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Speculation on reparations.
SoreShoulder
Member Posts: 3,148 ✭✭✭
Obviously, the case for reparations rests partially on the wrong committed to enslaved persons.
However, it is also claimed that this country profited heavily from slavery and is partially built upon the profits of slavery, which would mean we owed more.
The amount of net profit might have been quite low because the planters might have had a hard time borrowing money to plant every year because of high interest and bad credit.
Their credit rating must have been low because slavery was being banned all over the world and banks saw there was a high chance any day now, they could lose their ability to make the money back by using free labor.
Comments
Perhaps we should find out who loaned money to the plantations and hit them up for a share of reparations?
IMO we are owed reparations. I wake up every morning and thank God I was born here, but then I have seen the real bad places in this mean old world and most of them were in Africa. If they had any sense they would kiss the ground and praise God their ancestors were enslaved.
BTW My ancestors were debtors and brought over as indentured servants with Oglethorpe in 1730, they were "given" to the Cherokee Indians in GA and were indentured for 5 years. Some got out early by joining the militia and fighting the Spanish.
There were many Company Towns in the coal belt where one was paid in scrip that just covered what it took to survive.
If one links reparations to value of labor, does one have to factor in the costs of room and board?
Just curious.
Don
Brad Steele
My FIL and many of my own family lived in " coal towns " paid in script or you could get cash but it was just a very low % of what the company money you would receive . then the company stores charged more than the town stores also just a continuing cycle
my departed MIL told me stories of her and others going to the company store to get food or what ever the store clerk would call the mine and see how much "credit " the fellow had made for the day before giving out any thing
get hurt and laid up very long you were gone and some one else would be taking over your company owned shack you no longer were making money for the company
my departed FIL worked double shifts many times trying to feed the family and I know many more did the same go in before daylight and home after dark and never see the daylight for weeks on end
it was truly just one notch above slavery in may ways you were owned by the company ( like the old song I owe my soul to the company store )
Then again, maybe for the most part they were as profitable as you would think.
Maybe a secret plot in the North paid for a winning war effort by smuggling out the slaves and accepting bribes from Africans to emigrate.
You are probably correct on this one, SS. All the wealthy slaves bribed their way north, but the evil northerners took every last penny and left them destitute upon arrival. Many parallels with the traffic across our current southern border.
Brad Steele
Wealthy slaves??? What???
Opportunistic profiteers from among the Union soldiers guarding Port Royal, or on Sherman's march to the Sea, or guarding the freedmens' colonies on the Georgia coast after the war may have sold the freedmen in their care to South America or the Caribbean.
People from Africa (who were not slaves) may have bribed the supposed Union Army slave sellers or other opportunistic profiteers in order to emigrate in their place.
The US was a comparatively wealthier country than African countries even then, and some people from Africa may have been dispossessed or displaced by European colonization, inter-African warfare, natural disasters, disease, drought, famine, etc. It may be that many Africans would have preferred to stay in their homeland, but it just cannot be that absolutely none of them wouldn't pay to try to live in the US.
There were probably also freedmen in the Caribbean and South America who may have wanted to try to emigrate to a wealthy nation. Parts of those places were emancipated by this time.
Perhaps part of the intention behind the Emancipation Proclamation was to prevent the South from replenishing its war treasury by selling its slaves.
It only applied to "areas controlled by the Confederacy" and not to slaves secretly smuggled out by profiteers.
The South banned the importation of slaves in their Constitution but they could have intended to change it as needed. In fact, it could have been intended as a smokescreen. They could have intended all along to sell some of their slaves if money ran low.
Former slaves who were liberated by Sherman's march or showed up at Port Royal would have been hungry and uneducated, so they might have been exploitable.
From a New York Times article regarding 23andme:
"The report, which included more than 50,000 people, 30,000 of them with African ancestry, agrees with the historical record about where people were taken from in Africa, and where they were enslaved in the Americas. But it also found some surprises.
For example, the DNA of participants from the United States showed a significant amount of Nigerian ancestry — far more than expected based on the historical records of ships carrying enslaved people directly to the United States from Nigeria."
