POLL: Should we apologize to the blacks for enslaving their ancestors?

You're telling me all about American culture, from Sydney, Aus. Egad! It is for you to worry about your aboriginals.
I say again that my family came to America as slaves to the English. We WORKED our way out of that situation. It is within the potential of every single Citizen in this Country to WORK their way out of their situation.
If one CHOOSES to pursue gang/thug culture and foresake their education, that is a PERSONAL decision. If that bad decision leads them to prison, and remaining "confined to ghettos", that is a PERSONAL decision.
Just about EVERY ethnic group met with derision when they arrived here. The Chinese. The Irish. The Scottish, and on and on. EVERY SINGLE one of them WORKED to overcome their plight, and that has worked for them. DO NOT try to BS me about the po' widdle black man. I WORK to maintian my little social position, and I WORK with many people of every ethnicity on this planet, who WORK to live as well or better than I do.
Due diligence meets its' just reward, and anyone who doesn't understand that can live with the consequenses. PERIOD.

 

Well I suppose individual black people can and do leave, although that's not much of a solution is it? 'Yeah you can escape poverty and gang violence... just put a few postcodes between you and everyone you know.'

If I was conscious of myself discriminating against someone I would stop. I mean, I could detail everything I've ever thought that was racist, but all that proves is how pervasive racism is... which was my point in the first place.

 

lmao air conditioning and flat screen TVs are the norm. They don't even make the old TVs any more. 40 ounce is a kind of beer, right? Everyone drinks beer! You seem to be bitter that the unemployed (the unemployed blacks, oh no) have televisions, beer in the fridge and a fan running? I've never been in a house that didn't have those things.

The issue isn't that these neighbourhoods are (*)(*)(*)(*), it's that they're (*)(*)(*)(*) compared to the one next door. It's a matter of social cohesion and inequity aversion, not abject poverty as you seem to think.

Most people in black communities aren't involved in drugs or sex work of any kind. This is common sense to people who aren't massive racists.

 

Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today ?

 

And you are telling me about economic and social realities from a position of profound ignorance.

Not at all. The system is arranged so that a class of people are always on the bottom rung. That's why cleaning the toilets is a full time job, rather than something we all do in our spare time. If the system is designed so that everyone can 'work their way up', then they've not given much thought to who stacks the shelves at Wallmart when they do work our way up.

'Crime exists because people choose to commit crime', well I could've told you that. Maybe we can do a bit better and determine why people choose commit crime, and why members of certain demographics are more prone to committing specific crimes.

Lol this reads like 'our society is bull(*)(*)(*)(*) and steps on everyone but through generations of hard work it can become manageable.' That's not an argument in favour of the status quo, it's an argument against it.

Yes, and you're doing it right now.

Are you EVEN aware of socially CONSTRUCTED power structures? OR the LEGACIES of VARIOUS policies NAMELY slavery and JIM crow?

 

This massive copy pasted ranted doesn't address anything I've said. Nobody is denying that 'struggling financially' often means 'struggling to pay for an xbox', I'm asking what you're (*)(*)(*)(*)ing point is. If kids in one neighbourhood have video game consoles falling out their ears, and other kids don't, it's an injustice. It's just that we live in a society where economic injustice means a disparity in the level of comfort, not living in a cardboard shack. Of course, in the US people can't afford university and healthcare, so the point is moot. We're talking about relative rather than abject poverty. The former is an injustice in itself, but the latter still exists and can't be ignored.

 

A legacy that is long since dead, along with those who were directly responsible in the buying, selling, and trading of human beings. There is no longer any point in discussing it as if it were a current topic. Those who had ancestors that held slaves the same way you hold a chair and table set, are not responsible for what occurred, and should not be treated as such.

 

The Civil War was enough of an apology.

 

No, you really can't have everything you want for nothing that others work and pay for.

Doesn't matter was excuses lazyasses make or how much they rage and cry life is unfair. From Oprah to Obama, the claim of being trapped by race is a proven lie and a lazyass excuse.

 

lmao and what about issues facing black communities that have nothing to do with unemployment? Employed black people face a number of challenges, like being made to pay more for housing. If you think 'no more hand outs' is going to fix these issues, then you need to read a book, or failing that, go talk to a black person. You're just pissing them off, a lot. They aren't going to listen to you and nobody will make them.

 

Show us proof of such. It is your claim, therefore it is your obligation to back it up with proof.

 

There is nothing preventing those that want to apologize from doing so. Go ahead, knock yourself out.

But we're not having the government apologize or pay reparations.

 

An apology ought to imply reparations of some kind. Are we in favor of giving African-American's government reparations?

 

community-wide? yes.

to individuals? no.

 

Perhaps, as modern individuals we do not have any connection to the slavery of the past individually, however, many of the African-American elders, grandparents of our high school kids, grew up, and lived under the segregated America, particularly in education. It wasn't until 1948 that the great American tradition of baseball broke the color barrier with a Jackie Robinson. It wasn't until 1954 that Brown vs Board of Education integrated American public schools, and it took Federal troops in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama and other places, to force southern politicians to integrate their school systems. Isn't the U.S. Government (Congress), the appropriate place, and ought they be responsible for initiating some type of reparations to that community to apologize and mitigate the damages, both through discrimination, and psychological, of the institution of slavery.

