Re:The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s
by rayiner on Saturday May 12, 2018 @01:50AM
(#17052656)
There are two separate issues. Ongoing racism, and the lasting impact of past racism, segregation, and slavery. Per capita income for Africa Americans is 1/3 lower than the national average. Even among liberals it’s not a popular idea to say that a big chunk of that gap is not due to ongoing racism but lasting effects of past wrongs. The idea of paying reparations seems radical. But legally it’s not that odd. It would basically be paying money damages for state and federal governments’ past torts and constitutional violations. When slavery was ended, the government should have paid, under common law tort theories, a bunch of money for false imprisonment. When segregation ended, state governments should have been liable for damages for constitutional torts (what would now be 1983 liability).
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Re:The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s
by giardini on Saturday May 12, 2018 @11:35AM
(#17054518)
Perhaps the most memorable attempt at reparations created a common phrase,"40 acres and a mule", which unfortunately proved to have no resolution behind it:
"The Truth Behind ’40 Acres and a Mule’"
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cro...
from the article:
'And what happened to this astonishingly visionary program, which would have fundamentally altered the course of American race relations? Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor and a sympathizer with the South, overturned the Order in the fall of 1865, and..."returned the land along the South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it” — to the very people who had declared war on the United States of America.'