The question posed on the initial post was as follows: “Reparations for slavery?” It was the title of said post. Ryan’s opener to his comment to that was as follows: “No, I think reparations would be a waste of time.” Come again? Since when is paying for one’s mistakes a waste of time? No, don’t come again, man, but rather come off it.
Ryan, you suggest many things, you suggest that instead of reparations we should “end the slavery that is still going on in places like Sudan.” It’s not either this or that, my good man. It’s both. You wonder why there are “no calls for reparations from Arab countries who arguably played a greater part in the slave trade than England did.” Well, there are several reasons for this. I think that it’s because
- * Arabs enslaved Africans and Europeans and made them soldiers and workers and guards, but did not introduce the racial element as the enslavement of Africans by Europeans and Americans did. “Arab slave trade was not limited to people of certain colour, ethnicity, or religion.” As I write these words, the effects of the latter one are still palpable. Because of this latter one, certain groups in America today truly believe that the African is inferior and has no business being out of chains. Yes, it’s that bad.
- * The enslavement of black people by Europeans and Americans is better documented. There is clearer evidence of how humans were traded for profit and beaten up and raped. Moreover, Arabs castrated their slaves so there was no offspring to tell the story to, and so on down the line. Alex Haley made his fortune precisely because word was handed down in his family. I’m not excusing Arab slave drivers, I’m answering your question.
- * What Arab state are you going to ask for reparations? Qatar? Iraq? Saudi Arabia? What occidental state are you going to ask for reparations? America, England, Spain and Portugal.
- * American and Europeans, unlike their Arab counterparts, never set their slaves free. Slaves died of old age in their slave shack. Arabs released slaves after a certain number of generations. These freed slaves went on to re-establish their lives. In America, notably, we all know what happened.
If you need more reasons I can imagine a few others. Reparations would not be a waste of time at all. They would serve to “repair” what was damaged, and what was damaged was people’s lives, people’s esteem, people’s economic development, people, full-stop. I hope that answers your question of why the noise about one slavery and not about another. It’s a common utterance of those who’d like the issue of slavery to go away. Head in the sand kind of thing. You were enslaved, it’s finished, shut up. But it won’t go away, and we won’t shut up.
The question posed on the initial post was as follows: "Reparations for slavery?" It was the title of said post. Ryan's opener to his comment to that was as follows: "No, I think reparations would be a waste of time." Come again? Since when is paying for one's mistakes a waste of time? No, don't come again, man, but rather come off it.
Ryan, you suggest many things, you suggest that instead of reparations we should "end the slavery that is still going on in places like Sudan." It's not either this or that, my good man. It's both. You wonder why there are "no calls for reparations from Arab countries who arguably played a greater part in the slave trade than England did." Well, there are several reasons for this. I think that it's because
* Arabs enslaved Africans and Europeans and made them soldiers and workers and guards, but did not introduce the racial element as the enslavement of Africans by Europeans and Americans did. "Arab slave trade was not limited to people of certain colour, ethnicity, or religion." As I write these words, the effects of the latter one are still palpable. Because of this latter one, certain groups in America today truly believe that the African is inferior and has no business being out of chains. Yes, it's that bad.* The enslavement of black people by Europeans and Americans is better documented. There is clearer evidence of how humans were traded for profit and beaten up and raped. Moreover, Arabs castrated their slaves so there was no offspring to tell the story to, and so on down the line. Alex Haley made his fortune precisely because word was handed down in his family. I'm not excusing Arab slave drivers, I'm answering your question.* What Arab state are you going to ask for reparations? Qatar? Iraq? Saudi Arabia? What occidental state are you going to ask for reparations? America, England, Spain and Portugal.* American and Europeans, unlike their Arab counterparts, never set their slaves free. Slaves died of old age in their slave shack. Arabs released slaves after a certain number of generations. These freed slaves went on to re-establish their lives. In America, notably, we all know what happened.
