For the Leftists here, a Question about your hypocritical agenda.

[M5-Shogun]

Let's have an honest discussion for a second. There's a few points to the modern leftist agenda in the US that have irked me, especially as the descendant of a survivor of the 1959 Cubano revolution.

There's two points I want to in particular cover:

1. Slavery Reparations
2. Unconditional Support for Asylum Claimants on the US-Mexico Border

Let's cover the first one, shall we? First off, yes I'm aware that during the Reconstruction former slaves were promised 40 acres and a mule. That didn't happen, primarily due to the Democratic party. This is a fact. Let's move to the present day. Currently, the Biden-Harris admin and many, but not all, members of the Democratic party in Congress want to give into black supremacists and nationalists in the country and give them financial reparations, and increase affirmative action, among other things.

There's a lot of problems with this, but in particular I'm going to cover the main ones:

* Socioeconomic statuses in the US are no longer a matter of black and white occupying different sides of the poverty line. The KFF has information on this here. As you can see, while white Americans have less percentage-wise below the poverty line, let's apply that to actual population numbers. 250 x 9% = 22.5 million white Americans 44*.21 = 9 million Black Americans. This means that applying such a financial and social advantage would create a minority caste system.

* A minority caste system has existed before. Rhodesia. South Africa. Namibia. The Ottoman Empire (Specifically, the Balkans). These countries treated their conquered people differently, and frankly, as lessers. The Ottoman Empire regularly kidnapped Greek, Srbijan, Croatian and Macedonian children to make into Muslim child soldiers. Everyone the world over universally agrees the "white minority rule" countries of South Africa committed insanely immoral acts.

* Reparations are not viewed to improve race relations. To the contrary, many speak of increased resentment.

My viewpoints also are compounded by other neglected minority groups in the US who have also faced racism and hatred for their ethnicity. This includes Southern Europeans, many who were lynched, discriminated against for decades and beaten down in media. Or the Japanese, who were put into concentration camps and it took more than 50 years for the US to acknowledge what they did. Or Indo-Pakistani Americans, who are among the most successful immigrants to America, having some of the highest incomes and lowest divorce rates. How are you going to tell these people that they're not worthy, or that they will be expected to pay for these things?

I'd like to also say that the modern "white" population of the US is primarily made up of immigrants from Europe or mixes between them and people who lived here prior to 1865. Are you going to go by a one-drop rule? That's pretty racist. That money has to come from somewhere. If you tax everyone, then you're taxing rich minority families to pay for poor ones. If you just borrow it, you're compounding an already unsettling debt crisis. If you just print it, Weimar Republic Germany.

All of this sounds an awful lot like racism. That's because it is. It's racist to claim that Black Americans are such victims that they are entitled. Entitled to millions in subsidies while 22 million poor white people get nothing. While the other minorities of the US get nothing. While you virtue signal and prance about claiming you're solving the crisis plaguing Black Americans, you're just sowing further divisions.

My heart goes out to the Black Americans who have suffered, but this is not the answer. Creating a caste system will increase resentment. It will not solve this.

Let's cover the second topic. This is going to get heavy into international legalese, if you're not educated enough to understand what I'm talking about, then just listen.

Thousands of people are knocking on the US-Mexico border, demanding asylum. But how many of them actually meet the criteria by international law? Let's see:

In UN Conventions, Charters and Declarations, Asylum seeker = refugee. It's defined as: "a person who is outside that person's own country's territory (or place of habitual residence if stateless) owing to fear of persecution on protected grounds. Protected grounds include race, caste, nationality, religion, political opinions and membership or participation in any particular social group or social activities. Rendering true victims of persecution to their persecutor is a violation of a principle called non-refoulement, part of the customary and trucial Law of Nations." From hereon, I will refer to them as refugees.

Primary cases for asylum are those who would face persecution in one of those areas. Not economic. Notice that's missing. There's no economic clause here. A country with its economy in shambles is by itself, not enough. The primary three nationalities coming to the US from the Mexican border are:

Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador.

