Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black man

[Vixen]

If the dividend is 0.1p in the £1, someone owed £9,000 should get £9. Please be the person acting for me as the creditor!

9,000 x 0.10 = £900.

 

[Planigale]

9,000 x 0.10 = £900.

But 0.1p is £0.001, did you mean £0.1 (ie 10p) rather than 0.1p?

 

[Vixen]

The problem is at what point do reparations cease to be owed? There is no doubt that the impact of the Roman empire has continuing consequences. In the UK, the separation of England and Scotland is essentially the border of the Roman empire, that boundary is arbitrary as any other drawn up by colonial powers in Africa. If you look you can find papers on the massive economic consequences of the slave trade on the European mediterranean littoral. The massive migration from e.g. Sicilly and Greece was in may ways driven by the economic depression of coastal Europe by centuries of slavers from Africa raiding Europe. The reason why Slavs and slaves were viewed as synonymous was because the largest slave trade was from eastern Europe to the Near East and North Africa. In the 16 century when the trans Atlantic slave trade started if a European was asked to picture a slave it would be a Slav, or someone from the European mediterranean coast in North Africa. If asked to imagine slave owners and dealers it would be Africans and Arabs. (To be clear, African slave traders were not racist, they equally enslaved other Africans.)

I think the answer is continuity of responsible institutions. The Roman empire essentially ceased with the fall of constantinople, if anything is responsible for the reparations due by the Roman empire it is the Turkish state. The Barbary states of North Africa no longer exist, they transited through the French empire and now independent states. The slave trading states of the bight of Benin, transited through British and French colonialism and are now independent post colonial states. The European states and the US (and some companies) have continued in legal existence from slave owning to now. So whilst I think morally and in theory reparations are owed from North Africa to Europe, in a legal liability sense the only entities that still exist to pay reparations are US and European companies and states.

I do not think reparations need to be in cash, and are unlikely to address the issue, reparations need to be institutional. Liable institutions need to have policies to address and correct the systematic disadvantage that plagues the lives of black men.

Cash is all right. If you crash your car and are injured because of the other driver, people accept cash as compensation. The Atlantic Slave Trade owners received millions in compensation when slavery was abolished and they and their slaves are listed, so just give the slave descendants the money to go some way to equalising the problems caused by racism which is the direct result of the slave trade.

In Finland the Russians took over 20,000 mostly children as slaves in the Great Wrath of whom only two ever came back. Why shouldn't Russia recompense those families who never saw their kin again?



The fact that slavery has been common place throughout history is neither here not there. If you can bring a claim against someone who has committed a criminal offence against you why shouldn't you get compensation. Jews, gypsies and others affected by the Germans in WWII should likewise be compensated by Germany. Heaven knows it is rich enough. It stole all their wealth. It and other countries such as Spain and Portugal have admitted liability by offering citizenship for any Jewish person who suffered all those generations ago, even going back 400 years for Sephardic Jews, who were expelled then. So the idea is not so outrageous.

Maybe the Irish should receive cash compensation for the famines caused by the British corn laws.

If the African Americans in the USA were similarly compensated as the slave owners were, they would become millionaires overnight. No more race riots or tensions. No more being bottom of the pile, as it were, despite being co-founders of the USA.

Little by little, we can heal the world.

 

[Planigale]

Cash is all right. If you crash your car and are injured because of the other driver, people accept cash as compensation. The Atlantic Slave Trade owners received millions in compensation when slavery was abolished and they and their slaves are listed, so just give the slave descendants the money to go some way to equalising the problems caused by racism which is the direct result of the slave trade.

In Finland the Russians took over 20,000 mostly children as slaves in the Great Wrath of whom only two ever came back. Why shouldn't Russia recompense those families who never saw their kin again?



