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    Emerald D.V.Hamilton Nolan
    9/22/14 1:39pm

    Ready for the onslaught of commenters with half-baked arguments/tu quoques/handwringing that have been addressed time and time again.

    As for me, my ancestors that owned slaves and I would gladly pay higher taxes if it meant reparations were being made for their legacy.

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      Dead's pinHamilton Nolan
      9/22/14 1:39pm

      I'm just sayin', calls for slavery reparations have returned with the publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" in The Atlantic magazine (May 21, 2014). In making his argument, Coates goes through the horrors of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination.

      First off, let me say that I agree with reparations advocates that slavery was a horrible, despicable violation of basic human rights. The gross discrimination that followed emancipation made a mockery of the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. I also agree that slave owners and slave traders should make reparations to those whom they enslaved. The problem, of course, is that slaves, slave owners and slave traders are all dead. Thus, punishing perpetrators and compensating victims is out of the hands of the living, you know what I'm sayin'.

      Some old stankin' ass bitches think punishing perpetrators and compensating victims is not what reparations advocates want. They want government to compensate today's blacks for the bondage suffered by our ancestors. But there's a problem. Government has no resources of its very own. The only way for government to give one American a dollar is to first — through intimidation, threats and coercion — confiscate that dollar from some other American. Therefore, if anybody cares, a moral question arises. What moral principle justifies punishing a white of today to compensate a black of today for what a white of yesterday did to a black of yesterday?

      That's bullshit, and guess what, there's another moral or fairness issue. A large percentage, if not most, of today's Americans — be they of European, Asian, African or Latin ancestry — don't even go back three or four generations as American citizens. Their ancestors arrived on our shores long after slavery. What standard of justice justifies their being taxed to compensate blacks for slavery? For example, in 1956, thousands of Hungarians fled the brutality of the USSR to settle in the U.S. What do Hungarians owe blacks for slavery?

      There's another thorny issue. During slavery, some free blacks purchased other blacks as a means to free family members. But other blacks owned slaves for the same reason whites owned slaves — to work farms or plantations. Are descendants of these slaveholding blacks eligible for and deserving of reparations?

      When African slavery began, there was no way Europeans could have enslaved millions of Africans. They had no immunity from diseases that flourished in tropical Africa. Capturing Africans to sell into slavery was done by Arabs and black Africans. Would reparations advocates demand that citizens of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Kenya and several Muslim states tax themselves to make reparation payments to progeny of people whom their ancestors helped to enslave?

      Reparations advocates make the foolish unchallenged argument that the United States became rich on the backs of free black labor. That's nonsense that cannot be supported by fact. Slavery doesn't have a very good record of producing wealth. Slavery was all over the South, and it was outlawed in most of the North. Buying into the reparations argument about the riches of slavery, one would conclude that the antebellum South was rich and the slave-starved North was poor. The truth of the matter is just the opposite. In fact, the poorest states and regions of our nation were places where slavery flourished — Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia — while the richest states and regions were those where slavery was absent: Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.

      One of the most ignored facts about slavery's tragic history — and it's virtually a secret today — is that slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years. It did not become a moral issue until the 18th century. Plus, the moral crusade against slavery started in the West, most notably England.

      I think the call for slavery reparations is simply another hustle. Advocates are not demanding that government send checks to individual black people. They want taxpayer money to be put into some kind of reparations fund from which black leaders decide who receives how much and for what purpose.

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        DMartelDead's pin
        9/22/14 1:49pm

        Better duck, the Gawker commentariat don't like it when smart people get uppity.

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        SrynersonDead's pin
        9/22/14 1:55pm

        Thank you for pointing out the productivity problem with slave labor. It's ridiculous how the statement "America is rich today because of slavery" is accepted without question when the actual evidence shows that slavery retarded America's net economic growth.