None of these countries are under civil war. None of them are persecuting minorities en masse. None of them are doing anything that would particularly morally qualify for asylum at the outset. But all of them do have one thing in common - poor economies and high unemployment and crime rates.

By and large, these claims logically should be invalid. I am not against immigration. I am against illegal immigration or immigration of unskilled workers en masse. The US cannot afford to accommodate the world's impoverished populations.

Under much of international law, even if that were the case, Mexico would qualify as the first country for asylum. Mexico is a modern country, and it has offered many of the supposed refugees the right to stay.

The only countries in Latin America that regularly qualify for the definition of a country that persecutes and engages in human rights atrocities en masse are Venezuela and Cuba. Nobody else.

By supporting this, you're not only making a mockery of international law, but you're also just being foolish. These are primarily economic migrants. We have a massive labor surplus already. What makes you think these people are somehow more entitled than already established US citizens and alien residents?

So my question to you is how you can sit there and support these things when they not only deny the reality and consequences of these policies, but they don't seek to actually stand up to the values you claim to hold.

 

[wiscoaster]

Well, there's a couple things about your post, first: regardless of how much sense your points might make, when you address "leftists" and then characterize their agenda as "hypocritical", regardless of how right you may be, you've already tuned out that audience and eliminated them as participants in the "honest discussion" you seek. And second, the audience you're targeting isn't interested in listening and they're not interested in debating, and so you're not going to convince a single one of them of the rightness of your points, because as well as not listening, they're not even thinking. In other words, you don't understand your audience, you're not getting their attention, you won't get an "honest discussion", and you won't sway a single one of them using this approach.

 

[M5-Shogun]

I'm not looking to sway them. I'm looking to catch them in hypocrisy.

 

[wiscoaster]

Well, they're already caught. They don't care; they're not paying attention. Making any change in their thinking by a claim of hypocrisy requires more than proof of that hypocrisy when those proofs are discounted by them as falsehoods and when they're incapable of self-evaluation as to their values, thoughts and actions in reference to absolute externals.

 

[M5-Shogun]

Well in any case, I think my post was well-written. If you don't agree, that's cool. But I can say I tried!

 

[roscoe]

Let's have an honest discussion for a second. There's a few points to the modern leftist agenda in the US that have irked me, especially as the descendant of a survivor of the 1959 Cubano revolution.

There's two points I want to in particular cover:

1. Slavery Reparations
2. Unconditional Support for Asylum Claimants on the US-Mexico Border

Let's cover the first one, shall we? First off, yes I'm aware that during the Reconstruction former slaves were promised 40 acres and a mule. That didn't happen, primarily due to the Democratic party. This is a fact. Let's move to the present day. Currently, the Biden-Harris admin and many, but not all, members of the Democratic party in Congress want to give into black supremacists and nationalists in the country and give them financial reparations, and increase affirmative action, among other things.

There's a lot of problems with this, but in particular I'm going to cover the main ones:

* Socioeconomic statuses in the US are no longer a matter of black and white occupying different sides of the poverty line. The KFF has information on this here. As you can see, while white Americans have less percentage-wise below the poverty line, let's apply that to actual population numbers. 250 x 9% = 22.5 million white Americans 44*.21 = 9 million Black Americans. This means that applying such a financial and social advantage would create a minority caste system.

* A minority caste system has existed before. Rhodesia. South Africa. Namibia. The Ottoman Empire (Specifically, the Balkans). These countries treated their conquered people differently, and frankly, as lessers. The Ottoman Empire regularly kidnapped Greek, Srbijan, Croatian and Macedonian children to make into Muslim child soldiers. Everyone the world over universally agrees the "white minority rule" countries of South Africa committed insanely immoral acts.

* Reparations are not viewed to improve race relations. To the contrary, many speak of increased resentment.

