UN Report: The US owes reparations to black Americans for slavery

[tetley]

Finland paid reparations to Russia for Russia invading THEM.

 

[Commodore]

Answer: Subtract 1620 from 1865; slavery existed in North America for 245 years. Write this number on the board, point out that the period of slavery in American history lasted far longer than the period without slavery (thus far).

But the US didn't exist as a nation before 1783, so it would hardly be fair to hold the US responsible for the period of slavery before we won our independence. Anything that occurred prior to 1783 should be the responsibility of Great Britain since we were their colony and, thus, acting with their implicit approval.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

"That was all Britain's fault" might hold more water had we immediately changed things. I'm thinking the benefits mostly stayed on this side of the Atlantic so it is reasonable that the responsibility should as well.

 

[Commodore]

"That was all Britain's fault" might hold more water had we immediately changed things. I'm thinking the benefits mostly stayed on this side of the Atlantic so it is reasonable that the responsibility should as well.

It's a matter of who was the sovereign authority at the time the atrocity occurred. I mean, would you hold the modern Ukrainian government responsible for the atrocities committed by the USSR? No, you wouldn't. So the US can certainly be blamed for everything that occurred from 1783 onward, but prior to that, it's all Great Britain's fault. Good luck getting reparations from them though.

 

[Lexicus]

It's a matter of who was the sovereign authority at the time the atrocity occurred. I mean, would you hold the modern Ukrainian government responsible for the atrocities committed by the USSR? No, you wouldn't. So the US can certainly be blamed for everything that occurred from 1783 onward, but prior to that, it's all Great Britain's fault. Good luck getting reparations from them though.

It's a lot more like holding the Ukrainians accountable for something they did while the USSR existed and then kept right on doing when the USSR fell apart.

 

[EnglishEdward]

It's a matter of who was the sovereign authority at the time the atrocity occurred. I mean, would you hold the modern Ukrainian government responsible for the atrocities committed by the USSR? No, you wouldn't. So the US can certainly be blamed for everything that occurred from 1783 onward, but prior to that, it's all Great Britain's fault. Good luck getting reparations from them though.

Slavery was not then legal under English Law.

Please see:

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

The american colonies practiced slavery in defiance of UK law.
When Britain tried to confirm its sovereignty they rebelled.

 

[Commodore]

Slavery was not then legal under English Law.

Please see:

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

The american colonies practiced slavery in defiance of UK law.
When Britain tried to confirm its sovereignty they rebelled.

Slavery wasn't abolished empire-wide until 1833. Prior to that slavery was only illegal in the British Isles itself, but was still legal (and even financed by British banks) in British colonies. I got all this information from your source. So really, the British didn't have a problem with slavery as long as it was making them money, they just didn't want it in their backyard or on their doorstep.

EDIT: Upon further reading of the link you posted, it seems slavery wasn't even abolished in the British Isles itself until 1799, a full 16 years after the US won it's independence. So your entire claim in this post is wrong.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Slavery wasn't abolished empire-wide until 1833. Prior to that slavery was only illegal in the British Isles itself, but was still legal (and even financed by British banks) in British colonies. I got all this information from your source. So really, the British didn't have a problem with slavery as long as it was making them money, they just didn't want it in their backyard or on their doorstep.

EDIT: Upon further reading of the link you posted, it seems slavery wasn't even abolished in the British Isles itself until 1799, a full 16 years after the US won it's independence. So your entire claim in this post is wrong.

Which part of:

"In his judgment of 22 June 1772, Mansfield held,

The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.[6]

Although the legal implications of the judgement are unclear when analysed by lawyers, the judgement was generally taken at the time to have determined that slavery did not exist under English common law and was thus prohibited in England."

do you not understand?

 

[Commodore]

Which part of:

"In his judgment of 22 June 1772, Mansfield held,

The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.[6]

Although the legal implications of the judgement are unclear when analysed by lawyers, the judgement was generally taken at the time to have determined that slavery did not exist under English common law and was thus prohibited in England."

do you not understand?

"Generally taken" does not equal law. No official law outlawing slavery existed in the British Empire until 1799 and it was not abolished across the entire empire until 1833. The facts are simply not on your side on this one. You didn't send your soldiers over here to enforce anti-slavery laws, and your government was 100% okay with slavery as long as it was in the colonies and not in the streets of London. The fact that you are trying to deny your nation's role in the atrocity of slavery and trying to take the moral high ground for the sake of some nationalist pissing match is, quite frankly, disgusting. I don't always think the US should apologize for the things it has done in the past, but at least I can admit that it did them.

But whatever, you go ahead and keep thinking you were the "good guys" during our war for independence.

