NEWS: ShouldnÂ’t Have Reneged on the Forty Acres or That Mule

POLITICS: Shouldn’t Have Reneged on the Forty Acres or That Mule

Reparations efforts to compensate black Americans for slavery are successfully paying off and advocates are gaining momentum, even though slavery was abolished 140 years ago. Every year since 1989, Michigan Representative John Conyers has introduced a federal law ordering a study of reparations. Each year his efforts have failed. But six years ago the idea of reparations picked up momentum when Randall Robinson's "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks," became a best seller.

In the past six years, California passed a law forcing insurance companies that do business with the state to disclose their slavery ties. Illinois followed with a similar law and Iowa began requesting the information. Several cities followed suit. The laws have forced Aetna and financiers Lehman Brothers and Wachovia to apologize for slavery ties. JP Morgan Chase was forced to report that it had owned more than 1,200 Louisiana slaves in the 1800s. After the revelation, the bank created a $5 million scholarship fund for Louisiana blacks.

In June, both the Moravian Church and the Episcopal Church apologized for owning slaves. Episcopalian bishops used to own slaves, using the Bible to justify their actions. The Episcopalians are currently looking into whether or not they should compensate black members.

Cities and states are now being forced to look at the wrongs of the past. A North Carolina commission is urging the state government to pay reparations for violent acts committed in 1898 and advocates are pursuing reparations for a 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Lawsuits against 19 insurance, textile, railroad, financial services and tobacco companies are currently working their way through federal courts. Reparations advocates are calling for boycotts until the companies cough up some cash.

Some black Americans are opposed to the efforts, saying that it doesnÂ’t make sense to compensate people 140 years after slavery was abolished. They also believe continuing for focus on slavery is moving in the wrong direction.

Rich, white conservatives see it another way. John McWhorter, of the Manhattan Institute, says programs like affirmative action and welfare have taken the place of reparations.

Here, here. When you die donÂ’t give any of your money to your children, McWhorter.

Money makes the world spin in this day and age..... its only logical it be used to salve the whip marks of dead people.

Slavery did not end in 1862. After the civil war, former slaves worked on plantations and were compensated with meals & living quarters, living exactly the way they used to without the foot amputations or the whips. Some of them worked on plantations for little pay. Some of them were promised pay and stiffed in the end. Some plantation workers lived as feudal peons, making money but accumulating debt on fees charged by the owner; this is commonly known as sharecropping, or so I'm told (anyone from the south who knows more about this item, feel free to correct me). 100 years after the Emancipation Proclimation, blacks remained slaves to Jim Crow laws, lynching and segregation laws. In the north, they remained slaves to an economic system geared to benefit rich white Anglo Saxon Protestants. Many blacks will argue that slavery hasn't ended yet. To this day there is still housing discrimination, police brutality, environmental racism and funding discrimination for schools; and need I mention the discrimination and defamation practiced by the feds and the media during the debacle in New Orleans last year?

Whitey owes them more than just a court settlement. What this country needs is major policy change.

The people who were slaves are all dead now. The people who kept slaves are all dead now. What's the point? I mean, absolutely, racism is still a problem, and there is inequality and poverty and all that. And we should be dealing with it. But what does that have to do with slavery reparations?

While I am by no means belittling what African Americans have suffered in this country, I'd like to throw my .02 in here for a moment.
My family sharecropped cotton next to the slaves, and after the war, right next to the ex-slaves. Right up to and including my grandfather, who was picking cotton by the time he was 5 years old. And trust me when I say that society wasn't handing their family anything to compensate for the fact that they were dirt poor, they all earned and fought for every single thing they owned. White trash was just a tiny step up in the social hierarchy from the blacks.

Another large portion of my family were also Native Americans, and they definitely weren't owning any African American slaves. Native Americans were also used as slave labor, on top of every other indignity they suffered. Indentured servitude was also pretty common among Europeans.

Moving forward in the attempt to make America truly equal place is something that I wholeheartedly support. I do not think that paying people that are alive now, for wrongs done in the past, is a very logical way to do it. I can look back at the history of America and be aghast at how people were treated back then, but I personally refuse to feel guilty for crimes that were committed by people that I never knew. Cultural guilt is not the most level platform to promote equality.

I am not saying I am for this, but, just a point: There are many companies in existance today that owe some portion of their survival and profit to the fact that they supported slavery.