My viewpoints also are compounded by other neglected minority groups in the US who have also faced racism and hatred for their ethnicity. This includes Southern Europeans, many who were lynched, discriminated against for decades and beaten down in media. Or the Japanese, who were put into concentration camps and it took more than 50 years for the US to acknowledge what they did. Or Indo-Pakistani Americans, who are among the most successful immigrants to America, having some of the highest incomes and lowest divorce rates. How are you going to tell these people that they're not worthy, or that they will be expected to pay for these things?

I'd like to also say that the modern "white" population of the US is primarily made up of immigrants from Europe or mixes between them and people who lived here prior to 1865. Are you going to go by a one-drop rule? That's pretty racist. That money has to come from somewhere. If you tax everyone, then you're taxing rich minority families to pay for poor ones. If you just borrow it, you're compounding an already unsettling debt crisis. If you just print it, Weimar Republic Germany.

All of this sounds an awful lot like racism. That's because it is. It's racist to claim that Black Americans are such victims that they are entitled. Entitled to millions in subsidies while 22 million poor white people get nothing. While the other minorities of the US get nothing. While you virtue signal and prance about claiming you're solving the crisis plaguing Black Americans, you're just sowing further divisions.

My heart goes out to the Black Americans who have suffered, but this is not the answer. Creating a caste system will increase resentment. It will not solve this.

Let's cover the second topic. This is going to get heavy into international legalese, if you're not educated enough to understand what I'm talking about, then just listen.

Thousands of people are knocking on the US-Mexico border, demanding asylum. But how many of them actually meet the criteria by international law? Let's see:

In UN Conventions, Charters and Declarations, Asylum seeker = refugee. It's defined as: "a person who is outside that person's own country's territory (or place of habitual residence if stateless) owing to fear of persecution on protected grounds. Protected grounds include race, caste, nationality, religion, political opinions and membership or participation in any particular social group or social activities. Rendering true victims of persecution to their persecutor is a violation of a principle called non-refoulement, part of the customary and trucial Law of Nations." From hereon, I will refer to them as refugees.

Primary cases for asylum are those who would face persecution in one of those areas. Not economic. Notice that's missing. There's no economic clause here. A country with its economy in shambles is by itself, not enough. The primary three nationalities coming to the US from the Mexican border are:

Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador.

None of these countries are under civil war. None of them are persecuting minorities en masse. None of them are doing anything that would particularly morally qualify for asylum at the outset. But all of them do have one thing in common - poor economies and high unemployment and crime rates.

By and large, these claims logically should be invalid. I am not against immigration. I am against illegal immigration or immigration of unskilled workers en masse. The US cannot afford to accommodate the world's impoverished populations.

Under much of international law, even if that were the case, Mexico would qualify as the first country for asylum. Mexico is a modern country, and it has offered many of the supposed refugees the right to stay.

The only countries in Latin America that regularly qualify for the definition of a country that persecutes and engages in human rights atrocities en masse are Venezuela and Cuba. Nobody else.

By supporting this, you're not only making a mockery of international law, but you're also just being foolish. These are primarily economic migrants. We have a massive labor surplus already. What makes you think these people are somehow more entitled than already established US citizens and alien residents?

So my question to you is how you can sit there and support these things when they not only deny the reality and consequences of these policies, but they don't seek to actually stand up to the values you claim to hold.

In response to the first question:

I wouldn't get to hung up on the fact that the 'Democratic party' supported slavery. Republicans were once the liberal/progressive party (especially famously under Teddy Roosevelt) but between 1920 and 1970 the parties essentially flipped. Carter was the last Democrat to comprehensively win the South.

But with regard to reparations - this is not a simple issue. Many times between the end of Reconstruction and the 1970s, blacks were stripped of their property, or chased off of their land, or had their property burned down. That, and the red-lining (preventing blacks from buying property), which is documented and was part of official government policy across many jurisdicitons for much of the 19th and 20th century, prevented blacks from accumulating capital. Further, it was official policy in many businesses, and the US government (especially under Wilson, and afterwards) to keep blacks in menial positions. Finally, voter suppression prevented blacks from acquiring the political power to protect their economic interests. These actions are largely why the black population has been so poor, and why they have been ghettoized.