 

[Arwon]

Was baddies vs baddies really

 

[Verbose]

UN forgot on my money. In history we Slavs were enslaved nearly by everybody.

Depends. By the standards of that UN report, if you as a Slav is still suffering from such lingering consequences of that past that you cannot fully function as a citizen, i.e. you are in some perceptible way restricted in exercising your human rights, as they stand, then well, yes.

But is that really the case? Going by the standard set by the UN report, likely local Romani might take precedence...

 

[Commodore]

Was baddies vs baddies really

I'll concede that is an argument that could reasonably be made. Of course that's an argument that could be made for just about any armed conflict in human history.

 

[EnglishEdward]

"Generally taken" does not equal law. No official law

You never heard of case law?

outlawing slavery existed in the British Empire until 1799 and it was not abolished across the entire empire until 1833. The facts are simply not on your side on this one. You didn't send your soldiers over here to enforce anti-slavery laws, and your government was 100% okay with slavery as long as it was in the colonies and not in the streets of London. The fact that you are trying to deny your nation's role in the atrocity of slavery and trying to take the moral high ground for the sake of some nationalist pissing match is, quite frankly, disgusting.

I have never denied Britain's role in slavery, but the relevant examples of atrocities are in the trans Atlantic Slave Trade and in passing laws for and suppressing slave revolts in
the Caribbean Islands; not in the thirteen colonies on the north american mainland where slavery was propagated in fact and in local law by the locals and not by Britain.

But whatever, you go ahead and keep thinking you were the "good guys" during our war for independence.

The colonists reasons for fighting included retaining their customs which amongst other things included slavery.
Their fight for liberty included the liberty to enslave others. So I don't buy the revolutionaries were good guys line.

 

[Commodore]

not in the thirteen colonies on the north american mainland where slavery was propagated in fact and in local law by the locals and not by Britain.

With the implicit approval of the British government since you didn't do a single thing to liberate slaves in the colonies until we decided to rebel against the crown. Once that happened then it was all "oh yeah, we'll promise freedom to any slave who fights for King George!"

As long as we were good little loyal subjects of the crown we could enslave as many people as we wanted and the empire had no issue with it. Nor did they see the hypocrisy in condemning slavery from their comfortable homes in London while still reaping the benefits of it in the form of goods shipped from the colonies that were produced with slave labor.

The colonists reasons for fighting included retaining their customs which amongst other things included slavery.
Their fight for liberty included the liberty to enslave others. So I don't buy the revolutionaries were good guys line.

Is that what they teach you guys about our war for independence? Man, and people think the education system in the US is messed up...Either that, or you just have a very poor understanding of what the causes of rebellion really were.

No, the main issue which led to rebellion was about taxation and whether or not the colonies should have seats in Parliament. In case you weren't aware, independence was not the original goal of the rebellion. The original goal was to get the British government to recognize our right to representation as long as we were being taxed, or that we should not be taxed at all if they didn't want to give us that representation. That's why one of the early rallying cries of the rebellion was "no taxation without representation".

I also never made the claim that we were the good guys, just pointing out how ridiculous it is for you, or anyone for that matter, to paint the British Empire as the heroes of that particular story.

 

[Lexicus]

As long as we were good little loyal subjects of the crown we could enslave as many people as we wanted and the empire had no issue with it. Nor did they see the hypocrisy in condemning slavery from their comfortable homes in London while still reaping the benefits of it in the form of goods shipped from the colonies that were produced with slave labor.

Well, there was an abolitionist movement in England at this time.

Is that what they teach you guys about our war for independence? Man, and people think the education system in the US is messed up...Either that, or you just have a very poor understanding of what the causes of rebellion really were.

No, the main issue which led to rebellion was about taxation and whether or not the colonies should have seats in Parliament. In case you weren't aware, independence was not the original goal of the rebellion. The original goal was to get the British government to recognize our right to representation as long as we were being taxed, or that we should not be taxed at all if they didn't want to give us that representation. That's why one of the early rallying cries of the rebellion was "no taxation without representation".

You should probably ease up on the condescension, since you're not exactly right either. As I learned it, it was less about representation in Parliament (not seen as a realistic possibility by most given the length of an ocean journey from Britain to the colonies) but that they should be bound only by laws made by the colonial assemblies. It's true that we didn't outright move to independence until the Olive Branch petition, in which we tried to get the king to intercede on our behalf with Parliament, failed.

In any case English Edward is certainly not wrong, as one of the major fears of the colonists was that the strong government of England, whose presence in the colonies had become much more obvious due to the garrison of troops there since the end of the Seven Years' War, would be able to ban slavery. And one of the reasons for the colonists' obsession with limited government powers was precisely to ensure that government would be too weak to mount a serious attack on property rights (which encompassed the right to hold slaves). So the colonists certainly feared that the informal arrangement prevailing since the 17th century was coming to an end (again mainly due to the changes made and pressures induced by the Seven Years' War) and would be replaced by an arbitrary and unpredictable regime.

