Bernie wants a revolution! But let's not get crazy, right?

@Setanta,

Many thanks, professor. Smile

You gave me enough factual info that I can research a bit more.

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@Lash,

Lash wrote:

Many thanks, professor. You gave me enough factual info that I can research a bit more.

Did you ever read Coates' Reparations article in The Atlantic?

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@snood,

Alright, goddammit. I consider the issue closed for me, but I place a pretty good deal of value on Ta - nehisi, and a bit more on you, so reading it now.

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I don't think you'll like what I have to say. Coates didn't tell you or me anything we didn't know. Younger readers - sure. They may not know these details.

I think reparations have been attempted with the US's many social programs.

I believe with near certitude that no additional measures will ever be taken toward reparations in the US.

I think the US has done the best it can in that direction.

Do you think there's a former slave-holding society that can point to a better model of reparations than the US?

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@Foofie,

Foofie wrote: "Even in the Soviet era, Jews had "Jew" on their ID card, as their nationality; they never became Russian."

Do you have a citation for this? My source states that Jews in Russia gained legal equality in 1917:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_emancipation

Also, there's this:

According to Israeli historian Benjamin Pinkus, "We can say that the Jews in the Soviet Union took over the privileged position, previously held by the Germans in tsarist Russia".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia

Which is not, of course, to deny the existence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. In his biography of Lenin, Ronald Clark writes that in 1919 Lenin put eight of his speeches on gramophone records: when seven of them were rerecorded and put on public sale during the Khrushchev era, the one omitted was the one outlining Lenin's opposition to anti-Semitism.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I will say this again Foofie. This is the problem I have with your arguments on threads about race.

I believe that you value the lives of some races over the lives of others. You consistently state that some races deserve to be dominant, and you consider atrocities against certain races as barbarism where equivalent atrocities against other races aren't so bad to you.

It is very difficult to have a discussion on racial issues without an explicit agreement that all humans are equal regardless of their race.

My point iniitially was simple. The United States sacrificed 250,000 lives in ending the Confederacy and its slavery. That to me is a price that cannot be measured in money; however, it is a price that more than equals any reparations for slavery. The supposed debt was already paid in the loss of 250,000 Union soldiers. Any other reparations, such as 40 acres and a mule is nothing I can comment on, since I did not live 150 years ago.

You seem to think you are having a discussion with me. I did not respond to your post; you responded to mine. If you do not think I deserve your time, please do not give it to me.

It is not so much that I think some races are superior to others. I just think history has shown that some gene pools (aka, ethnicities/nationalities) have accomplished more than others. And, I give them the utmost respect. For this reason I am an Anglophile. As a U.S. citizen I do believe that only a Protestant America made this country what it is today. If it was anything else, I might have had much less opportunity.

Please just stop standing in judgement of me, since my thinking is not unique, and you are just harrassing me on this forum, in my opinion. Go away please.

1 Reply

@puzzledperson,

puzzledperson wrote:

Foofie wrote: "Even in the Soviet era, Jews had "Jew" on their ID card, as their nationality; they never became Russian."

Do you have a citation for this? My source states that Jews in Russia gained legal equality in 1917:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_emancipation

Also, there's this:

According to Israeli historian Benjamin Pinkus, "We can say that the Jews in the Soviet Union took over the privileged position, previously held by the Germans in tsarist Russia".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia

Which is not, of course, to deny the existence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. In his biography of Lenin, Ronald Clark writes that in 1919 Lenin put eight of his speeches on gramophone records: when seven of them were rerecorded and put on public sale during the Khrushchev era, the one omitted was the one outlining Lenin's opposition to anti-Semitism.

My sources are from ex-Soviet Jews.

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@Foofie,

I feel it is important to challenge racism when it is expressed in public. Your ideas on race are offensive and dangerous. You are pushing these in a public forum, I have the right to refute them and the moral responsibility to refute them.

If you stop pushing racist ideas on this forum, I will stop refuting them.

If you want to push racist ideas in public without them being challenged, then sorry, things don't work that way.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I feel it is important to challenge racism when it is expressed in public. Your ideas on race are offensive and dangerous. You are pushing these in a public forum, I have the right to refute them and the moral responsibility to refute them.

If you stop pushing racist ideas on this forum, I will stop refuting them.

If you want to push racist ideas in public without them being challenged, then sorry, things don't work that way.