And this is aside from the question of slavery. The economic value produced by the slaves up until 1865 was enormous, and obviously they received no compensation. There are still large land-owners in the South whose land was partially paid for with slave labor. Even these families have not been forced to pay compensation.

So, from a purely moral standpoint, obviously they deserve reparations. The only question is how to do it and make it, in some sense, fair. The other group that has a legitimate claim is the Native Americans. The Native American claim is not really settled. The US Supreme Court recently (McGirt v. Oklahoma, 2020) declared a very large chunk of Oklahoma to be under the jurisdiction of the '5 Civilized Tribes' ( Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek/Muscogee, and Seminole). So the courts have, at least partially, recognized older claims by native Americans.

But there never even been a token effort to compensate former slaves, or African-Americans who were simply economically repressed during the 20th century. Andrew Johnson prevented the '40 acres and a mule' proposal of Lincoln. So, literally, this was a group that started from nothing, and the Southerners, after 1878, did pretty much everything they could to prevent this group from getting an economic toehold. And now we see the results of that. Who paid for the recovery of the burned-out businesses of the Greenwood district of Tulsa? The African-American community rebuilt it themselves, and the arsonists and race-rioters got off scott-free. Just as happened to farms and houses all across the South between the end of Reconstruction and the 1970s.

Yes, today, nobody wants to pay for it (or even take responsibility for it). But it would take, relative to the US budget, a minuscule amount of money to ensure every descendent of a slave had access to good, free schools and a free college education. Or a well-funded mortgage program could be set up to encourage home-ownership and business creation. There are all kinds of ways to do it that don't mean handing out stacks of cash.

Slavery is the original sin of the United States, but we have never faced up to what we owe the former slaves.

 

[wiscoaster]

Well in any case, I think my post was well-written. If you don't agree, that's cool. But I can say I tried!

I do think it was very well-written. I appreciate the effort. I just don't think it was effectively targeted.

You can't convince someone they're "wrong" when they don't believe that there is an absolute "right". If their "right" is relative then any argument you make against their "rightness" as seen in their own eyes is seen by them as "not right".

 

[roscoe]

Let's have an honest discussion for a second. There's a few points to the modern leftist agenda in the US that have irked me, especially as the descendant of a survivor of the 1959 Cubano revolution.

There's two points I want to in particular cover:

1. Slavery Reparations
2. Unconditional Support for Asylum Claimants on the US-Mexico Border

Let's cover the first one, shall we? First off, yes I'm aware that during the Reconstruction former slaves were promised 40 acres and a mule. That didn't happen, primarily due to the Democratic party. This is a fact. Let's move to the present day. Currently, the Biden-Harris admin and many, but not all, members of the Democratic party in Congress want to give into black supremacists and nationalists in the country and give them financial reparations, and increase affirmative action, among other things.

There's a lot of problems with this, but in particular I'm going to cover the main ones:

* Socioeconomic statuses in the US are no longer a matter of black and white occupying different sides of the poverty line. The KFF has information on this here. As you can see, while white Americans have less percentage-wise below the poverty line, let's apply that to actual population numbers. 250 x 9% = 22.5 million white Americans 44*.21 = 9 million Black Americans. This means that applying such a financial and social advantage would create a minority caste system.

* A minority caste system has existed before. Rhodesia. South Africa. Namibia. The Ottoman Empire (Specifically, the Balkans). These countries treated their conquered people differently, and frankly, as lessers. The Ottoman Empire regularly kidnapped Greek, Srbijan, Croatian and Macedonian children to make into Muslim child soldiers. Everyone the world over universally agrees the "white minority rule" countries of South Africa committed insanely immoral acts.

* Reparations are not viewed to improve race relations. To the contrary, many speak of increased resentment.

