From The New Republic:
The Atlantic's Case for Slavery Reparations
By Isaac Chotiner
Ta-Nehisi Coates's long cover story in the June issue of The Atlantic is about reparations for slavery. Indeed, the piece is titled 'The Case For Reparations.' (It isn't online yet.) The story has been buzzed about for a while now, and while I recommend that everyone get their hands on the essay and read it at once, Coates's argument shouldn't be too controversial. But it will be—which is another sign of the sorry state of racial discourse in America.
Coates was wise to focus the essay less on the evils of slavery and more on the systemic and institutional ways in which African-Americans have been beaten down, discriminated against, and terrorized over the past 150 years. Rather than being left to their own devices—something America prides itself on doing for its citizens—blacks were forcefully kept down by government and private institutions, federal laws and private banks. (The piece closes with Bank of America's recent behavior.) It is a powerful argument with some superb storytelling.
But prescriptively? Here is Coates, with some big ideas that really shouldn't sound all that earth-shattering:
What I'm talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payout, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I'm talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling "patriotism" while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
Coates adds that he believes "wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced," and says he supports a John Conyers bill that would merely call for a "Congressional study of slavery" and make recommendations for "appropriate remedies."
The fact that such measures will no doubt prove to be controversial is what makes this subject so depressing.
Obviously, paying out big cash reparations would, as Dave Chappelle observed, drive up in the short run the price of Cadillacs and cocaine with few long term benefits, which is why so many black intellectuals over the years who have argued for reparations eventually get around to saying that, well, of course reparations shouldn't be mailed out in checks to black individuals, they should instead be given to black foundations run by black intellectuals like me.
If we spent $4 trillion giving $100,000 to every black person in America, blacks would still do badly a generation later on fire department hiring exams and all the rest. So, nothing would change about the status of blacks, nor about their complaints about invisible racism.
If we spent $4 trillion giving $100,000 to every black person in America, blacks would still do badly a generation later on fire department hiring exams and all the rest. So, nothing would change about the status of blacks, nor about their complaints about invisible racism.
But Coates' argument is an important one: the point of reparations is not just the money, but also "a revolution of American consciousness," i.e., a permanent delegitimization of dissent, present and past, from the racial ideological conventional wisdom as embodied by T-N Coates. Let the Brendan Eich-style firings begin!
As we saw, as long as gay marriage was losing over and over in referendums, some degree of ideological pluralism had to be pro forma allowed. But once the Supreme Court ruled, persecution of past pluralists seemed natural.
As we saw, as long as gay marriage was losing over and over in referendums, some degree of ideological pluralism had to be pro forma allowed. But once the Supreme Court ruled, persecution of past pluralists seemed natural.
We need to understand that an amnesty for illegal immigrants would be used in exactly the same way: as signifying the end of any need for even the most pro forma tolerance of dissent on immigration policy. Let the firings begin!
There were a lot of things Orwell didn't understand, but he did grasp the essential appeal of being an ideologue on the winning side:
There were a lot of things Orwell didn't understand, but he did grasp the essential appeal of being an ideologue on the winning side:
But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
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140 comments:
how much should Oprah & Michael Jordan get, i wonder.
How could you pass up the chance to link to Dave Chappelle's Reparations skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg6J1Skptbs
On a more serious note, Renan was on to something when he wrote: "the essence of a nation is that all of its individual members have a great deal in
common and also that they have forgotten many things."
TNC:"What I'm talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payout, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I'm talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling "patriotism" while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history."
Given some inklings that I've gained from reading TNC's stuff in the past, I think that his real goal here is to make the African-American experience define the American essence.
When I was twelve, I cried over "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman."
Reparations paid.
"Coates was wise to focus the essay less on the evils of slavery and more on the systemic and institutional ways in which African-Americans have been beaten down, discriminated against, and terrorized over the past 150 years."
Have to admit, this part of TNC's argument is quite clever. He's not just talking about slavery (an increasingly distant experience). Instead, he's talking about redlining and various more au courant modes of ant-Black discrimination.
Dear FredR,
Thanks!
Steve
Let us tax the top one percent to deliver reparations to blacks - on the condition that they renounce their citizenship and leave forever.
How about a museum on the mall in Washington DC dedicated to the remembrance of slavery in the antebellum South? Or, better yet, as a new wing to the Holocaust Museum.
The ongoing struggle to define America:
New England vs the South: New England, backed up by its near total command of American high culture in the 19th century wins, and the American experience is defined by Pilgrims, Thanksgiving, and John Winthrop's City on a Hill.
The Rising West: No, it has nothing to do with those Eastern palefaces. America was defined by the frontier experience:cowboys, log cabins, Indian fighting, etc.
Big City White Ethnics: That cowboy stuff is old hat. One with Nineveh and Tyre.America was made by the urban immigrant experience: Catholic Irish, Jews, Italians, etc. Need proof, just watch THE GODFATHER SAGA and GANGS OF NEW YORK.
TNC: Forget all that White people jazz. America was and is defined by the Black experience. That's why you need to read my column, so that I can explain to you how I and America are one and the same.
""""""""""""""""""Coates was wise to focus the essay less on the evils of slavery and more on the systemic and institutional ways in which African-Americans have been beaten down, discriminated against, and terrorized over the past 150 years.""""""""""""""""
A response then to Ta-Nahesi Coates.
Mr. Coates, you claim that reparations is due to black people.
A couple of questions first:
1. IF we agree to reparations for black people (whether to individuals or to black organizations, some of them, by the way, were in fact created by whites) can we deduct the roughly 10 trillion dollars that have been DIRECTLY paid to black people over the las half a century starting with the Great Society programs? Programs SPECIFICALLY aimed directly at blacks, such as Affirmative Action; Quotas; Set Asides; Enitre jurisprudence has been created specifically for blacks, btw as well as depts as the EEOC. OH, and the 13,14,15th Amendments as well.
Cont'd
2. See, for the last 50plus years of Civil Rights, black people have indeed already been on the receiving end of a form of "reparations" a la fully funded government programs including the 300Billion or is it 3 trillion in the most recent (this past March '14) My Brothers Keeper which the President touted as one that will directly uplift blacks in the inner cities regarding employment.It appears as though you've either forgotten about all of these programs that have been fully funded specifically for blacks improvement. Why is that?
So then, are you saying that if we give black people reparations, we could then ENTIRELY DEFUND ALL AND ANY FUTURE PROGRAMS that have gone to blacks since the Great Society? As in, no more federal programs, loans, benefits, affirmative action set asides, quotas, etc. All of them can now be defunded in return for this reparations you seem to think is still necessary to help blacks???
