Current Events > Do you favour full reparations to descendants of American slaves?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Basically, backpay for all those unpaid work hours, of all slaves, ever. One person once estimated how much this would cost, and it was somewhere between 1.4 and 1.7 trillion dollars.

I used to think doing this would be crazy, but now I'm on the fence. Apart from the fact that the US is incredibly rich, more to the point, such a huge goodwill gesture could finally heal the rift between blacks and whites. No more horrible tensions, and people getting killed by white police officers for no good reason.

What do you think?

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If it ever happened, every black resident would receive about 40,000. The majority of people could pay off some debt and bills, but they'd still be stuck
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fuck that noise
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I dunno, can you really consider what they did work when all of them lived for free? Basic necessities were provided for them and some lived really well off. When Lincoln freed the slaves I'm almost certain a large majority of slaves suffered greatly from it bc they were used to that lifestyle, they had to be weaned off from the whites if I recall correctly.

If you can find someone who suffered through slavery, please let me know and I'll personally hand deliver their reparations.
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I do not
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Sunhawk posted...

heal the rift between blacks and whites

Wouldn't heal shit. You'd have poor whites/asians/whatever wanting their piece of that $$$ too. It might make some aspects better, while making others worse. Who knows, tho.

Something like this shoulda happened at the end of slavery.
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Right now? No. Nobody alive has anything to do with it, so that would be dumb. It's the same thing when anyone brings up "stolen land" from Native Americans. This stuff happened so long ago that it's no longer relevant. It shouldn't be forgotten, but it also has nothing to do with daily life.

Sunhawk posted...

such a huge goodwill gesture could finally heal the rift between blacks and whites. No more horrible tensions, and people getting killed by white police officers for no good reason.

doubt

edit: i mean it might be a start but this isn't going away over night.
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nemu posted...

Right now? No. Nobody alive has anything to do with it, so that would be dumb. It's the same thing when anyone brings up "stolen land" from Native Americans. This stuff happened so long ago that it's no longer relevant. It shouldn't be forgotten, but it also has nothing to do with daily life.

saying it's no longer relevant is wrongly saying it doesn't have an effect today
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Kombucha posted...

Sunhawk posted...

such a huge goodwill gesture could finally heal the rift between blacks and whites. No more horrible tensions, and people getting killed by white police officers for no good reason.

doubt

edit: i mean it might be a start but this isn't going away over night.

If anything, it would inflame racial tensions. I can't imagine other minority groups who feel like they've also been treated poorly in the past would take kindly to black people getting free money at their expense. I'm positive poor whites would also react very badly. I would not be surprised if a reparation plan like the one suggested led to a resurgence of lynching.
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If you can track down literally every slave descendant, regardless of race, while not including anyone who shares a color but not actual descent with former slaves, sure, go ahead.

Let me know when you've got even the faintest idea of how that might be achieved, rather than your racist idea of "let's assume everyone who's black, and no one else, is descended from slaves".
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Paper_Okami posted...

nemu posted...

Right now? No. Nobody alive has anything to do with it, so that would be dumb. It's the same thing when anyone brings up "stolen land" from Native Americans. This stuff happened so long ago that it's no longer relevant. It shouldn't be forgotten, but it also has nothing to do with daily life.

saying it's no longer relevant is wrongly saying it doesn't have an effect today

Except it kinda doesn't. Slavery's been illegal for a couple of centuries now; even segregation is a couple of generations behind us now. The only thing that remains is... some people who don't like blacks. And you are never, ever going to be able to get rid of that; just like there will always be some blacks who don't like whites, etc.

In fact, it's so well solved now that those who want to be racist literally have to invent non-existant "racism", then use it to justify giving themself power, while hoodwinking people into thinking their racist moves are actually for the benefit of minorities (which kinda breaks down when most people, even if they don't see through the overall plan, realise that that's still a form of racism).
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Dyinglegacy posted...

You'd have poor whites/asians/whatever wanting their piece of that $$$ too.

good point. I bet TC didn't even think of the chinese railroad workers. many of them died while working

We need to get past all variations of "original sin" and move the fuck off.
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This stuff happened to so long ago

Yet we still live fully aware that we're on Native American lands.

lincoln002 posted...

I dunno, can you really consider what they did work when all of them lived for free? Basic necessities were provided for them and some lived really well off. When Lincoln freed the slaves I'm almost certain a large majority of slaves suffered greatly from it bc they were used to that lifestyle, they had to be weaned off from the whites if I recall correctly.

Lmfao. This is one of your better posts trolling or not.

But yeah absolutely fucking not. It was many generations ago and irrelevant today. No one today went through slavery and it would create more problems than it would solve, in addition to being a gigantic waste of money.
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Metro2 posted...

This stuff happened to so long ago

Yet we still live fully aware that we're on Native American lands.

