Maryland votes to create commission to study and recommend reparations for slavery

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why spend the time and money to study something that is impossible to implement? First, Maryland is in debt and facing a serious financial crisis. Second, voters will hate this. Third, if the state approved reparations, they would get sued and spend years battling this out in Courts. This seems more performative than serious and seems really, really poorly timed.

Well said.

Why? Because the objective is not to get this implemented, but re-direct taxpayer funds to the organizations who will perform this “study”.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like the federal government that keeps funding studies. This is a way to reward the companies that do the studies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One more reason to avoid Maryland. We should study and learn from history, but "reparations" for slavery in the current decade is just imbecilic.

Do you hold that same sentiment for the Native Americans who receive certain economic yearly benefits? What about those who are Jewish descendants of the Holocaust who also receive such benefits? What about the Japanese Internment camp descendants who received reparations?

The US stole Native American land and pushed them into "camps".

Those Japanese who were interned had their livelihoods stolen from them, and they directly received reparations, not the descendants.

The government was not directly involved in the slave trade, though they made it legal. And it's been over 150 years since the slaves have been freed. There are no living slaves or even direct descendants of slaves today.

We've had EO and AA for decades, and until recently DEI.

I'm all for means tested financial assistance like free meals for kids, subsidies for housing (I've given to those types of charities over the years), but not reparations to people who were not directly impacted by slavery.

So would you then want to be Black for a year and then come back to tell us that African Americans are still not directly impacted from American policies?

Slavery ended sure but what about Jim Crow laws, Water in Flint Michigan and the way families were treated after Hurricane Katrina (qualify as eco-terrorism). The direct and living descendants of the Tulsa Massacre still have not received any reparations from lost homes, land, businesses, family members being chased out by a man angry white mob. The NY Times ran an excellent piece on the impact still effecting those families whose wealth was wiped out in a night.

Let's not forget redlining, educational disparities, banking while black, driving while black, police brutality and a whole of host of other terrorisms and atrocities committed.

But why should the taxpayers of MD, most of whom had no relationship with this, bear the burden of it? Especially at a time when the state faces unprecedented job loss and all of the challenges that will come with it. You are welcome to start a charity fund, but this feels mismatched.

+1 MD, especially MoCo, is made up of a ton of immigrants, from all over. Why should these folks have to pay for what happened to people long dead. Some of these immigrants escaped violence, and now they should pay for something terrible that happened to people who are long dead?

If you come to the US, you get the bad with the good. They don’t get all of the benefits of this “great” country built by enslaved people without paying dues.

This country was neither built exclusively nor primarily by the labor of African slaves. Certain parts of it may have been, but a whole lot of other people were exploited to make the country what is was today.

Not exclusively, but definitely primarily. And because the exploitation was based on the immutable characteristic of race, it meant that your children and their children children (meanwhile, other demographics had the opportunity, often with the help of the government, to build and pass on wealth) and so on and so forth, are also property. This is a main characteristic that distinguished American slavery of Africans from other types of slavery/exploitation, which often allowed people to become free after a period of years and generally did not extend to descendants.

Everyone west of the Mississippi begs to differ that Sacramento, Fort Collins, Boise and Seattle exist because of the slave trade.

[Anonymous]

Are they just trying to piss Trump off? It doesn’t take much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are they just trying to piss Trump off? It doesn’t take much.

Why yes let's obey in advance and not even discuss ideas Trump doesn't like.

I'm sure that will prevent him from screwing over Maryland.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One more reason to avoid Maryland. We should study and learn from history, but "reparations" for slavery in the current decade is just imbecilic.

Do you hold that same sentiment for the Native Americans who receive certain economic yearly benefits? What about those who are Jewish descendants of the Holocaust who also receive such benefits? What about the Japanese Internment camp descendants who received reparations?

The US stole Native American land and pushed them into "camps".

Those Japanese who were interned had their livelihoods stolen from them, and they directly received reparations, not the descendants.

The government was not directly involved in the slave trade, though they made it legal. And it's been over 150 years since the slaves have been freed. There are no living slaves or even direct descendants of slaves today.

We've had EO and AA for decades, and until recently DEI.

I'm all for means tested financial assistance like free meals for kids, subsidies for housing (I've given to those types of charities over the years), but not reparations to people who were not directly impacted by slavery.

So would you then want to be Black for a year and then come back to tell us that African Americans are still not directly impacted from American policies?

Slavery ended sure but what about Jim Crow laws, Water in Flint Michigan and the way families were treated after Hurricane Katrina (qualify as eco-terrorism). The direct and living descendants of the Tulsa Massacre still have not received any reparations from lost homes, land, businesses, family members being chased out by a man angry white mob. The NY Times ran an excellent piece on the impact still effecting those families whose wealth was wiped out in a night.

