Senate Backs Apology for Slavery... Cannot Be Used in Reparations Cases

[tomm2thumbs]

Source: Washington Post

The Senate unanimously passed a resolution yesterday apologizing for slavery, making way for a joint congressional resolution and the latest attempt by the federal government to take responsibility for 2 1/2 centuries of slavery. The Senate's apology follows a similar apology passed last year by the House. One key difference is that the Senate version explicitly deals with the long-simmering issue of whether slavery descendants are entitled to reparations, saying that the resolution cannot be used in support of claims for restitution.

The House is expected to revisit the issue next week to conform its resolution to the Senate version. Harkin, who called the Senate's vote an "important and significant milestone," said he wanted the resolution passed yesterday to closely coincide with Juneteenth, a holiday first celebrated by former slaves to mark their emancipation.

<snip>

"The Republican Party needed to do it," Swain said. "It would have shed that racist scab on the party."

Republicans, however, were supportive of the resolution. "It doesn't fix everything, but it does go a long way toward acknowledgment and moving us on to the next steps to building a more perfect union, doing the things that Martin Luther King would talk about, like building a colorblind society," said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

---

Unanimous. Shocked, literally.

The Conservative Right Wing nutcase-base is going to eat this like a sandwich. (like a mama cass ham sandwich, that is.)*

* yes, I know it is a myth

[Tx4obama]

1. In my opinion...

there have been too many generations since 'slavery'.
The majority of taxpayers today had nothing to do with the evils of the past and should not be held liable for the things that the slave owners did - which although were wrong were legal at that period of time.
Millions of people came to the USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s from Europe and elsewhere and a huge amount of Americans are descendants of those folks (me included) and had nothing to do with 'slavery' so we should be held responsible.
All the slave owners ARE DEAD. If there are people out there that are personally offended by the southern slave owners then they should go the old cemeteries and find the headstones of the slave owners and kick them over, cuss, spit on the ground and then get over it and leave the rest of us alone

[shadowknows69]

4. None of us slaughtered the Native Americans either

But we still harvest the fruits of their lands. How many "Old money" fortunes were made on the backs of slaves? Everything is connected and no one is truly innocent.

[Dreamer Tatum]

5. If you measure innocence by having 'old money'

then I'm as pure as the driven snow, and I don't want to hear about reparations.

[Terran]

7. The nation as a whole continues to enjoy the fruits of slavery

and other forms of exploited labor. It's not about whether this individual or that individual's ancestry can or cannot be traced to participation in the slave ownership system. America as a whole traces its economic and physical infrastructure to slavery, and we all, right now, continue to benefit from that. That's the reason reparations remain a valid idea.

[No Elephants]

14. What "fruits of slavery" am I enjoying? My parents immigrated to the Northeast and were themselves

exploited by the owners of the sweatshops in which they worked.

[Terran]

19. Think of it in the aggregate.

Slaves didn't just pick cotton; they built things, crafted things, designed things and invented things, and they did it for free. Slaves basically built Washington DC. Their owners received direct economic benefit from these activities, and over time these benefits accrued to everyone connected with them. Over more than three centuries, slavery and other forms of exploited labor created accelerated economic growth in the US that, had it never existed, would make us a very different place today. It's exactly the same as if someone stole $100 dollars from someone else and gave it you, gratis. You would benefit from someone else's labor that earned that $100.

I'm in no way trying to exclude your parents, or any exploited labor. This is all still going on, right now. Why do you think fruit is as cheap as it is? Because Mexican immigrants pick it all for us and get paid next to nothing to do it. Who built the first transcontinental railway? Economic activity is all interconnected, so it doesn't matter that North Dakota never had any slaves in it; slaves created money and capital, which in turn created other money and capital, and so on and so on, until someone connected in that chain of benefit decided to go open a saloon in North Dakota and maybe his descendants now own a chain of grocery stores. Some of this may even be documented in the same way that Holocaust survivors documented Jewish slave labor used at Mercedes-Benz during World War 2. Most of it, of course, can't be documented, but I'm sure it's possible to estimate the value to all slave labor in terms of 2009 dollars. I imagine such a figure would be staggering, considering how long it went on.

[No Elephants]

31. If I think of it in the aggregate, MANY groups are due reparations, not only one. What about the

Chinese? What about my family? And no one has ever given me or my family squat gratis.

