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Am I Entitled to Reparations?
First, my family did not benefit from owning slaves (at least not for the past millennia or so, what happened before that time is hard to say). Living in the South, they were early members of the Resistance Movement against John C. Calhoun. They cleared land, farmed and built everything themselves. They missed out on the economic bonanza of King Cotton and tobacco. They were focused on feeding people, growing animals, and making tools for themselves and others.
(Full Disclosure: They used mules. For those who believe in the rights of animals, an argument can be made these animals deserve compensation. I will take a portion of what you give me and give it to the descendants of mules or those who support mules – like Democrat politicians who expect to cash in on the reparations movement.).
Second, though they were Southerners, my family fought for the Union, were wounded and suffered enormous pain, amputations, and hardship freeing the slaves (except for that one black-sheep relative, Robert E. Lee, who was temporarily confused about what country he lived in — Virginia was not his country; it was his home and state). They also had to sleep on the ground for months with fleas, ticks, and skeeters while conducting military operations against their former neighbors. All this cost them earnings, depleted family savings, diminished my family’s wealth and my inheritance, and harmed their health, which may have been passed on to me. A few free nights at the Holiday Inn might be nice recompense for their sacrifice.
Third, my family suffered immeasurably resisting slavery in the South and were ostracized for their stand for generations. Church ice cream socials were misery for us. Some free Fro Yo coupons could help soothe this memory. (Actually, I have no memory of this, but you can rest assured I will conjure one up if I am called to testify before Congress.)
Fourth, long before slavery, my forefathers endured the hardship of coming to America on cramped ships, labored settling the land, and faced deprivation, plague, and pestilence (all without cable, flat screens or cell phones). This restricted and diminished the capital and property of their estates and led to my current predicament. At a very minimum, this entitles my family to some form of compensation. Three free months of internet service might be a start, but I am going to encourage all of you to come up with something you think is fair. The NFL TV package would be much appreciated.
Fifth, my family continues to suffer. But now it is from the government’s oppression. The affirmative action, disfavor, and prejudice demonstrated against us in order to advance others solely due to their gender, race, or their illegal status is intolerable. Apparently, all men were not created equal in 1776 and are still not equal today — and the government remains determined to keep it that way. So help a fella out.
Elizabeth Warren is creating more classes and intersections to be compensated for their suffering. You can be assured that sooner or later I will be caught up in her net. And when I am, I intend to make you pay dearly. So settle this matter now and shell out some money. If you do, I promise not to sock it to you later. Scouts honor.
Note: I accept Bitcoin but prefer small denomination currency. No credit cards or checks. Need to keep this on the down-low. And no coins!
Published in General 
Those “ancestry” companies are gonna make out like bandits. Everyone wants to find that percentage of Negroid in their blood lines that will ring the slot machine. Unfortunately @jamesmadison the cleverly crafted sarcasm with which you write is made more biting because of the truth it unmasks. Just another handout for the greedy and lazy.
JM,
Oh, how simple it was for a time. The 1964 Civil Rights Act simply instituted a standard of civil behavior. Soon it became clear how hard it was to bring a civil rights lawsuit. So the original affirmative action law was passed. This was intended only to make it easier to bring the suit. Of course, you still had to prove your specific case. This worked as advertised.
All this was for the good as far as I could surmise. One could almost feel the black community making significant progress because of it. However, especially left-wing white voices weren’t satisfied. They wanted more. They said whatever their idea of progress was (always undefined) we weren’t making progress fast enough. In 1973 the quota-based ruling came down. Now you needn’t prove your case at all. You simply demonstrate a “disparity” and claimed this was the result of endemic racism. Now the era of race hustling could really begin. The facts didn’t matter (sound familiar) all that mattered was your half proven disparity and the completely unproven assumption that this was a result of endemic racism.
Now the government actually commits a new form of institutional racism to eliminate racism. I knew at the time that it wouldn’t work. It could never work. Two wrongs don’t make a right. From that moment onward the black community stopped making progress. Race relations got worse, not better.
This obviously wasn’t because Americans were racist but because leftism is garbage.
Regards,
Jim
“All this was for the good as far as I could surmise.” This is so true.
Unfortunately, (or perhaps fortunately in the case of your “generous” offer) mules do not have descendants, being a sterile hybrid between a donkey and a horse. Nice try, but I didn’t fall off the turnip truck last night.
