Reparations article in USA Weekend

[jgallagher109]

I admit I fume slightly when talk of reparations comes up. I share a lot of the same frustrations that others on this board have written about recently. And my frustration goes beyond wondering how those in the reparations movement don't see what to most of us is obvious: mainly that reparations to anyone living today for transgressions committed 140 or more years ago is impractical, unfair, and divisive. Added to that is a further frustration: that Black America is proving once again they are their own worst enemy.

I'm wholeheartedly with Shelby Steele on this one. For those that have read The Content of Our Character or any other of his writings, you'll recall that Steele - a black Univeristy professor from California - makes a convincing case that many in the black community are themselves largely to blame for not progressing further in the last 30 years. He sights as reasons the willingness of too many blacks to follow misguided leaders who practice a "victim's based" form of politics that mostly serves to reinforce blacks' self-perception that they are, in fact, still victims. (Steele has lots more to say, including great insight on "white guilt", and says it much better than I ever could. I'd urge to read his books if you haven't.)

However, the reparations movement is slowly gaining momentum.

What I'd like to do here is this: I'd like to hear your best counter-arguments to the main points made by those in the reparations movement.

I'm taking them from an article that appeared today in "USA Weekend" by Charles J. Ogletree Jr. entitled "The Case for Reparations". Ogletree is a Harvard Law School professor, and co-chairman of the Reparations Coordinating Committee that "plans to file an unprecedented lawsuit in the coming months that could amount to trillions of dollars".

Much of the debate will undoubtedly take place in the media, which lives on 30-second sound bites. I think this would be most worthwhile if you could think in those terms too when you think of an appropriate "comeback" to the following 6 points Ogltree made in his article (my comments and question are in parenthesis):

1) "As many as 25 million lives were lost" as a result of African slavery.

- (This seems very high. Could this number be for the whole of the African slave trade, including the West Indies, Brazil, etc.? He doesn't state where he got the number.)

2) The U.S. government has never issued a "formal apology in the 139 years since slavery was abolished."

3) Ogletree refers to "Randall Robinson's galvanizing book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks" as a sort of catalyst that reignited the reparations movement.
(Is anyone familiar with his book and its main arguments?)

4) Ogltree claims reprations stem from a "'breach of contract' between newly freed slaves and the government, and states: "In January 1865, slaves were promised, among other things, 'a plot of not more than (40) forty acres of tillable ground' in Special Field order No. 15, issued by Gen. William T. Sherman. But three months later, the order was rescinded by President Andrew Johnson, and the government seized the land it already had given to 40,000 blacks in Florida and South Carolina."

(I know there are a few of you out there that should be really able to wrap your hands around this one!)

5) Ogltree tips his hat but then dismisses other wronged minorities by saying: "the Native American, Irish, Italian, Mexican - almost every monority has been singled out, wronged or discriminated against. The fundamental difference in the case of African Americans is that it was written and enforced law, not just a matter of custom."

(Umm...it was a little more than "custom" that drove the Indians onto reservations Charles. Your thoughts everyone?)

6) Then, the victim card. Ogletree writes, "The legacy of slavery is seen today in well- documented racial disparities in access to education, health care, housing, employment and insurance, and in the form of racial profiling, the high rate of single-parent homes and the disproportionate number of black inmates".

--------------------------------------------------

There are some great minds and some great debaters on this forum. Whether you tackle the whole thing, or just bite off a point or 2, I'd be very interested to hear your best rebutals to the points made by one of the top men in the reparations movement.

Click below for the full article:

http://www.usaweekend.com/02_issues/...parations.html

[hoosier]

Well, I can speak to point #2.

So, Prof. Ogletree wants an apology.

The heck with the fact that the U.S. government spent millions of dollars and thousands of men lost their lives in a war effort to make sure slavery STAYED abolished for the last 139 years. Prof. Ogletree obviously does not consider all that to be worth as much as one apology.

Since the professor has made it clear that all those millions of dollars spent in the past didn't mean as much to him as one apology, clearly, no amount of reparations payments in the future could possibly mean as much, either.

OK, Professor, we're sorry.

You can drop all your requests for any monetary reparations now.

[eopfrank]

Jim,
How are you doing? Reparations is a very tricky discussion. I guess I have to say, of course, that the cost for slavery was paid-in blood- from 1861-1865, that it was too long ago, that no one is alive who suffered, and that- most important-the institution of slavery was not an American invention;that Americans were conspiring to eliminate a race of people- but that it was something that was inherited to Americans over 160 years before the Constitution was even created; people being born into it... There case is weak, in court no doubt about it.