Because if you say no, we have to keep funding the programs of the last half a century, you're basically saying that the programs have TOTALLY FAILED TO HELP BLACKS as was their original intended purpose.
So, you can't really expect to have it both ways. You can't have reparations AND continue the trillions of dollars in government programs that you don't believe are working to help blacks.
One or the other. And if after 50yrs of government programs as well as the jurisprudence created specifically for blacks, and that's apparently now not near enough to get the job done, why should anyone assume that a one time shot in the arm is going to do the job? When that fails in about 15yrs time you'll just be back demanding for more and more money.
Mr. Coates, I suggest you either grow up and get a life or attempt to practice self improvement on a more personal level.
3. What are blacks going to do in return for this money? Suppose as said before, that all the trillions already given to blacks is far more than reparations, don't you think the just and fair and equitable thing to do would be to owe America for all it has already been contributing to blacks for the last 50yrs, and now you're claiming it still isn't enough but that it's not working.
Fair is fair. Either blacks should return the money that they have been receiving as a group for the last 50yrs OR in return for reparations, we will repeal ALL federal programs from the books. They'll no longer be enforced and that means no more affirmative action, tokens, set asides, no more jurisprudence, no more special admits via college selection, no more special favoritism. From now on, you will have to wait in line like everyone else.
Are YOU, Mr. Coates, prepared to make that exchange? We'll give Reparations and in return America gets to repeal ALL federal programs regarding Affirmative Action as well repeal all federal, state, local bodies of laws that directly benefit minorities (mainly blacks)? We'll keep the 13,14,15Amendments as well as the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and perhaps a modified form of Brown v Education. BUT everything after that, is now to be totally repealed.
Will you accept that trade off, you get reparations and in return America no longer funds these federal programs and they won't be on the books as law and binding.
What do you say?
Let me reiterate, Blacks should pay themselves/each other reparations, depending on the quantum of white blood they carry. They are the true descendants of the white slave owners, just as many Hispanics are the descendants of the conquistadors. Why should whites whose ancestors never owned slaves be forced to pay reparations to peoples whose ancestors did own slaves?
A net summary of TNC's thinking: I want everyone to think about the Black experience in America all the time. For talking points, consult TNC's blog. Everyday.
id be all for reparations + plane ticket back to africa. I wonder how many white americans would approve of a plan to say, pay a one time tax of 30% of their yearly income to blacks in exchange for the expatriation of all black americans.
i would do it in a heartbeat. heck, id pay 50% of next years income if it meant them all leaving. gladly. Such a tax would pay itself off very very quickly via lower crime rates, better schools, less welfare spending, etc.
think of it as an investment in the future.
Each time I read something written by Coates I feel like I should get some sort of recompense.
The reparations we owe them is repatriation to Africa. It is the only way make up for dragging them out of Africa against their will.
The past injustice cited in the argument is extremely overstated, proven be fact that they have insisted on staying in this country. This is because they have been provided a quality of life they cannot provide themselves anywhere in the world. This has already come at a very high cost to white Americans.
They need to live in a country populated and run by their own race in order understand what true adversity in this world really is. Blacks all over the world uprooting themselves in order to seek a better quality of life in any white culture they can elbow their way into; desperate to have what black Americans have been born to: their very own white people to give them jobs, welfare, food stamps housing and healthcare.
The future of America is Trayvon Martin punching George Zimmerman in the face - forever.
"""""""""A net summary of TNC's thinking: I want everyone to think about the Black experience in America all the time. For talking points, consult TNC's blog. Everyday."""""""""""""""
Derbyshire was entirely correct when in an interview earlier this year he stated:
"Practically all educated black Americans, for example, are communists [Or far leftist] And white conservatives are the **only** people in the U.S.A. trying to ‘transcend contentious racial issues.’ Everyone else is keenly exploiting them for group advantage and personal enrichment."
TNC = prominent example of AA at the NYT and still he's not grateful. Just wants more, more, and more gimmedat stuff or you racist!
Anonymous at 1:27 captured my thoughts. Blacks have been repaid for the past 40 years through affirmative action and preferential treatment.
And who is this Chotiner guy telling everyone reparations shouldn't be controversial?
Issac Chotiner: If we can't even have the conversation he wants because people are so defensive or unwilling (or plain racist), it's just more evidence for what his essay rightfully bemoans.
Not for the first time I find myself wondering how Jews ever gained a reputation for intelligence. He manages to pack multiple logical fallacies into just that once sentence.
The fact that such measures will no doubt prove to be controversial is what makes this subject so depressing.
Don't you see? The fact that people find Coates ideas to be objectionable just proves thaa those ideas are good and necessary!!!
Are YOU, Mr. Coates, prepared to make that exchange? We'll give Reparations and in return America gets to repeal ALL federal programs regarding Affirmative Action as well repeal all federal, state, local bodies of laws that directly benefit minorities (mainly blacks)? We'll keep the 13,14,15Amendments as well as the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and perhaps a modified form of Brown v Education. BUT everything after that, is now to be totally repealed.
Actually, I suspect Coates would agree to this.
I'm in favor of reparations under certain conditions. If we wiped out the Civil Rights act and repealed the Reconstruction Amendments, I would pay the tax required to pay reparations. If that's what it takes so the next generation can be free of this nonsense, so be it.
But that's most certainly not what a miserable bigot like Coates has in mind. He wants the checks and the right to piss and moan about the honkies.
Actually, I suspect Coates would agree to this.
If this were implemented, I truly wonder where the black community would be in a few decades. Would they uplift themselves, with the soft bigotry of low expectations now off their backs?
Blacks owe whites for rescuing their ancestors from Africa.
Do we have an additional x trillion dollars to throw at blacks, anyway? We have spent quite a bit of money on them already, you know. The eternal parasite will eternally squawk for more.
Notice also the brainless assumptions of collective guilt and what Sowell correctly derides as "cosmic justice." The argument is: some blacks had it rough in the past (allegedly due solely to persecution), so all blacks are owed a Cosmic Debt by all whites. Such things are hard to quantify, but that doesn't keep the likes of Coates from putting his hand out.
I can think of plenty of people I'd like to collect reparations from, going back to the Norman Conquest. Know why I don't pursue it? Because I'm an adult with a brain, not a childish, shallow, whining parasite.
I don't think Coates wants money or any kind of wealth transfer. What he wants is what every decent human being wants: a fair shake in society.