If you need more reasons I can imagine a few others. Reparations would not be a waste of time at all. They would serve to "repair" what was damaged, and what was damaged was people's lives, people's esteem, people's economic development, people, full-stop. I hope that answers your question of why the noise about one slavery and not about another. It's a common utterance of those who'd like the issue of slavery to go away. Head in the sand kind of thing. You were enslaved, it's finished, shut up. But it won't go away, and we won't shut up.
Tagged as:
African History,
Human Rights,
Slavery
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
“Since when is paying for one’s mistakes a waste of time?”
I think one mental barrier many white westerns have is that reparations do NOT constitute paying for one’s mistakes. They constitute paying for the mistakes of one’s distant ancestors.
I’m inclined to support reparations. But I’m merely pointing out a common counterargument I hear a lot.
“They would serve to “repair” what was damaged, and what was damaged was people’s lives, people’s esteem, people’s economic development, people, full-stop.”
Correction. They COULD serve to repair those things. I don’t think potential corruption should be used as an excuse to weasel out of reparations. I think precise language is necessary on serious questions. I also thing such recognition is necessary to ensure that the potential benefit for reparation that you cite as is actually realized.
“Arabs castrated their slaves so there was no offspring to tell the story to”
As a man, I can tell you this hardly endears me to your thesis. Especially since it seems like a slow way to eradicate blacks. And if they castrated black men, how could their be any offspring to release in future generations?
“Because of this latter one, certain groups in America today truly believe that the African is inferior and has no business being out of chains.”
As was pointed out in the last post (and as evidenced by the genocide in Darfur), there is certainly no shortage of Arabs who believe the African in inferior either.
“Arabs enslaved Africans and Europeans and made them soldiers and workers and guards, but did not introduce the racial element as the enslavement of Africans by Europeans and Americans did.”
Ghack! Not from what I have read. Arab slave traders treated black slaves like cattle: relegated to roles involving hard labour. White slaves, on the other hand, sometimes held advisory roles and were able to marry and have children. Most eunuchs in harems were black; I have read that 7 out of every 10 castrations resulted in death either from loss of blood or from infection.
No, the Arabs were most definitely not equal opportunity slave drivers. From the link you included in your post:
“Racist opinions recurred in the works of historians and geographers: so in the 14th century CE Ibn Khaldun could write “…the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals…”
Yeah, sounds like they were all for equality. (That said, I am very sure you’ll find something equally repulsive said by a Britain or American alive during the slave-trade.)
Also from the link you included in your post:
“In the Ottoman Empire, the last black eunuch, the slave sold in Ethiopia named Hayrettin Effendi, was freed in 1918.”
The Brits outlawed slavery in 1836 or so…? (Okay, the Yanks held out for a lot longer… 1866?)
I agree fully that slavery is an abomination and that it is quite normal to empathise with those in the past who have suffered in a such a manner. Especially if one believes that the past is still impacting the present.
By all means hold accountable those organisations that took part in slavery and are still in existence now (Del mentioned a few in another comment-thread). Just bear in mind that some organisations (political or commercial) are as different from their past incarnations as this present South African government is from the Apartheid government. Because they’re the South African government should this present ANC government be held accountable for, say, the actions of the Apartheid regime in Angola, Namibia, and Mozambique. Difficult one. Now add 171 years to that (or 89 years if we consider the end of slavery as occurring with that last Ottoman slave).
Sure enough an organisation with a moral conscience will (and should) find it in its heart to redress past wrongs even if their directors and shareholders were not alive at the time of the wrongdoing.
From your writing it sounds as if it is not so much the past you are feeling some pain about. It is the present. If I have made you feel any worse this past week, I am sorry. I’ll just let this go.
Fellas, fellas, I thought it was clear. My post was meant to answer the question of why everyone is clamouring for reparations from the occident and not from the East.
My post was not meant to apologise for Arab slave-drivers.
