Reparations for slavery

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Sean Hayden
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Reparations for slavery

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Feb 28, 2018 5:03 pm

Are you for or against, and why? My initial reaction has always been to be against reparations. Which happens to be the reaction of most Americans too. However, when reading the arguments put up against reparations for slavery I see weaknesses, in some cases serious ones. For example, when an opponent makes it all about punishment and then decides that because he doesn't deserve to be punished Reparations are wrong; and if they aren't about punishment?

What's your best argument against them? Or do you support them, and how would you implement something like reparations for slavery?

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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Svartalf » Wed Feb 28, 2018 5:10 pm

totally against, I'm not going to go an d make sacrifices to atone for crimes my ancestors, if even my ancestors were involved in the slaves trade as shipowners , crewmembers or slave owners, the statute of limitations took force back in 1848... they are free, they are citizens, they are not gonna sue successfully for crimes commited against their ancestors centuries ago.Slaves or former slaves might have deserved reparations, their emancipated, full-righted descendants are not entitled to that.
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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Rum » Wed Feb 28, 2018 5:34 pm

I'm against the idea too. It is an instinctive reaction rather than a reasoned one though I will admit. But if I unpick it, it is something to do with:

1. I don't know if my ancestors were involved in any way with slavery, especially given they were Welsh and irish.
2. If by some remote chance they were, why is it my responsibility getting on for two hundred years after slavery was abolished (in the UK it was 1833) to somehow have some responsibility?
3. Why should I or other white people be responsible as a race?(assuming that is the angle that is being taken)
4. What actual harm has come to currently alive descendants of slaves? Arguably their - the majority anyway - lot is better than if they had been born in an African country.
5. They can just fuck off anyway.

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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Svartalf » Wed Feb 28, 2018 5:41 pm

:clap:
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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by devogue » Wed Feb 28, 2018 7:10 pm

Demands for slavery reparations are utter fuckery.

One of the things that does my nut in about New Zealand is the ongoing reparation settlements between the Maori and the Crown. Essentially, the Maori tribes are getting payouts of hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars for land that was stolen from their ancestors in the 19th century. Often, great wads of this money is spunked up the wall or plundered. What's more, the payments are ultimately from the pockets of modern day NZ taxpayers which includes great swathes of Asian, Indian, and non-British Europeans - people who are paying for the actions of almost exclusively 19th Century British settlers, while the UK itself doesn't put up a single penny.

Also, the Treaty of Waitangi, the basis of the reparations, was signed in 1840 - it just so happens that seven years later the Crown sat idly by, or even exported food from stolen Irish land, while evicting indigenous people as the great famine overwhelmed my ancestors and 1.5 million of them starved to death while a further 1.5 million of our brightest and strongest emigrated. And what sort of reparations have I and my fellow Irish enjoyed? - not a brass farthing.

The dead are dead, the distant past is distant, and the world we live in today is an incalculably better world, even for the poorest in our Western nations. Reparations not only pick old scabs, but they create victimhood where it no longer exists and resentment where there is no need for it to exist.

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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Feb 28, 2018 7:20 pm

My forebears were forcibly cleared from their ancestoral lands in the Scittish lowlands. I'll agree with reparations for slavery when I've had what's due to me.
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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by laklak » Wed Feb 28, 2018 7:23 pm

I'm all for them. Just before they pass out the checks I'll open a Rims, Tire, and Really Loud Stereo shop in the Hood. Yo, dawg.
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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Svartalf » Wed Feb 28, 2018 7:37 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:My forebears were forcibly cleared from their ancestoral lands in the Scittish lowlands. I'll agree with reparations for slavery when I've had what's due to me.
yep, I'm descended from a minor branch of the Stuarts (or Stewarts, I'm not sure, all I know is that my ancestor was close relation enough to carry in sword while in company of the Old Pretender) and from some Irish Earl that had to fly after the Boyne, unless and until *I* get reparations for their losing their lands and riches, I won't advocate for slave descendants to get compensation either
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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Rum » Wed Feb 28, 2018 8:04 pm

Well if we are going down that route I want reparations for the 'dust' my Welsh grandfather got down the coal mines. Killed him dead at 63.

