Reparations Redux:

Ok now that work and food are done now back to a full refutation.

Now, I hardly went into the detail that David did because I frankly consider Reparations the kind of political toxin that should be reserved to the extreme fringe. The Sad part of this is that there is no way we could have considered just 10-15 years ago the N.A.A.C.P to be part of the lunatic left…

My first argument had to do with establishing culpability and damage in the Slave reparations game. While you can argue that blacks were economically disadvantaged versus the larger white community due to slavery, one could also argue that since they have outpaced people pretty much everywhere in Africa do we pro-rate that development out of the equation? Their own people sold them into slavery so they hold a degree of culpability, as do the Islamic slave traders who introduced the system of African slavery to the European powers. We have of course the European powers who established the culture of slavery so they have a degree of culpability as well. We have the fact that slavery is an economically regressive practice which actually slowed down development of the American society. We have many people who never owned slaves and never knew a slave owner in much of the south, so how do you pro-rate their culpability? How about the folks who the vast bulk of their financial interests in this country post date 1865 but they do have some strains of history that are touched by slavery economically?

Some of these arguments allow racist and bigoted thinking to come out into the light of day in a reasonable way. Because if we have to assign a price tag to slavery, and assign a blame game then we also have to in our system assign mitigation of blame. It isn’t about harm to white people, or about “getting whitey” though I think to the extremists who pioneered this issue before the NAACP did they may feel that way. It is about trying to establish fair blame, and fair culpability. It isn’t possible or even practicle.

A company which utilized slaves gained profits it would not have gained, which is then passed on to its (white) executives and its (white) shareholders. Those gains are illegitimately taken. While it is true that today there are some black shareholders and executives sharing the wealth, they are in a distinct minority (well behind the proportion you'd expect given their numbers in American society). The benefit to them is incidental and de minimis, about as relevant as saying that our obligations to slaves were fulfilled because we gave them housing and food.

Now... you missed something from the original work which puts your defense of the NAACP sideways

Almost every business has at least an indirect link to slavery, he said. For example, some railroad and Southern utility companies can trace their roots to businesses that used slave labor. Textile companies, for example, use cotton that was grown on Southern plantations.
"There's never going to be a solid number because the idea of how you connect a company to slavery is more a political one than a historical one," Mr. Lide said.

There is no way, according to an expert on the issue, to make a legitimate case for the company benifiting from slavery in an objective sense. a textile company may have benifited from slave grown cotton, but they may have also used cotton from other areas as well. So how can you place a line on the profits based on slave labor with intrest? You can't and people in the reperations game admit to that.

But the NAACP isn't going to be establishing a case based on logic and law. They will put out an implication and smear campaign in the media, call for a boycott.... and take such actions they deem valid until the company gives them what they want. And in corporate America these days the treat of such actions will often force capitulation.

And... Let us also not be naive here. With Slavery divestment at various universities and this action they serve a clear purpose of establishing a validity in the national political dialouge for reperations. And as more companies comply with the wishes of the NAACP then this will build a political argument for governmental reperations.

Dave then makes another point which I want to go back to.

hat's all well and good, and it explains why reparations doesn't and shouldn't consist of reaching into white bank accounts and drawing out enough money until the "debt is paid."

How can you pay for a thing like the holocaust?
How can you pay some one for the fact their anscetors were disconnected from their traditional system brutalized and generations to follow were brutalized and treated abusively.... Is their any way to put a price tag on that?

Lets put it in perspective... when we have a Natural Disaster out there the debt is never paid. if you have x dollars in damages you are never put back to x... or even x plus intrest and growth. What happens is you are given a amount of money that allows you to move on with your life and meet some bare minimum standards.

To say you can assign a value to it is not only impracticle, not only impossible, it means that some day people can be freed of a reasonable guilt about the past. And since bigotry comes out of a sense of xenophobia we will have bigots happy as clams because they no longer have that slavery monkey on their back keeping them quiet about what they "really feel".

We can also look at Affirmative action which the advocates who got it into law presented as "something we'd need for 20 years at the most." It also is naive and insulting to suggest any amount of money will ever be viewed as reperations enough.

