I'm completely in favor of slavery reparations . . .

[RickWA]

The American government allowed for human being to be held as slaves in the laws that founded this nation.
Had it not, then there would have been no slavery, end of story.

There is no need to point fingers anywhere else.
No other group of people in history were subjected to the kind of slavery practiced in the U.S.


American chattel slavery stand alone.

Myths and Misunderstandings: Slavery in the United States Archives- American Civil War Museum

Earlier this summer, comments on one of our Facebook posts sparked a larger conversation about recurring debates about the Civil War. We …

acwm.org

Simplistic, selective, and lazy. And, of course, entirely neglectful of everything to which you responded.

We can’t correct old wrongs. We can learn from them and do better today. There is no “undo”
button. The “do” button, however, should be thoughtfully engaged - with full attention to all consequences, intended and unintended.

 

[RickWA]

My family legally immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s during the Bolshevik Revolution. My ancestors had to have sponsors and worked as share croppers until they could save enough money to buy their own land. We owned no slaves...didn't become citizens until over 45 years after Reconstruction.

My family owes nobody for slavery, as our ancestors weren't even here. Therefore, my family's tax money should go to nobody regarding reparations.

My family came here in 1953. I was born 12 years later. But…constituencies, ya know. Move this stuff here…away from those people there…Thats how power works.

I’ve given up hope that rational people exist…let alone LISTEN.

 

[EatTheRich]

ii don't think "all whites" have benefitted from slavery which took place decades or centuries before their forebears's arrival in the USA. if you need convincing, just visit

1. state and federal penetentiaries
2. kids drop out of public high school because they can't even read at the "average" 5th grade level
3. substance abusers
4. the homeless
5. your local amazon picker, starbucks barista, or uber driver

1. Black first-time offenders are 6 times as likely to be incarcerated as whites who commit the same crimes.
2. Black students are almost 400 times as likely to attend schools with students more likely to go to prison than be graduated from high school. Blacks are about 25% more likely than whites to value education but almost 40% less likely to have the opportunity to complete high school.
3. Whites disproportionately abuse substances because whites disproportionately avoid serious consequences for doing so.
4. Black homeowners and Black renters on average pay more for housing than whites, for homes of lower quality. Blacks are about 3 times as likely as whites to be homeless.
5. Black college graduates on average earn less than whites with only high school diplomas. Blacks are almost 50% more likely to be paid poverty-level wages than whites.

 

[EatTheRich]

Simplistic, selective, and lazy. And, of course, entirely neglectful of everything to which you responded.

We can’t correct old wrongs. We can learn from them and do better today. There is no “undo”
button. The “do” button, however, should be thoughtfully engaged - with full attention to all consequences, intended and unintended.

The point of reparations is to correct the present-day wrongs traceable in part to the great historic injustice.

 

[RickWA]

The point of reparations is to correct the present-day wrongs traceable in part to the great historic injustice.

No, that’s the popular narrative intended for the consumption of stupid people…which is what America is at this point. Reparations is just one more Trojan Horse. It’s a bloody stampede at this point. Addressing wrongs exacted upon dead people to benefit the living is the stuff of morons.

 

[Zam-Zam]

Sad, being made to fight for your own enslavement.
This is utterly shameful.

There is nothing about slavery that is not shameful, IMO.

It degrades the slaveholder as much as it does the slave. And yet, it was the way of the world for most of recorded history, long before the United States came into being. It is humankind's enduring legacy.

We are indeed fortunate to live in these times and should be eternally grateful. I know I am.

 

[Zam-Zam]

The Louisiana Native Guard were union troops.

Active fighting ended less than three weeks after the law was passed, and there is no evidence that any black units were accepted into the Confederate Army as a result of the law. Whatever black combat service might have occurred during the war, it was not sanctioned by the Confederate government. Even beyond the Official Records, there is no known letter, diary entry, or any other primary source in which a Confederate mentions serving with black soldiers.

Black Confederates: Truth and Legend | American Battlefield Trust (battlefields.org)

Agree to disagree:

ARTS & HUMANITIES
Black Confederates

Their numbers in Civil War were small, but have symbolic value

ven 150 years after it started, the Civil War is still the battleground for controversial ideas. One of them is the notion that thousands of Southern slaves and freedmen fought willingly and loyally on the side of the Confederacy.