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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Feb 28, 2018 8:52 pm

In the US nearly 100 years passed from the ratification of the constitution, which declared all men equal, and the end of slavery in 1865. It would take another 100 years before the Jim Crow laws were removed in 1965. During this time African slaves and their descendants contributed to the success of the US without being treated even as proper citizens. Are they owed nothing? Instead of seeing reparations as a punishment, why not as something like dividends owed to investors? I would not be contributing to atone for the sins of my ancestors, but to repay my country's debt.
The dead are dead, the distant past is distant, and the world we live in today is an incalculably better world, even for the poorest in our Western nations. Reparations not only pick old scabs, but they create victimhood where it no longer exists and resentment where there is no need for it to exist.
I really like this point. I do wonder how any reparations could be made practical, especially given our current political climate.

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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Seabass » Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:07 pm

Sean Hayden wrote:In the US nearly 100 years passed from the ratification of the constitution, which declared all men equal, and the end of slavery in 1865. It would take another 100 years before the Jim Crow laws were removed in 1965. During this time African slaves and their descendants contributed to the success of the US without being treated even as proper citizens. Are they owed nothing? Instead of seeing reparations as a punishment, why not as something like dividends owed to investors? I would not be contributing to atone for the sins of my ancestors, but to repay my country's debt.
The dead are dead, the distant past is distant, and the world we live in today is an incalculably better world, even for the poorest in our Western nations. Reparations not only pick old scabs, but they create victimhood where it no longer exists and resentment where there is no need for it to exist.
I really like this point. I do wonder how any reparations could be made practical, especially given our current political climate.
Historically beleaguered groups would be better served by a decent social welfare regime than a one time lump sum. Reparations make no sense, either ethically or logistically.
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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Svartalf » Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:41 pm

it would not be feasible under any political climate, this kind of things is why there are status of limitation laws in the first place, so that people don't come claiming redress for torts committed decades or centuries earlier... human memories can run very long if people can expect any form of revenge or redress.
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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Strontium Dog » Thu Mar 01, 2018 12:41 am

Reparations are ludicrous even from a practicality standpoint alone. How do you even begin to define who would be eligible for compensation? The average black American derives quarter of their DNA from white European sources. The uncomfortable reality is that millions of black people are actually descended from white slave owners. What are they going to do, pay reparations to themselves?

The whole thing really touches upon the outright stupidity of classifying people based on their skin colour in the first instance.
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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Thu Mar 01, 2018 1:00 am

Reparations are already in effect in the US. Not many people know or understand this.

No less of an emancipationist than Frederick Douglass has reminded us of the eternal truth that taxation is slavery.

It therefore follows that those who pay the most in taxes are undeniably the most fully enslaved, and the most entitled to reparations.

Thus, when the Republicans in the US relieved some of the horrible burden of taxation on those who pay the most in taxes, they were in effect making a proud (if however insufficient) gesture of giving reparations for those people's past and ongoing slavery.

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Re: Reparations for slavery

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Mar 01, 2018 3:16 am

Seabass wrote: Historically beleaguered groups would be better served by a decent social welfare regime than a one time lump sum. Reparations make no sense, either ethically or logistically.
I don't understand what's unethical about reparations.

Improving the lives of African Americans through social reform seems to make up the bulk of the recommendations here: Report of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its mission to the United States of America

--worth a read

However they also recommend the following:
The Working Group encourages Congress to pass H.R. 40 — the Commission
to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act — which would establish a
commission to examine enslavement and racial discrimination in the colonies and the
United States from 1619 to the present and to recommend appropriate remedies. The
Working Group urges the United States to consider seriously applying analogous
elements contained in the Caribbean Community’s Ten-Point Action Plan on
Reparations, which includes a formal apology, health initiatives, educational
opportunities, an African knowledge programme, psychological rehabilitation,
technology transfer and financial support, and debt cancellation.
:dunno:

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