Smithers, see how my Confederate Slaveholdings stock is doing!

Actually, I will be leaving for the Seychelles Islands in January...for good

But it doesn't matter what my personal preference is. The fact is, it is MY personal preference, and when Africans were denied the right to choose a preference for themselves, I find it very pompous to say, in hindsight, that they're better off to be able to live in our righteous world.

And then, after a couple centuries of enslavement, simply say, "Okay, you're free. Off ya go!"

 

I answered his question. Affirmative action isn't specific to the descendants of slavery so how is that reparations? It's not. Affirmative action is to balance the scales of racism for all minorities, not simply the descendants of slaves.

And no amount of money ends any issue forever. You're not buying the right to destroy history anymore than reparations for Holocaust victims is buying that right. What they're seeking is what is rightfully theirs. $1.4 trillion in slave labor.

 

What they're seeking is what is rightfully theirs. $1.4 trillion in slave labor.

Do you have any clue how they came up with this number? Since it's just an estimate by a lawsuit seeking attention, do you really think that its even close to accurate? Given the number of people living in the US during that time period, even in current value terms, do you think they generated anywhere near that amount of money? I would guess they used some very, very liberal estimates and such to come up with their figures. Given how they link a company founded in 1980 to slavery, there's no doubt the connections are tenuous.

Let's say my parents worked for Company A. Other white Americans who were descended from families that owned slaves surely also worked at Company A. That means Company A benefitted from slavery (according to the logic in this lawsuit). Therefore, my parents were paid by people benefiting from slavery, so my parents must have benefitted from it. Since I wouldn't have been born without my parents, I must have benefitted from slavery as well. I guess my company should also be held liable? That's the type of logic being used here.

And no amount of money ends any issue forever.

Ahhh, this is the crux of the matter. In civil suits, the "payment" is basically made to clean the slate. I screwed you, I pay you $x to make up for it, it's all over. I owe nothing more at that point. Here, you're proposing the payment and then STILL owing more.

 

Originally posted by Major
Do you have any clue how they came up with this number? Since it's just an estimate by a lawsuit seeking attention, do you really think that its even close to accurate? Given the number of people living in the US during that time period, even in current value terms, do you think they generated anywhere near that amount of money? I would guess they used some very, very liberal estimates and such to come up with their figures. Given how they link a company founded in 1980 to slavery, there's no doubt the connections are tenuous.

Honestly I've been looking but I don't have the specifics of how they arrived at the figure but I'd assume it involves only the corporations they're suing which they haven't released all the names yet. The $1.4 trillion isn't actual wages but rather actual plus interest. The precise figure can I'm sure be debated to no end but no doubt it's a very significant amount of money.

Let's say my parents worked for Company A. Other white Americans who were descended from families that owned slaves surely also worked at Company A. That means Company A benefitted from slavery (according to the logic in this lawsuit). Therefore, my parents were paid by people benefiting from slavery, so my parents must have benefitted from it. Since I wouldn't have been born without my parents, I must have benefitted from slavery as well. I guess my company should also be held liable? That's the type of logic being used here.

I don't think employees of a corporation are ever held liable for the actions of the corporation unless they're in a position of running it in some fashion. The janitors at Enron aren't being called to testify at Congress for their company's misconduct anymore than a former foot soldier in the German army is having his wages garnished to pay reparations.

Ahhh, this is the crux of the matter. In civil suits, the "payment" is basically made to clean the slate. I screwed you, I pay you $x to make up for it, it's all over. I owe nothing more at that point. Here, you're proposing the payment and then STILL owing more.

What do you mean by clean the slate? A civil suit settlement just makes them no longer financially responsible for that particular past conduct. The victim can still think you suck and have hard feelings. Nobody is forced to make nice nice or anything.

 

Careful folx. . .your robes are showing

Rocket River

 

That is very offensive to me. I have black friends who think that the reparations notion is ridiculous. Are their robes showing also?

<b>timing</b>: How did the government profit from slavery? Taxes?

<b>Prempeh</b>: When was the last time that ANY black African was enslaved to America? The damn country was founded in 1776 and the slaves were freed in the 1860's. That's less than a century. I doubt that slaves were brought into the US much after the turn to the 19th century, I don't know for sure. Do you? Rimbaud? Mango? Ottomaton? Sick Monkey?!