The idea of “black Confederates” appeals to present-day neo-Confederates, who are eager to find ways to defend the principles of the Confederate States of America. They say the Civil War was about states’ rights, and they wish to minimize the role of slavery in a vanished and romantic antebellum South.

But most historians of the past 50 years hold that the root cause of the Civil War was slavery. They bristle at the idea of black Confederates, which they say robs the war of its moral coin as the crucible of black emancipation.

Stepping into this controversy is Harvard historian John Stauffer, who studies antislavery movements, the Civil War, and American social protest. (He is chair of the History of American Civilization Program, and a professor of both English and African-American studies.) At the Harvard Faculty Club on Wednesday (Aug. 31), Stauffer opened the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute’s Fall Colloquium Series with a lecture on black Confederates. He acknowledged that critics of the concept now dominate the academic arena, including one scholar who called it “a fiction, a myth, utter nonsense.”


Complete text: Black Confederates – Harvard Gazette

 

[middleview]

Agree to disagree:

ARTS & HUMANITIES
Black Confederates

Their numbers in Civil War were small, but have symbolic value

ven 150 years after it started, the Civil War is still the battleground for controversial ideas. One of them is the notion that thousands of Southern slaves and freedmen fought willingly and loyally on the side of the Confederacy.

The idea of “black Confederates” appeals to present-day neo-Confederates, who are eager to find ways to defend the principles of the Confederate States of America. They say the Civil War was about states’ rights, and they wish to minimize the role of slavery in a vanished and romantic antebellum South.

But most historians of the past 50 years hold that the root cause of the Civil War was slavery. They bristle at the idea of black Confederates, which they say robs the war of its moral coin as the crucible of black emancipation.

Stepping into this controversy is Harvard historian John Stauffer, who studies antislavery movements, the Civil War, and American social protest. (He is chair of the History of American Civilization Program, and a professor of both English and African-American studies.) At the Harvard Faculty Club on Wednesday (Aug. 31), Stauffer opened the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute’s Fall Colloquium Series with a lecture on black Confederates. He acknowledged that critics of the concept now dominate the academic arena, including one scholar who called it “a fiction, a myth, utter nonsense.”


Complete text: Black Confederates – Harvard Gazette

Be real. What black units fought for the confederacy? There would certainly not have been integrated units. The confederacy made it illegal to arm blacks. The anecdote about a black man in a crew firing a cannon does not indicate he did more than manual labor...

 

[Zam-Zam]

Be real. What black units fought for the confederacy? There would certainly not have been integrated units. The confederacy made it illegal to arm blacks. The anecdote about a black man in a crew firing a cannon does not indicate he did more than manual labor...

Harvard is fairly real, no?

No one is claiming they were large in number, only that they did exist. If that doesn't fit what you wish to be true, that can't be helped.

Are you here to deny them their place in history simply because it's inconvenient for you?

 

[middleview]

Harvard is fairly real, no?

No one is claiming they were large in number, only that they did exist. If that doesn't fit what you wish to be true, that can't be helped.

Are you here to deny them their place in history simply because it's inconvenient for you?

3,000 is a large number. No evidence of a negro unit. No accounts of negroes integrated in the Confederate army. Did they dig trenches or cook? Yes.

 

[middleview]

California proposed legislation is not for enslaved blacks.

About your suggestions.

You cannot collect slavery reparations if you are in jail for a capital offense like murder. Or are a drug kingpin. Or have a net worth of millions because you're a big time rapper, Neo Nazi sneaker endorser, sports superstar, famous actor, etc. Back of the bus for you guys.

What would stop Whites politicos from conducting mass arrest and show trials in order to deny payments.
It's not like we aren't in this situation because that would be something beneath them ?
Also, those rappers and successful blacks had the same ancestors as other descendants of slavery. Remember, reparations are the attempt to right a wrong you know in fact was committed against this population. Great or small makes no difference. Yet you seem to want to fold another wrong into the attempt to do right.


If you're behind on child support, your reparations check goes FIRST to your baby momma and her struggling kids. If there's any money left over, you can laugh all the way to the bank, homie . ..

Again, it is the American govt that did the wrong here. Now you want the rules of the wrongdoers to prevail over the fact that it committed the wrong in the first place.

You seem to have the wrong idea about what happened.

THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT is responsible for reparations, because it was the continuing government of these United States and not the ancestors of people today who acted upon those laws, that were responsible for what happened. Trying to pin it on certain individuals and not others is pointless. Everyone has the choice of being an American or under this government. Individuals get excluded from reparation payments by picking up and leaving America and its govt and settling in a place where slavery never existed.

1. Not all African Americans are related, in any way, to former slaves.
2. Not all Americans benefitted from slavery.
3. A huge number of families lost loved ones fighting to end slavery.

There is no way to make slavery fair or to actually repay everyone hurt by slavery or to punish those who profited. The effort is pointless, unless you are one of those who wants money for nothing (and chicks for free).

 

[Zam-Zam]

3,000 is a large number. No evidence of a negro unit. No accounts of negroes integrated in the Confederate army. Did they dig trenches or cook? Yes.

Read.

It's there.

 

[middleview]

Read.

It's there.

Name a negro unit that fought for the confederacy.

No Confederate ever references having black soldiers under his command or in his unit, although references to black laborers are common. The non-existence of black combat units is further indicated by the records of debates in the Confederate Congress over the issue of black enlistment. The idea was repeatedly rejected until, on March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a law to allow black men to serve in combat roles, although with the provision “that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners,” i.e. that black soldiers would still be slaves.

Active fighting ended less than three weeks after the law was passed, and there is no evidence that any black units were accepted into the Confederate Army as a result of the law. Whatever black combat service might have occurred during the war, it was not sanctioned by the Confederate government. Even beyond the Official Records, there is no known letter, diary entry, or any other primary source in which a Confederate mentions serving with black soldiers.

Black Confederates: Truth and Legend

"Black Confederates" is the Civil War Trust's historical article outlining the role of black people in the Southern war effort.

www.battlefields.org

 

[Zam-Zam]

Name a negro unit that fought for the confederacy.

No Confederate ever references having black soldiers under his command or in his unit, although references to black laborers are common. The non-existence of black combat units is further indicated by the records of debates in the Confederate Congress over the issue of black enlistment. The idea was repeatedly rejected until, on March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a law to allow black men to serve in combat roles, although with the provision “that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners,” i.e. that black soldiers would still be slaves.

Active fighting ended less than three weeks after the law was passed, and there is no evidence that any black units were accepted into the Confederate Army as a result of the law. Whatever black combat service might have occurred during the war, it was not sanctioned by the Confederate government. Even beyond the Official Records, there is no known letter, diary entry, or any other primary source in which a Confederate mentions serving with black soldiers.

Black Confederates: Truth and Legend

"Black Confederates" is the Civil War Trust's historical article outlining the role of black people in the Southern war effort.

www.battlefields.org

In 1865 US Civil war: Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs bill authorizing use of slaves as soldiers.
On March 13, 1865, with the main Rebel armies facing long odds against must larger Union armies, the Confederacy, in a desperate measure, reluctantly approves the use of black troops.

The situation was bleak for the Confederates in the spring of 1865. The Yankees had captured large swaths of Southern territory, General William T. Sherman’s Union army was tearing through the Carolinas, and General Robert E. Lee was trying valiantly to hold the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, against General Ulysses S. Grant’s growing force. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis had only two options. One was for Lee to unite with General Joseph Johnston’s army in the Carolinas and use the combined force to take on Sherman and Grant one at a time. The other option was to arm enslaved workers, the last source of fresh manpower in the Confederacy.

The idea of enlisting blacks had been debated for some time. Arming enslaved workers was essentially a way of setting them free, since they could not realistically be sent back to plantations after they had fought. General Patrick Cleburne had suggested enlisting enslaved workers a year before, but few in the Confederate leadership considered the proposal, since slavery was the foundation of Southern society. One politician asked, “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” Another suggested, “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” Lee weighed in on the issue and asked the Confederate government for help. “We must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves.” Lee asked that the enslaved workers be freed as a condition of fighting, but the bill that passed the Confederate Congress on March 13, 1865, did not stipulate freedom for those who served.

The measure did nothing to stop the destruction of the Confederacy. Several thousand blacks were enlisted in the Rebel cause, but they could not begin to balance out the nearly 200,000 blacks who fought for the Union.

In US Civil War confederacy approved black soldiers today (aviation-defence-universe.com)

Are you a holocaust denier as well?

