The UN demands the US pay Reparations

genuineoriginal

New member
If you owned a slave in Virginia Crown Colony in 1775, chances are you continued to own that slave after 1789. Changing sovereignty doesn't change property ownership, nor does changing the constitution, and it doesn't change legal or moral responsibility for actions either.
Nobody alive today is responsible for anything done under the Virginia Crown Colony in 1775.

I'm not saying you're guilty of holding slaves. But if you are white you likely have benefited, if unwittingly, from slave labor, segregation, and discrimination.
No, that is a lie.

Again, you're calling for a wholly inappropriate solution. I could give everything I have and it wouldn't make a dent. The nation is responsible, the nation should pay its moral debt.
The nation is not responsible, the nation has already made any reparations required during the civil war.
Now, if you want to talk about fiscal responsibility and paying back a debt, when are the former slaves going to pay for the costs to the nation for freeing them from their lawful owners?

And ending slavery is the least that we should have been done.
If the nation already did that, why are you whining about wanting more?
 

rexlunae

New member
i wouldn't want to try because the number of my great (x15) grandparents from 400 years ago is roughly 65536

and i know the story of two of them

In other words, you don't really know if you have a claim or not. You just wanted to throw up a roadblock.
 

rexlunae

New member
Nobody alive today is responsible for anything done under the Virginia Crown Colony in 1775.

No. But they could be liable for debts incurred in 1775 in the Virginia Crown Colony. They could own property acquired in 1775 and passed down as an inheritance.


No, that is a lie.

Nope.

The nation is not responsible, the nation has already made any reparations required during the civil war.

Specifically?

Now, if you want to talk about fiscal responsibility and paying back a debt, when are the former slaves going to pay for the costs to the nation for freeing them from their lawful owners?

Never. And they should have been made to actually pay for their crimes. And I'd add that there are some acts so wrong, so fundamentally and obviously illegitimate that no one should recognize any attempt to legalize them. I'd count slavery among them, as would most people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity

If the nation already did that, why are you whining about wanting more?

Because there's more that we should do beyond ending the practice of an actual crime against humanity.
 

This Charming Manc

Well-known member
I think they have a case but so do a lot of other people.

History is full of people abusing, hurting and killing other people.

Often people in power abusing those not in power, not because they are morally worse or better than the other person but because they have the ability to do so.

But reparations? Where do they start and stop? How far back do we go? What effect do they have in there here and now?

Should we start looking for the descendants of the Huns to give the Italians a payout?

I think looking at concepts such as South Africas Truth and reconciliation commission is a lot more beneficial for both parties than talk of blame, responsibility and reparations.
 

Traditio

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No. But they could be liable for debts incurred in 1775 in the Virginia Crown Colony. They could own property acquired in 1775 and passed down as an inheritance.

These claims are just silly. Again: squatter's rights? Your claim that it is unjust for someone to hold property which initially was acquired unjustly, regardless of how long ago, is simply wrong, or, at the very least, is generally and publicly considered wrong.
 

Traditio

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Only in the sense that I don't intend to solve every injustice all at once. If you can get away with one crime by pointing out that someone else got away with something similar, you might as well just not bother making anything illegal.

Why do you care about the one and not the other?
 

Traditio

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Ultimately, these are my basic sentiments:

Ultimately, what reparations suggests is that somehow I am in debt, I, as a white person, am responsible for the plight of black people. It suggests that I owe black people something.

And because, of course, I am somehow responsible, the government should take steps which prejudicially favor black people and are contrary to my own interests.

To which my answer, of course, is to tell them where they can shove it.

Again, in a few select words of Johnny Rebel, from "Reparations":

So there you go again talking about reparations
There you go again talking about something else free
There you go again talking about reparations
Well listen to me...
you ain't getting nothing from me

There ain't a slave still living today
So tell me why do you think we should pay?
For what we didn't do
and what didn't happen to you
You can always go back home
Where the monkeys and the baboons roam
And if you're ain't satisfied that's exactly what you ought to do....

We don't owe you a...thing
Man, you gotta be out of your mind
So take your reparations
And stick them where the sun don't shine.
 

Traditio

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Specifically to RexLunae and to other persons who actually think that reparations are owed.