Let's not forget redlining, educational disparities, banking while black, driving while black, police brutality and a whole of host of other terrorisms and atrocities committed.

But why should the taxpayers of MD, most of whom had no relationship with this, bear the burden of it? Especially at a time when the state faces unprecedented job loss and all of the challenges that will come with it. You are welcome to start a charity fund, but this feels mismatched.

+1 MD, especially MoCo, is made up of a ton of immigrants, from all over. Why should these folks have to pay for what happened to people long dead. Some of these immigrants escaped violence, and now they should pay for something terrible that happened to people who are long dead?

If you come to the US, you get the bad with the good. They don’t get all of the benefits of this “great” country built by enslaved people without paying dues.

This country was neither built exclusively nor primarily by the labor of African slaves. Certain parts of it may have been, but a whole lot of other people were exploited to make the country what is was today.

Not exclusively, but definitely primarily. And because the exploitation was based on the immutable characteristic of race, it meant that your children and their children children (meanwhile, other demographics had the opportunity, often with the help of the government, to build and pass on wealth) and so on and so forth, are also property. This is a main characteristic that distinguished American slavery of Africans from other types of slavery/exploitation, which often allowed people to become free after a period of years and generally did not extend to descendants.

Not even close to primarily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One more reason to avoid Maryland. We should study and learn from history, but "reparations" for slavery in the current decade is just imbecilic.

Do you hold that same sentiment for the Native Americans who receive certain economic yearly benefits? What about those who are Jewish descendants of the Holocaust who also receive such benefits? What about the Japanese Internment camp descendants who received reparations?

The US stole Native American land and pushed them into "camps".

Those Japanese who were interned had their livelihoods stolen from them, and they directly received reparations, not the descendants.

The government was not directly involved in the slave trade, though they made it legal. And it's been over 150 years since the slaves have been freed. There are no living slaves or even direct descendants of slaves today.

We've had EO and AA for decades, and until recently DEI.

I'm all for means tested financial assistance like free meals for kids, subsidies for housing (I've given to those types of charities over the years), but not reparations to people who were not directly impacted by slavery.

So would you then want to be Black for a year and then come back to tell us that African Americans are still not directly impacted from American policies?

Slavery ended sure but what about Jim Crow laws, Water in Flint Michigan and the way families were treated after Hurricane Katrina (qualify as eco-terrorism). The direct and living descendants of the Tulsa Massacre still have not received any reparations from lost homes, land, businesses, family members being chased out by a man angry white mob. The NY Times ran an excellent piece on the impact still effecting those families whose wealth was wiped out in a night.

Let's not forget redlining, educational disparities, banking while black, driving while black, police brutality and a whole of host of other terrorisms and atrocities committed.

But why should the taxpayers of MD, most of whom had no relationship with this, bear the burden of it? Especially at a time when the state faces unprecedented job loss and all of the challenges that will come with it. You are welcome to start a charity fund, but this feels mismatched.

+1 MD, especially MoCo, is made up of a ton of immigrants, from all over. Why should these folks have to pay for what happened to people long dead. Some of these immigrants escaped violence, and now they should pay for something terrible that happened to people who are long dead?

If you come to the US, you get the bad with the good. They don’t get all of the benefits of this “great” country built by enslaved people without paying dues.

This country was neither built exclusively nor primarily by the labor of African slaves. Certain parts of it may have been, but a whole lot of other people were exploited to make the country what is was today.

+1 Chinese immigrants in the west helped build the railroads, even as the Chinese Exclusion Act prevented them from getting US citizenship. Asian Americans were also prevented from owning land and were segregated in schools.

Where are their reparations?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One more reason to avoid Maryland. We should study and learn from history, but "reparations" for slavery in the current decade is just imbecilic.

Do you hold that same sentiment for the Native Americans who receive certain economic yearly benefits? What about those who are Jewish descendants of the Holocaust who also receive such benefits? What about the Japanese Internment camp descendants who received reparations?

The US stole Native American land and pushed them into "camps".

Those Japanese who were interned had their livelihoods stolen from them, and they directly received reparations, not the descendants.

The government was not directly involved in the slave trade, though they made it legal. And it's been over 150 years since the slaves have been freed. There are no living slaves or even direct descendants of slaves today.

We've had EO and AA for decades, and until recently DEI.

I'm all for means tested financial assistance like free meals for kids, subsidies for housing (I've given to those types of charities over the years), but not reparations to people who were not directly impacted by slavery.

So would you then want to be Black for a year and then come back to tell us that African Americans are still not directly impacted from American policies?

Slavery ended sure but what about Jim Crow laws, Water in Flint Michigan and the way families were treated after Hurricane Katrina (qualify as eco-terrorism). The direct and living descendants of the Tulsa Massacre still have not received any reparations from lost homes, land, businesses, family members being chased out by a man angry white mob. The NY Times ran an excellent piece on the impact still effecting those families whose wealth was wiped out in a night.