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      KevHamilton Nolan
      9/22/14 1:40pm

      great first step, but the huge issue here is that paying reparations doesn't do much to lift folks out of systemic poverty. $50k per household now doesn't mean the kids in poor neighborhoods automatically have better access to education or opportunities for jobs. it just means a $50k bandaid.

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        Hamilton NolanKev
        9/22/14 1:49pm

        $50k is not a bad bandaid.

        Like I say, this is not meant to replace any other social programs that are in place to fight poverty. It's meant to give some wealth to a community with little to no wealth at present. Just the presence of some level of wealth could do amazing things.

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        cmmntsystmscksHamilton Nolan
        9/22/14 1:53pm

        You don't feed a starving person a buffet lunch.

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      The Hammock DistrictHamilton Nolan
      9/22/14 1:42pm

      "3. This monetary payment is not enough to address the myriad ills that are still the legacy of racism. I strongly agree. This payment will not make the public school system function well for rich and poor alike. "

      See, one problem with reparations is that it will give people yet another excuse to overlook or excuse the kind of foundational, institutional       racism that truly traps people. Look at the way people write off concepts of racism as it is: We already have a black president, JEEZ!

      I'm not saying that there isn't a worthwhile case to be made for reparations; but we run the risk of putting one more token in the "Is Racism Over Yet?" hat for everyone that doesn't want to do any personal or national critical self-evaluation.

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        Hamilton NolanThe Hammock District
        9/22/14 2:11pm

        My argument is that saying "don't do it because it will give white people another excuse to overlook racism" is foolish, because we can clearly see that white people (at least of a certain political persuasion) do not need ANY excuses to overlook racism. They do it already. They will do it with or without reparations. Since that is the case, it would be better to go ahead and have the reparations. At least some concrete benefits ensue.

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        The Hammock DistrictHamilton Nolan
        9/22/14 3:04pm

        I appreciate that perspective, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't be paying reparations, I'm just saying that we know exactly how it will play across FoxNews and throughout so many corners of the country: like a secular version of a Papal Indulgence.

        You're right; white people don't need any excuse to overlook racism, and the money would at least be something tangible, but it also trades any hope of ever trying to have some kind of meaningful acknowledgement of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow America. So many people will have already, in their minds, bought that guilt off their conscience and paid away any responsibility for it.

        Then again, seeing the way that people responded to — and then promptly forgot — Ferguson, maybe you'll say it's impossible to have a meaningful discussion of racism in America. And maybe you're right...

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      destor23Hamilton Nolan
      9/22/14 1:47pm

      "What about black people who are already economically well off?"

      They should be weller off. This isn't a needs-based transfer, its a reparation. Checks should go to everybody. Let the people on Fox get all twisted over one going to Jay-Z.

      As for it being too expensive, I agree with you about the potential stimulus. I would not, however, raise taxes to pay for it. That would potentially counteract the stimulus. I'd issue reparations bonds instead, to be paid for by the economic growth caused by the payments.

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        SwipeRightForJesusdestor23
        9/22/14 1:55pm

        Plenty to read out there about the inequalities between black wealth vs. white wealth. A black family making $100,000/yr goes fight large amounts of systemic inequality, racist housing policies, etc. that white families making $100,000/yr don't even think about.

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        Craigalotdestor23
        9/22/14 2:02pm

        Yeah, you're right. In the case of someone like Jay-Z, the 25K would probably be donated to charity anyway.

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      Dave Hamilton Nolan
      9/22/14 1:44pm

      Respect to the ideology behind this HamNo but you are better off discussing the relative merits of the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy, because their existence is far more plausible than the idea of reparations ever happening.

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        Hamilton NolanDave
        9/22/14 1:48pm

        Think positive friend.

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        Paul DimitrovDave
        9/22/14 2:00pm

        Dude! Come on, the discussion begins on the fringe and moves to the center.

        Do you not understand that?

        Your argument is a Davis Brooks-ian bunch of nonsense, stating basically that, "Oh, this isn't currently part if some centrist-approved political discourse, so let's just dismiss it wholesale."