It's not pompous to say that being in America is preferrable. Look at Cohen's stats. Look at the African emigration phenomenon: THERE IS NONE! So a few extremists organized and made their way back to Africa. That's not a populist movement.

Slavery was wrong. I wouldn't have had the stomach for it even were it legal. It smacks of inhumanity. For well over a hundred years anyone in the US, black or white or brown or yellow, could have emigrated to Africa. Those who wanted to did a long time ago and can continue to do so today.

This reparations nonsense is nothing but predatory behavior on a weak-kneed legal system.

 

All right then, the Human Race will cease advancements for the next 50 years to try to determine the descendants of wronged peoples and calculate reparations. Lets try to even everything out, and of course let's go back 10,000 years (because there is no statute of limitations, you know).

First the African slave trade went on for 400 years, and people were not just sent to what is now the US, but all through the Americas, North Africa and the Middle East. Wait! What about indentured servants? Its seems that European peasants sure had a gripe also, and don't I even remember English Royals getting Scottish Women on their wedding night? (I don't think that I've scratched the surface here, anyone disagree?)

I seem to recall Romans enslaving people. I'm half Italian, maybe my ancestors were enslaved?! I'm also half Jewish, oh man! Holocaust, Russian Pogroms, even from the Bible...Egyptian pyramid builders! (etc. etc.) add that to what I get from the Italians, woo woo...I'm rich!

Or maybe it's time to get past all of that and live MY life, not relive my ancestors'.

 

The statute of limitations for wrongful death in Texas is 2 years...can't imagine it is over 100 years in any state or jurisdiction!! Even still, I don't believe she's alleging anything like wrongful death...she's simply saying profits were made on the labor of slaves, and they weren't compensated for it. One of the policy reasons for employing a statute of limitations on an action is to prevent sham trials with aged evidence...she has to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that these companies actually made money off slavery. She's going to need documents to do that...who will authenticate those documents before the court?? what "keeper of the records" from the late-1800's will testify to make sure these records were kept in the regular course of business??? What company executive will be questioned about the decision to earn profits from slave labor??? It simply can't be done...the company will likely file a motion for summary judgment that will end this case quickly.

Actually, probably the first challenge would be against standing. A person has to have standing to bring a case in the United States. It means they have to be materially affected by the wrongs they're alleging. There is no way this woman can effectively argue this in a US court of law. Yes, you can recover for damages done to the estate of a relative whom you can directly trace lineage to through heirship laws...but there's even a statute of limitations on that kind of action as well.

The Jews in Germany issue was certainly not decided in a court of law in the United States...I don't know if the Japenese interment issue was actually decided in a court of law or if it was something worked out outside of the confines of the judicial system. Even still, that was the federal government that made that decision and they paid for it. Quite different when you consider the protections afforded private persons/companies in this country. My point remains, this does not belong in the American justice system...it makes a mockery of every policy for every rule of civil trial you can think of.

As for the UN...you can try that all you want there...but I doubt very seriously that that will be effective. Again, this is the questioning of an economic policy that existed some 140 years ago...one that played a part in a very bloody civil war in this question...and one that was abdicated by Constitutional amendment. The real social policy concerns that the UN is typically concerned with are not implicated...too much time has passed.

If you want results on this, your only real solution is to challenge the legislature to essentially make a gift....but try selling that to the elected representatives of a nation that has seen more immigration since the end of slavery than it had at US slavery's inception.

 

I'm against this lawsuit. Screw the legalisms regarding this matter. The only value this lawsuit is as a mechanism for starting a conversation on reparations.

However, I'm totally against the "tort reform " folks who have been duped by the insurance comapny lobby and so called "citizens against law suit" abuse crap.

This should be a government issue. I'm moderately in favor of reparations, but only as a public apology for what happened with slavery. Public apologies can be important. In South Africa, the Truth Commission is a form of public apology. This has been shown to help a country overcome issues like this.

As those on the bbs who always preach money as the prime value and their big goal in life might say, a $ trillion would make the apology meaningful.