The fact that slavery has been common place throughout history is neither here not there. If you can bring a claim against someone who has committed a criminal offence against you why shouldn't you get compensation. Jews, gypsies and others affected by the Germans in WWII should likewise be compensated by Germany. Heaven knows it is rich enough. It stole all their wealth. It and other countries such as Spain and Portugal have admitted liability by offering citizenship for any Jewish person who suffered all those generations ago, even going back 400 years for Sephardic Jews, who were expelled then. So the idea is not so outrageous.

Maybe the Irish should receive cash compensation for the famines caused by the British corn laws.

If the African Americans in the USA were similarly compensated as the slave owners were, they would become millionaires overnight. No more race riots or tensions. No more being bottom of the pile, as it were, despite being co-founders of the USA.

Little by little, we can heal the world.

Germany was obliged to pay reparations. Russia had a long history of treating its ethnic minorities badly. Russian owned Slavs / slaves / serfs were sold into the African slave trade even after owning African slaves was made illegal in Russia. My guess is that at some point Finland agreed that there was no ongoing liabilities between states (very common in international treaties), so it would be dependant on individuals to seek compensation from Russia as the successor of the Romanoff Empire, or sue the estate of the late tsar. Slavery was not a crime at the time in the states, so no crime was committed. Even if it was the victims are long dead and likely the case for compensation is time barred. What compensation is sought for is not primarily the enslavement of an ancestor, but the ongoing disadvantagement and discrimination suffered post emancipation with ongoing impact on those alive today. I am not convinced that a lump sum or pension or tax exemption given to black men would produce the permanent change in society that is wanted and needed. Systemic discrimination occurs because black dominant areas are poorer so investment in local schools and social services are poorer. Infrastructure is poorer. What is needed is a major capital program to catch up. This would provide employment. Two million americans do not have access to running water a huge issue if you need to wash your hands because of covid-19. This is how reparations need to be delivered, this will have a long term impact.

 

[Venom]

Pretty much my suggestion.

It would be better able to uplift black dominant communities, vast majority of whom are descendants of slaves. I don't think cash payment would solve anything either now, even if it would have been the best thing to do in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

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[Stout]

I need me some reparations, seeing as men in general have it better than a lot of women do because men weren't saddled with systemic and institutional sexism and discrimination for thousands of years.

You may have a point there, with the 77 cent dollar and all. The broadcaster in the OP isn't after reparations though, he's after increased affirmative action because the last 30 or so years haven't done the trick.

Maybe America needs to ramp up it's game here. A moratorium on university admissions, trade school admissions and hiring on cis-het white males. Just educate them so they can read and write then shove them behind the wheel of a taxi or show them to a hotel room that needs cleaning until equality is achieved.

 

[Vixen]

Germany was obliged to pay reparations. Russia had a long history of treating its ethnic minorities badly. Russian owned Slavs / slaves / serfs were sold into the African slave trade even after owning African slaves was made illegal in Russia. My guess is that at some point Finland agreed that there was no ongoing liabilities between states (very common in international treaties), so it would be dependant on individuals to seek compensation from Russia as the successor of the Romanoff Empire, or sue the estate of the late tsar. Slavery was not a crime at the time in the states, so no crime was committed. Even if it was the victims are long dead and likely the case for compensation is time barred. What compensation is sought for is not primarily the enslavement of an ancestor, but the ongoing disadvantagement and discrimination suffered post emancipation with ongoing impact on those alive today. I am not convinced that a lump sum or pension or tax exemption given to black men would produce the permanent change in society that is wanted and needed. Systemic discrimination occurs because black dominant areas are poorer so investment in local schools and social services are poorer. Infrastructure is poorer. What is needed is a major capital program to catch up. This would provide employment. Two million americans do not have access to running water a huge issue if you need to wash your hands because of covid-19. This is how reparations need to be delivered, this will have a long term impact.

But slavery was a crime in Britain at the time. It was illegal for anybody, Black or White to be kept as a slave on British soil.