Europeans and Asians don't drone on about who killed who to get who's land hundreds of years before, for the most part. It shouldn't be thought of in a positive light, but it also is ancient history.

What about the descendants of the Africans who sold other Africans to the slavers?
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LightHawKnight posted...

What about the descendants of the Africans who sold other Africans to the slavers?

To European slavers? The way you worded that, you sound like you're actually blaming the European slavers for creating so much demand in the first place!
Surely you didn't mean to though?

nemu posted...

Right now? No. Nobody alive has anything to do with it, so that would be dumb. It's the same thing when anyone brings up "stolen land" from Native Americans. This stuff happened so long ago that it's no longer relevant. It shouldn't be forgotten, but it also has nothing to do with daily life.

This is completely false
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Slaves? What about the descendants of the Greenville race riot in Tulsa? Or generations of housing discrimination in this country?

You can't fix these problems by just throwing money at them. it's going to take a whole cultural realignment of who we are to fix this, and it's going to take generations.
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Lmao
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will europe be paying some of it? since they were the ones that introduced the slaves to the americas and abused the hell out of the practice.

will reparations be paid to the scores of immigrants that were functionally slaves since they weren't the right type of white?

how about native americans, who arguably got a wore deal?
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Fuck reparations.

White people could literally just treat black communities the same way they treat white communities and that would be such a huge goodwill gesture could finally heal the rift between blacks and whites.

hollow_shrine posted...

Slaves? What about the descendants of the Greenville race riot in Tulsa? Or generations of housing discrimination in this country?

You can't fix these problems by just throwing money at them. it's going to take a whole cultural realignment of who we are to fix this, and it's going to take generations.

It's always been my impression that the discussion of reparations is more thought exercise than serious policy.
Basically, do you take seriously the continual and continuing damage white racism has done to the economic standing of black Americans and agree that something(s) concrete must be done to rectify the problem?

No. Nobody alive now in the US had anything to do with slavery.
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LethalAffinity posted...

No. Nobody alive now in the US had anything to do with slavery.

You think all the racist slave-masters just vanished into thin air when slavery ended?

ThanksUglyGod posted...

You think all the racist slave-masters just vanished into thin air when slavery ended?

you think they achieved immortality and are still walking among us today?

ThanksUglyGod posted...

LethalAffinity posted...

No. Nobody alive now in the US had anything to do with slavery.

You think all the racist slave-masters just vanished into thin air when slavery ended?

Nope. It's too late to do reparations is what I'm saying. The idea should have been floated after reconstruction.
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ThanksUglyGod posted...

LethalAffinity posted...

No. Nobody alive now in the US had anything to do with slavery.

You think all the racist slave-masters just vanished into thin air when slavery ended?

ah, well line up the 180yo+ slave masters and i'll be the first to shoot them in the head.
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No. That's like asking for the slavers who bought them from other African tribes to get a refund.

The tribes who sold other tribes to the "White man" should have to pay if anyone does.
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They've already been paid back by living in this country and being able to do anything any other person can. If that isn't good enough we can buy them a ticket back to where they came from.

But dont forget it was blacks who sold other blacks. So if anything they should look to get reparations from the african people who sold their ancestors

LethalAffinity posted...

ThanksUglyGod posted...

LethalAffinity posted...

No. Nobody alive now in the US had anything to do with slavery.

You think all the racist slave-masters just vanished into thin air when slavery ended?

Nope. It's too late to do reparations is what I'm saying. The idea should have been floated after reconstruction.

It kinda did though. Former slave owners and their descendants hated it so much, they rolled them back and introduced Jim Crow laws.

ThanksUglyGod posted...

LethalAffinity posted...

No. Nobody alive now in the US had anything to do with slavery.

You think all the racist slave-masters just vanished into thin air when slavery ended?

Much of them lingers. Their entitlement, their self-serving justifications and self-delusion, their trenchant sense of cultural identity. Across our history, the pendulum of American political discourse has kept showing us glimpses of them in how we see ourselves.
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wheredayayo posted...

They've already been paid back by living in this country and being able to do anything any other person can. If that isn't good enough we can buy them a ticket back to where they came from.

But dont forget it was blacks who sold other blacks. So if anything they should look to get reparations from the african people who sold their ancestors

Another dumb comment
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All the people who endured american slavery arent alive today so
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wheredayayo posted...

But dont forget it was blacks who sold other blacks. So if anything they should look to get reparations from the african people who sold their ancestors

Nobody told white people to buy them

ThanksUglyGod posted...

wheredayayo posted...

But dont forget it was blacks who sold other blacks. So if anything they should look to get reparations from the african people who sold their ancestors

Nobody told white people to buy them

So it woulda been ok as long as the buyer wasnt white? So it was all good when blacks captured and held them as slaves