A trillion is well spent, if it would really help our country put the racism issue more on the back burner. BTW I believe the Savings and Loan bailout cost that even more.

Another value to this trillion would be if it allowed us to cutback radically on many aspects of affirmative action, which though I support it in theory, has functioned in the political realm as just another wedge issue for the Republican elite to divide working class whites and blacks. Unfortunately we know the same elite will always be seeking to drive a wedge between working people of different races.


For thos who say Slavery was too long ago, I say many of the racists and their victims are still alive. Talk to black people above the age of 60 from Lousiiana and find out how many have only one or two years of education and can't read. The percentage might be informative. (I have at the food stamp office and throughout my years of working with such people.)

I also believe that this should be a public fund for perhaps scholarships for black kids. Don't give everyone a check for $28,000 or whatever. Numerous examples of rich folk promising free college educations for poor kids if they graduate and make B's, have shown that a high percentage go to college when they know with certaintly that they can pay for it.

 

Glynch, this discussion is about slavary and reparation, no one is arguing that racism doesn't or didn't exist.

Slavery was terrible, but none of us were there to see it.

DD

 

glynch --

1. racism and slavery aren't the same thing. affirmative action was meant to alleviate racism. reparations are being proposed for slavery. equating the two clouds the two issues here. slavery was too long ago to provide meaningful reparations for...racism exists in every nation all over the world even today.

2. tort reform can be a good thing...sometimes it is taken too far, agreed. the pendulum shifts, but there was a time when it was drastically on the other side.

3. a trillion would be well spent if it would put the racism issue to bed...but, like many other problems, this is not one where you can just throw money at it and solve it. the problem doesn't go away, even with that big of a check. and how the hell do we determine who gets what??

4. Democrats have been equally divisive on racial issues...don't pretend they haven't. Clinton was a master at pitting black against white.

5. I don't have a problem with a public apology...if it helps to right a wrong, fine.

 

I think there are two (not entirely unrelated) arguments for reparations.

1) White America took advantage of slave labor to build the infrastructure of our current economic system. That labor should never had been free and therefore the decendants of slaves should be compensated for their ancestors work.

and

2) Slavery hurt Black America by creating the perception that they are dumb, etc. This perception still exists today and is mostly to blame for the disparity in wealth and education between Blacks and Whites.

quote from the original article:

"Advocates of reparations for slavery argue that the descendants of slaves are still being hurt economically and sociologically by their ancestors' bondage. Those who argue against compensation say, among other things, that it happened so long ago that reparations would be punishing people who had nothing to do with the practice of slavery. "

The quote implies that advocates are arguing for argument #2 and opponents are arguing against #1.

Not like I'm goign to change anybody's mind, but...argument #1 doesn't work. The fact is probably the vast majority of the world's population is descended from someone who was enslaved or otherwise taken advantage of. Where do you draw the line? Should I demand payment from Britain for the damages caused by imperialism? Should I demand payment from Pakistan when my parent and grandparents were forced to flee their homes and all their property when India/Pakistan were separated? Who is entitled to recover damages and who isn't? Until someone can provide a reasonable answer to that question, argument #1 doesn't work.

Argument #2 is more difficult to overcome. No one can deny that racism exists today. No one can deny that (too many) people use unfair stereotypes to pass judgment on people. No one can deny that the wealth of this country appears to be disproportionately in the hands of White people. If that is a given, we need to identify the cause. Is it the result of a poor educational system? Is it the result of perceived cultural superiority? Is it a result of innate characteristics? What the hell is it? Answer that question. Then determine the ties that has to slavery. Make sure you can isolate it to the plight of Blacks in America, not Latinos or any other ethnicity. If the problems are faced by other minority groups in America, it's hard to say it's a result of slavery.

Then tell me who pays? Is it everyone who is prospering from the economic system? Is it only former slave owners?

If someone can address those questions in a rational and educated fashion, maybe I'll get on the reparations bandwagon.

oh and by the way...

most ignorant ****ing comment i've read in a long while.

 

Isn't it possible that the slavery of yesterday in part contributed to the racism of today, by instilling a mind-set of African Americans as having less worth than Caucasians? And, no doubt it contributed to the current socio-economic disparity between whites and blacks.