@Rethabile – I think Ryan is obsessed with Arab slavery – he just cannot get it out of his head. These are typical diversionary tactics used by certain people to dodge the issue we are discussing – its called TRANS ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE guys! There is more than one front you know!
I don’t think the fact of the Arab slave trade diminishes the grotesqueness of the western slave trade. However Rethabile’s post, while ostensibly designed to defend reparations demands against western countries, did so by mitigating the Arab slave trade by comparison with the western slave trade.
My statements are not mitigative at all, Brian. They are in response to the question of why “A” and not “B”
I list (some) of the obvious reasons for this state of affairs, and hope that we’ll say “ah, OK,” and move on to the matter at hand: Trans-Atlantic slavery.
America went to war with itself, primarily because of the issue of slavery. Britain was the nation which spearheaded an end to the ghastly, racist practice. And slavery continues to be practiced, most notably, in North African states today.
No, I do not believe in reparations.
“They would serve to “repair” what was damaged, and what was damaged was people’s lives, people’s esteem, people’s economic development, people, full-stop.”
All of this speaks of people who are no longer living. That is, granting reparations to the definitely no-longer disadvantaged and wronged offspring to be paid for by the definitely not responsible or wanton offspring of the perpetrators.
This makes no sense at all. How far back should we make claims for compensation for wrong-doing? Humans have wronged each other since the beginning of time.
I don’t even need to go back hundreds of years… My family experienced forced emigration, discrimination, ostracism and, ultimately, mass genocide at the hands of many people from many different countries.
Yet, I do not see fit to claim some form of compensation for this. I do not seek back the money and possessions confiscated from my grandparent’s parents. I do not even seek to return to a home from which my grandfather’s father once lived; a home which, for all intensive purposes, should really be rightfully mine.
This is because my family and I are not ingrained with a sense of forced, masochistic sentimentality. Time marches forward; be it more than two hundred years or, in my case, just over sixty.
What we truly think of is the sheer blessing of circumstance we were granted with that allows us to live and work for prosperity today.
I do not seek out long-gone perpetrators of crimes not committed against me. Nor am I inclined to seek out a “reparation” for which I would be wholly undeserving.
Of course, it is important to never forget but it is, perhaps, far more important not to dwell for eons in the past. Doing so only brings about a stifling infliction of masochistic sentimentality and perpetuates a syndrome of resent and bitterness which is borne out, not only by you, but by your children and your children’s children and so forth.
How could we possibly agree to stifling the lives of our children for such a pedantic and inane cause? Teach children forgiveness, perseverance and hope for future rather than festering within a past wholly uncontrollable and, more so, wholly gone.
Here we go again. We aren’t here about slavery in North Africa, but about slavery that was carried out by Europe and America across the Atlantic. The fact that it is still practised “in North African states today” lets no one off the hook. I fail to understand why you everyone keeps harping on this particular string. I do see why, though. It is to say, “blacks are doing it to themselves, so shut up already.” Except I hope that nobody shuts up. It was wrong then, and it is wrong today. And I hope the world will get every single slave-driving nation.
I’m happy that America went to war with itself over the issue of slavery. I’m just sorry that the war wasn’t over how to apologise and “repair” the damage, but over whether or not to keep blacks in chains. Do you see what I mean? America fought with itself over this question, and what good did that do? Why was there need for Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Rosa Parks and the Black Panthers and all of them folks? Know that it wasn’t for fun.
“No, I do not believe in reparations,” you say. You are free not to. But I do. If it exists, I know of no official reconciliatory effort in England or in America (or in Spain and Portugal), these countries that you flaunt as having fought for the freedom of slaves. Now, South Africa, there’s a country that did do something in the way of sincere reconciliation. Thank you Mandela and De Klerk. Thank you Tutu.
“Oops, excuse me for stepping on your toes.”
“No problem, man.” OR “Fuck you, that hurt!”