How can this be done? There are several solutions:
1. eliminate housing discrimination
2. overhaul speech laws (free speech does not include hate speech)
3. legislate fair voting districts
4. do things to insure proportional representation
5. legislate sensible gun laws
6. reform immigration laws
7. make white privilege a mandatory course in high school and college
8.
This kind of stupid prposal illustrates one of the weaknesses of being a "propositional nation" - anyone can try to take an element of your founding proposition and hijack it, and reorient it so as to redefine the "national proposition" to serve their own particular grievances or interests.
In countries that are defined ethnically (Japan, Korea, China) or by a self evident long history and traditions despite having multiple ethnic groups (Russia, Thailand) the meaning of the country is clear. You can't just show up and define what is a the true meaning of being Korean based on your own historical grievances. These societies are much better at shoving internal historical injustices into the closet and moving on, since they don't violate any abstract ethical proposition of the nation's identity.
Europeans and North Americans have received free stuff at the expense of Africans, Indigenous people of America, and other oppressed people in the world for 500 years. People of Color want compensation for all the backbreaking work they did (and continue to do) to build up (and sustain) Europe and North America. Wegot rich on their backs
Could you tell me some of the things Orwell didn't understand? I was under the impression he got just about everything right.
If Thomas Piketty has us all thinking about massive wealth redistribution as an answer to growing inequality, let’s also put reparations back on the table. The descendants of enslaved Africans in America have endured a particular type of inequality, one based on an ideology of white supremacy and borne out in a racial caste system, that requires a particular type of corrective. The un- and underpaid labor of generations of black bodies created massive amounts of wealth for everyone but the peoples whose work was exploited. And we’ve continued to suffer the consequences.
The least the American government can do is cut a check.
Well, it's great timing since the Atlantic's summer interns are just about to start, and it'll surely be all hands on deck to police the comment thread once the article's posted.
Steve, the whole Witchfinding thing is both uniquely Anglo-Scandinavian (hard to find Witchfinders among the Virginia Tidewater degenerate aristos or casual black magic practicing backwoodsmen, much less the thinly Paganized Catholics of Italy and Ireland) ... and related to internal power struggles.
As Vox Day notes, Eich was fired not because of his gay marriage donations but because Mozilla wanted to have DRM support embedded in its browsers to make Hollywood happy and Eich stood in the way of that goal.
Good luck getting lots of White people to hand over money to Coates or Oprah.
And heck, if Race is a Social Construct, I'm Black. Y'all. And Oprah is WHITE! So she owes ME money. So does Obama! Y'all.
The surest way to get a fight to the death is for one group to start to seize the other's money.
That skit is classic!
As long as we're quoting, here's British economist Walter Bagehot in "Physics and Politics" (1872):
"A nation means a LIKE body of men, because of that likeness capable of acting together, and because of that likeness inclined to obey similar rules ..."
Pretty soon, the population-replacement program will be irreversible and WE will be the ones who are "unlike" the barbarian majority. Then it's going to get unpleasant because we can't carry all of them.
And here's British poet and social critic Matthew Arnold in "Culture and Anarchy" (1869). It's about England, but it applies to the United States:
"It never was any part of our creed that the great right and blessedness of an Irishman, or, indeed, of anybody on earth except an Englishman, is to do as he likes; and we can have no scruple at all about abridging, if necessary, a non-Englishman’s assertion of personal liberty. The British Constitution, its checks, and its prime virtues, are for Englishmen. We may extend them to others out of love and kindness; but we find no real divine law written on our hearts constraining us so to extend them."
There's no divine law that says we have to keep paying, paying, and paying until the end of time because some segments of the population don't belong in a society that still has its roots in Western civilization.
Commune, up-state Nigeria.
Goatweed
My ancestor died a Union soldier, fighting slavery. I'm entitled to reparations too.
There should be a parody of Ta-Nehisi Coates called Ali-Bahma Jacquets.
only in America would someone as !@#$%^ as Coates write such drivel for a national magazine. Affirmative Action in action. Reparation was all the burglaries at my house when I lived on the edge of the wrong neighborhood.
Give the blacks Florida. Then build a wall along the Georgia Florida border.
Problem solved.
What I resent about this is that my ancestors were all down coal mines at the time. At least the field slaves had sunshine.
""""Actually, I suspect Coates would agree to this.""""""""""
Not a chance. Once they get something for nothing they're not ever gonna let it go. If they actually got reparations, they'd then turn around and accuse people of racism still if they ever thought of repealing their precious federal programs.
Look at the stink they caused in the 90s when welfare reform was signed. Or when U of Michigan banned AA in admissions. Something like AA being repealed from the books? Guess again cause they're never letting any of those programs go, ever.
Its telling that it doesn't even seem to occur to TNCoates to make the connection that blacks have been well compensated for slavery, Crow, etc. All that's on their minds is more, more, and more of gimmedat, gimmedat, gimmedat.
I don't think Coates wants money or any kind of wealth transfer. What he wants is what every decent human being wants: a fair shake in society.
Coates is treated far better then he deserves to be solely because of the color of his skin. I'm all for a fair shake, but that requires Coates and his ilk to stop sponging off everyone else.
Steve:
This is somewhat off-topic, but a recent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is simply crying out for one of your pointed, satirical dissections.
Pittsburgh's economy has gained from high-skilled immigrants
Quick summary: While Pittsburgh has benefited from high-skilled (i.e., mostly highly-educated Asian) immigration over the past 40 years, the city continues to lack the optimal level of dynamism and vibrancy because it has failed to attract adequate numbers of “lower-skilled immigrants.” It actually reads like parody in some sections.
I am completely in favor of individual payments in reparations, provided that each individual renounces his or her US citizenship permanently, including citizenship for his or her minor children, and is required to leave the US never to return within 48 hours.
Reparations for slavery? If there's any compensation to be paid, it ought to be paid by the descendants of the slaves, for the good fortune they enjoy as citizens of the country where they have prospered more than anywhere else in the world. And they should kiss the ground they walk on here, and not act like resentful, entitled ingrates.
As Vox Day observes, Brendan Eich's persecution was all about Mozilla's desire to implement DRM.
His views on gay marriage were simply a convenient pretext.
It never was any part of our creed that the great right and blessedness of an Irishman, or, indeed, of anybody on earth except an Englishman, is to do as he likes; and we can have no scruple at all about abridging, if necessary, a non-Englishman’s assertion of personal liberty. The British Constitution, its checks, and its prime virtues, are for Englishmen.