As far as Washington, DC, it has had its hand in my pocket most of my life. Put another way no more than my African American countryman gets from it and perhaps somewhat less. If I am enjoying the "fruits of slavery," then so is he. And building so much of DC as existed before slavery ended would cost a lot less than reparations would cost. Not to mention that it would have crumbled away by now, if it were not maintained and improved with tax dollars paid by everyone who owes taxes.

If the slaves or their children were still alive, I would be more amenable to arguments about reparations, but only if everyone who was exploited were to be treated the same. Ditto if you were proposing that the families of slave owners pay the reparations. As it is, it would be simply creating another injustice without helping those who were actually exploited.

[Psephos]

28. It's called Six Degrees of Separation

Why are we only going back a few hundred years? I see no problem reaching back a couple of millennia, and wringing hands over the well-known enslavements of Celts by Romans, Spaniards by Moors, miscellaneous abuse of Carpathians, Visigoths, Turks, Ethiopians, Hebrews, Macedonians, Tatars, etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

And there's some 'splainin to do about the strange disappearance of the Clovis Point people in North America by other native tribes 10,000 years ago....

lol

(In other words, I agree with your p.o.v. on this completely.)

[No Elephants]

16. Sorry, I disagree that America as a whole traces its economic and physical infrastrucure to

slavery and we all still benefit from it. Saying something like that does not make it so. No clue what, for instance, North Dakota owes slaves (though it may owe a great deal to Native Americans).

America owes a lot of its infrastructure and economy to immigranta, too, but no one is going to pay me reparaions because my parents were exploited immigrants, nor would I expect anyone to do that.

[rd_kent]

21. Enjoying the fruits of slavery? Are you serious?

If anything needs to be apologized for, its the treatment of blacks AFTER emancipation. The sins of slavery were paid for with the lives of the thousands of Americans that gave their lives in a war AGAINST slavery. My family tree is much, much smaller because of the price MY family paid to end slavery. I think that's payment enough, dont you?
What needs to be addressed is the treatment of blacks after the end of slavery. THAT needs to be apologized for. This country went to war with itself over slavery yet did not follow through. I'm angry about that, and we need to address it.
As for repatriation? What would you suggest? Who will receive it? Bring a plan to the table and lets talk about it.

[Terran]

24. Quite serious.

And I've heard that argument a million times, that the civil war somehow 'made up' for slavery, and I don't, to say the least, buy it. The treatment of blacks post-civil war is just part of the continuum of slavery and racism in this country. I don't see any point in making an artifical distinction between one and the other. One is the legacy of the other.

And it's "reparation", not "repatriation". And no, I'm not going to present any "plan" to you, since you clearly will oppose any suggestion I might make. We've discussed the issue to death on DU over the years and I don't feel like wasting my time with you, as I anticipate hearing every bogus argument against reparations that I've already heard hundreds of times before.

"It was such a long time ago."
"All the people who owned slaves are dead."
"All the slaves are dead."
"I had nothing to do with it."
"My familiy immigrated o the US in 19xx so they had no part in it."
Etc., etc., etc.

Edit: try reading post #19 for an explanantion of the "fruits of slavery". That is, if you're actually interested in another point of view.

[JonQ]

29. So the nation that ended slavery

is to blame for slavery?

And how much of our infrastructure really came from slavery? As I understand it was primarily used to produce cotton, not a lot of infrastructure there. Most of those farms were destroyed in the war, or by the boll weevil that came a few generations later.

So slavery was instrumental to one portion of our economy, briefly, that has since been entirely replaced and all our current infrastructure was put together by free laborers, and yet we still benefit from slavery. Right. I suppose italians owe pretty much all of europe and north africa an apology, Rome was built by slaves from all over.

[Terran]

35. *sigh*

1) I never said the US is "to blame" for slavery.

2) See post #19.

3) Your reference to the Roman slave system shows ignorance of how that system worked compared to the Atlantic slave system.

You post is a good example of why I'm no longer willing to argue this issue in detail...it's because the ignorance and refusal to think is so colossal and it keeps coming back and coming back. No offense to you personally, but that's just how I see it.

[Abq_Sarah]

37. My ancestors came here from Ireland less than 100 years ago

I'm not sure how they or I benefited from slavery.

