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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica Has Never Truly Atoned For Slavery. John Conyers Has Pressed the Issue for Nearly 30 Years.
Every year, the Michigan congressman introduces a bill to study reparations. Every year it fails.
Last months torch-lit white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, a response to the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public park, kickstarted a national dialogue about how communities should address this nations centuries-long history of violence and discrimination against African Americans. Democratic politicians and others, pushing back against the old arguments about maintaining our heritage, have called for the removal of additional Confederate statues and monuments from public spaces. Black people, they say, should no longer be faced with laudatory memorials to people who fought to keep their ancestors enslaved.
Among those calling for the removal of what President Donald Trump called beautiful statues and monuments was 88-year-old John Conyers of Michigan, the nations longest serving congressman. For nearly three decades, in fact, Conyers has been arguing that there is much more the government can and should be doing to atone.
The 13-member commission Conyers bill calls for would spend a year reviewing the existing research on the scope and lasting impact of African American enslavement and Jim Crow-era discrimination, and ponder what the government might do to help remedy the problemincluding the form that any compensation might take, how much would be appropriate, and who should receive it. Although it does not authorize actual reparations payouts, it does allocate $12 million for the operation of the commission, which would have authority to compel federal agencies to hand over relevant records and documents. The panel also would look at federal policies that harm African Americans and suggest changesas well as advise Congress on how to educate the public about the findings.
What we want to do is have people more appropriately understand the relationship between [historical discrimination and] the racial tensions that are still quite evident, Conyers said. This legislation will make people see this [connection] and become more supportive of the notion that all of us have a responsibility to do something to make things better. The reparations conversation has been reenergized thanks in part to fresh research and moves by some universities and companies to make amends for their own complicity in the slave trade. Last year, for instance, Georgetown announced it would grant admissions preference to the descendants of 272 slaves the university sold in 1838 to keep its doors open.
http://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2017/09/in-some-parallel-universe-congress-is-debating-how-america-could-atone-for-slavery-1/
brooklynite
(94,383 posts)...and I'll note that Conyers spends as much time actually trying to get this passed as he does trying to pass single-payer health care. If he doesn't take it seriously, why should we?
brush
(53,743 posts)Last edited Mon Sep 25, 2017, 11:40 PM - Edit history (1)
For hundreds of years enslaved African Americans worked dawn to dusk and were not paid.
Their labor was stolen and this country became rich because of it.
Anyone who runs a business knows that wages are the biggest item of overhead. If you don't have to pay it, any business will do well.
I'm not talking about cutting checks to individuals. Small business grants, college tuition, job training, community centers and programs, healthcarethose kind of things to show that the country at least made an effort to atone for the centuries of stolen labor during slavery and the jim crow period that followed and the racism that still persists today (how many innocent, unarmed blackmen have been gunned down by coward, racist cops in the last couple of year since cell phone video has become available, not to mention all the killings that took place before cameras were everywhere?).
If those stolen wages had to be paid back, with the principle of compounding, even our treasury couldn't pay the trillions it would amount to so the items I listed in the paragraph above would be an huge bargain.
brooklynite
(94,383 posts)brush
(53,743 posts)by Germany, and Japanese internment ancestors are alive who were compensated by our government.
Why is it that racists always make that pitifully sad argument if African Americans were alive they could be compensated but since they're not...oh well...yet other races can be compensated?
IMO it's pure racism, whether conscious of unconscious, of people who never had their future stolen from themselves in the form of property and wealth that would've been left to them by ancestors whose labor was stolen from them.
Black people just cannot be compensated, just can't be done, a line that can't be crossed by racists.
And then those same racists are always quick to point out their superiority because their average families' worth far outstrips that of African American family worth.
It never occurs to them that that stolen labor over centuries is a huge part of the reason for that, or maybe it does occur to them and they take satisfaction in it.
brooklynite
(94,383 posts)brush
(53,743 posts)LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)...as is your habitual moving of the goalposts.
Great two-fer in this one. Nice.
JI7
(89,241 posts)on record .
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)This is the government shit that has to change. I don't think there's anything wrong with a Corporation 'hiring' prisoners, what is unjust is they aren't paid the Federal minimum wage. They'd be able to help support their families on the 'outside', save money for release time, pay their fines & parole fees.
A suggestion would be to ban corporations from hiring anyone in public or private prisons/detention camps- for less then federal minimum wage. $6.25? an hour. Corps wouldn't be able to find outsiders to work fish farms, warehouses, farms, fire fight diggers, dig pipelines, gaslines, mine and sew clothes for even that $6 minimum wage.
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
tblue37
(65,227 posts)lucky to have been brought to America!
Quayblue
(1,045 posts)a toehold even...
I certainly don't see it happening within my lifetime and I'm just turning 40.
Respect to my home state congressman.
L. Coyote
(51,129 posts)Two centuries of genocide didn't really end a century ago when one considers the social injustice, lack of health care, etc.
Orrex
(63,172 posts)"Atone for it?" Hell, we're still practicing it.