You are proselytizing Universalist Humanist ideas, in my opinion. That is not what America is based on. You are not challenging my thinking; you are just making pejorative statements about my personal viewpoints. Not illegal, and actually quite legal in this country, as a private citizen. Pick on someone else. My thinking is not different than those that would rather have the Boston Red Sox win against the Yankees, than vice versa. I prefer the Yankees to the Boston Red Sox, even though I am a Mets fan. Why? The Yankees are a New York team. The Boston Red Sox are not. It is just human nature. Now please direct you thinking to someone else; otherwise, you might just be picking on someone that is not an idealist, and understands who really are the power brokers. Plus, you have never defined "equal." Equality has nothing to do with a private citizen's views. Equality has to do with opportunity. My views affect no one. You do not seem to realize that a private citizen affects no one with their views. That is the privilige of being an American citizen with the right to be discriminating as to who one chooses to befriend, or give a red lollipop to. You do not get a red lollipop.

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Foofie wrote:

That is the privilige of being an American citizen with the right to be discriminating as to who one chooses to befriend, or give a red lollipop to. You do not get a red lollipop.

Don't worry, maxdancona. I will give you a red lollipop, and here it is! Smile

http://forums.androidcentral.com/attachments/photo-contests/142386d1413896070t-weekly-photo-contest-lollipop-lollipop.jpg

Oops! Someone nibbled on that one. Embarrassed

Ah, here's one I can give you. Enjoy! Smile

http://cdn.dailypainters.com/paintings/big_red_lollipop_c75adc80776b61a6fd84fcff4272156f.jpg

1 Reply

@wmwcjr,

Have you ever wondered why racism is the accusation for slavery being part of the U.S. history, but "tribalism" is the accusation for slavery historically existing in Africa amongst native tribes? My point is that current anthropological theory considers humans just tribal. So, tribalism is practiced by different groups, regardless of race, and it could include all kinds of atrocities. However, claiming that someone is racist is a pejorative utilized for some purpose, in my opinion. Telling someone they are tribal doesn't have the same pejorative effect.

Naturally, accusing someone of being racist puts the accuser on the moral high ground, so to speak. But, not if one is accused of being tribal, since we are really all tribal, even if that tribe is today referred to by some name reflecting a religion, a country, a subculture, etc.

The reality I believe is that slavery existed in the history of the U.S. because it wasn't understood to be immoral. That can have nothing to do with whether one is a racist. The term having all sorts of meanings in the vernacular. I just think it is better to talk about specific moral or immoral behavior, and then in context of the reality of our tribal loyalties. The human species is really a conundrum.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

I have always found Britain's attitude both amusing and disgusting.

Tell me about it. I live in Bristol (England) a city in which a great deal of wealth was accumulated from the slave trade. It also has a sizeable black population, and in the last 30 years or so, pressure has been growing to face up to the shameful history. There are buildings and streets named after, and statues of, notorious slave owners who happened to be mayors, prominent merchants, etc. People see statues of Franco being taken down in Spain, streets renamed, etc, and ask why it can't be done here. The situation is the same in many other parts of the UK. Much needs to be done, and one wonders if it ever will be.

We should not forget Britain's more recent past, either. Look at the massacres in Kenya during the Mau Mau "emergency". A lot of Britons feel that national shame (slavery, Nazism, fascism, Stalin, etc) are things that other countries need to address, but not us.

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The population of Trinidad and Tobago is slightly more than one third East Indian. In fact, according to the CIA world factbook (an excellent resource) there are more T & T's descended from East Indians than from Africans. While they're cleaning up the mess with slave owner statues and street names, they might acknowledge what replaced African slavery in the West Indies.

Don't take it the wrong way, either. The very recent flap over here about the continued display of the Confederate battle flag in southern venues shows how far we've really come. I would take any American expressing holier-than-thou opinions very much amiss. The "southern heritage" claims and the "lost cause" myth are potent examples of one of the most successful bullsh*t public relations campaigns in history. Many northerners continue to believe that Robert Lee was one of America's greatest generals. If one had set out to destroy the main Confederate army in the war, i can think of no better way to have done it than the Seven Days' Battle and the attack at Gettysburg on the third day, usually called Pickett's charge--both masterminded and ordered by Lee. Lee killed more Confederates than any northern general ever did. When i was a child, Lee's birthday was a state holiday in states all over the south. Americans continue to see him as a great man.