Next the same people who first demanded reperations will demand soverign territory in the united states to rule as their own... and eventually the NAACP trying to find a way to keep their power will advocate that position to....

It won't ever end, nor should it. It is a debt and a stain on our humanity that is impossible to pay back but is possible to move past.

Now I have covered previously that the NAACP hasn’t made a real effort to target the problems in black education. I am going to put this into perspective. The US government lost billions of dollars earmarked to help inner city schools and the NAACP was silent because the President at the time was "The first black president"

But let me show some of what the NAACP efforts on primary and seconday education ( because if kids can't get the tools to go to college all the efforts in the world to provide them with a college education are useless) actually do.

he fundamental goal of the NAACP's education advocacy agenda is to provide all students access to quality education. The NAACP Education Department seeks to accomplish this goal through policy development, training, collaboration, negotiation, legislation, litigation, and agitation. The NAACP Education Department's resources are strategically focused on three major objectives:

1) Preventing Racial Discrimination in Educational Programs and Services;
2) Advancing Educational Excellence; and
3) Promoting an Equal Opportunity Education Agenda.

The NAACP Education Department coordinates, supports, and advises, the more than, 2,200 NAACP units efforts to annually meet these objectives through a nationwide emphasis on program development, capacity building, and collaboration. Through these elements, the NAACP seeks to:

1. Empower students, parents and local advocates to assess their local schools, school districts, universities, and state educational agencies through data collection and the production of substantive research on key educational equity issues.
2. Empower students, parents and local advocates to assist their local schools, school districts, universities and state educational agencies through training, and collaborative technical assistance designed to prevent discrimination in educational programs and services.
3. Empower students, parents and local advocates to advance educational excellence through programmatic support and development based on sound research, strategic planning and strong collaborative networks.

Schools in the Inner city can't keep good teachers but they go to fight equality issues. Schools in the inner city often don't have the same quality school facilities and they view it as an issue of racial equity.

The issue is the building is run down and johnny can't learn because the teacher has only been there for 3 months and will bolt in another two. But the biggest impediment to black education as pointed out by bill cosby is the black family life... and the NAACP is silent on that issue. If you are going to fight for systematic equity in the public education system, but are also going to be silent on the systematic disruptions in many families then you are spinning your wheels on what's going on.

Kids being dissed for "acting white" by trying to learn.
Parents who encourage their children to watch far more TV then their white counterparts, and far more then is healthy for children to function educationally. This is something that the NAACP has encouraged by pressing for more programs that reach out to the black community.

I could run down a list of more things but all the NAACP is willing to do is aggitate that "this school is racist" and not fight for "we need to help our children learn and give them the tools to achieve in this society." Indeed the promotion of a victimization mindset, which reparations contributes to by saying the reason they are failing is because of slavery, only discourages people from attempting to achieve.

now he goes off the deep end Dave does with a attack on my general premise

guess. But think of the precedent we're setting: that if you can dodge liability for massive injustices for X amount of years, then you're home free. In cases of massive wrongs (and in civil claims in general), this "modified statute of limitations" argument simply doesn't fly--especially since it was our legal system which prevented Blacks from pursuing slavery reparation claims when it would have been timely.

Nothing stopped blacks from suing their owners and companies. Nothing stopped them from suing the government. The problem is at the time everyone would have thought the idea was crazy...

Now I want to get into something personal. I had a mild form of learning disabilities that I suffered from in school. I can imagine I probably still suffer from it technically, but what finally crossed my educational performance over was a truly radical notion. I control my body, I control my mind. Whatever problems; I have with my mother, with coding problems, with transference issues, and the like I can’t let this keep me from succeeding. And you know what, when I had that change in my attitude I was able to achieve again.

More blacks own homes, more own small business, because the positive tools the NAACP provided have enabled them to innovate and to achieve. But what the NAACP is doing in bullying corporations will only serve to reinforce and make louder that voice in the black community “we can’t do it.” And as Henry Ford said If you think you can’t do it, your right.

This attacks thrift, this attacks hard work, this cheapens charity, and it coarsens us as a society. And it will not be tolerated by me.