I'm sympathetic to the general sentiment, but it's nullified in this case by the fact that the English invaded half the world. You can't forcibly make other peoples business your own and then object if they think the reverse also applies.
Jews ran the white slave trading operation in Moorish Spain (also in Crimea).
After the Reconquista the Jewish slave traders in Spain were chased out to Portugal and there they rebuilt their slave business using African slaves - first on the Portuguese owned islands along the west coast of Africa then later Brazil then the Caribbean then America.
So if Jews pay black people for centuries of black slavery and white people for centuries of white slavery then white people can pay some of their reparations to black people.
"Not for the first time I find myself wondering how Jews ever gained a reputation for intelligence. He manages to pack multiple logical fallacies into just that once sentence."
Really? He's a Jewish racist using slavery to attack white people and you're taking him at face value - seems pretty smart to me.
Slavery was just the tip of the iceberg. We also owe the worthy citizens of the Third World reparations for colonialism and climate change.
Will it be pro-rated based on % of white admixture?
Every single day since May of 1865, a segment of the population descended from African slaves forcibly extracted reparations from Caucasians. The extraction was and is via criminal activity, in which cash, valuables, merchandise are stolen. Caucasian lives increasingly are taken even when no resistance is offered to the reparation seekers.
Let us have a national reckoning about this. Let us total up the number of innocent white victims and compare that with the harm done to the slaves and their descendants. Let us consider whether Jim Crow laws were mindless oppression or were an attempt to avoid the descent into violence and chaos exemplified by present-day cities like Detroit, Birmingham, Baltimore and Memphis.
Let us speak openly of the behavior of some of the descendants of slaves, and the conditions of life where African-derived populations are in the majority and make the political decisions.
Reparations if and only if in return, the recipients agree to leave from this country and never return.
I enjoy that dumbass lefty troll Vedder included a blank number 8 in his list of gay lefty bullshit. (Naming your moron lefty troll Vedder is too perfect, maybe it's a rightist parody.) Regardless, I think this effectively symbolizes the eternal futility of the leftist program: there'll always be a new program or nonsense demand to throw out there after all of the prior attempts have failed miserably. We may not know what it is, but it's coming.
Though perhaps it would've been even better to have the list go on and on with the same damn items listed again and again and again, repeating to infinity. That woulda taken up a whole lotta space, though.
Yes, and "Crush your enemies before you and hear the lamentations of their women. This is the best of life."
Or something like that.
Orwell seems to have missed freedom of contract since he was a socialist.
Our New Rulers sincerely believe their own hothouse-delusion, that a "national reckoning" (more public and private stompings of EWMs) will produce a 'SPIRITUAL renewal' in the land.
For most modern westerners -- and certainly for Leftists, and indeed many Righties and apoliticals -- ideology, politics, empowerment, and materialism IS their spirituality. Because holy God is not in them -- and how could He be, as they are so chockfull of Themselves -- their Inner Void where humility before God is supposed to be, instead is filled by self-serving, self-comforting ideo-politics.
It's all they have, so they cling desperately to it.
The existential hole in all of us must be filled with something. America has rejected the God who blessed her far beyond all other nations, and instead worships its own created religion: The Religion of Herself. All ethics, all law, all morals in the U.S. spring from this foundation of self-worship, papered-over with endless Helping The Oppressed hypocrisy and lies about Civil Rights.
When you allow government, or political systems, to award and rescind your "civil rights," you've lost the battle before it's begun. The only real rights any of us have come from God. When we replace God with Government, we allow Government to award and rescind our God-given rights, and replace them with "civil right" from Government. You vote for your own enslavement.
Didn't take long for a totalitarian bloc consisting of The Sisterhood, the Race Faction, homos, and the rest of the Minority Majority, to gradually rescind some folks' Civil Rights because, well . . . you're one of the Oppressor Class. Because Privilege. No amount of reparations will satisfy them, just as no amount of empowerment, privileges, set-asides, quotas, and material goodies will ever satisfy the Sisterhood.
Cheers.
Careful, you might offend a certain gelded, Dante-lauding poseur on another "conservative" website who is a TNC a$$-kisser. He never seems to post my comments although he allows every anti-white, anti-Christian to spew his/her BS.
Tanisha Coates banned me from The Atlantic when I posited that he only pretended to like rap music because he thought it annoyed white people. No sense of humor that guy.
My personal favorite Reparations sketch, from the fantastic HBO comedy show "MR=r. Show."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glp5539NK-4
Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling "patriotism" while waving a Confederate flag.[etc.]
I vaguely recall a time in my life, many years ago, when I could be moved to correct idiotic assertions that Americans denied the historical facts of slavery, Jim Crow, etc. Now I just spit (metaphorically).
I doubt it will ever dawn on people like Coates or Chotiner that decade after decade of relentless denigration and deconstruction of the traditional American identity will end, inevitably, with there no longer being any "our heritage" to which appeal for reparations can be made.
The satisfactions of extorting, haranguing, and demographically swamping whitey will not end in any lasting material advantages for black Americans, quite the contrary. But apparently people like Coates prefer the Twilight Zone Miltonian inversion of serving in hell in preference to at last "being left to their own devices" in heaven. (Prefer for other black Americans, that is. I'm sure he'll do all right in his own lifetime in the declining imperial freak show that was once America.)
I'm concerned that reparations could bankrupt several West African countries - I mean, as the suppliers to the slave trade, they'll be paying half, right?
Race is pretty much all educated blacks think about these days, isn't it? I know the white guilt racket is lucrative, but there's obviously more to it than that. In their writings on the matter, the intense hate shines through like a cop's flashlight, and it's plain to see that making us miserable is their one overriding urge from the moment they get up in the morning until they go to bed at night. That ill will never goes away, no matter how many individual whites they like or bond with.
I believe this is the unspoken motivation behind the unending complaints about creeping re-segregation. The very idea of a white person, even a child, going an entire day without being intimidated, irritated or reminded of his/her place by someone black is too much for most of them to bear.
It proves that blacks and whites are always going to be at odds, no matter how many whites bend over backwards to prove how much they love black people or how guilty they feel.
I wonder what white liberals say about all this when no one is around to hear them.
Maybe we should start a rumor that the newly minted - once illegal aliens - Hispanic citizens will be paying the bill as well: that should cure our border problem.
Reparations of any sort will not change the landscape one iota; in fact, they may encourage more boondoggles.
Coates' florid language is just that; florid and subject to decay.
