Slavery lawsuit
Moms View Message Board: The Kitchen Table (Debating Board): Slavery lawsuit
Do you think black americans are due compensation from today's government on behalf of relatives which were slaves in the 1800's?
WOW! Annie2 where did you come up with this one? What a doozie  .
My first response was no. They were not slaves in the 1800's there relatives were. Are their relatives alive today? I doubt it or they are very old. I guess I feel that the only ones who should receive compensation would be the people themselves and they are not alive I do not think the relatives today should be able to collect money from the government.
On thinking about it I feel if their is any money to be given to black americans it should be in the way of a trust fund for their children to attend University and further their education not just money for them to live off of now JMHO!
p.s. do you have a link to the news item about this? I really answered without reading anything about it
It's called slavery reparation and has been around for a while. Here is an article from Sept, 2001.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D21E.htm
http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/news/040501/Opinion/ST003.shtml
Not very sure how to make a link. There was an article in our paper about it and since then there have been several letters to the editor.
I think many people are "sue" happy in this country.
I have thought about this a lot since it was first raised, and I can understand it as a political concept, and I believe it is based on the various successful lawsuits that Jews have filed against various banks, insurance companies, and businesses where Jews were used as slave labor during WWII. And, of course, Germany as a nation is paying reparations to Jews all over the world whose family members were imprisoned and/or killed in the Holocaust.
I do believe that this nation, politically, tries really hard to ignore its past, and especially ignores what, as a nation, was done in and by the United States to both African slaves and their descendents, and to the American Indians. Anyone who thinks we are a color-blind nation is not dealing with reality, and certainly African Americans are still paying the price of the past enslavement of their ancestors and of our continuing racism.
I think one real problem with the concept, however, is that, unlike Germany and the various banks, insurance companies, and the like who benefited from the killing of Jews, it is really hard to put the finger on true descendants of the actual villains. As so many point out, there are a lot of people in this country whose ancestors weren't even here before the Civil War, and many more whose ancestors were but who never, except in fairly indirect ways, benefited from slavery. And the fact that the nation, as it is presently constituted, has grown from a nation in which one half of it went to war with the other half over the issue of slavery (and yes, I know slavery was not the only issue and not even the starting issue), and that the winners made the freeing of the slaves a legal fact.
I know the bitter fact that African Americans suffer tremendous prejudice and discrimination, and that as a whole our system does not do nearly what it should to try to make up for the prejudice and discrimination of the past. And just saying - well, my great grandfather was an immigrant or refugee from Ireland, China, Germany or wherever doesn't take into account the long-standing prejudice most people of caucasian background feel for people of color, and how this prejudice plays out in so many ways. I am firmly convinced, for example, that one of the reasons most state legislatures and our federal government don't fund public schools in big cities the way they need to be funded to be effective is that most view big cities as being populated mostly by "them", and "they" don't count. That they are people of color, and poor, means that they don't matter.
But to get back to your questions - I have given the matter of slavery reparations a lot of thought, and think it is a political dead end. I don't think it will ever go anywhere, and I think that focusing energy and attention on the concept draws energy away from more possible goals and gives those who don't want to take a serious look at racism a reason to continue to ignore how we, as a nation, continue to be racist and to fail to take seriously the special needs of inner city people of color (and not of color) and to develop and adequately fund programs to seriously address those needs on a long-term basis.
BTW, they weren't just slaves in the 1800s - slavery began in this nation almost from the time the first white people set foot here (at least in the southern parts of this nation) and only ended in the 1800s after the Civil War. This means some 200-300 years of slavery.
What about the first americans.........the indians?
I don't believe in giving money to people that weren't the slaves themselves. I like Ginny think that this is a dead end and we need to focus on more important things.
I do however stongly believe that racism starts at home and we need to teach our children that slavery was part of our history and we made mistakes. I don't think our children need to suffer the ramifications of our ancestors.
My children arn't allowed to say black, or any other racist comment. For instance Halle Berry is a beautiful woman, She is not a beautiful black woman. Thats the rules in my house.
I think if we looked back at all of our history there were mistakes everywhere including with white people. So should we get money also?