Either way it’s done. America and England officially abolished the thing but unofficially went on with the same practices. As late as 1985 I was experiencing hard racism in America, racism that was more or less institutionalised, depending on where you lived.
While we can’t go back and ask the Egyptians to fork out some form of reparation to the Hebrews they enslaved, we can go back and ask the Occident to “repair” Trans-Atlantic slavery. Of course, it’ll never be repaired, but everybody knows that it is the thought that counts. I mean, I got pictures of it, for crying out loud, and documents, certificates of sale or purchase of people. This shit is documented. We know who did what to whom and when. You know what I’m saying? This is a crime that could conceivably be tried in a court of law tomorrow. At “the beginning of time,” nothing that I know of was documented.
I do not know yours or your family’s suffering, but it sounds horrendous. It sounds like the Shoah. Now, while all atrocity is despicable, whether it be against A, B or C, the Shoah stands alone (I think) as a human disaster caused by humans for no apparent reason. I don’t see any reason why the Shoah happened. That doesn’t excuse anyone or belittle other human-caused catastrophes, like slavery, or the slaughter of American Indians. But slaves and Indians were taken or killed for economic gain. And the Shoah’s victims?
If the Shoah is what you’re referring to, you better dig in and ask for excuses and reparations, and fight to make sure it never, ever happens again. If it is the Shoah you’re referring to, then know that, “A coalition of American, European and Israeli organizations launched a series of campaigns in the mid-1990s to secure personal compensation and material restitution for crimes committed against Jewish victims of the Holocaust. This wave of public advocacy was triggered by a combination of factors, including the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the unification of Germany, which opened up vast archives of long-hidden material documenting Nazi-era crimes and led to class-action lawsuits filed in the United States against European corporations with historic ties to the Nazi regime.” This source is from July 2006.
You aren’t ingrained with that sense of masochistic sentimentality, and neither am I, and I doubt the above-mentioned victims of the Holocaust are. A wrong was done, and someone needs to stand up and say, “Oops, excuse me for stepping on your toes.” It’s up to the victim to say “No problem, man,” or “Fuck you, that hurt!” One of the motivating factors for my personal outcry is to “teach the lesson.” Whatever you do in our society today you’re hit at the wallet, and it hurts. it’s dissuasive. It would be a form of punishment, and punishment is a sort of lesson given to someone for them not to screw up (again). But there are other reasons, and other motivations.
Hard Rain, here’s my take. “Britain was the nation which spearheaded an end to the ghastly, racist practice” And that’s supposed to do what for us today? Impress us? Absolve Britain? The country’s role in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade (why do I capitalize this?) leaves me cold even after reading that statement. True, I have issues with the idea of reparations. It has very serious consequences. Forget the practical near-impossibility of who gets what and how much for a moment. Think about the vague possibility that everyone agrees that they have been compensated enough. What excuses will we have then? Because regardless of who I am or what my stance is, I think that sometimes some people use slavery and associated issues as a crutch or an excuse. I am digressing.
I am most interested in your statement: “This is because my family and I are not ingrained with a sense of forced, masochistic sentimentality. Time marches forward” This assumes that slavery is over, and that colonization has ended, and so all its associations, racism, inferiority complex, racial othering etc, are all things of the past. After all time has marched forward, has it not? And with it all the latent oppression? What you call “masochistic sentimentality” (which confuses me), is an awareness of the hypocrisy of ostensible “emancipation” or “independence.” It is an awareness, a resentment and a desire to kick against it.
If I understand your argument correctly, we need to get over ourselves, not demand reparations, and to forgive…and most importantly move on. Again the assumption that we too do not desire these things. We are not on a level playing field. Just because Britain so benevolently decided to stop enslaving people when it was convenient to do so, doesn’t mean that the repercussions do not stretch into present times. Britain did after all go on to pillage and, well rape a continent to its satisfaction. The past IS NOT “wholly gone.”