Naturally their fear was intertwined with their slaves, since property in slaves consisted of a great part of what the wealthier colonists had to lose.

 

[Commodore]

Well, there was an abolitionist movement in England at this time.

That's the hypocrisy I'm talking about. I would venture to guess many of the leaders of that abolitionist movement still drank their tea, smoked their tobacco, and wore their cotton clothing without the slightest feeling of guilt that those products were brought to them through slave labor and exploitation of native populations in the empire's colonies. I mean, it's kinda hard to take an abolitionist seriously when that very same abolitionist is contributing to the demand for products produced by slave labor.

 

[Verbose]

Well, there was an abolitionist movement in England at this time.

The North American colonies were part of that. There was an abolitionist movement there as well.

And then the US abolitionist movement was the first political mass movement in the republics history. It eventually had a quarter million paying and card-carrying members. Unfortunately it was VERY unevenly distributed between north and south. It's a big reason the US eventually progressed to civil war.

 

[Gary Childress]

So I read the UN report, and it's not really about reparations for slavery. It's mainly about contemporary mistreatment and inequality. The Washington Post, for one, opened its article with a bit of a misleading title and opening sentence: "The history of slavery in the United States justifies reparations for African Americans, argues a recent report by a U.N.-affiliated group based in Geneva."


They're not talking about the 1840s, they're talking about right now.

The UN report particularly calls out the U.S. criminal justice system; our 'war on drugs', racial profiling, mandatory minimum sentencing, the death penalty, minors charged as adults, jail sentences for people unable to pay court fees, etc.

It appears that the hoopla is over Section V., B. #94 of the report where it says:

94. The Working Group encourages Congress to pass H.R. 40 — the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act — which would establish a commission to examine enslavement and racial discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and to recommend appropriate remedies. The Working Group urges the United States to consider seriously applying analogous elements contained in the Caribbean Community’s Ten-Point Action Plan on Reparations, which includes a formal apology, health initiatives, educational opportunities, an African knowledge programme, psychological rehabilitation, technology transfer and financial support, and debt cancellation.

https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/183/30/PDF/G1618330.pdf?OpenElement

 

[trader/warrior]

Reading the Caribbean Ten-point Plan for reparations I find it pretty agreeable really. But it's hard to see how several of the points can be applied to the US in any way. Technology transfers and debt cancellation is about state-level things from European nations to Caribbean nations, cancelling the debt of individuals or "giving technology" would be a quite different and messy matter. On the psychological rehabilitation point, I'm not sure the African-American community would be particularly accepting of their reparation money going to an effort to "integrate" them into the wider American culture, it could likely be seen as taking away more than helping. On repatriation, I think it's nice in concept, but doubt it would be very popular as an option (and I can already imagine the "go back to Africa if you don't like it, the trip is paid for" cries from racists.)...

I think it would be hard to swallow for a lot of people to give such things as health-care and education as a form of reparation to a subset of people, this again seems much more applicable in the Caribbean where it would apply to the state as a whole and coming from outside states. For the US it seems a bit more difficult to come up with a good solution, which is likely why the UN report is so vague.

 

[EgonSpengler]

It appears that the hoopla is over Section V., B. #94 of the report where it says:

I haven't read either of those documents, but off the top of my head, I'd see no issue with a formal apology and African knowledge program. I assume the latter is some kind of education program, and I'm all in favor of education. Health care and education are two of the three ginormous Gordian Knots we face right now (criminal justice being the 3rd), so I'm all on board the reform train and I think much of what African-Americans are rightfully angry about would be sorted out by getting those three systems to not suck so hard. Easier said than done, of course, but an apology doesn't do much if you're still doing the thing you're apologizing for. I know, I know, we don't keep slaves anymore, but the 'legacy of slavery' isn't Confederate Flags and movies like "Twelve Years a Slave", it's a massive discrepancy in capital, biases (unconscious, systemic, not necessarily deliberate) in hiring and in extending credit, stiffer prison sentences for drugs used by African-Americans than for drugs used by whites, and on and on and on.

Just this very morning I heard that the Massachusetts Court of Appeals is reversing the dismissals of 6 Boston police officers for positive drugs tests because the test uses hair samples and is known to produce a high rate of "false positives" on hair that is thick and coarse. 5 of the 6 officers who tested positive are black, and the Boston PD is not 83% black. Yes, a fracking drugs test is accidentally racist. You can't make this stuff up.