My viewpoints also are compounded by other neglected minority groups in the US who have also faced racism and hatred for their ethnicity. This includes Southern Europeans, many who were lynched, discriminated against for decades and beaten down in media. Or the Japanese, who were put into concentration camps and it took more than 50 years for the US to acknowledge what they did. Or Indo-Pakistani Americans, who are among the most successful immigrants to America, having some of the highest incomes and lowest divorce rates. How are you going to tell these people that they're not worthy, or that they will be expected to pay for these things?

I'd like to also say that the modern "white" population of the US is primarily made up of immigrants from Europe or mixes between them and people who lived here prior to 1865. Are you going to go by a one-drop rule? That's pretty racist. That money has to come from somewhere. If you tax everyone, then you're taxing rich minority families to pay for poor ones. If you just borrow it, you're compounding an already unsettling debt crisis. If you just print it, Weimar Republic Germany.

All of this sounds an awful lot like racism. That's because it is. It's racist to claim that Black Americans are such victims that they are entitled. Entitled to millions in subsidies while 22 million poor white people get nothing. While the other minorities of the US get nothing. While you virtue signal and prance about claiming you're solving the crisis plaguing Black Americans, you're just sowing further divisions.

My heart goes out to the Black Americans who have suffered, but this is not the answer. Creating a caste system will increase resentment. It will not solve this.

Let's cover the second topic. This is going to get heavy into international legalese, if you're not educated enough to understand what I'm talking about, then just listen.

Thousands of people are knocking on the US-Mexico border, demanding asylum. But how many of them actually meet the criteria by international law? Let's see:

In UN Conventions, Charters and Declarations, Asylum seeker = refugee. It's defined as: "a person who is outside that person's own country's territory (or place of habitual residence if stateless) owing to fear of persecution on protected grounds. Protected grounds include race, caste, nationality, religion, political opinions and membership or participation in any particular social group or social activities. Rendering true victims of persecution to their persecutor is a violation of a principle called non-refoulement, part of the customary and trucial Law of Nations." From hereon, I will refer to them as refugees.

Primary cases for asylum are those who would face persecution in one of those areas. Not economic. Notice that's missing. There's no economic clause here. A country with its economy in shambles is by itself, not enough. The primary three nationalities coming to the US from the Mexican border are:

Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador.

None of these countries are under civil war. None of them are persecuting minorities en masse. None of them are doing anything that would particularly morally qualify for asylum at the outset. But all of them do have one thing in common - poor economies and high unemployment and crime rates.

By and large, these claims logically should be invalid. I am not against immigration. I am against illegal immigration or immigration of unskilled workers en masse. The US cannot afford to accommodate the world's impoverished populations.

Under much of international law, even if that were the case, Mexico would qualify as the first country for asylum. Mexico is a modern country, and it has offered many of the supposed refugees the right to stay.

The only countries in Latin America that regularly qualify for the definition of a country that persecutes and engages in human rights atrocities en masse are Venezuela and Cuba. Nobody else.

By supporting this, you're not only making a mockery of international law, but you're also just being foolish. These are primarily economic migrants. We have a massive labor surplus already. What makes you think these people are somehow more entitled than already established US citizens and alien residents?

So my question to you is how you can sit there and support these things when they not only deny the reality and consequences of these policies, but they don't seek to actually stand up to the values you claim to hold.

Here is my discussion of the second topic, but you are making a straw-man argument if you think that liberals want 'unconditional asylum'. In fact, no liberal I know wants that - that is just a claim right-wingers make to work each other up into a frenzy. They just want border enforcement done in a way that is humane and far-sighted. But we are obviously handling the border the wrong way:

Trump and the Wall

I just wish that they would go ahead and install the panels that are finished. I'm tired of looking at them. There's about thirty acres of them here, stacked 25 feet high, and they block the view from the end of my street. Too bad that all of those obstructionists are determined to keep the...

notechtyranny.com

 

[M5-Shogun]

In response to the first question:

I wouldn't get to hung up on the fact that the 'Democratic party' supported slavery. Republicans were once the liberal/progressive party (especially famously under Teddy Roosevelt) but between 1920 and 1970 the parties essentially flipped. Carter was the last Democrat to comprehensively win the South.

