51–60 of 194 posts
Off topic but what does “tolerably spare made” mean? Is a euphemism for slightly overweight?
Which gives us "spare made", "well made", and "well set" as descriptions.
A similar "ethnography" (http://tiny.cc/3ip6tz) gives me this:
"Although from their wiry and spare conformation of body, the Villees look tall, they are not so in reality."
Which I would think implies thin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You do realize that every civilization that has ever existed has both enslaved others and been enslaved in the past, right? Do you realize that's an extraordinary claim? You have proof for this, right?
I know they don't teach real history in school or in the media anymore and you have an entirely skewed perception of history at this point, but it's the truth. Or course the word "every" is probably too much, because there's been exceptions. Just pick any random country/civilization and google "history of slavery in X". For example England, Ireland, Turkey, any country you enter, you'll find a history of it.
Warning; while there really was slavery in Ireland at one time (indeed Dublin was one of the biggest markets in Europe before the Normans suppressed it in the 12th century), if you Google for this you are likely to get a good bit of nonsense. Decent summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_slaves_myth
I have a pretty good idea, its about investing in Africa. America has a lot of assets, in the black population, they should encourage people to visit their homeland, on a paid trip. Helping the African economy and helping African Americans create business connects to Africa. Then there should be a programme where African Americans get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land in Africa. France is doing s…
This seems like an absolutely indispensable technology for achieving reparations. Most black Americans have ancestors who (slavery) worked a lot of unpaid hours. Having clear metrics on how many slaves there were is a step towards having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be. There are some places in the US which have started, but they're just kind of pulling numbers out of a hat and I don'…
Disclaimer: my parents are immigrants, and I have absolutely no genealogical connection to American slavery. > having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be I just don't understand how someone can talk about a "well-founded number" for reparations in a serious way. How can you calculate a dollar amount, even within 5 orders of magnitude, for something that happened to millions of people for…
And to those who will certainly tell me that I’ve benefitted from the modern spoils of slavery: I beg to differ. My first decade in the US was all about climbing out of the pit of “you’re not white enough for us because you didn’t go to a top school”. That shit still haunts me to this day.
I have a pretty good idea, its about investing in Africa. America has a lot of assets, in the black population, they should encourage people to visit their homeland, on a paid trip. Helping the African economy and helping African Americans create business connects to Africa. Then there should be a programme where African Americans get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land in Africa. France is doing s…
This might trigger some people. If you used a term like "ancestral region(s)" or something, it might've been less triggering.
Firstly, the word "homeland" is not one typically associated with one's country of ancestry. I've rarely ever heard someone use that term. On the contrary, I have heard people say "my ancestors came from X country", or like "my great-grandparents came from Italy". The term "homeland" is usually used for the region where a person's current home is. And this not to mention that even a first-generation immigrant who has lived in X country for a long time, could consider X country to be his true homeland.
Secondly, there's an implicit assumption here that "Africa" is the "homeland" of African Americans. I don't need to explain why that's troubling.
Thirdly, many of my "African American" friends are of thoroughly mixed ancestry. One such friend did a 23andMe test, and it turned out he had 54% European ancestry (even though physically "he looks black"), 30-something% African ancestry, and a smattering of other ancestry groups (including Native American) for the rest. It would be inaccurate and inappropriate to consider him as someone "of African ancestry" (even though he looks somewhat so). The phenotypes a person's genome expressed do not necessarily correspond to a person's actual genetic ancestry.
I could go into more reasons as to why it's not a great term to use, but I think these three reasons make a good case.
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> get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land
While the underlying motivation behind your idea is pretty decent (and a fairly lofty goal I might add); I, for one, would rather prefer direct foreign aid (not loans, but literal foreign aid grants with no expectation of return). There's too much of a risk of corruption with your idea, and bad incentives are baked right into it. Just increase the current foreign aid to developing countries across the board. Do something like the Marshall Plan, where in exchange for free-market economic policies, we directly invest in education, infrastructure, and other things in developing countries.
