Government assistance and reparations. I had to get this out. I wrote much this while studying my undergrad. PLEASE READ. PROVIDE YOURSELF WITH KNOWLEDGE. OPEN YOUR MIND UP FOR DISCUSSION. IF I HAVE OFFENDED MY NON BLACK FAMILY AND FRIENDS THEN YOU NEVER KNEW ME AT ALL “We are coming to get our check” – Dr. Martin Luther Kind Jr. What Dr. King was referencing too is many people tell us to pull ourselves up by the boot straps and up out of the trenches, to overcome the obstacles we were born with and stop making excuses. But oh how the same people telling us this forget so quickly. The Homestead Law provided free or the low-cost farm lands to SPEED UP EXPANSION of commercial agriculture. National banks provided sound currency and low cost loans.The 1862 Homestead Act opened up the public domain lands for free. Land grants to the railroads meant they could sell tracts for family farms (80 to 200 acres) at low prices with extended credit. In addition the government sponsored fresh information, scientific methods and the latest techniques through the newly established Department of Agriculture and the Morrill Land Grant College Act. You see government assistance provided the foundation of stability for many of the families who judge blacks today. REPARATIONS The proposal of reparations for slavery is a proposal that a type of compensation SHOULD be provided to the descendants of enslaved people in the United States, in consideration of the forced and uncompensated labor and inhumane and harsh treatments of their ancestors performed over centuries in addition to the civil issues, injustice, murders, tortures, rapes, lynching’s, non-police protection, violence, hate crimes, lack of employment, false incarcerations that followed after the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment and the psychological, physical, mental and long term effects it has had on this suspect class of people. 2 passed as white for their entire life and 3 decided to be black. The arguments began with the revoked land reparations received by Blacks in 1865, after General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 “assure the harmony of action in the area of operations” and to solve the masses of freed slaves, each freed family was granted forty acres of tillable land. Around 40,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres in Georgia and South Carolina. However, after the assassination of Lincoln President Andrew Johnson reversed the order returning the land to its previous white owners. Reparations has be proposed in a variety of forms 1. individual monetary payments 2. land-based compensation schemes related to independence 3. free education, free medical, free legal and free financial aid for 50 years with no taxes levied 4. Social services, community rehabilitation and not payments to individual descendants A few reasons/ excuses we have not decided on reparations and my opinion and solutions Excuse 1: The US does not track descendants of slaves. This is why they do not want us to list BLACK and prefer us to identify ourselves as African American. I met women from Morocco who looked Caucasian and she said she was African American. This is why I identify myself as Black American just as a white American I nor did generations of my ancestors come from Africa and my family was here well before the US Constitution was written unlike many other groups that have come after and identify themselves with the country or continent they are from. Whites do not identify themselves as German American, Swedish American etc., why should the only other most populous race that was here since the beginning of this county have to? Therefore Blacks of America should not. In Article I section 9 of the US Constitution placed a clause that ended the international slave trade 20 years after the Constitution was written, prohibiting the migration or importation of slaves. This was the conventions way of handling the abolition of slavery by assuming the end of the slave trade would bring the end to slavery. This was inaccurate and the end of the slave trade meant no more competition and caused domestic slave trading and slavery in general to boom creating huge economic growth in the Southern States. Therefore if I have any direct decedents of Africa that held the role of an African slave they entered the country well before 1808. After 1808 the black race dialect, religion, music, and blood had been mixed with whites, Indians and even Asians as well as simply being black. Hence the development of gospel, jazz, dance, ebonics etc. all a constellation of the black experience in the 1600s-1800s. Furthermore many of the US censuses in 1870 and beyond list families as mulato meaning of mixed blood. Thomas Jefferson created formulas to try and eventually make all blacks mulato with plans of integrated and intermarriage based create colonies eventually creating mulato slaves in a odd belief that fair skin and thinner hair would be the solution to end the blacks status and the whites hatred toward them in addition to his fascination with his father in laws extremely mulato slave mistress who was ½ black and white and the mother of his soon to be mistress and mother of his 5 children Sally Hemming’s. Sally was a product of his father law and his mistress. Sally was ¼ black and ¾ white and still his slave. Sally Hemming’s and Thomas Jefferson’s children were so white when they were freed 2 were able to pass as white! I do not believe proving ancestral heritage at least to the 1800s should not be an issue. Some foot work should have to be done. Indians have to prove their bloodline and they have fewer records than Blacks. People like me can prove my heritage and existence through many records up until 1700s. This type of research can be institutionalized if needed to prove your families existence in this country. Excuse 2: Who’s responsible and who benefited? (dumb questions I know) but let’s lay it out there! How much did America benefit from slavery after the international slave trade in 1808 since before the slave trade ended in 1808 the role of the America and the established European countries that created the colonies in which slavery was legal was shared. Both European Countries and America should share in funding reparations. This argument suggest it’s not all Americas fault. European countries who owned the colonies should have to assist in paying reparations. I STRONGLY DISAGREE! When this country’s leaders meet in 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the Constitutional convention they decided to continue slavery and only ended the slave trade 20 years later not slavery, a chance to end slavery was provided and was not taken in fear we would not have UNITED STATES. After the European countries did not own the colonies and the international slave trade ended in 1808, and the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 caused great economic wealth for America and between 1800 and 1860, 1.8 million of the 2.5 million enslaved blacks were in agriculture. In addition, beginning 1640s black codes and slave laws turning black indentured servants sentences to life long sentences and prohibiting blacks from owning property, fire arms, honoring their marriages, was created colony by colony and carried out by the people who lived in these colonies the same people who declared their freedom and remained citizens of the new America. Hence the perpetrators went from European citizens to American citizens in 1777. Europe should not have to pay for this country’s acts against blacks! Furthermore, European countries were ending slavery several years before America decided to in 1865 which is why Fredrick Douglass fled to Europe in the 1840s until he could buy his freedom. Excuse 3: slavery was not illegal in the United States Keep in mind, under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government apologized for Japanese American internment during World War II and provided reparations of $20,000 to each survivor, to compensate for loss of property and liberty during that period. For many years, Native American tribes have received compensation for lands ceded to the United States by them in various treaties. Other countries have also opted to pay reparations for past grievances, such as the German government making reparations to survivors of the Holocaust. All of these acts were not illegal but the people of these suspect classes still received compensation. Excuse 4: A renewed demand by African-Americans for slavery reparations should be rejected because such payments would only increase racial hostility. I want someone else to give their thoughts on this one I can take any more excuses Interns of proving lineage I have been preaching this for a while the apology...the treaty! History is wealth! Ancestry has all the Indian treaty roles you can search including the Dawes roles but this post leaves out the first part and important part putting together your linage! Something I have been doing for almost 3 years now! Black genealogy is key and will be an important factor in the debate for reparations! I encourage you to put together as much of your family tree as possible it is valuable! It will come in handy as policies change!
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 06:15:29 +0000
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