The point is, moving on does not mean pretending the past never happened, and in order to move on successfully, we need to free our necks from the heels of racism and insidious slavery under which they are being crushed currently. What would some not give to walk into a room and be free of the associations of that visual curse: colour and all its trappings. And this room I talk of is the school/job interview room, the church, the restaurant, the bus, hell, even the public bathroom. Sure, the signs are down, and no one will spit in your face. But the issues are still there, and there does not refer to our minds. We are not making up the pain. In the end, race is still very linked to economic disparity, and that is a legacy of our racial interactions historically. And so I do not want to think of myself as someone with a forced, ingrained masochistic sentimentality (which still confuses me). Instead, I would like to think of myself as someone whose “time has marched on” mentality will not put food on the table.
Which is of course not to say that I think some financial reparations will do that either. An end to slavery and colonization maybe?
Let’s not forget that pointing fingers at Muslim/Arab anti-black racism also bolsters anti-Muslim/anti-Arab sentiments, in the same way pointing fingers at Afghani sexism helped support anti-Taliban war, a la Laura Bush’s “save the Afghani women, bomb the shit out of the Taliban”…. Dubious criticisms…
Wow, Sokari, perhaps another blog dedicated to TA slavery and the issue of reparations???:))
The reparations” argument seems to only cast a negative light when applied to the TA slave trade but makes perfect sense when applied to other groups who, righteously, demand it. I’m waiting for groups to step forward having survived the “ethnic cleansing” in eastern European.
And the Arab slave trade was/is bad, bad, bad and played a large role in moving future slaves from one part of the continent to the other so they get no recognition for a “lesser” role on any level. BUT, yes, let’s stay on point since this is about the TA slave trade.
I’ve been digging for some scholarly work analyzing “reparations” to help separate the “philosophy” from reparations/TA slave trade ongoing debate. I’ve stated this before, this human-induced suffering triggered centuries of economic development and nation-building and is SO profound that, yes, I agree, how can anyone even begin to wrap a mind around compensating descendants but its aftermath is why the majority of the pan-African diaspora is barely surviving and the African continent is on its knees!!
That stated, we keep forgetting the uniqueness of the TA slave trade and how reparations would have to be “uniquely” applied. I can only speak for the USA. Slaves were freed “on paper” and were to be granted “40 acres and mule”. That’s become the biggest joke but it’s true and would have been some type of beginning but they were freed and marched right into Jim Crow which is on some level even more devastating than slavery! Don’t forget, Brown vs the Board was in the 1950’s, ending school segregation and in “public” institutions and then President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the year I was born so up until those acts and obviously for decades afterward, pretty much the same abuse, racism, economic/income/job disparity was in place. That means generations were malnourished; had no access to public, higher ed institutions and many were poorly educated (although there is some validity to the argument that segregated schools in black communities and HBCU’s offered a much better education back then); lacked healthcare, were disenfranchised, living in segregated communities, emotionally battered and terrorized people (particularly in the American South) but had to get on with it! Then listen to white people and other groups tell us that we are lazy and should work harder!
The closest example for me is South Africa—the stories almost mirror to me, minus the TS slave trade.
But it goes deeper, there are several key domestic policy and “informal” economic practices that created “urban America”, job disparity; single parent/below the poverty line households; real estate “restricted covenants”; the prison industrial complex; welfare policies; and the biggest and most pervasive monster, structural/institutional racism. I really believe a very clear, thorough, understanding of the effect(s) of all of this and how this is VERY different from just being poor.
And yes, dignity, self-respect, self-love, etc. and the internal looking-in-the-mirror is half the battle but that economic piece is at the center. Telling people on the brink to straighten up and fly right reminds me of the Billie Holliday quote: “You’ve got to have some food in your belly and some love in your life before you’re gonna sit still for anyone’s damn sermon.”
Basically, a nation evolved a group of people in a particular way under some devastating circumstances based on a global institution that brought them here. So the US black underclass is no mistake AND was a systemic process of economic racism, slavery and white supremacy in the US—at the very core of this country.