On a secondary note, domestically, I would rather focus on just getting some kind of actual, concrete, meaningful (maybe financial) reparations bill passed through Congress. That alone seems like a huge and almost insurmountable political challenge, and I want to see that tackled somehow. We want to improve the quality of life and access to opportunity for the poorest economic classes in the US, so they can pursue their ambitions and dreams from a similar starting point as more well-off Americans. Achieving this alone would be a huuuge deal in and of itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a pervasive fear that admitting that the US owes the descendants of slaves something could potentially validate the complaints black people have about other issues in America. See the posts about Timnit Gebru for comments depicting the demands of black people as "too disruptive".
Really? I think the resistance to reparations comes from folks like me who don't see a reason we should pay anything. Most of my ancestors are German immigrants to the northeast US who arrived after slavery was abolished. The remainder were poor Scotts Irish who continued to live in poverty in northern Appalachia. I understand, but do not agree with, the logical hoops many jump through to justify indebtedness to all…
If there is no paper trail saying that you are a beneficiary of human trafficking, you will not pay reparations. In order to understand this, you and also the justice system need to evolve to see the world more granularly than just "race". Slaves had names, they had families, they had descendants. Those descendants have legal standing in the most basic sense: they have been deprived of property. Justice demands that those stolen assets be returned to the rightful, legal owners.
Forget "resolving racism". That's a red herring. Just return the stolen property to the rightful owners. That's a much more concrete, actionable goal.
Edit: please post response instead of downvoting. Why should this comment disappear?
I have a pretty good idea, its about investing in Africa. America has a lot of assets, in the black population, they should encourage people to visit their homeland, on a paid trip. Helping the African economy and helping African Americans create business connects to Africa. Then there should be a programme where African Americans get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land in Africa. France is doing s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But reparations should be paid, if for nothing else, at least for the unpaid hours. You must be young to speak with such certainty. Post-slavery, black sharecroppers basically made nothing after expenses. So how much was their time actually worth? (An economist will ask this.) Post-slavery, norhern states, which had no slaves, paid the cost of welfare for millions of black families. So how does that factor in? Sinc…
Do the people who had their property stolen by the Nazis have to pay the US for liberating the death camps? Yeah, no. There are simple answers to several of your questions.
Not just the US of course. Britain and France among others are owed a lot more in reparations for what Germany did and the long-term consequences.
The US got repaid - only in part - for its war lending. It has never been paid reparations for its losses in WW2 (including 400,000 military deaths).
What's the reparations tally for 400,000 dead, going by the numbers thrown around these days? $10 trillion? Germany and Japan can figure out the split on that and then write some big fat checks to the families in question.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But we can hardly answer them if we refuse to engage with the idea of reparations to begin with. That's because the first order of business is to demonstrate that reparations are even a good idea. Engage with those who don't like the idea, and address the concerns they raise, if you can; then deal with minutae.
And the second order of business assuming it is even a good idea would be to determine who should pay. The answer "taxpayers" is an absolute non-starter. My family only showed up in this country in the mid 80s and have zero responsibility for things that happened well over 100 years ago. We also don't live in states where slavery was ever a thing.
That’s not really... likely. Even if your state wasn’t a ‘state’ Pre-abolishion, there was slavery there. The history of slavery in North America did not start at Plymouth Rock.
I have a pretty good idea, its about investing in Africa. America has a lot of assets, in the black population, they should encourage people to visit their homeland, on a paid trip. Helping the African economy and helping African Americans create business connects to Africa. Then there should be a programme where African Americans get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land in Africa. France is doing s…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Societ...
Later Marcus Garvey motivated another 'Back to Africa' movement. As I understand it the, the movement did not send very many blacks back to Africa.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey
We have to wonder, do Africans want Black Americans to come colonize their homelands?