No one deserves to be paid in today's society for the work of his ancestors. The idea is absurd to any right-thinking individual. Reparations can not correct the sins of the past. The true objective of any one is to avoid making the sin in the first place. What are whites to do - buy 'indulgences' in the Catholic tradition?
This type of 'settling a debt' is nothing more than mental masturbation. Once it's over, look for another fix.
They should sue the princes and kings who sold their subjects to the white man.
I could go along with reparations checks, as long as they come with one-way tickets to Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, etc., and no return.
@Mangan's comment above is on target.
Indeed, let's have a true accounting. Only some 15% of southerners, including quite a few Africans, were slave owners. Let's track down their descendants and ONLY their descendants. Let's do the same with the slave traders who bought the slaves in Africa, shipped and sold them in America, along with the descendants of the Africans who captured the slaves for sale to the traders. We must also account for the forty acres and mules given to those Africans who got them.
Let's also track down all the Union army soldiers' descendants, especially those of dead and wounded soldiers for certainly they too are due reparations.
And finally, let's account for the trillions of dollars in transfer payments given to Africans over the past fifty years. Let's account for the MILLIONS of victims of African crimes and what they suffered.
After tabulating everything, we can collect from the slave trader's and slave owner's descendants and cut checks to the Africans and Yankees whose forebears paid in labor and blood. Of course that's only IF the cost of African welfare and African crime actually exceeds what their forebears would have been due for picking cotton in the 1700's and early 1800's.
At any rate, once columns have been totaled and checks cut, let's get every cruise ship in America loaded up with newly rich (?) Africans for their triumphant return to their homelands. For surely if enslaving them was horribly evil so too was taking them from their homelands and the ONLY way Justice may be achieved is by returning them to the shining shores of Africa where they may finally enjoy a life free from the racism of white people.
I know I'll vote (often!) for such a proposal.
Stan D Mute
+1!
Yeah. But more likely, I anticipate an early closing of the comments altogether as Ta-Nehisi gets overwhelmed by the incoming fire.
"People of Color want compensation for all the backbreaking work they did (and continue to do) to build up (and sustain) Europe and North America. We got rich on their backs."
**************************
In fact, slaves recaptured more of the value of their labor than poor whites in the form of food, shelter, clotting, health care, disability insurance, and old age pensions.
Let African-Americans seek reparations from the descendants of the Black Africans who sold their black "brothers" into slavery or kept them in slavery themselves.
$10K per head would total around $370 billion, contingent upon accepting a one-way ticket to Liberia. Sounds like a good deal to me. Compared to the Wall Street bailouts we just went through this is a bargain. Janet Yellen, fire up the presses! General Selva, start your engines! Let's make this happen!
My ancestor died a Union soldier, fighting slavery. I'm entitled to reparations too.
No, he got what he deserved.
Talking about reparations is such an idiotic obsession. It's never going to happen. Please explain how the most disenfranchised 12% of the population is going to force the rest of us to pay for this. Blacks are largely excluded from decision making in the USA; the only ones who get a seat at the table are center-right friends of Wall Street like Barack Obama. Aside from a host of token appointments in the executive branch from the talented tenth, what else has he done specifically for black people? Nothing.
If you all moan and spit enough about this, you'll keep forgetting that Wall St. and DC are flooding this country with a vast reserve army of illegal labor, the sole purpose of which is to destroy your wages and your standard of living. They're counting on you continuing to forget about this for as long as possible. You people are such suckers.
The only people who take this seriously are professors of African American studies at crappy colleges, and angry white paleocons who apparently need fake bull crap controversies in order to wake up in the morning.
"As we saw, as long as gay marriage was losing over and over in referendums, some degree of ideological pluralism had to be pro forma allowed. But once the Supreme Court ruled, persecution of past pluralists seemed natural."
I would date the beginning of all-out war on dissent to Obama's conversion (May 2012), more than to the Supreme Court's decision (Hollingsworth v Perry, June 2013).
The comment thread on Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece will be a lot of fun. There'll be room to raise a lot of uncomfortable issues. For example, let's calculate the economic damage blacks have done to American cities.
I expect the comment thread will close very early on.
"People of Color want compensation for all the backbreaking work they did (and continue to do) to build up (and sustain) Europe and North America. Wegot rich on their backs."
I think we all recognize that the "People of Color" you're referring to in reference to backbreaking work are mostly illegal Hispanics, who aren't owed anything because they are ... how to say ... illegal; it sure isn't the vast majority of indigenous blacks.
Okay Steve, what do we do about it?
I wonder if, on his death bed, Coates will recognize that he spent infancy to adulthood whining like a selfish little baby. Probably not.
Coates was wise to focus the essay less on the evils of slavery and more on the systemic and institutional ways in which African-Americans have been beaten down, discriminated against, and terrorized over the past 150 years.
One good reason to NOT focus on actual slavery is that things can get ugly very quickly for some famous American families, with actual proof using census records, colonial tax rolls, deeds and wills... all public information readily available. For example, a former mayor of New York City was a slaveholder on a plantation in the Hudson Valley. Yes, slaves in New York, until emancipation in 1827. Since most Americans don't know squat about their own country, be careful what you wish for.
Anonymous at 5/20/14, 2:25 PM
"Europeans and North Americans have received free stuff at the expense of Africans, Indigenous people of America, and other oppressed people in the world for 500 years. People of Color want compensation for all the backbreaking work they did (and continue to do) to build up (and sustain) Europe and North America. Wegot rich on their backs."
You must mean some elite Europeans and North Americans got rich from exploiting "people of color." Apparently you are unaware these same elites exploited many white Europeans too. Those of us who are or are descended from ditch diggers, coal miners, and cannon fodder know this - even those of us who haven't the "wit" to put it in words. We do not owe "people of color" a gd thing.
One more clever repackaging of "send mo' money". Gimme gimme gimme, me me me, mo' money mo' money mo' money. There, brevity is a virtue.
el supremo said...
"This kind of stupid prposal illustrates one of the weaknesses of being a "propositional nation" - anyone can try to take an element of your founding proposition and hijack it, and reorient it so as to redefine the "national proposition" to serve their own particular grievances or interests. "
Indeed, this is one of the problems with Karl Popper's Open Society.
I'd gladly pay for any reparations as long as we also conduct a massive, unfettered investigation into genetic cognitive differences between peoples and then accept its conclusions and consequences. Deal?
After reparations, black will want something else.
I wonder what the future of the surrogacy movement is. Once we have gay marriage in 50 states, we'll need lots of high quality eggs housed in high quality bodies. One thing about gay men is, they have high standards, and they won't want to buy cruddy eggs and house them in fat military wives or Ukrainian prostitutes.