I know that there is nothing we can do for the wrongs that our ancestors did- and more than half of our ancestors came here after slavery had been abolished... But, in my conscience, I know that Blacks in this country have been short changed for a long time afterward. I know that reconstruction was replaced with Jim Crow... I know that black youths' parents and grand parents [today]that lived in the south couldn't go in diners or certain stores, and they had to say 'sir' to certain people, and couldn't vote, and were just simply treated like second class citizens- not to mention beaten to death for speaking up. We had an institution of Apartheid in this country for One Hundred years after slavery was abolished. I have to say that that doesn't sit too well with my conscience. So, I guess, this is an issue that is closer to today that we all may think. I am a white man, so I can not understand what black people have gone through and I guess that is why it is a tough issue for me.

-Frank

[longstreetlass]

JG,

Your criticisms of Ogletree's argument, at least in the article, are quite good and I agree with them. I am particularly troubled by what does appear to be a dismissal of other minorities, native Americans especially, based in legal precedence. He seems to lose the moral basis for his argument with this rationale, and his intentions appear to be a bit less than completely honest (and honorable) as a result.

Still reading,

LongstreetLass

[tamaroa]

I posted what I felt in an earlier reparations thread on this board. My thoughts have not changed at all regarding it, but I do have one more item to add. Does the suit also include the African governments who sold their captive slaves to the Dutch and then the American colonists? If not, why not? It stands to reason that if there were no captives to purchase then we couldn't buy any. Therefore slavery would have ceased to exist earlier. i know its a bit simplistic but the fact remains that without a supply of an item, other sources or methods would have been necessary to replace them.

Item #5 is a hoot. We owe the Black descendants reparations because slavery was legal while other forms of discrimination were not; therefore they are more wronged? As Data would say, this does not compute. Wrong is wrong, whether it is legal or not.

And you want to talk about divisive? How would reparations be paid? Anyway you slice it, whether it was in a form of outright payments or tax credits, who will foot the bill? Tens of millions of tax payers who never had a thing to do with slavery, that's who. Here's another goodie, prove to me that you are the descendant of a slave. Where is the family tree and the supporting documents. If a black person came over here from the caribbean say in 1915, would he be eligible just because he is black? If so, he is not being paid reparations because of slavery he is being paid a fee because his skin is a different color. Last I heard, that was discrimination.

BillD,

The descendant of WRONGED Irish folk!!!!

[jgallagher109]

Bill I'm with you! My dad jokes he should sue the British government for the way his (my) Irish ancestors were treated.

Something else in Ogletree's article was telling. I think he's working on a way to sidestep that whole sticky question of proving ancestory with a slave. He writes, "A trust fund should administer money received through claims, and an independent commission should distribute those funds to the poorest members of the black community, where damage has been most severe."

In other words, the whole thing is just one giant transfer of wealth scheme!

Of course the entire idea is absurd. But absurd ideas sometimes get traction in America. I'm sure you heard the results of a survey that came out this past spring where black Americans named Bill Clinton the greatest American President. Do you really need to hear any more?

The world is full of wackos, always has been. The time to pay attention is when they start to unite.

Regards,

Jim

[blue_zouave]

Hmmm, if we are going to talk about legality of forms of discrimination, women of any color were not given the legal right to vote until 1920 in the US... I want reparations for my wronged ancestresses who were denied the right to vote!

(That suffrage march I participated in at the reenactment this weekend must have gone to my head) :0

Zou

[longstreetlass]

Zou!

My suffragette sister! Perhaps we should define this word for the men - they may think we only want to "suffer" some more.

Time to conspire, Zou...


LongstreetLass

[tamaroa]

Two more points. I heard on the radio today that during the rally in DC, hucksters were amongst the crowd hawking T-shirts declaring "Kill Whitey." Hmmm, now that will get them a lot of sympathy, won't it!! An lastly, here is another item for consideration. In conjuction with my previous post where I postulated that a Haitian coming here in 1915 may be eligible for reparations, look at it another way. If only bona fide slave descendants are eligible for the money, does that mean that the descendants of black immigrants that arrived on our shores after the Civil War also have to ante up and pay reparations? It would be amusing, if it wasn't so ridiculous.

BillD.

(Message edited by tamaroa on August 20, 2002)

[minie57]

Bill,

One of the things that is most troubling to me is the number of white hate groups that seem like wolves ready to pounce on this as their meal ticket to prestige and power like the New Black Panthers and the Nation of *****. They are no better then the KKK and the Neo-Nazis in my book.

Though Ogletree makes passionate argument, he neglects to be able to be accurate to the numbers. Besides that they want an apology, what was the Civil War and 660,000 dead nearly 600,000 where white.

"MY ancestors faught for you and this is how you pay us back?"

Geez.

Tom