Let's not forget redlining, educational disparities, banking while black, driving while black, police brutality and a whole of host of other terrorisms and atrocities committed.

But why should the taxpayers of MD, most of whom had no relationship with this, bear the burden of it? Especially at a time when the state faces unprecedented job loss and all of the challenges that will come with it. You are welcome to start a charity fund, but this feels mismatched.

+1 MD, especially MoCo, is made up of a ton of immigrants, from all over. Why should these folks have to pay for what happened to people long dead. Some of these immigrants escaped violence, and now they should pay for something terrible that happened to people who are long dead?

If you come to the US, you get the bad with the good. They don’t get all of the benefits of this “great” country built by enslaved people without paying dues.

This country was neither built exclusively nor primarily by the labor of African slaves. Certain parts of it may have been, but a whole lot of other people were exploited to make the country what is was today.

Not exclusively, but definitely primarily. And because the exploitation was based on the immutable characteristic of race, it meant that your children and their children children (meanwhile, other demographics had the opportunity, often with the help of the government, to build and pass on wealth) and so on and so forth, are also property. This is a main characteristic that distinguished American slavery of Africans from other types of slavery/exploitation, which often allowed people to become free after a period of years and generally did not extend to descendants.

Everyone west of the Mississippi begs to differ that Sacramento, Fort Collins, Boise and Seattle exist because of the slave trade.

How was our country founded in the first place? Who funded later expansion? Where did that wealth come from?

It all ties back to the unpaid, forced labor of millions of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would descendants of Union soldiers who died fighting to free slaves be exempt from paying reparations?

Individuals aren’t writing checks, dckhead.

dp..no, but presumably taxes are. Where is the reparation money going to come from? MD has a finite budget. It already has a budget shortfall, and the MD govt wants to raise taxes.

Just where do you think the reparation money will come from?

[Anonymous]

I support this. I don't think it should be an insane amount and I think it should be limited to slavery (not like the insanity in California where you had people saying give millions for redlining or whatever; that is the kind of stuff that makes people want to completely reject reparations).

American chattel slavery was a remarkably repressive and enduring institution. It involved not just legal subjugation, but also went along with an brutal campaign of moral repression from birth to death that we see the impacts of to this very day. While America has had many, many other instances of discrimination and racism, none of them are really comparable.

To be clear, when I say nothing is comparable, I am including the Jim Crow era as well as not being on the same level as actual slavery. It was awful, but it was not on the same level. And that's to say nothing of more recent events.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One more reason to avoid Maryland. We should study and learn from history, but "reparations" for slavery in the current decade is just imbecilic.

Do you hold that same sentiment for the Native Americans who receive certain economic yearly benefits? What about those who are Jewish descendants of the Holocaust who also receive such benefits? What about the Japanese Internment camp descendants who received reparations?

The US stole Native American land and pushed them into "camps".

Those Japanese who were interned had their livelihoods stolen from them, and they directly received reparations, not the descendants.

The government was not directly involved in the slave trade, though they made it legal. And it's been over 150 years since the slaves have been freed. There are no living slaves or even direct descendants of slaves today.

We've had EO and AA for decades, and until recently DEI.

I'm all for means tested financial assistance like free meals for kids, subsidies for housing (I've given to those types of charities over the years), but not reparations to people who were not directly impacted by slavery.

So would you then want to be Black for a year and then come back to tell us that African Americans are still not directly impacted from American policies?

Slavery ended sure but what about Jim Crow laws, Water in Flint Michigan and the way families were treated after Hurricane Katrina (qualify as eco-terrorism). The direct and living descendants of the Tulsa Massacre still have not received any reparations from lost homes, land, businesses, family members being chased out by a man angry white mob. The NY Times ran an excellent piece on the impact still effecting those families whose wealth was wiped out in a night.

Let's not forget redlining, educational disparities, banking while black, driving while black, police brutality and a whole of host of other terrorisms and atrocities committed.

But why should the taxpayers of MD, most of whom had no relationship with this, bear the burden of it? Especially at a time when the state faces unprecedented job loss and all of the challenges that will come with it. You are welcome to start a charity fund, but this feels mismatched.

+1 MD, especially MoCo, is made up of a ton of immigrants, from all over. Why should these folks have to pay for what happened to people long dead. Some of these immigrants escaped violence, and now they should pay for something terrible that happened to people who are long dead?

If you come to the US, you get the bad with the good. They don’t get all of the benefits of this “great” country built by enslaved people without paying dues.

This country was neither built exclusively nor primarily by the labor of African slaves. Certain parts of it may have been, but a whole lot of other people were exploited to make the country what is was today.

