Well this back in the news. Representative John Conyers (D), Michigan, has reintroduced House Resolution 40. Here is an excerpt from his Web page with some of his comments:
Slavery reparations supporters generally make this fundamental argument: That slavery harmed slaves and thus, indirectly, their descendants; therefore, any organization, corporation, institution or government that promoted or profited from slavery owes reparations to descendants of slaves.
Among the arguments made against reparations:
1) One injustice (slavery) cannot be corrected by another injustice (taking money from an innocent party). No one alive today owned slaves legally in the United States. Millions of non-black Americans don't even have ancestors who lived in the U.S. at the time of slavery.
2) It would be impossible to administer fairly. Most Americans don't know their lineage well enough to assert, let alone prove, harm from slavery (or the converse, that their ancestors are responsible for or benefited from slavery). This means -- and most reparations advocates seem to concede -- that reparations would be paid to black Americans by other Americans simply on the basis of race. This would result in reparations payments not only by the distant descendants of actual slaveowners, but of post-Civil War immigrants, such as Vietnamese "boat people" refugees and now-elderly survivors of Nazi concentration camps.
3) Reparations payments based on race alone would be perceived by nearly everyone forced to make payments as a monstrous injustice, embittering many and inevitably setting back race relations. Apologetic feelings many whites hold because of slavery and past civil rights injustices would to a significant extent be replaced by anger. Yet, would one of the goals of the reparations movement: A supposed lessening of black anger (to the extent it exists) because of slavery really abate if reparations were enacted? Evidence is scant.
What do you all think?
I think this is a really bad idea. The advocates of this cite reparations to interred Japanese-Americans during WWII, but these payments were made to people who were actually wronged not the descendants. As far as I know there have been no slaves in 3 or 4 generations nor any slave owners.I chose the number of the bill, 40, as a symbol of the forty acres and a mule that the United States initially promised freed slaves. This unfulfilled promise and the serious devastation that slavery had on African-American lives has never been officially recognized by the United States Government.
My bill does four things:
1. It acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery
2. It establishes a commission to study slavery, its subsequent racial and economic discrimination against freed slaves;
3. It studies the impact of those forces on today's living African Americans; and
4. The commission would then make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies to redress the harm inflicted on living African Americans.
Slavery reparations supporters generally make this fundamental argument: That slavery harmed slaves and thus, indirectly, their descendants; therefore, any organization, corporation, institution or government that promoted or profited from slavery owes reparations to descendants of slaves.
Among the arguments made against reparations:
1) One injustice (slavery) cannot be corrected by another injustice (taking money from an innocent party). No one alive today owned slaves legally in the United States. Millions of non-black Americans don't even have ancestors who lived in the U.S. at the time of slavery.
2) It would be impossible to administer fairly. Most Americans don't know their lineage well enough to assert, let alone prove, harm from slavery (or the converse, that their ancestors are responsible for or benefited from slavery). This means -- and most reparations advocates seem to concede -- that reparations would be paid to black Americans by other Americans simply on the basis of race. This would result in reparations payments not only by the distant descendants of actual slaveowners, but of post-Civil War immigrants, such as Vietnamese "boat people" refugees and now-elderly survivors of Nazi concentration camps.
3) Reparations payments based on race alone would be perceived by nearly everyone forced to make payments as a monstrous injustice, embittering many and inevitably setting back race relations. Apologetic feelings many whites hold because of slavery and past civil rights injustices would to a significant extent be replaced by anger. Yet, would one of the goals of the reparations movement: A supposed lessening of black anger (to the extent it exists) because of slavery really abate if reparations were enacted? Evidence is scant.
What do you all think?