And no, it’s not a feasible idea to give every black person, descendant of American slaves, tons of money but maybe pump the billions into “urban America” as we so easily do with Halliburton’s Iraq. We should ALL have jobs/businesses, healthcare, the best schools, hospitals, neighborhood clinics, libraries, environmentally safe neighborhoods in the country; and because that is such a success, it spills over into other communities i.e. Native American, Latino, poor whites.
It’s really about dissecting “reparations” from the magnitude of the TA slave trade debate which keeps getting muddled. Reparations is a legal philosphy of acknowledging a wrongdoing and then doing something to “right” that wrong. Thus, taking an honest hard look at the aftermath, in this case, and compensating accordingly. Forgiveness and letting go of the past has nothing to do with reparations.
Should people be required to pay for the mistakes of their ancestors?
In 700, Africans arrmies cross the Mediterrean and drove all the way to the outskirts of Paris. Their conquest of the Iberian Penisula (Spain and Portrugal) lasted 400 years. During this time, white slaves were transported by the thousands to Africa. Should people of African descent pay raparations for this?
Africans established and ran the slave markets, which flourished for centuries before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade. Should people of African descent pay reparations for this mistake?
How can anyone compare the mechanized TransAtlanic slave trade to the Arab/African slave trade? Tens of millions of Africans brought to the new world in the fastest Portuguese ships known at that time. It should be like comparing Hitlers final solution. His use of the present day technology to maximize his evil.
The profits from the slave trade made the most classless of whites rich. Arab didn’t become that rich until the nationalize oil.
You don’t hear this to much anymore, but many of the southern Americans at the beginning came from prisons and debtors prison. With their poached land and a few slaves they could make their lives emulate French royalty.
They incited race hatred to keep the poor whites who didn’t make it accept slavery so that they wouldn’t rebel for just wages or work.
The demonizing of blacks plus slavery and Jim Crow has taken its toll. 1964 might be when younger people think it ended, but I had live almost twenty years under Jim Crow. There still many fights after 1964. Never any full school desegregation, mainly because of white flight. None of the things we expected ever fully realized. Sometimes you think times have changed and then you hear about a black man was drag to death with a truck by two white men, simply because he was black. This happen a few year ago, not 50 or 100 years ago.
The survival techniques learned during slavery and Jim Crow have become cultural almost ingrained in our DNA. It has changed our behavior and we know it, but we still carry it because we never know when we will need it again.
To Hard Rain, I do believe you believe that you have not been changed or your family has, but I think in the depths of your soul you have.
Trade Routes: Investigates key British institutions and the slave trade
More on British business links to slavery
Most slaves went to Latin American. The Altantic slave trade brought about 500,000 slaves from Africa to the United States. That works out to about 20,000 a year over a period of about 250 years. Today, immigration from Africa to the United States exceeds the rate of forced immigration during the slave era.
About 6 percent of whites and 1.6 percent of free blacks owned slaves. They tended to be land rich but cash poor. Their wealth was their slaves and it vanished along with slavery. The 94 percent of whites who did not own slaves were mostly small farmers who suffered because they had to compete with plantations operated on slave labor. As a result of slavery, Southern whites are still poorer than whites in other parts of the country.
African Americans are rich compared to Africans whose ancestors were not transported to the United States; this makes them benificiaries rather than victims of the slave trade. However, Jim Crow laws and defacto or de jure segration prevented them from sharing in the growth of the U.S. ecomony, especially the Post World War II economic boom that followed the Great Depression. Civil Rights legistation was enacted in the 1950s and 1960s to remedy these social injustices, and we should leave them in place for at least a few more generations.