I am self identifying as a black and a slave descendent , just send my check asap
if every one else can decide what gender race or combination they are so can I
if its good for some then all can be counted in
Maybe they was et.
I am white in color but i must be black, I love fried chicken and water mellon. Got a gap between my two front teeth if that means anything.
My wife's great great grand mother was full Cherokee Indian. My son and his girl friend were looking at family pictures, his G G G grandmother turns out is his girl friend's G G G grandmother. Thought she was going to pass out.
FYI I like people of all colors and walks of life but some of the things they say and do riles me up to the fullest.
Oops, all thumbs
I changed my stance on reparations once i filled out a form 4 today at my local gun shop...
They asked what race to I IDENTIFY with - I checked them all as i identify with all of them...
I am IN LINE for Reparations!
wtf? can those reparation people be serious ??? and why would any adult or political party even tolerate such stupidity... ahh votes and divisiveness..
Keith, they are serious as all get out.
I don’t entertain suppositions. Life is vexing enough as it is.
Throughout the Americas, slaves were employed in their off hours for money. Many earned enough to buy their freedom. While this was easier in areas with a majority minority free population, with a quarter million free blacks living in the south during the lead up to war, this also occurred in the Southern States of the US. Those that did not buy their freedom used the cash to supplement their diets and living conditions, while no doubt many were saving the money. Wealthy has always been a relative term, and there were no doubt many owners who prohibited the accumulation of money by their slaves.
We are conditioned today to believe that there was no such thing as a good person who owned slaves. There were good people who owned slaves and treated them well.
Brad Steele
that's interesting about your GGG grandmother
I will guess most all Americans have a sorted mixed back ground if they have been in country for a couple hundred years ( or less ) population was a lot less and well reginal mates were a bit more scarce as no one traveled much
My great grand mother was Cherokee on moms side . no details as far as names but was just passed on word of mouth thru the family . my moms side of the family all looked the part . a lot of my cousins could still pull it off black hair a few shades darker than most. as for me and my brothers and sisters having blond hair ( well gray now ) and blue eyes and some what fair skin no way I could pass , my dads side of the family donated most all of it .
Afrikans made slaves of each other. American Injuns made slaves of other tribes and white folks. Egyptians enslaved the jews. There is a history of slavery on just about every continent.......time to get over it people
The North wanted the South in the country, obviously, they fought a war to prevent secession. They might have supported the South's interest in not having their country flooded with free people who might potentially be full of hatred and revenge. That might be a potential reason they'd turn a blind eye to the various interests that might want to see the slaves go.
I finally came up with a reasonable scenario regarding how a few of the freedmen could have turned over. The Africans who captured and sold the US slaves were extremely concerned about the outcome of the Civil war because they feared one day the freedmen might be strong enough to come back and extract revenge. There were many in the US who felt the same way. So they talked to one another behind the scenes. It was decided to move the freedmen to the coast where the Africans would kidnap them in secret raids. Where they wound up is anyone's guess.
As for how more Africans moved in, I think I heard someone say once, "try keeping them out." Especially after a major war with the nation heavily in debt.
There's a small issue with why they can't expect to get reparations out of West African nations.
It doesn't absolve us here in the United States, but their ancestors might have known and accepted the deal in their home countries.
They might have only been able to borrow money to plant their own fields in their home countries because of the understanding that they might be sold if they got too deeply into debt. So they wouldn't have come into existence if they hadn't been part of the system.
What about the asians that built the railroads?
Too smart for their own good? They now have have no bell curve allowances on entrance exams.I heard they are too smart now.
serf
Wondrous apparitions, provided by magicians...
Maybe that's why people sometimes find they're related to a bunch of European peoples when they thought they were part Native American.
The only reparations I will endorse must come from CHINA. Payable to all of the planet earth!
Of course I had missed the most obvious reason there could have been turnover just after the Civil war.
Africans would have been fleeing from places with slavery to a country that had just outlawed it.