The conclusion that you want is one of the following:

1. Therefore, current descendants of slave owners owe something to current descendants of slaves.

2. Therefore, white people in general currently owe something to black people in general.

3. Therefore, the government owes something to black people.

4. Therefore, the government should pursue policies which preferentially favor black people.

No argument that has been presented in this thread actually supports any of the above. Simply pointing out that black people have been subject to mistreatment in the past, even if true, doesn't actually prove any of the above. Asserting that black people and white people currently have unequal social, economic, etc. outcomes also doesn't prove any of the above.

If you disagree with me, then consider absolutely any other case. Would these arguments suffice, considered all by themselves, to win a private civil suit?

Does anyone have a syllogistic argument which actually concludes with the premise: "Therefore, [either conclusions 1, 2, 3 or 4 listed above]"?

Note, RexLunae, I'm not asking for a boo hoo sob story about how black people have been unfairly treated and blah, blah, blah. I'm asking for an actual syllogistic argument which concludes to one of those premises.
 
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ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
In other words, you don't really know if you have a claim or not.


no more so than do modern blacks, wrt slave ancestors

how would you determine what reparations are due someone like Obama, for instance, whose black heritage never included slavery in america?
 

rexlunae

New member
no more so than do modern blacks, wrt slave ancestors

You sure about that? There are an awful lot of people who can draw pretty direct lines back to pretty specific times and places and people.

how would you determine what reparations are due someone like Obama, for instance, whose black heritage never included slavery in america?

Well, first we'd pass John Conyers's bill to study the question.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
You sure about that? There are an awful lot of people who can draw pretty direct lines back to pretty specific times and places and people.

2016-1865=151 years

151 years/25 years per generation = 8 generations

2^8 = 256 great (x6) grandparents

most people I know of have trouble naming more than a couple of those

how would you determine eligibility?
 

Traditio

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2016-1865=151 years

151 years/25 years per generation = 8 generations

2^8 = 256 great (x6) grandparents

most people I know of have trouble naming more than a couple of those

how would you determine eligibility?

He's already made himself clear earlier in the thread in answer to me. He has no interest in determining the financial responsibilities of the descendants of slave owners to the descendants of slaves.

He wants the government to provide preferential treatment for all black people in general.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
well, if de gubmint gwine be gibbin' out free moneys, i sho nuf wants to be gettin' some fo me!
 

rexlunae

New member
2016-1865=151 years

151 years/25 years per generation = 8 generations

2^8 = 256 great (x6) grandparents

most people I know of have trouble naming more than a couple of those

how would you determine eligibility?

My mother has traced her lineage back to the Norman conquest. There are records. It's not a complete record, but enough to establish a link.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
My mother has traced her lineage back to the Norman conquest. There are records. It's not a complete record, but enough to establish a link.

at a 38 generation remove, that's 274,877,906,944 great (x36) grandparents

you know of 2?


how do you know that the other (or some of the other) 274,877,906,942 weren't the perpetrators of any claimed oppression?
 

genuineoriginal

New member
No. But they could be liable for debts incurred in 1775 in the Virginia Crown Colony. They could own property acquired in 1775 and passed down as an inheritance.
You don't have a point here. Acquiring property does not mean you are a debtor unless you borrow from a creditor, which is not what you are talking about. You are talking about an inheritance, not a debt.

Specifically?
Anything the nation may have "owed" the slaves was fully paid for by the civil war that freed them. Whether anything was actually owed is a matter of debate.

The civil war cost the Union $2,300,000,000. In today's dollar, that is $50,030,861,995.42.

If you are demanding reparation in excess of the 50 billion dollars that was already spent, then you are nothing but a greedy pig.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
You don't have a point here. Acquiring property does not mean you are a debtor unless you borrow from a creditor, which is not what you are talking about. You are talking about an inheritance, not a debt.


Anything the nation may have "owed" the slaves was fully paid for by the civil war that freed them. Whether anything was actually owed is a matter of debate.


The civil war cost the Union $2,300,000,000. In today's dollar, that is $50,030,861,995.42.

If you are demanding reparation in excess of the 50 billion dollars that was already spent, then you are nothing but a greedy pig.


we could give 'em each a buck, then the bill for the civil war :idunno:
 
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