This was my little trickery, … and I thought it funny.
What are you going to do with all of your reparations money? 40 acres and a mule could probably be had with all the scrub land the government owns in Nevada. Probably need to have Bureau of Land Management start setting up operations.
Ontarians who are descendants of United Empire Loyalists look forward to all the compensation they’re going to get for the land they lost at the end of the American Revolution.
Ditto for all the descendants of Anglo-Saxons whose land was confiscated by the Normans, Romano-Britons whose land was confiscated by the Saxons, Celtic-Britons whose land was confiscated by the Romans, and neolithic-Britons whose land was confiscated by the Celts.
;-)
It would almost be worth the cost IF our elected reps had the guts to say to race hustlers afterwards, “We paid you, so shut the [redacted] up! You’re on your own now, just like the rest of us.”
I am owed reparations.
My great, great, great (I forget how many “greats”) grandfather owned 31 slaves. None of our family records show why, or what the business was. Nonetheless, I demand reparations.
Okay, the “takings clause” under the 5th Amendment was probably not meant to cover slavery, but my ancestor lost “property” by an act of the Federal government. I want my money.
Or . . . I’d be willing to forgo my claim if liberals would drop this “reparations” crap and move on . . .
I’d like to see the Supreme Court call reparations unconstitutional under the “corruption of blood” clause. They can make it fit.
I owned no slaves. I have no guilt on me for slaves. Even if my father were 200 years old and owned slaves, I am still not guilty of having owned slaves.
The slaves were freed. That was enough.
And they were freed at considerable cost, which is woven into my story. My ancestors paid dearly to emancipate and rid our country of this scourge. In fact on a present value dollar basis, when compared to the accumulated wages never paid to slaves, the compensation owed to the descendants of my forebears for their courage, pain, suffering and lost income through and after the Civil War might exceed the amount owed to some of the descendants of the slaves – on an equitable and comparable social justice to social justice basis. One will never know.
It is my theory that Elizabeth Warren and company have no more fear of this actually becoming any law than they do of serious economic fallout from the Green New Deal or the elimination of all student debt and funding of free migrant medical care. They just want to go on record as “good guys,” and make the mean ole conservatives have to point out all the absurdities (their followers can’t grasp). It’s just hot air used to flush out and identify the “bad guys” who don’t want to help everybody with everything everywhere every time, that is all.
And the beauty of it all, is that the absurdities are never PROVEN. Since only a smaller version ever happens, if at all, they can take credit for that, claim more would have been even better, and say at least they fought their virtuous fight.
JM,
If we are to be drawn into a Historical debate with these crypto-Marxist ideologues then let’s start from the baseline that every society on the face of the earth had a slave trade until modern liberal western society banned it. If modern unlimited illegal mass-migration represents anything it is a return to the slave trade ethic of the past. All this crap about other cultures is a smoke screen. The real proponents want helpless exploitable super-cheap labor in quantity. Slavery without those unpleasant looking chains but with all the exploitation. How sweet it is if you are a soulless globalist. You can even blame the right wing. If Obama detains people at the border he’s just doing what he should do. But if Trump detains people in exactly the same way it’s a concentration camp.
Regards,
Jim
Thomas Jefferson inherited debt from his father in law and he never paid it off. We don’t inherit debt today, I thought. I agree with you. Those that were called to end slavery, in that generation did it.
Notice that Democrats seem to suffer amnesia and are determined that everyone else pays for their mistakes? The same people that told kids they couldn’t make it in life without college are now saying they can’t make it because of college (debt).
This raises the question of what period of suffering the people requesting reparations includes. Is it only from the injustice of slavery, or does it include unfairness post-slavery, during and even after Reconstruction. And to address your point, collateral damage of the mistreatment to others not originally subjected to the institution of slavery. Even during slavery, poor Southern whites were very poorly mistreated by the ruling aristocratic classes, who basically had their way in the running of the local government to perpetuate their profits.
Then there are the secondary impacts stemming from the great northern migration out of the South to cities which by the late sixties became unlivable.
But you could attribute most of this to policies perpetrated by the Democrat party, going back even before the rise of Progressivism. So there might be a case to be made for making the Democrat party responsible for reparations to the country as a whole, not limited to those of a certain race or those whose family directly experienced the pain of slavery.