        When did america become this? I fawking blame you, David Brooks.

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      hhppHamilton Nolan
      9/22/14 1:35pm

      While whites were complicit in slavery, weren't most slaves a part of large mega-plantations owned primarily by rich interests?

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        burnernumberfourhhpp
        9/22/14 1:41pm

        We all benefit from the stolen labor of slaves. The country would not have been able to become the enormous economic powerhouse it was — and thus contributing, as a legacy, to the wealth today — if it weren't for the labor done on the backs of slaves. They made this country and absolutely no wealth was able to be handed down to their families because of it.

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        Srynersonburnernumberfour
        9/22/14 1:51pm

        False. Slave labor is less productive than free labor and slavery, particularly in the form as practiced in the South, retards capital investment. That's why the "North" was substantially wealthier than the "South" by the time of the Civil War. The long-term effect is that United States is actually poorer today than it would have been had slavery never been introduced to its territory. Just because a small number of people get rich off of something doesn't mean that it's good for the overall economy.

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      PoetjunkieHamilton Nolan
      9/22/14 1:37pm

      "Oh, hey Black community. Here's some cash! Sorry about the centuries of ingrained terribleness... This 25k means we're cool now, right?"

      Don't get me wrong, $25,000 is a nice chunk of change, but what is that inky, flimsy paper supposed to be fixing? Unless you're a millionaire/billionaire, throwing cash at problems doesn't really make them go away, but just band-aids the wound.

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        partyoatmealPoetjunkie
        9/22/14 1:52pm

        It seems that this strategy would need to include financial literacy education for all receiving reparations. "Starting a business" and "investing" are easier said than done, and you're right—instead of throwing money at the problem, they'd need to gently hand it over rubber-banded to a thickass brochure.

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      StorminMike2000Hamilton Nolan
      9/22/14 2:32pm

      But if you are giving the wealth to members of all races based on poverty, this isn't "reparations." All you are doing at that point is creating a stimulus package.

      The thesis of Coates' piece was that in addition to the economic hole Blacks were put into by slavery, they continue to suffer from the lack of opportunities Whites receive simply for having white skin. Giving this reparation/stimulus package to low-income Whites as well as Blacks would be a criticized as a "double payment."

      I think that this is a reasonable idea but labeling it as "reparations" is incorrect. Even if it were to be passed, calls for reparations would not cease.

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        Hamilton NolanStorminMike2000
        9/22/14 2:47pm

        I'm saying that this is as close to pure reparations as I think America could get. Happy for an enlightened future America to prove me wrong.

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        StorminMike2000Hamilton Nolan
        9/22/14 3:19pm

        I'd be interested to see the calculus of what percentage of current American wealth is directly related to the institution of slavery.

        It seems to me that much of the wealth created by slavery was destroyed during the Civil War. It must be greater than 20% if that was the monetary value of slaves in and of themselves. Destruction of property, looting, collapse of the Confederate currency, etc... must have represented another healthy chunk of wealth gained through slavery which was lost. Then the Great Depression essentially reset the economy to zero. I think it would be very interesting to see how much American wealth is a direct decendant of slave exploitation.

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      MBelinkieHamilton Nolan
      9/22/14 2:08pm

      Instead of a one time payment, don't you think it's more beneficial to the recipients to pay out the money over the course of 25 years or so? A thousand bucks a year, tax free. Since I'm a bleeding heart liberal I believe in social engineering as well as reparations, and if you just write people giant checks many of them are just going to splurge and spend it all immediately. That has nothing to do with race; that's human nature.

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        Hamilton NolanMBelinkie
        9/22/14 2:16pm

        Maybe, although I tend to think that you want to give people payments big enough to make a concrete difference in their lives. $1K a year is a little too incremental to truly use it to try to build wealth. But definitely there is a discussion to be had on the specific numbers and timing of payments.

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