The party flip is a myth. I said that above. Show me the numbers. Richard Russell Jr. was a lifelong Dem. Guess who else? Robert Byrd. William Fullbright. Sam Ervine. Only example from the Senate ever thrown at me is Strom Thurmond. Tell me another lie.

But with regard to reparations - this is not a simple issue. Many times between the end of Reconstruction and the 1970s, blacks were stripped of their property, or chased off of their land, or had their property burned down. That, and the red-lining (preventing blacks from buying property), which is documented and was part of official government policy across many jurisdicitons for much of the 19th and 20th century, prevented blacks from accumulating capital. Further, it was official policy in many businesses, and the US government (especially under Wilson, and afterwards) to keep blacks in menial positions. Finally, voter suppression prevented blacks from acquiring the political power to protect their economic interests. These actions are largely why the black population has been so poor, and why they have been ghettoized.

Guess who was responsible for that property seizure? Democratic party members.

Redlining may not have a racial bias to it. Asians and Native Hawaiians had a lower denial rate, around 12%. Clearly, if this was a racial issue, it would not only affect Blacks. Sources: Federal Reserve Bulletin, Summer 2005, African Americans and Homeownership: The Subprime Lending Experience, 1995 to 2007.

Do you expect that a lender would lend money to someone whose statistically unlikely to pay it back? It's not racial discrimination. Look at statistical credit ratings for each ethnicity. Do you mean to tell me that financial responsibility's definition is somehow racist against Black Americans?

Wilson was a Democrat~. He and FDR both supported segregation! Since the CRA of 1964, Black Americans and other minorities have had the right to vote. Unless you consider voter ID laws somehow voter suppression (Note, 75% of Black Americans have a DL per a report generated by ERIC HOLDER, a Democratic AG) - other forms of ID including a standard ID card. In VA, that's $16. If you have money for a carton of cigs, you have money for an ID card. It's $33 in California. That's still less than carton of cigs nationally.

And this is aside from the question of slavery. The economic value produced by the slaves up until 1865 was enormous, and obviously they received no compensation. There are still large land-owners in the South whose land was partially paid for with slave labor. Even these families have not been forced to pay compensation.

Sins of the father, much? If my father killed someone 50 years ago and then died, I am not responsible for his crimes or for compensation for the victim's family. Similarly, anything I inherited is mine to keep. That's simple morality. Do you lack that?

So, from a purely moral standpoint, obviously they deserve reparations. The only question is how to do it and make it, in some sense, fair. The other group that has a legitimate claim is the Native Americans. The Native American claim is not really settled. The US Supreme Court recently (McGirt v. Oklahoma, 2020) declared a very large chunk of Oklahoma to be under the jurisdiction of the '5 Civilized Tribes' ( Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek/Muscogee, and Seminole). So the courts have, at least partially, recognized older claims by native Americans.

Reparations are not a morally justified by what you said above.

But there never even been a token effort to compensate former slaves, or African-Americans who were simply economically repressed during the 20th century. Andrew Johnson prevented the '40 acres and a mule' proposal of Lincoln. So, literally, this was a group that started from nothing, and the Southerners, after 1878, did pretty much everything they could to prevent this group from getting an economic toehold. And now we see the results of that. Who paid for the recovery of the burned-out businesses of the Greenwood district of Tulsa? The African-American community rebuilt it themselves, and the arsonists and race-rioters got off scott-free. Just as happened to farms and houses all across the South between the end of Reconstruction and the 1970s.

Most of the people who were alive during or before the Civil Rights movement and not children are dead. Those who aren't are geriatric at this point. Are you SERIOUSLY advocating to violate statute of limitations laws to go after people in nursing homes or who are senior citizens? Sheesh.

Yes, today, nobody wants to pay for it (or even take responsibility for it). But it would take, relative to the US budget, a minuscule amount of money to ensure every descendent of a slave had access to good, free schools and a free college education. Or a well-funded mortgage program could be set up to encourage home-ownership and business creation. There are all kinds of ways to do it that don't mean handing out stacks of cash.