State and local governments in the South would have been too disorganized to stop them and some of their citizens might have found a way to profit from it such as by helping Africans get past occupying Union forces in exchange for money. They needed it to rebuild the devastated South.
The idea seems plausible enough to need research.
Dead in water now a global oil crisis and govts have a reason to raise prices
Over 650,000 Americans died due to Lincoln's War and freeing the slaves. It would seem that is payment enough. Now, let's talk about reparations for Native Americans who were slaughtered, and relocated as official government policy.
I kind of thought the gov't paid the Native Americans back by allowing them to build casino's, control their own law enforcement, open season on fishing and hunting 365 days a year, free healthcare, and basically super citizenship for their members with yearly pay allotments given to all generated from tribe endeavors. 😮
I am working on one of my theories.
Can it be the goal of the Spanish conquest of the New World was to confiscate the sources of the gold which was funding the Ottoman Empire's invasion of Europe?
Perhaps traders based in the Ottoman empire were exporting opium or trafficking humans to the New World.
Some sailors in the Old World probably knew about the existence of America before Columbus. It just wasn't widespread public knowledge. Besides the Vikings, the Portuguese or Basque were said to have fished the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.
At one time, the East side of the Rockies and other places probably had gold dust lining the rivers just like the West side did until 1847. America might be the location of Solomon's mines.
Vikings may have started importing goods to the Native Americans in the 800-1000 period. Hopefully they weren't trafficking people from their raids. Some say they stopped because of Christianization.
Perhaps Mansa Musa of the Malian Empire found a way to reach the Americas and traded opium, hashish or captives for gold.
Perhaps the Ottomans either forced him out or became wealthy trading with the Malian empire for the gold they got from the Americas.
The traffickers were probably happy to leave things as they were in the Americas so the natives wouldn't mind scouring rivers for gold dust which they would trade away without knowing what it could be worth.
Can it be the goal of the European conquest of the Americas was to confiscate the gold which was funding the Ottoman empire as well as fueling the disappearance of people from the coastal areas of Europe?
There was also a risk that the Americas would absorb too much Old World knowledge due to the trafficking victims and become much better armed and much more numerous due to European weapon and farming technology.
Spain scoured much of North America looking for gold but probably decided to focus on South and Central America first. They were looking for the large sources which would fund the Ottoman conquest of Europe.
However, there is a chance there was enough for the natives there to still occasionally be able to pay someone to cross oceans and deliver them some trafficking victims.
I have no real knowledge of any North American indians to base that on except I think I did hear someone say once that they would discontinue taking captives when their land was given back to them. It sounded like he may have meant to speak for all his people but he could be mistaken, I suppose. I don't know.
England and France claimed most of North America for a similar reason.
Of course they wanted the land and the gold but that doesn't mean leaving it there was an acceptable risk.
So perhaps the Americas were confiscated from the natives because 500 years ago they were becoming dangerous. In addition to the gold, there was a risk that if they absorbed too much European knowledge, they might become a gangster state but equipped with much more advanced weaponry and farming than they had at the time of contact. Instead of tens of millions of traffickers there could soon be hundreds of millions, armed with muskets and cannon and sailing ships.
When they pay off all the national debt and balance the budget than you can start paying reparations by DNA analysis of percentages of certain profiles. Heck by then 75% of the population could get funds under The NWO edicts of equity for so called minorities enslaved by their own species.
serf
Truth IS 70% of a Plantations' wealth was its ''NEGROES''. A past grgr grandfather of mine in 1823 got a tax bill from Horry County for $5.33--Property tax on ''5 NEGROES'' and 1100 acres of land plus lmprovements. $3.75 for the ''NEGROES" @ $.75 each. $1.33 tax on 1100 acres of land and improvements. Land was taxed @ 1/10 of one cent per acre. For tax purposes the value of one Negroe was the same as 750 acres of land. From a dollars¢s point of view it seems very unlikely PROPERTY OWNED Negroes were abused. lf they were problems they were simply TRADED, BOUGHT, SOLD.
Kinda like team players are bought, sold, traded TODAY in PRO SPORTS🤑