Today, about 9 million blacks live in poverty compared to about 16 million non-Hispanic whites. Blacks are only disporportionately poor. About 24 percent of blacks live in poverty while only about 10 percent of non-Hispanic whites live in poverty. Some of this is due to racism while some is due to demographics. Blacks are, on the average, younger than whites and tend to have more children. There are more unwed white mothers than black mothers with dependent children, but a higher percentage of blacks are unwed mothers with dependent children. Single parent households are the primary cause of proverty for both races.
There are about 750 million Baby Bommers. Most of them are white and they make up nearly a third of the population. At the moment, Baby Boomers are at the height of their earning capacity, a demographic that inflates white income statistics. The first cohort of the Baby Boomers turn 60 this summer, and most will retire over the next couple of decades.We are loosing about one-third of the workforce in a very short time. There are not nearly enough younger non-Hispanic whites to fill slots vacated by the Baby Boombers; by default, a large percentage of these soon-to-be vacated slots will be filled by minorities. It’s up to African Americans to positioned themselves and their children to take advantage of demographics that are shifting in their favor.
About 76 percent of African Americans households are middle class, and they are sending their children to college. At the moment, they are ahead of Hispanic Americans, who have now replaced blacks as the nation’s largest minority group.
Blair…? What are you saying? This just does not fit snuggly with my prejudices against white Europeans. I mean, sure, in the past various groups have fucked over other groups and benefitted in the process. But, I think it is still fair to pick on Europeans (especially the British!) and Americans despite the fact that other slave trades (like that of the Arabs) were longer lasting, crueler, effected more people, and only ended in the 20th century (if they *really* ended it at all. Darfur!). I mean, it’s like when a policeman sees a greenman, a purpleman, and an orangeman all breaking the same law and only arrests the purpleman… wait, that’s not it. It’s like when purple people just happen to have the most successful societies in the world; obviously hard work, ingenuity, scientific curiosity, and geography had nothing to do with that success. Something sinister was obviously at play. Slavery! But only when the purple people enslaved the orange people. Certainly not when the Green people enslaved both the Purples and the Oranges!
Blair, don’t you see you’ve demonstrated that despite my prejudices, and what I’d like to continue believing, white people didn’t benefit all that much from slavery. This just will not do!
I really do implore you to change your views.
LOL. Three of my ancestors fought during the Civil War. Two died. Do I qualify for a payment? Who would pay it? The descendants of slaves? The descendants of Southern government officials? The descendants of the Southern troops who killed my ancestors? LOL at the poster trying to portray the Arab slave trade as “better.” LOL at the quote, “American and Europeans, unlike their Arab counterparts, never set their slaves free. Slaves died of old age in their slave shack. Arabs released slaves after a certain number of generations. These freed slaves went on to re-establish their lives. In America, notably, we all know what happened” First of all, saying that Arabs set their slaves free after a certain number of generations is just plain wrong. Secondly, saying that Americans and Europeans, unlike their Arab counterparts, never set their slaves free is also just plain wrong. And finally, who are you going to ask to pay these reparations? How are you going to decide who gets them? How much do they get? What qualifies someone to get a payment? And LOL at the suggestion that slavery helped build up America.
LOL isn’t an argument, ZAKattackSJ. It is an Internet abbreviation. You seem to LOL everything.
I don’t know why your ancestors fought the civil war, but who uprooted them from their homes and sent them to the forefront to fight? Who killed and raped their wives and children? Who took their belongings? Who pillaged their nation? Who stuffed them in a boat on a long, dying voyage? Who received them on the other side with whips and insults, and put them in a cotton field by force? Who raped and killed their new wives and burned crosses in their yard? Who denied your ancestors schooling and a livelihood and freedom and well being and just being human?
When you find them, that’s who should pay, and that’s who you should see about reparations for you.
Tell them the experience they put your ancestors through was unfair and criminal in the eyes of God and man, and that that experience is still dogging you to this day. Tell them.
And I’ll tell the ones who did the same things to my ancestors, as I’m trying to do here, which is difficult enough with you LOLing everything. “