The U.S. government is directly responsible for the Jim Crow laws following the Civil War because they divided the conquered South up into military districts, to break the large plantation and elite white classes from their positions of power, in freeing four million totally uneducated slaves in 1865. Although those laws held the freed slaves down in education, employment, and particularly from voting, they were state laws, that the U.S. Government failed to strike down. Ought reparations along with a Congressional apology needed today?

 

Congress has already an official apology for slavery.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hres194/text

As far as reperations go, it will never happen. It's unfair.

 

Pretty good analysis. It should be noted that during the Great Depression, when 1/3rd of the country was out-of-work, those unemployed survived either by taking government welfare, very skimpy at the time - soup lines, Hooverville cardboard shanties as living quarters, the classical story of the American hobos (hobos worked - lazy people begged). Or they went to work in the agricultural industry, many migrating to the vegetable farms of Southern California, in their Central and Imperial Valley's. Backbreaking labor, as they followed the crop cycle up through Northern California to Washington State's apple industry. Those that could, got WPA jobs on the Hoover Dam, also backbreaking construction work in 110-120 degree temperatures.

The idea that American's, and particularly Black America, wouldn't do those jobs, not for the menial wages paid today is two sided. When White America due to the stock market crash, the bank foreclosures on their farms and savings, and the Great Dust Bowl, were prostrate and there were no government programs to assist, they took any job they could to survive, including those menial back breaking agricultural positions. Modern machinery has made many of those job obsolete by the original 1930's standard's. Although it is the immigrants who now do them, if you get hungry enough - and can't support your family - just like our ancestor's and grandparents who grew up in the Great Depression, you would do those menial jobs. That is why they shouldn't be granted to illegals, there is still a market for the positions, and eliminating the labor pool of illegal immigrants doing them would force companies like ConAgra to raise the pay rates to levels that American's, Black and White, would accept them. It is why securing the border's from illegal immigration is so important in these modern times........

 

Nope, none of my ancestors had anything to do with it so neither I or my family owe any apology. Neither does the Nation, it has tried to right some of the wrongs, more could be done, but it is time for everyone to move forward into the future and not dwell in the past.

 

Those blacks were soldiers of the United States Army, most of whom remained in the army after fighting in the Civil War. Therefore, since the U.S., Congress has apologized to the Native-American population for the Plains Indian Wars of the late 1800's, you can't individualize any particular soldier, no matter what his race, as being responsible for killing or quartering the Native American's to the ugly reservations they were moved to. They were legitimate representatives of the United States government, engaged in United States government business, the relocation or destruction of the Plains Indians, to make way for Manifest Destiny, and the settlement of the West through the Homestead Act, for dthe massive White European immigrants.........

 

Don't forget the most important expense that all Black America, in fact, All America, must have in order to survive in today's society, many wasting $500-$1000 a year on it - cell phones...........getting someone's cell phone away from them today is tantamount to highway robbery, they can't function without it...........

 

Who exactly is supposed to apologize to who and for what? Slavery ended before anyone alive today was born. There is literally no one now that has held any slaves and no one now that has been a slave.

 

this is obviously an accepted fact within the scientific community, only racists would claim otherwise

 

Could you be a little more specific regarding "community-wide." What are we talking about here - better schools and teacher's? Incentives to teach in inner-city neighborhoods by forgiving college loan debt? Better policing? Increasing Affirmative Action programs from just college to corporations (which, BTW, made the most off of slavery, many of them still around today and giants). Also, if an apology and reparations are given, doesn't that shut the door to any future reparations or civil right's discussions and interface? The standard will be, "well we paid you and apologized, now what are you complaining about, the issue is over and done with?"
"

 

But the stigma of slavery remained for over 100-years after the end of the Civil War. Only the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education decision which integrated the American public schools, and the 1965 Civil Right's Voting Act, were instituted to correct the ills. Many African-American's, in their 70's and 80's now, and their children perhaps - the parents of today's High School students, grew up in, and suffered under segregation, Jim Crow laws, and active violence by legitimate police authority, using billy clubs; police dogs and water canons on protester's in the late 1950's and particularly in the Kennedy years of the early 1960's. The Congress and the Supreme Court, and, in fact, the American military, always had the means to end the Jim Crow laws, from 1865 on, easily, and failed to do so. A simple House of Representatives apology is enough to make up for all of that? African-Americans suffered from violence; deprived of the franchise; discrimination in housing; employment; union representation; even a segregated military force, until the Truman military unification bill. It was Eisenhower and Kennedy who finally decided enough was enough, and sent the Federalized National Guard into the South to enforce school integration.

Has the government made strides with Affirmative Action; the War on Poverty; welfare; child care; school lunches; no child left behind; the Johnson Great Society? Yes. But, ought there be some form of reparations to the African-America community, to compensate for over 100-years of misrule and white supremist actions since 1865, not only governmental, but private enterprise, many of those companies founded on the backs of slavery, and still around today in the "too big to fail" category?

 

None of this addresses the issue of apologizing for slavery. My point still stands. You bring up social problems African Americans face and the attempted political remedies like welfare and affirmative action. I don't understand the point. You can address and solve those problems without an apology for something that happened too long ago for anyone to rationally take responsibility for.