Right now you get good eggs by advertising on Craig's list and hoping you can get a college educated girl. But the supply is limited. Maybe in 10 years girls will be pressured to give up an egg or two to their gay friends?
Crazy? Yes. But then, so is gay marriage. So is the idea that a man whose penis has been cut off is a woman.
...African-Americans have been beaten down, discriminated against, and terrorized over the past 150 years. Rather than being left to their own devices—something America prides itself on doing for its citizens—blacks were forcefully kept down by government and private institutions, federal laws and private banks.
Chotiner is dissembling.
Whites didn't just leave Blacks to their own devices during the Jim Crow period. Blacks were left to their own devices (that's what segregation means); they also subsidized Blacks.
In the 1920's or '30's, when Blacks and Whites were approximately equal proportions of the South Carolina population, Whites contributed 14 tax dollars for every tax dollar Blacks contributed to the funding of Black schools.
The truth is that chattel slavery in North America was an absolute bonanza for Blacks. Thirty-five or forty million Blacks in the US would not exist if their ancestors had not been brought to our shores. What's more, their standard of living is far superior to that of their brethren back in Africa.
We don't owe them a damned thing; in fact, they owe their very lives to slavery.
There should be a parody of Ta-Nehisi Coates called Ali-Bahma Jacquets.
Lol. I went the other way and tried to come up with something based on "Kentucky". I didn't get anything nearly as good as yours. Nicely done!
This kind of stupid prposal illustrates one of the weaknesses of being a "propositional nation" - anyone can try to take an element of your founding proposition and hijack it, and reorient it so as to redefine the "national proposition" to serve their own particular grievances or interests.
In countries that are defined ethnically....
The US was originally "defined ethnically", with citizenship limited to "free white persons" under the original United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790. Then came the hijacking followed by the fatuous notion of a proposition nation.
The hijacking occurs before, not after, a population becomes a "proposition nation".
Maybe it would be worth it to spend the $4 trillion. Give each African American a choice - a tax-free, $100,000 check and lose the right to vote for the rest of their life, or keep the status quo. This might actually be a bargain for America.
Speaking for myself--a single rain drop in the whole hurricane--I'm ready to tell the African nation here's your check (we just print the money we need in any event), and goodbye and good luck.
Seriously, I am really tired of this charade. The US's African nation and its Anglo-European nation have practically nothing in common. The only way this doesn't end in bloodshed is the central government relenting to allow people their safe harbors to which they can withdraw or leave to interact as they choose and on their terms. But we are adding over a million exogenous people a year to this powder keg.
You'd think a race would be embarrassed to be associated with constant whining, complaining, ingratitude, excuse-making, blame-shifting, and begging, wouldn't you? But it doesn't seem to bother them a bit. In fact, they revel in it!
If none of your ancestors owned slaves, you come from a long line of losers.
Obama's time in office is ticking down, and he still ain't got me my 14 million dollar reparations check!
What's that boy been doin' all this time other than playin' golf and goin' on very pricey vacations?
I wants my reparations and I wants them now!
Persecution for Crimes Against Identity -- force-outs for opposing homosexual marriage, mild non-p.c. comments by n.b.a. owner during a private conversation, public calls for reparations in the polluted Atlantic, etc.
Why now? bc the Great Savior of Progressivism has had 2 and 1/2 terms, with no accomplishments... instead constant failures and embarrassments to the nation, inevitable and predictable pre-2008.
That's gotta be a lot of somebodies fault, and it aint gonna be obama, jarrett, hillary etc. So the heat, and the drama, and the cameras are shifted to Correctness Circus Trials -- so instead sterling is roasted daily, breathless broadcasters emote about snatched girls in africa etc.
Cheers.
"Europeans and North Americans have received free stuff at the expense of Africans, Indigenous people of America, and other oppressed people in the world for 500 years. People of Color want compensation for all the backbreaking work they did (and continue to do) to build up (and sustain) Europe and North America. We got rich on their backs."
BS. Got rich off their backs? How? By taking all the wealth they were obviously producing?
People who are not atheist male nerds have received free stuff at the expense of atheist male nerds and other oppressed people in the world for 500 years. Atheist male nerds want compensation for all the backbreaking work they did (and continue to do) to build up (and sustain) Europe and North America. They got rich on those backs.
Liberia has been an independent nation since around the time California became a state. And Whites are not allowed to be citizens of Liberia. Per the CIA's 'World Factbook':
Liberia is a low income country that relies heavily on foreign assistance.
Per capita GDP is 700USD. To pick a modest country for comparison: per capita GDP in Guatemala is 5.3kUSD (which is less than half the average for the region). In Iceland -- more or less an inhospitable rock in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean -- it is almost 41kUSD.
Black prosperity is highest in direct proportion to their participation in white run societies. They know this which is why they claim oppression but never separate or immigrate, never even think about it. Separation, and the offer to do so, is the wedge that truth tests and exposes the opportunism behind their complaints, complaints such as the demand for reparations.
Blacks constitute approx. 13% of the population but contribute approx. 3% of tax revenues. Their total exactions from the public fisk are unknown to me but given their demographic profile certain to be greater as a proportion of per capita government expenditures than simply 13% of the total. That blacks, while making de minimus contributions to federal tax revenues, correspondingly vote at much higher levels to increase expenditures from those same revenue streams, the income tax, that they do not appreciably contribute to speaks volumes about their motives. This is, for all intents and purposes, a description of a social parasite class, not unlike the Roma.
Part of of the fictional background that constitutes all racial discussions in America is an assumption that all groups seek to make equal sacrifices on behalf of their country. Why this is assumed given the abundance of evidence to the contrary is a mystery. Just as the Roma are a recognized parasite social class within Europe (a group that has made the conscious decision to operate not as an equal contributor but an organized parasite), it is fair to ask why black America is never examined in such a light.
What if we give African Americans a big (and very valuable) chunk of the U.S. to let them establish their own country? I mean, why force them to live amongst the cancer of the human race? Think of how much less racism they would suffer.
"Given some inklings that I've gained from reading TNC's stuff in the past, I think that his real goal here is to make the African-American experience define the American essence."
You make TNC sound like the black Ken Burns.
The easiest way to provide "reparations" for African-Americans would be to stop flooding the USA with immigrants. If liberals won't wake up to the fact that large scale immigration is designed to contain and dilute the African-American community both politically and economically, why should we take them seriously on immigration? Do you think it's a coincidence the Immigration and Nationality Act passed the year after the Civil Rights Act?
