Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Should America Pay?
I read some where that it may be required that the American will have to give reparations to the African American there are many debate about should American have to pay or not.. I feel they should pay because we as African American were promise many changes after the slavery time which we never seen. Now let me know what you guys think about it?
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8 comments:
Suggesting that Africans were brought into slavery "by their own race" is like saying that Hitler killed his own race when he killed Russians and British. While it is true that many slaves were the captives of other Africans, it was other Africans of completely different tribes and societies who had nothing in common, not even the same language.
There is precedent for paying reparations. We did it for Japanese-Americans because of internment during World War II, we did it with land for Native Americans and we even did it here in Florida for survivors of the Rosewood massacre.
While it is a complex topic, it is clear that there are indirect effects of slavery today. Poverty is something that is cyclical and the fact that at the end of slavery there were almost no blacks with any money, any property or even literacy affected not only those people, but their children and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren., etc. Most people in America are of the same economic status as their great-grandparents. Most families rarely change in economic status over their entire history in America. Combine that with the fact that while slavery officially ended in 1865, it was replaced by sharecropping, which, for all intents and purposes, was the exact same thing with a different name. Sharecropping continued on into the 20th century. Another outgrowth of slavery was Jim Crow laws, which were created to keep black people poor and uneducated -- since it was illegal to own them, you could at least keep them "in their place." Jim Crow lasted until the 1960s in fact and well beyond that in secret.
There is absolutely no question that the higher rates of poverty, lower levels of education and other issues that negatively affect the African-American community are traceable to the days of slavery and its outgrowths -- sharecropping and Jim Crow.
1) African-Americans today are affected by slavery. Indirectly so, but the effects are still there.
2) The reservations are land that was owned by the U.S. government (although it was not obtained legally in many cases) and was given to the Native Americans. The value of that land is not insignificant. Furthermore, we have allowed them independence on that land and exemption from many laws, such as gambling laws. No Native American alive today was directly affected by the way that we took their land from them initially and slaughtered most of their population. The effects are all indirect.
3) Your knowledge of Rosewood is a bit off. There was no actual rape. There was a false accusation of rape from a white woman, then the white mob came in and destroyed an entire town, killing numerous blacks. In the fighting, a couple of white men were also killed, but these were little more than unofficial Klan members killed in their attempts to kill black people.
I completely support doing something to help out the white communities in the Appalachian mountains (and other parts of the country, too). But their plight is not something that was caused by the government. Slavery was.
And, again, I'm not saying reparations are right or wrong, I'm somewhat undecided on the issue, I'm just making sure that all the facts are taken into account when people discuss it.
And a question that needs to be asked, is why should indirect and direct effects be any different? If you are harmed by something, does it really matter if it is directly or indirectly?
This isn't really a topic to discuss in this class. It's fine for the blog, but it's really not an Intro topic.
>How is giving someone money making something that didn't happened to the them any better?
I'm sure you can see the lack of logic in this one. Clearly, for most people, more money is better than less money. And, again, the "didn't happen to" part is only true if you include the word "directly."
>Sounds to me like someone looking for a handout.
No one in this thread is someone looking for a handout. I'd be willing to wager that the only person in this thread who could possibly be the descendant of a slave is Christina and I didn't read anything in her post suggesting she was asking for a handout. Furthermore, most of the people arguing for reparations are not descendants of slaves.
Josh, no one suggested that anyone couldn't improve their situation. Obviously, most people can. But to use three examples is, of course, anecdotal evidence. The percentages are clear that fewer African-Americans in American succeed economically, politically or other ways, as a percentage, than their proportion of the population. For that to be the case there are only really two arguments: 1) black people are inferior or 2) something is holding them back. Obviously, the first answer is not true, so then it must be the second.
Again, the arguments you guys are using against reparations are not very strong ones. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other, but if you are going to make an argument, it has to be backed up with logic and evidence.
Saying it is too long ago isn't logical. If something was wrong in the 1860s, its still wrong now, why should we not right that wrong just because it was a long time ago? Make an argument to support this.
It does not follow that there are too many questions/complications to do this. We actually have very good records as to who is the descendant of a slave. During the Depression, the government paid workers to gather information on former slaves and we still have that evidence today (along with who were the children of the people tracked down then). Beyond that, all you would do would be to decide how much to give each person and then it would be paid for by taxpayer funds. Whether you agree with doing this or not, it isn't that complicated.
>http://sydaby.eget.net/ody/emi/report.htm
Bo, you misread this report, which is mostly accurate. Frances Taylor was a white woman. Beyond that, this source has absolutely no references and they are not showing their evidence. The big flaw it makes is that it give equal weight to differing versions of the story that historians don't generally credit as valid. It gets most of the details right, but tones down the harshness of the real event.
