feel bad.