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Many Americans also continue to see Jefferson as a great man (don't get me started on that deceitful, lying bastard). They tend to be able to completely overlook that he was a slave owner who manumitted exactly two of his slaves in his lifetime. After his death, most of his slaves were sold off to pay the debts of the estate. His rationale for not manumitting his slaves was that they were not prepared to live in modern society.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Many Americans also continue to see Jefferson as a great man (don't get me started on that deceitful, lying bastard). They tend to be able to completely overlook that he was a slave owner who manumitted exactly two of his slaves in his lifetime. After his death, most of his slaves were sold off to pay the debts of the estate. His rationale for not manumitting his slaves was that they were not prepared to live in modern society.

Slavery being immoral was not understood to be immoral by people of European descent. Nor, by the tribes that sold slaves to the Europeans slave traders. To understand history, one should understood the historical thinking of the people at that time, I thought.

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snood I'm genuinely curious and interested in hearing what you would do if you could describe the ideal choice and implementation. Not sure if you support it and how but if so how would it work in your ideal scenario?

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@Foofie,

You're an idiot, Miller/Foofie, which you demonstrate every time you open your big mouth.

American Quakers and German evangelicals, meeting in Germantown Pennsylvania in 1688 called for the abolition of slavery. To put that in perspective for your lame brain, that was almost 60 years before Jefferson was born. English Quakers officially expressed their opposition to the slave trade in 1727. That was sixteen years before Jefferson was born. The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in England on May 22, 1787--which was three days before the constitutional convention in the United States convened.

You should really keep your big mouth shut, Miller, because you never know a goddamned thing about the subjects on which you pontificate, and you always make yourself look a fool. That, combined with your undoubted racism pretty well sums you up.

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

snood I'm genuinely curious and interested in hearing what you would do if you could describe the ideal choice and implementation. Not sure if you support it and how but if so how would it work in your ideal scenario?

I'll answer just in case you're really curious, and not just baiting me to put forth something that you can shoot down because you believe reparations is either an absurd or dead issue. I'd have to scroll back but I think Lash's take on it is that the US has already dealt with the issue as best it can(or "show her a country that's done it better"). I think that your initial answer was something to the effect that it's sort of moot to talk about reparations today.

My argument has never included a well thought out plan for implementation. In fact, in all the arguments for the cause of reparations I've seen(Randall Robinson's The Debt, Coates' Atlantic Article, Boris Bitner's Case for Black Reparations to name three good ones), I don't believe I've seen anyone try to actually plot out a working plan for financial reparation of injustice due to the practice of slavery. Such a plan would have to be economically sound in the context of the ever shifting economy and logical to the satisfaction of ever contentious politics, and I don't think I've seen anyone try to blueprint it.

My argument has always been and remains that the issue of government reparations for the ancestors of black chattel slaves is an issue that is worthy of discussion. It just is. The issue does not present itself as a yea or nay vote as to whether it's worthy for discussion. The issue abides as a moral obligation to at LEAST discuss, not dismiss as a settled matter or ignore simply because it's so uncomfortable. The almost immeasurable, and undeniably vital financial benefit of chattel slavery (especially for the purpose of producing cotton) to this nation; and the devastating damage it had on the people on whom the crime was perpetrated AND their ancestors SHOULD be something that people of moral substance WANT to discuss, and not dismiss as whining or the amusement of the naive.

If you read Coates' recent critique of Sanders carefully (or at all) it is clear that this is Coates' main contention as well. Reparations for slavery has never been seriously considered - "considered" meaning discussed with a truly open mind.

I hope you're answered.

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@snood,

snood wrote:

I'll answer just in case you're really curious, and not just baiting me to put forth something that you can shoot down because you believe reparations is either an absurd or dead issue.

I see it as a non-starter in that I don't see it likely to happen, and also can't imagine how it would work without causing more harm than good but don't see it as something to ridicule.

Quote:

My argument has never included a well thought out plan for implementation. In fact, in all the arguments for the cause of reparations I've seen(Randall Robinson's The Debt, Coates' Atlantic Article, Boris Bitner's Case for Black Reparations to name three good ones), I don't believe I've seen anyone try to actually plot out a working plan for financial reparation of injustice due to the practice of slavery. Such a plan would have to be economically sound in the context of the ever shifting economy and logical to the satisfaction of ever contentious politics, and I don't think I've seen anyone try to blueprint it.