It's effectively a "white tax" let's be real. You are willing to tax people who had nothing to do with slavery to meet your end goals. And if you don't make it a white tax, you'll make it be part of our ballooning national debt and kick it down the road. Good job. slowclap.gif

 

[theotherwaldo]

I think that they should give reparations to every surviving former slave and their immediate families.
Beyond that, you'd have to give reparations to folks like myself.
I am the product of the combination of Scots-Irish "indentured servants" that had been kidnapped in Great Britain who promptly escaped over the Appalachians and joined the Comanches and Creeks (who were matrillineal),then intermarried with the mixed-bloods of the mountains until whatever "race" identifiers that may have existed were totally obliterated.
-And that's just my Father's side... .
Mother's side is far more complicated.
Both sides include a number of folks that were members of suppressed minorities.
So when do I get my reparation checks?

 

[roscoe]

The party flip is a myth. I said that above. Show me the numbers. Richard Russell Jr. was a lifelong Dem. Guess who else? Robert Byrd. William Fullbright. Sam Ervine. Only example from the Senate ever thrown at me is Strom Thurmond. Tell me another lie.



Guess who was responsible for that property seizure? Democratic party members.

Redlining may not have a racial bias to it. Asians and Native Hawaiians had a lower denial rate, around 12%. Clearly, if this was a racial issue, it would not only affect Blacks. Sources: Federal Reserve Bulletin, Summer 2005, African Americans and Homeownership: The Subprime Lending Experience, 1995 to 2007.

Do you expect that a lender would lend money to someone whose statistically unlikely to pay it back? It's not racial discrimination. Look at statistical credit ratings for each ethnicity. Do you mean to tell me that financial responsibility's definition is somehow racist against Black Americans?

Wilson was a Democrat~. He and FDR both supported segregation! Since the CRA of 1964, Black Americans and other minorities have had the right to vote. Unless you consider voter ID laws somehow voter suppression (Note, 75% of Black Americans have a DL per a report generated by ERIC HOLDER, a Democratic AG) - other forms of ID including a standard ID card. In VA, that's $16. If you have money for a carton of cigs, you have money for an ID card. It's $33 in California. That's still less than carton of cigs nationally.



Sins of the father, much? If my father killed someone 50 years ago and then died, I am not responsible for his crimes or for compensation for the victim's family. Similarly, anything I inherited is mine to keep. That's simple morality. Do you lack that?


Reparations are not a morally justified by what you said above.



Most of the people who were alive during or before the Civil Rights movement and not children are dead. Those who aren't are geriatric at this point. Are you SERIOUSLY advocating to violate statute of limitations laws to go after people in nursing homes or who are senior citizens? Sheesh.


It's effectively a "white tax" let's be real. You are willing to tax people who had nothing to do with slavery to meet your end goals. And if you don't make it a white tax, you'll make it be part of our ballooning national debt and kick it down the road. Good job. slowclap.gif

You are really wrong on this. The party flip is not a myth. Republicans were the 'liberal' party until early in the 20th century. Teddy Roosevelt was a famous progressive. As was Lincoln, obviously.

The Southern Democrats were pro-segregation starting with Andrew Johnson and only ending when Lyndon Johnson passed the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Woodrow Wilson was the one who instituted racial segregation in the federal service, after T. Roosevelt had integrated it not long before. FDR was nowhere near the rabid segregationist that Wilson was, and he wanted to institute more racially advanced policies, but was blocked by the Southern Democrats. You should do some research of FDR - he was a patrician, and probably mildly racist, but definitely not a rabid segregationist (look up Executive Order 8802). Truman, his VP, integrated the military, over the protests of Southern Democrats (many of whom left the party to found the Dixiecrats).