If you deduct their room and board under slavery, along with the usufructs of white society that they received, it's a wash. If you also deduct government transfer payments that started in the 1960s, blacks owe us. And if you deduct the destruction they've wreaked (going back to the earliest days), then they owe us big time.
I calculate the bill at just under $400 trillion, figuring in the compound interest and opportunity costs.
Comments already closed on his teaser post: http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/371050/
The comment thread on Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece will be a lot of fun. There'll be room to raise a lot of uncomfortable issues. For example, let's calculate the economic damage blacks have done to American cities.
There's a hilarious Nat'l Lampoon bit out there somewhere. Black America is presented with an invoice of charges against any future reparations representing costs incurred so far, such as the total amount spent on The Club anti-theft device for cars, private school, etc.
I figure blacks owe ME money for squandering all I've paid in taxes for their education, for their housing, for their food, for their babies, for....well, you get the point.
I want my money BACK, dammit.
So a piece published in one 'zine that likely fewer than 1% of Americans reads proclaims that a piece published in another 'zine that likely fewer than 1% of Americans reads has the power to force a national debate on reparations?
He wasnt fighting to end slavery. Heck, he was fighting on the side that wanted to send every black - free or slave - to Africa, Haiti, or "anywhere but here" as Lincoln put it.
The most up to date historical estimates I have read indicate only SIX percent of southerners owned slaves! And that is all slave owners, including the Indian and Black slave owners.
You know how leftists love to post the map of which states take in more money than they pay back to the Feds? I find it dubious for a number of reasons, but those same leftists would suddenly no longer be interested in tax payments if the same thing was broken down by race, as suggested above.
Let us tax the top one percent to deliver reparations to blacks - on the condition that they renounce their citizenship and leave forever.
Who, blacks, or the 1%?
Fine by me if we evicted both. Provided the 1% left without their money. They are actively working to destroy the nation that made their undreamed of wealth possible in the first place. We could keep those few of the 1% that aren't guilty of this; the remainder would be more than enough to pay off "reparations" and wherever they moved to they would be unlikely to get the same sweetheart deal they got in the old USA that they ruined.
What if we give African Americans a big (and very valuable) chunk of the U.S. to let them establish their own country?
Been there, tried that -- see my post on Liberia.
As Vox Day observes, Brendan Eich's persecution was all about Mozilla's desire to implement DRM.
His views on gay marriage were simply a convenient pretext.
Mozilla's desire or Hollywood lawyers' desire to implement DRM?
They sure did act quickly to force DRM on us once he was out of the way.
The similarities to the Sterling brouhaha are interesting.
who? whom? etc.
I bet he won't even open the comment section. He's not the debating type.
The solution is obvious. Hand over New York and the rest of New England plus Illinois and the other Great Lakes states plus California and the Pacific Coast to African Americans, in perpetuity. Expel all whites from these territories. Deny all political rights to those who refuse to go.
vinteuil
Well, we're about 92 Komments in now - is it safe for me to infer that all talk of Konstitutionalism is now going to be Kontrolled at iSteve?
Or is the LIFO stack greater than 92 Komments in length?
Keith "Thank God for Slavery" Richburg begs to differ.
I'm sympathetic to the general sentiment, but it's nullified in this case by the fact that the English invaded half the world. You can't forcibly make other peoples business your own and then object if they think the reverse also applies.
The English did not invade "half the world". Their rulers did. And now their rulers are using immigration to invade England itself. The English people bear no responsibility forany of this.
After reparations, black will want something else.
They will want compensation for the failure of reparations to close the gap.
Liberia is a low income country that relies heavily on foreign assistance.
Liberia is a modern hell hole. I have talked to South Africans who work there. It sounds like the Mad Max films come to life. No laws, rule by the strongest and best armed, you can see the results of Western Aid (hospitals, factories, schools, etc.) abandoned and rotting away in the fields as you drive by. It is a zero trust society where everyone is trying to gain the upperhand and screw their partners in any partnership. Everything has to be explained at a 4th grade level when you talk to locals, etc. I'm surprised the descendents of American slaves in Liberia haven't asked for reparations for making them live in such a hellhole.
Hitler and the Nazi party were extremely gay. They were a compendium of gay stereotypes. He was an artist who loved opera, art and aesthetic (male) nudity. The Nuremberg rallies were like Burning Man: Huge, garish, loud. The Nazis loved uniforms, spectacle. It's interesting to see a "gay sociologist" in this film try to deny the obvious: That the 3rd Reich was a 13 year long pride parade. http://youtu.be/_C9qLO9rr84
Re: Liberia
Liberia is an odd case - the freed slaves (the "Americo-Liberians") who were settled in Liberia actually built a fairly stable, if poor, society for around 150 years - but they were only a small part of the total population of Liberia. The disaster that is modern Liberia is the result of civil wars unleashed by the native Africans after generations of being excluded by the Americo-Liberians.
The story of the Americo-Liberians is really fascinating - upon being settled in Africa, they built society based on their impressions of the Antebellum South - the ruling party up through the 1970's was the "True Whig Party", the elite men all were members the Monrovia Masonic lodge, which was built in a grand Greek revival style, and the elite were wearing top hats and bonnets for decades after they went out of style in America.
They also looked down and exploited the native African tribes, denying them citizenship and voting rights, and forcing them into labor on plantations. Eventually these tribes rebelled and started exceptionally savage Liberian civil wars in the 1980s.
The English did not invade "half the world". Their rulers did.
Really? That's what you're going with?
Harry Baldwin said...
You'd think a race would be embarrassed to be associated with constant whining, complaining, ingratitude, excuse-making, blame-shifting, and begging, wouldn't you? But it doesn't seem to bother them a bit. In fact, they revel in it!
====
A few of us are very embarrassed.
I'm sympathetic to the general sentiment, but it's nullified in this case by the fact that the English invaded half the world. You can't forcibly make other peoples business your own and then object if they think the reverse also applies.
Funny how your logic only kicks in after the dates of the beginning of English expansion, and only applies to the English. (Though I grant that the more expansively resentful may apply it to Europeans in general.)
How about a list of the places conquered by the English which were occupied by innocent autochthones sprung from the ground they stood on, who never engaged in wars of conquest themselves or went in for the other sorts of resource-grabbing mayhem? So the ones that don't make the cut (ahem, most if not all) were just getting what was coming to them when the English came in turn, right?