Slavery is not over. It is just different. There are approximately 20,000 people a year who are enslaved in the U.S. Most of them are runaways and many of them are sold into sexual slavery overseas. That's beside the point though. While the enslavement of African-Americans is over, the effects of that institution are not.
Bo, I didn't misinterpret you. You stated: "Sounds to me like someone looking for a handout." Now that means that either you are saying that someone in this thread is looking for a handout or someone outside of this thread is looking for a handout. You included only part of my response. I did say: "No one in this thread is someone looking for a handout." I also said: "Furthermore, most of the people arguing for reparations are not descendants of slaves." The implication with this line was that none (or few) of the people arguing for reparations are looking for handouts either, since they wouldn't be the recipients of any of this money.
>I am sorry, but i do not believe that there are any affects of slavery today.
Feel free to believe this all you want, as this is a free country. But the consensus among scientists in the fields of history, economics, political science, sociology and other related fields is that such effects do exist. The burden of proof is on you to counteract decades of research and evidence that show otherwise.
>With affermative action in many states, minorities, including blacks, have higher chances to get into colleges- which i think is wrong.
I would agree that this would be wrong if it were true. The evidence says otherwise. Show me even a shred of evidence to suggest that minorities have "higher" chances to get into college. First off, everyone who wants to go to college can go. They don't necessarily get to go to the college they prefer, but they can go. Second, to prove that minorities get higher chances to go, then you would have to show that enrollment for African-Americans is higher than their percentage of the population and that policies of particular schools are the cause of that. Now, the first part is clearly false. African-Americans lag significantly behind whites in college attendance (the same is true for Hispanics/Latinos). Minorities attend college less than whites. Now it is true that sometimes minoritiy candidates get accepted over white candidates, but it is not true that unqualified candidates get accepted into particular colleges. That is illegal. Similarly, if a college has minority representation equal to the percentage of the population (or higher), then white students have a higher chance of getting in than minority students.
>There are no more Jim Crow laws, no matter how yo look at it, none exist; if you believe there is one, give an example.
Most discrimination now days is de facto, meaning it is illegal under the law, yet happens anyway. Some does still exist. In particular this is true in the criminal justice system. A black person is more likely to get a harsher sentence for the same crime. A black perpson is more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime as a white. Crack cocaine (primarily used by blacks) has significantly higher penalties than powder cocaine (primarily used by whites), despite the fact that they are chemically the exact same thing. I could go on and on, but that would be a different class.
>wouldn't that be the most valid way to tell a story? Why isn't it valid to have both side of the story told?
This would absolutely not be the most valid way to tell a story. You do not include both sides of a story if both sides do not have evidence to support them. For example, there are some people who argue that President Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened and that he allowed it to happen so he could benefit from it. Should we include those people in any discussion of 9/11? Or teach their views in a college classroom? Obviously not. They have no evidence to back their arguments up. Fairness and balance has nothing to do with both sides or both parties or both ideologies, it has everything to do with facts, evidence, logic and truth.
>I think I have expressed my opinion enough.
Yes, you have expressed your opinion clearly. The problem is that you haven't clearly explained why you hold that opinion. The point of any debate should be to prove yourself correct. You haven't done that.
>I still stand by my last argument, which is basically regardless of race; anyone in America can prosper with motivation and will power.
And no one really disagreed with the basic point. But the reality is that a much lower percentage of African-Americans (and other minorities such as Hispanics/Latinos) do prosper. There are two explanations for that. One is that many of them don't want to. The other is that something is holding them back at a higher rate than whites (and Asians). The first argument doesn't really match up with any known evidence and borders on racism (and I'm not suggesting you are making that argument). That leaves the last one.
>Putting our nation in more debt for something that happened so long ago is futile.
What makes you think this would put us in debt? No one has actually suggested a program to do this yet, so the automatic assumption of increased debt is a false one. It is completely possible that this could be paid for without any further debt -- tax increases, cuts to other programs, etc.
Lance the statement "Slavery has nothing to do with anyone living at the present time in America." is the truth by declaration fallacy and is demonstrably false according to pretty much any related scientific evidence.
Similarly, calling reparations "ridiculous" is an ad hominem fallacy and does nothing to support your argument and makes you look illogical.
Slavery was very very very wrong and the worst thing one human could do to another. I beleive for our generation to owe money put in someones hand without knowing how they are gong to spend it is wrong. Now to give money to an all African American colleges and give money to all African American grants and scholarships to help them to get a proper education to make money and help get out of poverty is right. I beleive handing money out to anyone just because of race and past discrimination is wrong, but helping them being able to get an education to pass on to their children is a good idea.
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