As for the Indians, I was raised near a reservation and I think they have got more than they deserve. They pay no taxes, get land for free and houses basically for free. Where I grew up alot of the Indians smuggled cigs, and alcohol into Canada and made millions of dollars. They have brand new trucks,cars, houses, boats all because of smuggling. I do understand that they deserve land that we took from them, but they also cross the borders for nothing or without searching their vehicles. While many white people get their cars torn apart and you have to put them back together. I lived too close to a reservation that was really was bad, I know that not all reservations or Indians are like that, but that is what I saw in one part of our country. And to add to that fact, my mom married an Indian and we lived on the reservation, I was the only white girl riding the bus, so needless to say that I was beat up and harrassed everyday. So racism is everywhere not only with colored people but also with the white people.
Coming from someone who is part Native American OUCH!!!
Tammie, this is no offense to any race and if you took my message as being in any way shape or form, I apologize. Like I said this is one part where we lived and I know not all the Indians are like this. I just had a hard time living on their land because I was white, and tried to explain that not only are black, chinese, indians subjected to racism.
Thats why it should be taught to our children at an early age, that racism should never be tolerated in any way.
Ah well, - Native Americans are a whole different situation. As far as I know, the U.S. has never kept one of its treaties with Native Americans. The whole idea and system of reservations was and is an absolute disgrace, simply setting up large groups of people for failure, done to move people off their land because the people with the power and guns wanted that land. Most of the people appointed to manage reservations and the whole NA system were and are political appointees, and the amount of incompetence, plain and simple theft of money and resources, and neglect of people whom we effectively imprisoned is staggering. And for the past 20+ years the government bureau charged with managing trust funds for Native Americans has been unable to produce accurate records of how the trust fund moneys were handed, with extensive evidence that they were badly mismanaged and multitudes of Native Americans cheated - and this agency is fighting audits with all its might.
IMO, reservations are no different in principal from refugee camps (and just as badly handled with just as terrible results), or maybe like the U.S. concentration camps we put Japanese Americans in during WWII. Except we have been putting and keeping Native Americans in them since before the Civil War. I agree that there are multitudinous problems on the reservations, but by and large our government has created them and continues policies which were bad to start with. We know, for example, that for several generations the government's solution to educating Native American children was to take them from their families by force and put them into boarding schools (badly staffed and with mostly inadequate teachers and inadequate resources).
As for how racism is defined (which I believe is different from the prejudice one experiences if one is not part of the majority group in one's immediate environment) - that is another debate. Personally, I don't believe that a caucasian person in this country can be a victim of "racism", even if s/he experiences individual acts of prejudice. And I say this having lived in a mostly African American community where my sons were sometimes victimized because they are white. I think that racism and prejudice are two different things and require different definitions.
Ginny~ just asking... you are saying that a caucasian person can not be a victim of racism? For real? So do you think that only caucasian people are possible of being racists? If so, that's interesting... LOL I dont agree, but, it's an interesting point of view. 
I should have limited that to caucasion people in nations which are predominately caucasion in makeup and power structure. I simply do not believe that persons who are part of the majority race in any nation can be victims of racism. They can (as were my sons)be victims of racial prejudice and actions based on that prejudice, but the definition of racism I work with is that of a system and culture views people of another "race" as automatically and naturally inferior, with those who are demonstrably not inferior being the exception. In this country, racism is against all persons of color and particular those of African descent. (In the Southwest U.S., there is probably a greater racism/prejudice against Hispanics, primarily, I think, because of their greater numbers and historical prejudice.) In Japan, it is against all persons not Japanese, but particularly against caucasians. In Africa, in countries in which the power structure is African (by which I do not mean persons of caucasian descent who were born in Africa), there is certainly the opportunity for racism against non-Africans. And in some African nations, a particular tribe or group is in power and exercises a systematic, institutionalized oppression of those who are not members of that tribal community - again, in my view, racism. In the Arab nations, all non-Islamic, non-Arabs are generally held to be inferior. Which means, of course, that no, I don't believe only caucasians can be racists.
I have been persuaded by a number of thinkers to this point of view, which is, essentially, that persons who are members of the group which holds power may experience individual prejudice, but not racism. However, as long as the power structure in this country is predominately caucasian, under that definition caucasians cannot be victims of a systemic, institutionalized system of racism in this country.
|
Members