Southern Democrats - there are too many to mention, but look up Jesse Helms, George Wallace, Fielding Wright, Robert Byrd, etc. And look up the Dixiecrat party - they specifically removed themselves from the Democrats over integration (which they opposed). When the Dixiecrat party couldn't get enough traction, they joined the Republicans (starting with Nixon, and his famous 'Southern Strategy').

 

[roscoe]

Most of the people who were alive during or before the Civil Rights movement and not children are dead. Those who aren't are geriatric at this point. Are you SERIOUSLY advocating to violate statute of limitations laws to go after people in nursing homes or who are senior citizens? Sheesh.

I actually think people are hiding behind the 'statute of limitations'. This means that the racists essentially got away with it - they repressed people for 100 years without consequence.

And we do go after old people found to have committed genocide (Nazis even today), or Southerners found to have killed civil rights workers. This literally happens all the time.

 

[roscoe]

Sins of the father, much? If my father killed someone 50 years ago and then died, I am not responsible for his crimes or for compensation for the victim's family. Similarly, anything I inherited is mine to keep. That's simple morality. Do you lack that?

Actually, under US law, if your father was found culpable for murder, and there was a subsequent claim against his estate, then, yes, the inheritance could be confiscated.

 

[roscoe]

I think that they should give reparations to every surviving former slave and their immediate families.
Beyond that, you'd have to give reparations to folks like myself.
I am the product of the combination of Scots-Irish "indentured servants" that had been kidnapped in Great Britain who promptly escaped over the Appalachians and joined the Comanches and Creeks (who were matrillineal),then intermarried with the mixed-bloods of the mountains until whatever "race" identifiers that may have existed were totally obliterated.
-And that's just my Father's side... .
Mother's side is far more complicated.
Both sides include a number of folks that were members of suppressed minorities.
So when do I get my reparation checks?

I specifically said no cash payouts.

 

[theotherwaldo]

The real bottom line is that reparations would breathe new life into racism.
It's time that we accept that there are no races, only the Human Race.
Otherwise we will continue to be divided and conquered... .

 

[roscoe]

It's effectively a "white tax" let's be real. You are willing to tax people who had nothing to do with slavery to meet your end goals. And if you don't make it a white tax, you'll make it be part of our ballooning national debt and kick it down the road. Good job. slowclap.gif

The blacks were effectively taxed for 100 years, and prevented from accruing capital. So they had to pay the financial cost. And we just leave it at that, I guess - 'sorry your farms and businesses were burned'; 'sorry we kept you out of the professions'; 'best of luck rebuilding from scratch again!'.

 

[roscoe]

The real bottom line is that reparations would breathe new life into racism.
It's time that we accept that there no races, only the Human Race.
Otherwise we will continue to be divided and conquered... .

Who says it would create new racism? Maybe it would give a historically subjugated group a small leg up - one that they should have had 150 years ago. And if some groups protested, well, fine - I am all for public dialog.

If folks believed in the 'one race' idea 150 years ago, it would have been fine. But to do it now sounds like folks want to ignore some ugly realities of the past.

 

[theotherwaldo]

-and 'Irish need not apply' should be forgotten?

 

[theotherwaldo]

Who says it would create new racism? Maybe it would give a historically subjugated group a small leg up - one that they should have had 150 years ago. And if some groups protested, well, fine - I am all for public dialog.

If folks believed in the 'one race' idea 150 years ago, it would have been fine. But to do it now sounds like folks want to ignore some ugly realities of the past.

-So we should keep those racial divisions going just to prove a point?

 

[roscoe]

-and 'Irish need not apply' should be forgotten?

There is a big difference here. After 1 generation, an Irish person can effectively disappear into the larger white population. The Southern race statutes specifically said that 'a single drop of black blood' was enough to keep someone categorized as 'black', and therefore subject to segregation laws. This was not that long ago - I was a kid when SCOTUS overturned Loving v. Virginia.

Look, I am all for ignoring race, but the Southerners wouldn't let it happen, and as a result, the black middle class was effectively prevented from existing for almost 100 years. Often, literally, by fire and terror. Are we just going to ignore that fact? I don't see how that is moral.