Not exclusively, but definitely primarily. And because the exploitation was based on the immutable characteristic of race, it meant that your children and their children children (meanwhile, other demographics had the opportunity, often with the help of the government, to build and pass on wealth) and so on and so forth, are also property. This is a main characteristic that distinguished American slavery of Africans from other types of slavery/exploitation, which often allowed people to become free after a period of years and generally did not extend to descendants.

No it was not. Asians are basically responsible for building the entire other half of the country. Almost no black labor was used to build the rail roads. I suggest you go read books on the development of the West. It all happened because of the transcontinental railroad through absolutely hellacious and brutal conditions. It was virtually allllllll Asian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One more reason to avoid Maryland. We should study and learn from history, but "reparations" for slavery in the current decade is just imbecilic.

Do you hold that same sentiment for the Native Americans who receive certain economic yearly benefits? What about those who are Jewish descendants of the Holocaust who also receive such benefits? What about the Japanese Internment camp descendants who received reparations?

The US stole Native American land and pushed them into "camps".

Those Japanese who were interned had their livelihoods stolen from them, and they directly received reparations, not the descendants.

The government was not directly involved in the slave trade, though they made it legal. And it's been over 150 years since the slaves have been freed. There are no living slaves or even direct descendants of slaves today.

We've had EO and AA for decades, and until recently DEI.

I'm all for means tested financial assistance like free meals for kids, subsidies for housing (I've given to those types of charities over the years), but not reparations to people who were not directly impacted by slavery.

So would you then want to be Black for a year and then come back to tell us that African Americans are still not directly impacted from American policies?

Slavery ended sure but what about Jim Crow laws, Water in Flint Michigan and the way families were treated after Hurricane Katrina (qualify as eco-terrorism). The direct and living descendants of the Tulsa Massacre still have not received any reparations from lost homes, land, businesses, family members being chased out by a man angry white mob. The NY Times ran an excellent piece on the impact still effecting those families whose wealth was wiped out in a night.

Let's not forget redlining, educational disparities, banking while black, driving while black, police brutality and a whole of host of other terrorisms and atrocities committed.

But why should the taxpayers of MD, most of whom had no relationship with this, bear the burden of it? Especially at a time when the state faces unprecedented job loss and all of the challenges that will come with it. You are welcome to start a charity fund, but this feels mismatched.

+1 MD, especially MoCo, is made up of a ton of immigrants, from all over. Why should these folks have to pay for what happened to people long dead. Some of these immigrants escaped violence, and now they should pay for something terrible that happened to people who are long dead?

If you come to the US, you get the bad with the good. They don’t get all of the benefits of this “great” country built by enslaved people without paying dues.

This country was neither built exclusively nor primarily by the labor of African slaves. Certain parts of it may have been, but a whole lot of other people were exploited to make the country what is was today.

Not exclusively, but definitely primarily. And because the exploitation was based on the immutable characteristic of race, it meant that your children and their children children (meanwhile, other demographics had the opportunity, often with the help of the government, to build and pass on wealth) and so on and so forth, are also property. This is a main characteristic that distinguished American slavery of Africans from other types of slavery/exploitation, which often allowed people to become free after a period of years and generally did not extend to descendants.

No it was not. Asians are basically responsible for building the entire other half of the country. Almost no black labor was used to build the rail roads. I suggest you go read books on the development of the West. It all happened because of the transcontinental railroad through absolutely hellacious and brutal conditions. It was virtually allllllll Asian.

And Eastern European immigrants did much of the hard labor in the factories of the North during the industrial revolution. Slavery was only widely practiced in the Southeast, and even there there were plenty of poor white laborers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would descendants of Union soldiers who died fighting to free slaves be exempt from paying reparations?

Individuals aren’t writing checks, dckhead.

dp..no, but presumably taxes are. Where is the reparation money going to come from? MD has a finite budget. It already has a budget shortfall, and the MD govt wants to raise taxes.

Just where do you think the reparation money will come from?

You don’t know how taxes work, dickhead?

I think the PP knows exactly how taxes work. We're all in the middle of paying our taxes to Maryland. This would raise our taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My Parents came over in 1962. We had zero to do with slavery. Do we get a waiver?

No, because you and they benefitted from white privilege. For instance, the USDA, Dept of Agriculture moved many white immigrants to states which were largely underpopulated, gave them land and then taught how to farm, have them low interest rates and gave them grants/loans for farming equipment.

Let's not also forget GI bills which locked African Americans out of home building relate but gave first generation immigrants opportunity.

All of this can be easily Googled or read in books.

I did? Odd, I’m not white….

[Anonymous]

Do democrats not understand how their policies create death spirals ? If they decide to do reparations it means taxes will go up, people will leave. Which means taxes go up more. Also these stupid policies mean softnesss on crime. So real proooert values drop. Taxes go up more.