[WriteDown]

6. The US is still slaughtering the Native Americans...

Trust me. There is not enough of us left to warrant much concern though.

[shadowknows69]

8. True that, I didn't in any way mean to diminish your struggles today.

And FWIW, which probably aint much, this is one white man who has always been concerned and ashamed of what his race has done.

[WriteDown]

9. Don't be too hard on yourself...

Its the way of the world that some peoples are conquered and eliminated. It just sucks that we were on the losing end.

[shadowknows69]

11. It is the way of the world but it didn't have to be.

Humanity could have evolved in better directions had generosity won over greed. Community over self. Earth over "progress".

[WriteDown]

12. Humanity is still too young for that...

I wish my people had invented the wheel or metal for that matter . May have made a difference.

[No Elephants]

15. Can you be more specific please? Who is slaughtering Native Americans? How?

[WriteDown]

17. Easier to show you...

Take a trip the the Awesasne reservation in upstate NY/Canada sometime. Or just google recent news stories.

[No Elephants]

32. Not traveling and no luck with the first page of google hits. BTW, it seems to be "Akwesasne." I

did see something about a border standoff. Is that what you are referring to?

[WriteDown]

36. Didn't learn to type until i was well in my twenties...

So that mistake does not surprise me. The border standoff is a good starting point. Nothing like not upholding treaties with people who are easy to push around.

[Zavulon]

30. +1.

I'm so fucking tired of this. What good is an apology going to do anyway?

If anyone alive actually feels better because today's government apologized for an atrocity that ended in the mid-1800s, they're a little too bit into the victim mindset.

The apology should be prefaced with "We'll offer this apology on the condition that we finally get to let this go and concentrate on other things which, like it or not, are way more pressing. Okay?"

[zbdent]

2. language gets me ... "It doesn't fix everything" ... that's like the "This legislation isn't perfect

"

When it's theirs, and the media darlings' (read: Republican), it's "not perfect" ... with the implication that it's the best they could get out of the process ... more of a positive lean in inference ...

whereas a Dem/Lib bill is "deeply flawed" ... inferring that there's little, if any, good to it ...

[shadowknows69]

3. Will that finally include 40 acres and a mule?

[raccoon]

13. The US should've done that when they freed the slaves.

They didn't, because of course, the power elite really didn't care about the slaves as people.

[goclark]

10. I'm African American and I accept the apology

Everytime I find another ancestor only in the 1870 and beyond I think about how their lives must have been.

I accept it and now let's move on as a country and provide justice for ALL ( not just African Americans)in the 21st Century.

[classysassy]

18. Some blacks

can't move on,because of the heavy load slavery imposed on blacks.

[Terran]

20. I would say that everyone can "move on", is capable of it...

It's just that the legacy of slavery is a ball and chain on many people and they find it too difficult, overall, to carry that around with them. It prevents them from competing effectively in a society that demands competition. This basic truth is why we have affirmative action.

[ecstatic]

22. Wrong. Affirmative Action forces racists and sexists

to hire qualified minorities when possible, rather than just sticking with the good old boys. It is not about giving someone who cannot compete a "leg up." That's a common misconception.

[Terran]

23. you're right

What was I thinking?

[No Elephants]

34. Affirmative Action does not force the hiring of qualified minorities or women "when possible." It

forces hiring to fill certain minimums. As little as 5% of the hiring sometimes, though for African Americans (but not for women), the percentage increases as and if necessary to reflect the local population.

It also helped with school admissisons, though, contrary to popular belief, not beyond the admission stage.

And, affirmative action is going, going, going, gone. Even Obama says it shouldn't exist, except maybe as to strictly economics, without regard to race (or gender, I guess).

[goclark]

26. I understand but it's not going to happen with this economy

and there are so many important things that everyone needs-- healthcare for everyone etc.

[goclark]

27. I understand but Reparations are not going to happen IMO

Health Care for ALL Americans equals reparations.

Civil Rights for ALL Americans equals reparations.

Better PUBLIC Schools for All Americans -- not just Charters for some.

[No Elephants]

33. I believe that discrimination still exists. But that is the same for all African Americans, even

those whose ancestors were never slaves. So, I am not sure what you mean.

And discrimination in America is not limited to discrimination against African Americans.

[Towlie]

25. But how long before they apologize for torture?