I'm not in favor of reparations, but there's no doubt in my mind that African Americans today, as a whole, are in a worse position than they would be if slavery had never existed and their ancestors had simply emigrated to this country as Europeans did.

 

Best quote of the whole thread.

The problem I see is that slavery in America was such a recent (relativley speaking) event. Slavery has existed in various forms throughout history. Most races (and religions) have been enslaved, persecuted, etc at some time throughout history (in fact, slavery is still practiced today). Americas experimentation with slavery was very short lived and had opponents to it throughout its practice.

Did we not fight an entire war over this issue?

 

Some activists claim the number due in reparations is $4.1 trillion, which is about $410,000 per slave in current dollars (assuming that the 10 million total US slaves number is correct).

In 1865 dollars, that would be $34,893 so that would work out to about $1,292 per year in lost wages assuming that slaves would've put in about 20 years of labor on average (the average person usually didn't live too far past 40 in those days). Now, a good annual income in 1865 was about $260, so $1,292 is making out pretty well. But that's bad math because not all slaves were alive and working in 1865 and not all of the work they did took place in 1865.

If we assume a decent wage of $260 per year per living slave (approx) in 1865, that would come to just over $12 billion in 2002 dollars for that year (or about $1 billion in 1865 dollars). Of course, those numbers are not going to be constant for the entire 76-year history of slavery in the United States.

But I assume the calculations were made in such a way, find the average income for the day and multiply that times how many slaves you think there were working in that year. And I'm sure they've figured it in constant dollars. That'd be the way you'd have to go. And then you add in punative damages and interest and all that good stuff that lawsuits tend to have going on and you arrive at $4.1 trillion or $1.4 trillion or whatever you've arrived at. The actual number in lost wages in 2002 dollars is probably under $100 billion, though.

Problem is that most slaves were held by plantation owners and individuals, not corporations. So to actually properly sue for the money they claim, they'd need to sue the decendants of the individual familes who owned slaves.... actually, they'd need to sue the estates of the people who actually owned them. A person pretty much cannot be held personally liable for his parents' debts.

And this woman is not necessarily suing companies that owned slaves. At least one company was an insurer who insured slaves as property, which is a relatively dubious way of saying they profited from slavery.

But since they can't sue the government and can't sue the individuals who owned slaves, they have to go after the corporations. There's nobody left to sue (though the real goal is probably to get the government to make a settlement of some kind).

On a slightly different note, I have another practical question. How do you seat a jury for these trials (not that they'll get to trial, but just bear with me)? You can't let any African-Americans on the jury because they are all effectively plantiffs. Yet you can't really exclude people from the jury pool based on race.

 

I'm not saying the two are completely distinct...but they are for the purposes of a lawsuit. She's suing for economic damages for money made on the backs of slaves....that can not be confused with the racism of a 60 year old black man in America. The two are not related, as they pertain to the allegations of the lawsuit.

If she makes a separate allegation asking for damages caused by slavery's effects on people throughout multiple generations, that's one thing. But my understanding is that this lawsuit is about the money made by these companies from the practice of slavery.

 

I have another question based on this. Should things like the housing and meals provided to slaves by their owners be deducted from the lost wages sought?

I mean, if these slaves had been free and had actually earned money, they would've had to spend at least some of their income on housing and food and whatnot. The people who were free and working spent their money on such things.

Just asking (and before anyone claims I'm a member of the KKK for bringing it up, I'm not trying to say that slaves were better off because they had their meals and housing provided).

 

mrpaige -- great point on jury seating for these trials!!! you're exactly right...all African Americans are potential takers in this suit...you can't exclude people from juries because of their race. I think they'd have to say all African Americans can't be on the jury, not because they're African Americans, but because they're potential takers...but feel free to assume that battle would be fought out for a LONG time!!!

 

MadMax your being a lawyer gives you a distinct advantage in discussing this lawsuit so bear with me! On this topic, perhaps the lawsuit will attempt to link the evolution of institutional racism towards blacks in America to the dehumanizing tactics employed during slavery. The link between slavery and racism against blacks is probably more historically intertwined than you're giving credit for.

 

I knew if I threw enough out there, I'd make a good point just by accident. Law of averages and all.