 

[middleview]

In 1865 US Civil war: Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs bill authorizing use of slaves as soldiers.
On March 13, 1865, with the main Rebel armies facing long odds against must larger Union armies, the Confederacy, in a desperate measure, reluctantly approves the use of black troops.

The situation was bleak for the Confederates in the spring of 1865. The Yankees had captured large swaths of Southern territory, General William T. Sherman’s Union army was tearing through the Carolinas, and General Robert E. Lee was trying valiantly to hold the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, against General Ulysses S. Grant’s growing force. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis had only two options. One was for Lee to unite with General Joseph Johnston’s army in the Carolinas and use the combined force to take on Sherman and Grant one at a time. The other option was to arm enslaved workers, the last source of fresh manpower in the Confederacy.

The idea of enlisting blacks had been debated for some time. Arming enslaved workers was essentially a way of setting them free, since they could not realistically be sent back to plantations after they had fought. General Patrick Cleburne had suggested enlisting enslaved workers a year before, but few in the Confederate leadership considered the proposal, since slavery was the foundation of Southern society. One politician asked, “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” Another suggested, “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” Lee weighed in on the issue and asked the Confederate government for help. “We must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves.” Lee asked that the enslaved workers be freed as a condition of fighting, but the bill that passed the Confederate Congress on March 13, 1865, did not stipulate freedom for those who served.

The measure did nothing to stop the destruction of the Confederacy. Several thousand blacks were enlisted in the Rebel cause, but they could not begin to balance out the nearly 200,000 blacks who fought for the Union.

In US Civil War confederacy approved black soldiers today (aviation-defence-universe.com)

Are you a holocaust denier as well?

Lee asked that the enslaved workers be freed as a condition of fighting, but the bill that passed the Confederate Congress on March 13, 1865, did not stipulate freedom for those who served.

The war ended on April 9, 1865. Are you kidding? Thousands of slaves were trained to use weapons in three weeks?

 

[Dawg]

Lee asked that the enslaved workers be freed as a condition of fighting, but the bill that passed the Confederate Congress on March 13, 1865, did not stipulate freedom for those who served.

The war ended on April 9, 1865. Are you kidding? Thousands of slaves were trained to use weapons in three weeks?

You're Wrong again

Black Confederates - Sons of Confederate Veterans (scv.org)

 

[Zam-Zam]

Lee asked that the enslaved workers be freed as a condition of fighting, but the bill that passed the Confederate Congress on March 13, 1865, did not stipulate freedom for those who served.

The war ended on April 9, 1865. Are you kidding? Thousands of slaves were trained to use weapons in three weeks?

If you prefer to ignore all the reputable sources and concoct your own preferred reality, fine by me.

The facts will be your enemy, however, and you'll still be wrong.

It's all good.

 

[middleview]

You're Wrong again

Black Confederates - Sons of Confederate Veterans (scv.org)

Sorry, my anti-virus won't let me go to that page.

 

[Spamature]

Simplistic, selective, and lazy. And, of course, entirely neglectful of everything to which you responded.

We can’t correct old wrongs. We can learn from them and do better today. There is no “undo”
button. The “do” button, however, should be thoughtfully engaged - with full attention to all consequences, intended and unintended.

What do you mean we can't correct old wrongs ?

You do understand the old wrongs caused damage and harm that still exists today.
Especially when that harm and damage was compounded by another century of oppression and disenfranchisement. All of it very purposely enshrined in the laws of this nation.

The last damage is a wrong that can be righted.
Some people just don't want to see that.
They feel that even admitting it exist is a bridge too far for their pettiness.
So they do what you just did.

Lasting damage ?
Brush it off.

 

[Spamature]

1. Not all African Americans are related, in any way, to former slaves.
2. Not all Americans benefitted from slavery.
3. A huge number of families lost loved ones fighting to end slavery.

There is no way to make slavery fair or to actually repay everyone hurt by slavery or to punish those who profited. The effort is pointless, unless you are one of those who wants money for nothing (and chicks for free).

1. About 80% in this country are descendant of slaves.
2. America is the nation it is today because of free land and free labor. It built the foundation that everything else sits on. So even to this day, all American benefit from slavery.
3. More slaves lives were lost in just bring slavery to America than people lost in that war, or likely all the wars we've had combined. Also remember what Lincoln said, that war wasn't about slavery,

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.