Reparations for Slavery
- Thread starter Thoreau
- Start date
No.
You might not have noticed it, but there was a big attempt to bring that rather silly idea to the forefront in the US just a few years back. It naturally died quietly without ever gaining any real popularity. The majority saw it for exactly what it was - an attempt to extort money for no good reason.
I suppose it depends from what angle you look at this from. From a legal perspective, no of course not, slaves work for free they aren't owed anything. However if you were to be humane and see it from a human rights perspective, if one is forced to work (and they had no choice they couldn't quit without physical harm) then they should be compensated. But the one who did the work should be compensated personally or perhaps their immediate family (spouse, children, parents) if the individual can not be paid.
It would be silly to do that in the US now. A slave working their whole life probably would have earned like $500 maybe, if that. It hardly makes sense to distribute $500 among the 90 people descended from one person that they never met and are only distantly related to. I know personally I wouldn't want the money of a ancestor slave as it shouldn't be mine to have. Not to mention what a pain it'd be to trace family lines back, to both the slaves and the slave owners
It would be silly to do that in the US now. A slave working their whole life probably would have earned like $500 maybe, if that. It hardly makes sense to distribute $500 among the 90 people descended from one person that they never met and are only distantly related to. I know personally I wouldn't want the money of a ancestor slave as it shouldn't be mine to have. Not to mention what a pain it'd be to trace family lines back, to both the slaves and the slave owners
How far back in history are we allowed to go in order to make a claim?
And can we sue the nations that sold slaves as well as those that purchased them?
~Raithere
why not? the jewish people got a whole country out of one genocide, even those not born or not even living in EROUPE let alone germany so why shouldnt the victoms of another genocide (like the slaves, like the aborigional peoples) be entitled to reperations for what was done to THERE people.
Asguard, you're one of the few people here who's absolutely atrocious spelling matches your faulty logic.
"Whatever" is right! You always choose to take sides against Israel or the U.S. And I'd say the former makes you a serious racist and the latter makes you a smug, self-serving little stick in the mud.
How doe it feel to have someone tell you the actual truth about yourself, eh?
Who cares? You've already proven yourself to be racist and not much of a 'thinker.'
I heard a very good lecture on this topic in Chicago once, it was by an alumni of Yale University and she said that the reason she had a comfortable and relatively wealthy existence with opportunities and access not available to others is because back in the day her ancestors accumulated a great deal of wealth by enslaving black people. This ensured that for generations her family was comfortable, rich and educated and had the power to affect policy making in government.
I think people need to decide for themselves what it means to be privileged for generations vs being enslaved, dehumanised and discriminated against for generations.
Its not possible to really make reparations but it certainly helps if you don't dismiss the cumulative effects of generations of being suppressed as a culture of stunning failure
Actually the zionist movement started well before WWII and Israel declared itself a nation afterward. It was not given as reparation.
The point, however, was that if we go back far enough in history and include those who sold as well as those who bought slaves there are going to be a lot of people due to both give and receive reparations. A difficult, if not impossible, scenario to resolve.
But even if we limit it how do we figure out who owes who? My family came to the USA a good 40 years after the abolition of slavery. Should I have to pay reparations for something neither I, nor my ancestors were ever a part of?
And then we have to think about ancestry. Do we get reparations for each ancestor that was a slave, or just if we can show any ancestor was? Does everyone get the same amount or does a single amount get divided between all of the great-great-great-great-grandchildren?
~Raithere
In light of which men should abdicate all wealth and positions of power and hand it over to women. They win, hands down, in any question of who has been most abused, dehumanized, and discriminated against. It's also a rather simple one to figure out.
~Raithere
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
As a legal matter the issue is not "criminal" liability, but liability in tort for slavery. Conduct does not need to be illegal for a tort claim to apply (for example, if I accidentally hit you with my car, that may not be a crime, but it could still be legal "negligence" which would entitle you to a recovery). There are many tort claims that could apply to slavery, including a false imprisonment claim, and many states have freeform "tort" claims that one could assert.
The problem is not the legal theory, but the impracticality of the claims. The claims should be against the tortfeasor, and they are all dead. One can imagine asserting a claim against the estates of the tortfeasors, but the wealth they accumulated has been so disbursed that you can never separate it from general funds.
Even if you could (or if you asserted the claim against the federal government, which itself never owned slaves), the plaintiffs would be the descendants of slaves, and you can't determine who is owed how much under that standard. Not every black person is descended from slaves. Amongst those who are, some have more white ancestry than black, and almost all have some white ancestry and some ancestry from free blacks who themselves were not slaves. Figuring out which person was entitled to what by ancestry would be impossible.
Even if you could overcome that, though, determining what the damages were to each slave in the plaintiff's ancestry is impossible. Some slaves had it worse than others. There are just too many immeasurables involved.
Besides that, even if we named an arbitrary figure, most blacks would be offended at the size of it. Imagine that we gave $100 billion. That would only be only about $2,800 per black person in America. That is not a small sum, but it's not life changing either.
The problem is not the legal theory, but the impracticality of the claims. The claims should be against the tortfeasor, and they are all dead. One can imagine asserting a claim against the estates of the tortfeasors, but the wealth they accumulated has been so disbursed that you can never separate it from general funds.
Even if you could (or if you asserted the claim against the federal government, which itself never owned slaves), the plaintiffs would be the descendants of slaves, and you can't determine who is owed how much under that standard. Not every black person is descended from slaves. Amongst those who are, some have more white ancestry than black, and almost all have some white ancestry and some ancestry from free blacks who themselves were not slaves. Figuring out which person was entitled to what by ancestry would be impossible.
Even if you could overcome that, though, determining what the damages were to each slave in the plaintiff's ancestry is impossible. Some slaves had it worse than others. There are just too many immeasurables involved.
Besides that, even if we named an arbitrary figure, most blacks would be offended at the size of it. Imagine that we gave $100 billion. That would only be only about $2,800 per black person in America. That is not a small sum, but it's not life changing either.
Well maybe a woman might yet get elected POTUS now that a half black man has made it.
I'm hoping so.Well maybe a woman might yet get elected POTUS now that a half black man has made it.
Unfortunately, she will still be a politician so I expect the results will be about the same.
But it's kind of like gift-giving, it's the thought that counts.
~Raithere
Notes on absurdity
How so? I mean, the nearest I can figure is if Israel is representative of all Jewish people around the world, but you can't seriously mean that, because it's absurd.
General Note:
Whence comes this latest thread? There's nothing in the topic post for reference. Just a random question, then?
Read-Only said:
How so? I mean, the nearest I can figure is if Israel is representative of all Jewish people around the world, but you can't seriously mean that, because it's absurd.
• • •
General Note:
Whence comes this latest thread? There's nothing in the topic post for reference. Just a random question, then?
In the u.s very few people owned slaves. probably 90% of the population didnt own a slave for the 50 years or so before it was abolished. Some countries have servants (slaves) to this day and they do the house work and dont get paid anything. also, the monetary system was very primitive. i can only imagine what some countries were like for workers, probably got paid with a basket of fruit.
Even paid workers, regardless of the color, what would they have paid them in the 1700's? thirty cents and hour, if they were lucky. i wouldnt be surpirised if they even paid workers a nickle an hour. Minimum wage in u.s was, up until a few years ago, around $4.00 an hour.
Even paid workers, regardless of the color, what would they have paid them in the 1700's? thirty cents and hour, if they were lucky. i wouldnt be surpirised if they even paid workers a nickle an hour. Minimum wage in u.s was, up until a few years ago, around $4.00 an hour.
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