However, there are also companies that profited from the stealing and genocide of the native American people.

The question is what to do. Maybe nothing. But I think at least an admission is in order.

Penn and Teller: Bullshit had a great episode on this.

I don't see the need to have the entire population who weren't even alive pay people who weren't even alive. Slavery wasn't a unique thing to America. Should everyone in the world who has ancestors who were slaves get money? African Americans have had to deal with some social injustices but how is a check going to help? Wouldn't scholarships and job training be better?

Reparations on the other hand do make perfect sense if the people who suffered are still around. Such is the case for the hardships done to Japanese Americans during WWII.

Good point!

This is an earlier instance of the "white guilt" problem being bandied about lately. If dubya would just admit "big mistakes have been made," it would help us all move forward.

That'd be an issue for every other country in the world to deal with.

My thrice great grandfather treated his slaves (and later, his sharecroppers) rather well by all accounts. Does that mean that I owe less in reparations?

DO you mean dubya needs to admit slavery was wrong?

I suspect that whatever good might be accomplished with reparations would be more than undone by the backlash and "me toos!" it would bring about.

As an individual of Irish descent I will be pursuing reparations from the British, Germans, French, Romans, Finns, Danes, and everyone the fuck else in Europe. Just because the Roman Empire invaded the British Isles two thousand odd years ago doesn't mean they don't owe me and mine for all the horrible things they did.

Here,here!

The next person who says "My people were Irish (or whatever), so they were slaves too" needs to have a history book thrown at them. I also love how every other person on this (and any other board concerning race) suddenly has hundreds of Native American ancestors. I call bullshit.

As NickFaust pointed out, it's not the suffering of the slaves that is really in question here, it's the fact that some of the biggest companies (as well as the entire country) became extremely wealthy and successful because of free, slave labour.

I'm not saying that reparations are the way to go, but to act like the issue isn't worth even looking at is the worst kind of ignorance.

No, but it does mean that your great grandfather was a piece of shit slave owner. Congrats!

I am sick and fucking tired of the topic of reparations. I don't mean we should forgive & forget...I just think that monetary compensation is ludicrous.

Call bullshit all you want, we can't trace any of my family roots past my grandmother because of the Native American blood, and a fair amount on my grandfathers side as well. It is actually a pretty simple and common fact, especially in certain geographical areas, and among certain social castes, that *gasp* white people married Injuns!
That does not mean that I am going to run out and get a tribal card and demand Native American rights, my husband doesn't even use his and he is half Lakota Sioux. I usually don't even mention it because it is so far back as to be pretty irrelevant in every day conversation, but it was brought out to make a simple personal point.
And are you suggesting that no people of European descent were ever used as slaves?

Word.

No, I just don't see how that has anything to do with who built America...without getting paid. Stands to reason that if a company made millions because of the reprehensible act of owning people so that they could make them money, the idea that the relatives might deserve some money (or that the companies in question deserve some sort of monetary penalty) isn't that crazy, and the only people who do think it's crazy aren't really informed.

I think that the time for reparations has come and gone (mostly due to logistics and short memories), but I also think that is a fucking shame. Basically, America was built on slave labor, and every time there has been a chance to remedy (in even the smallest way) that atrocity, we've backed down.

Not to mention that in America we use reparations all the fucking time. Who do you think gets paid if their father dies of Asbestos poisoning? You know what some of that money is based on?

First of all, it would impossible to trace even a fraction of the people alive today to certain companies. Part of the horror of slavery was that children were removed from families, sold on an open market, and never had a chance to know who their families were. So are we to pick and choose which people deserve reparations. Should a person whos great great great great grandfather was actually freeborn be allocated less?
Modern reparations are a whole other matter. My father dying of asbestos poisoning is a lot different than my great great great grandmother being a slave. It affects me NOW.
European indentured servants were brought here, often as a punishment for a crime. Often, a petty crime. They were told they could work their way out, pay their debt, and be free. A lot of times they accrued so much debt while working that they were never free. It was common practice to beat your indentured servants and rape the women. They had no right to vote, and were sometimes sold on the open market, same as slaves. They also helped build America without getting paid. Sharecropping worked on a similar system, it was basically American serfdom.

I've always found curious that while I've heard white people say countless times that their great grandmother was Native-American, I've have never heard any white person say their great grandmother was Black.

I'm sorry, I don't see the point here.