ot; trayvon martin

[scaredyclassic]

I don’t know. Maybe it was just the “right” answer. There were many, many legal issues, including how it would be financed and it was necessary to argue pro and con on all the issues. Can’t remember the issues…

Conservative student body… Maybe they forgot to argue the pro fully. Lots of grumbling about how “weird” the question was…

That was a good test for me.

But whoopie do is about right, ultimately. It was a silly issue, right?

Didn’t we recently give reparations to the Japanese in camps during WWII ?

I distinctly remember many of the legal issues were raised in one clause of one sentence in a lengthy question, tucked away. I never forgot that. Read carefully. The issue or answer orimpirtant winning point is often tucked away somewhere…

[scaredyclassic]

In 1988, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which had been sponsored by Representative Norman Mineta and Senator Alan K. Simpson – the two had met while Mineta was interned at a camp in Wyoming – which provided redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee, totaling $1.2 billion. The question of to whom reparations should be given, how much, and even whether monetary reparations were appropriate were subjects of sometimes contentious debate.[98]

On September 27, 1992, the Civil Liberties Act Amendments of 1992, appropriating an additional $400 million to ensure all remaining internees received their $20,000 redress payments, was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, who also issued another formal apology from the U.S. government on December 7, 1991, on the very day of the 50th-Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor Attack:

“In remembering, it is important to come to grips with the past. No nation can fully understand itself or find its place in the world if it does not look with clear eyes at all the glories and disgraces of its past. We in the United States acknowledge such an injustice in our history. The internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry was a great injustice, and it will never be repeated.”

[scaredyclassic]

Was not slavery and the years subsequent a far greater disgrace than internment during wartime?

Have we as a nation ever done anything to redress the wrong?

Affirmative action, I guess…not much of an apology.

[scaredyclassic]

Perhaps black leadership should haveen fighting harder for damages…proofs a lot harder than in the Japanese case though…they waited too long for litigation…

Jews got reparations from Germany post WWII …

Imagine how the issue would’ve been seen by the USA back close in time to emancipation.

I can imagine being part of an underclass and not wanting to be a part of the system due to past injustices.

How can we justify paying money damages to the Japanese but not to blacks?

I remember arguments existed on both sides…

[Allan from Fallbrook]

[quote=squat300]Was not slavery and the years subsequent a far greater disgrace than internment during wartime?

Have we as a nation ever done anything to redress the wrong?

Affirmative action, I guess…not much of an apology.[/quote]

Scaredy: The issue is complicated by a couple key facts. The Union forces were fighting against slavery (among other issues), and over 300,000 Union soldiers died in the American Civil War. The Confederate States of America were economically devastated by the war.

So, how does one assess reparations? Who pays? Does the US Government pay? The same government that expended huge amounts of blood (the Civil War remains the bloodiest in American history, with casualties exceeding ALL other wars combined) and treasure restoring the Union?

Do you levy the Southern states that comprised the Confederacy? Who gets paid (how does one assess the validity of a claim)? On this last one, the recent Pigford fiasco is instructive. If you haven’t heard about this debacle, it’s worth your time to read up on it. The road to hell and good intentions and all.

[livinincali]

[quote=squat300]appropriating an additional $400 million to ensure all remaining internees received their $20,000 redress payments, [/quote]

This is the key right here. None of the members of the current black community suffered from slavery. Why should we think that current Americans who weren’t responsible slavery should pay repercussions to people that weren’t victims of slavery. Even if you did decide to do that, do you really think that solves problems in the black community. Food stamps, section 8, and other forms welfare don’t seem to be solving the problem why would checks for $20K help?

[scaredyclassic]

Reparations, like apologies, are about far more than money.

All the issues you raise are good ones though…

[scaredyclassic]

Basically the time for reparations is when the injury is fresh…

Yet the injury continues.

Impossible to prove causation tho…

I’d suspect the black community still suffers in some unprovable way the effects of slavery…

If not.. Around what year would you say it stopped?