Yeah, I asked because I noticed I hadn't ever seen one. And I think that's because the debate is just stuck on the concept but for me to seriously consider it I'd have to consider the practical implications. I guess in a way I am ready to more seriously consider it and wonder what it would look like.

Quote:

My argument has always been and remains that the issue of government reparations for the ancestors of black chattel slaves is an issue that is worthy of discussion. It just is.

I admit that I haven't always agreed that it was even worthy of discussion. Ten years ago I thought it to be more of a fringe militant position and thought even discussion of it was harmful (in that I thought it was racially divisive and set back race relations for blacks without any prospect of it reaching consensus).

I think the country has progressed enough on the conversation of race that having this discussion is less divisive now than it was a decade ago, but still do believe that this is unlikely to get off the ground, and that white people and even other minorities like latinos or asians will feel "punished" for something they don't feel responsible for (and not get past that).

Quote:

The issue does not present itself as a yea or nay vote as to whether it's worthyfor discussion. The issue abides as a moral obligation to at LEAST discuss, not dismiss as a settled matter or ignore simply because it's so uncomfortable.

It's not because it's uncomfortable but because I don't see it as having a realistic prospect of being helpful while the discomfort can cause a backlash and regression in progress.

I just don't know how it could be implemented in a way that is helpful and while I agree that some level of discussion of this is helpful I think that there is also a point at which it can become unhelpful if pressed too hard.

Quote:

The almost immeasurable, and undeniably vital financial benefit of chattel slavery (especially for the purpose of producing cotton) to this nation; and the devastating damage it had on the people on whom the crime was perpetrated AND their ancestors SHOULD be something that people of moral substance WANT to discuss, and not dismiss as whining or the amusement of the naive.

And it is something that society today is willing to discuss, it is really the specific idea of reparations that is so much more sensitive. I think that most people disagree with a race-based approach to this vs a class-based approach (myself included).

Quote:

If you read Coates' recent critique of Sanders carefully (or at all) it is clear that this is Coates' main contention as well. Reparations for slavery has never been seriously considered - "considered" meaning discussed with a truly open mind.

If you mean the nation as a whole I agree. But I think that sometimes this is a way of saying that it is not agreed with. I think it's not a given that an open mind would be receptive to the idea.

I'm familiar with the arguments for it and have given them serious genuine consideration (though seeing a better example implementation than I am able to conceive would be a way to consider it even more seriously) and my main disagreement just boils down to the preference for a race-based vs class-based solutions.

I understand the counter argument to my position too. A class-based solution does not address all the influence of the race-based problem. But there are problems with a race-based solution as well. One is that the optics are not great and many people are not thoughtful enough to not see it as reverse racism. Because of this it will inevitably be racially divisive and provoke a backlash, in my opinion. It also is often perceived as less "fair" to the average person, and I think this is instinctual. While a class-based solution would not address all of the general inequality between black and white races (one example is because it's not just that there is more poverty in the legacy for blacks but also that the success is less successful, the rich less rich too) it has some advantages that directly address the disadvantages of the reparations (or positive discrimination approaches).

But I'm not going to go into my arguments for class-based approaches too far, I am not here to shoot down the idea my question was sincere. I can't imagine a good implementation of reparations. There are some things I can see working (companies that have been shown to directly profit from slavery could be targeted etc) but I just don't see how it can work as a helpful instrument and not just another wedge issue.

I am legitimately curious about what proposals have been put forth on how this would work.

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@snood,

snood wrote:

If you read Coates' recent critique of Sanders carefully (or at all) it is clear that this is Coates' main contention as well. Reparations for slavery has never been seriously considered - "considered" meaning discussed with a truly open mind.

Given that Coates, as you noted, never offered any kind of plan for carrying out reparations, I'd argue that he never "seriously considered" reparations either. It's not enough to say "we should have reparations" if there's no realistic plan offered for the implementation of reparations. Without some kind of plan, it's all just wishful thinking. He might as well throw in some fairy dust and unicorns along with those reparations. Coates, in short, supports reparations in the same way that a saloon keeper supports "free beer tomorrow." And if Sanders isn't taking the issue of reparations seriously, maybe it's because Coates and the rest of the supporters of "reparations-in-theory" don't take it seriously either.

1 Reply

Bernie wants a revolution! But let's not get crazy, right?

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