Glad we cleared that up. By the way, if "the reverse also applies", could you give us a firm date for when all the Pakistanis and Nigerians are going to clear out of the British Isles?
ben tillman: The English did not invade "half the world". Their rulers did. And now their rulers are using immigration to invade England itself. The English people bear no responsibility forany of this.
True as far as it goes, but I don't like this tack because it will never be taken as anything but a concession. The people using the "but the empire!" line, after all, are only interested in it as a cudgel against whites, not in finding any common ground with some of them, or respecting their right to nationhood in any way.
It's of a piece with "but my ancestors didn't own slaves", or "but my ancestors didn't come over 'til after 1865" - as if, hey, collective punishment and vilification of (white only, of course) people whose ancestors did own slaves, or who came before 1865, would be mete and reasonable. I'm all for hanging traitors, but apologies for conquest and empire are owed by all conquerors or no conquerors.
The English did not invade "half the world". Their rulers did. And now their rulers are using immigration to invade England itself. The English people bear no responsibility forany of this.
Indeed. And furthermore, in case anyone hadnt noticed, the English have now left most of those countries.
Keith "Thank God for Slavery" Richburg begs to differ.
Richburg is an interesting subject. For those who don't remember he published a book in 1998 about his experience as WaPo bureau chief in Kenya and dared suggest that maybe it's a tad better to be born a black American than a black African. I doubt he'd manage to get such a book published today. Here he is on CSPAN's Booknotes:
http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/79419-1/Keith+Richburg.aspx
apologies for conquest and empire are owed by all conquerors or no conquerors.
You're determinedly missing the point. Matthew Arnold made his assertion about how "we can have no scruple at all about abridging, if necessary, a non-Englishman’s assertion of personal liberty" in 1869 - at a time when England was very enthusiastically abridging non-Englishmens assertions of personal liberty all around the globe. He was making an apology for conquerors. So to cite him in support of "the right to be left alone" is just odd.
A piece of paper is not the state. Only the character of the citizens is. Got anything else?
Funny how your logic only kicks in after the dates of the beginning of English expansion, and only applies to the English
Nothing "funny" about it, if you bother to notice who I'm responding to, what he said, and when he said it. It was an Englishman, talking about England, in 1869. So it's hardly surprising I did not say anything about the Roman Empire in 265 AD.
Since you're so concerned about it, I've never been a big fan of empires in general.
Farrakhan has always yelled for separation.
Once, I warned a white co-worker who was becoming too enarmored of Farrakhan because of the latter's position on "separation of the races." I told him, "The only thing that guy wants to separate is your head from your body."
I like Eich!
“The English did not invade "half the world". Their rulers did. And now their rulers are using immigration to invade England itself.”
Really? King James I, for example, was a one man wrecking crew? Nay, the English people were more than willing to spread their culture to those poor wretches in Africa, India, and the Americas.
Coates is treated far better then he deserves to be solely because of the color of his skin. I'm all for a fair shake, but that requires Coates and his ilk to stop sponging off everyone else.
Exactly. Coates can't be bothered to learn to write grammatically correct English, yet he taught an essay-writing class at MIT, for Christ's sake. His editors at the Atlantic seem to think cleaning up his fractured syntax is racist.
Here's the per capita incomes of various African countries in 2013: Nigeria, $1,692; Ivory Coast, $1,175; Kenya, $1,107; Zimbabwe, $987; Mali, $656; Niger, $443; Eritrea, $544; Ethipioa, $541; and Central African Republic, $333.
The US per capita income in 2013 was $53,101. Of various Western European countries (from which most Americans originate) or their descendants: UK, $39,567; Holland, $47,663; Austria, $48,956; Sweden, $57,909; Australia, $64,863; Switzerland, $81,323; Germany, $44,999; Canada, $51,989; Italy, $34,714.
In other words, American whites are, at best, earning twice as much in the US as they would if they had stayed in Europe or moved to some white country w/o slavery (e.g., Australia). Mostly we're doing 20-30-40% better than we would be at "home." But blacks in the US are earning an order of magnitude more than they would be if they were still in Africa.
That isn't to justify slavery. Slavery was horrible. But it was horrible to people who are now several generations removed from the living. Freed slaves had a rough start of it in 1865, having little wealth to their names. But they were little different than millions of whites who found themselves in the same poverty upon arriving in the US.
American blacks are not owed for the labor of the long-since deceased. If we are to give them reparations, it must be with the condition that they renounce their US citizenship and head back to Africa. In fact I would gladly offer $100,000 to any working age black who accepts such an offer, just to show how few of them would actually accept it.
Give each African American a choice - a tax-free, $100,000 check and lose the right to vote for the rest of their life, or keep the status quo.
Lose the right to vote but stay here? I'd take that deal. My vote hasn't gotten me much. The Republican Party doesn't worry about voters anymore, just donors.
Provided the 1% left without their money. They are actively working to destroy the nation that made their undreamed of wealth possible in the first place.
It's not the 1% that's the real problem, it's the 0.02%, those whose net worth is $30 million or more. When you're talking about the 1% you're including way too many people who don't have enough money to cause a lot of problems.
"Anonymous Idle Spectator said...
'The English did not invade "half the world". Their rulers did. And now their rulers are using immigration to invade England itself.'
Really? King James I, for example, was a one man wrecking crew? Nay, the English people were more than willing to spread their culture to those poor wretches in Africa, India, and the Americas."
Whatever dude. Here you stand in the US (most likely) sponging off the teat of that Maritime Empire of trade and good laughs inherited from the British. Go live in Rwanda instead. Tired of the Marxist claptrap. It ain't so fuckin' bad.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
The English did not invade "half the world". Their rulers did.
Really? That's what you're going with?
5/21/14, 8:02 AM
There is a pretty good argument to be made that Britain was ruled by a Scottish-German-Jewish Junta for much of the Imperial period and trampled on the lower orders who were separated out by a class system that verged on a racial caste system. Frankly I think it still is. The English are ruled by a hostile elite. It's been the case since at least 1066 and likely long before.
The Royals associated with the Empire since the act of Union are almost all Germanic. The Stuarts were Scottish-French. Their court hangers on? Have you ever dipped into the lists?
The English themselves have been abused like cattle with few rights and few means of determining their own destiny. Any social historian who has looked at it seriously would agree that the non aristocrats were treated like cattle.
Now that English cities are going black and brown and the historic population migrates to the country or overseas it's hard to see what is left of the identity or the territory.
Again this is the product of a hostile elite tooling around with ordinary people.
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