[scaredyclassic]

Why should Americans who weren’t even alive during WWII pay money to Asians for an imprisonment that happened 40 years earlier?

How does 20k help?

If you were a black teen living in a crappy project in a single parent family in a drug infested neighborhood with crappy schools and lots of people you know we’re in and out of prison, would it seem completely unreasonable that slavery was in some small part a bit responsible for the current plight of your community even if you couldn’t prove it?

If so wouldn’t you think it unfair to pay off the Asians and apologize for the injustice and ignore you?

Maybe. I might.

Food stamps aren’t “reparations”.

[scaredyclassic]

I think the damages from slavery so dwarf the Japanese damages that they are essentially unpayable.

If Barack Had said

“In remembering, it is important to come to grips with the past. No nation can fully understand itself or find its place in the world if it does not look with clear eyes at all the glories and disgraces of its past. We in the United States acknowledge such an injustice in our history. The internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry was a great injustice, and it will never be repeated.”

Instead of bush, America woulda flipped out.

Why?

Because we did bad by black people and never made amends…

[scaredyclassic]

I think the best hope for the future is very high rates of intermarriage and a lessening if past connection to historical identity.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

Scaredy: No, not completely unreasonable. But what other things contributed to that situation you reference?

And, your argument presupposes that the $20k check gets spent wisely.

A good friend of mine does scouting/recruiting for a Big Ten school. He has told me, repeatedly, about visiting homes all over the country, where people live in fairly abject circumstances, but there’s a plasma big screen TV, a nice ride outside and the kids are sporting iPhones and expensive kicks.

Problem is more thorny than any of us imagine and my concern would be reparations simply becomes another gubment handout.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook] The deployment of race-positive social programs institutionalized the underclass and created a series of perverse incentives, not least of which was the common practice of having ever more children because the state essentially “paid” you to do so.[/quote]

Welfare is not race positive but income and asset based.

I don’t think that welfare paid women to have kids. But it make made is less painful to be reproductively responsible.

You can’t expect teenagers and 20 somethings in destitute situations to be sexually responsible. All they have to do is screw like rabbits. And young girls look for love when there’s nothing else. For young uneducated men, scoring girls is the thing to do. Witness the military despite the edicts from commanders.

But welfare is much better now that fathers are pursued for payments.

We could have avoided a lot of pain by having aggressive, proactive sex education, pills and condoms available for free at school. Science shows that it works.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Scaredy: No, not completely unreasonable. But what other things contributed to that situation you reference?

And, your argument presupposes that the $20k check gets spent wisely.

A good friend of mine does scouting/recruiting for a Big Ten school. He has told me, repeatedly, about visiting homes all over the country, where people live in fairly abject circumstances, but there’s a plasma big screen TV, a nice ride outside and the kids are sporting iPhones and expensive kicks.

Problem is more thorny than any of us imagine and my concern would be reparations simply becomes another gubment handout.[/quote]

True. Native american casino checks are often reportedly consumed in unwise ways. Sometimes those checks seem like very indirect and weird reparations.

Doesn’t mean reparations aren’t due. The nazis probly owed the Jews some cash, even if the Jews were gonna blow it all on some high quality coke to ease the pain.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=squat300]I think the best hope for the future is very high rates of intermarriage and a lessening if past connection to historical identity.[/quote]

I agree. And the offsprings are more beautiful also.

Right now, the push back is that whites, especially non-college educated white men, feel under assault from all fronts. The historical “superiority” was their identity but they have nothing to offer anymore. They are especially afraid of blacks because black genes are dominant and black masculinity is superior.

I read the 15% of marriages are interracial now.

There’s a big psychological element to racism. But few people want to self-examine.

Obama represents the new world. Despite some people claiming that’s he the same as Bush, Obama means a changing of political establishment to a younger more diverse crowd. That shift has already happened in popular culture, celebrities and athletics.

The world evolves. You’re happier when you embrace the changes.

[Author]

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