Nobody is asking you to like 'Black males' or even Black females. Compensation is what is due to equalise the wrongs of racism, which has been an entire industry built around rationalising the use of slaves in the colonies. Even if, like some White supremicists keep saying here, 'Blacks are inferior', how does that justify it? If someone is lazy, dirty or stupid in your eyes, it doesn't make it OK to exploit them for one's own personal gain....?

The same people love Black music. They'll play Lionel Richie or Johnny Mathis at weddings, the racist skinheads of the 70's loved reggae and 'soul' and Brits were crazy about Tamla Motown and Michael Jackson. But they don't want to see a Black family in a short TV Christmas ad. And certainly not living in the same street or having the same or better salary at work. They burst a blood vessel at the sight of an Indian soldier wearing a turban in a recent film 1917 mixing with everybody else.

One way to redress the balance is fair reparation for all the harm done through the generations as a result of the crime of slavery. You don't have to like anybody you don't want to like.

 

[Vixen]

Pretty much my suggestion.

It would be better able to uplift black dominant communities, vast majority of whom are descendants of slaves. I don't think cash payment would solve anything either now, even if it would have been the best thing to do in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

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That would not be perceived as fair. That would be seen as reverse racism and even patronising. Suppose you had a car accident - the other guys fault - which led to life-hanging injuries. Would you really prefer to donate your cash compensation to the local do-gooders? You are lying if you say, yes.

 

[Vixen]

You may have a point there, with the 77 cent dollar and all. The broadcaster in the OP isn't after reparations though, he's after increased affirmative action because the last 30 or so years haven't done the trick.

Maybe America needs to ramp up it's game here. A moratorium on university admissions, trade school admissions and hiring on cis-het white males. Just educate them so they can read and write then shove them behind the wheel of a taxi or show them to a hotel room that needs cleaning until equality is achieved.

And it was affirmative action (cf the Suffragettes) that got women the vote, was it not?

Treating cis-het males as badly as African American slaves were treated/are treated by them doesn't solve anything. Two wrongs don't make a right.

 

[Venom]

That would not be perceived as fair. That would be seen as reverse racism and even patronising. Suppose you had a car accident - the other guys fault - which led to life-hanging injuries. Would you really prefer to donate your cash compensation to the local do-gooders? You are lying if you say, yes.

What is up with your analogies in this thread.

If my grandfather was killed in a car accident that they never compensated my father for, the next best thing would be for me to receive it. This is my special individual case and all the details of my grandfather's accident are documented.

When we talk about compensating a group of millions of people more than a hundred years after we probably should have compensated them and with the added hardship of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era and beyond, black reparations may have to take the form of a more sustained institutional change.

If you're worrying about what's perceived as fair, I think there could be enormous backlash in the country if the government started mailing money to individuals. You don't think that could come across as patronizing? What if they skipped over some blacks who have just a little AA ancestry? Or mixed ethnics who feel cheated.

 

[Planigale]

But slavery was a crime in Britain at the time. It was illegal for anybody, Black or White to be kept as a slave on British soil.

Nobody is asking you to like 'Black males' or even Black females. Compensation is what is due to equalise the wrongs of racism, which has been an entire industry built around rationalising the use of slaves in the colonies. Even if, like some White supremicists keep saying here, 'Blacks are inferior', how does that justify it? If someone is lazy, dirty or stupid in your eyes, it doesn't make it OK to exploit them for one's own personal gain....?

The same people love Black music. They'll play Lionel Richie or Johnny Mathis at weddings, the racist skinheads of the 70's loved reggae and 'soul' and Brits were crazy about Tamla Motown and Michael Jackson. But they don't want to see a Black family in a short TV Christmas ad. And certainly not living in the same street or having the same or better salary at work. They burst a blood vessel at the sight of an Indian soldier wearing a turban in a recent film 1917 mixing with everybody else.

One way to redress the balance is fair reparation for all the harm done through the generations as a result of the crime of slavery. You don't have to like anybody you don't want to like.

I don't think slavery was a crime. The legal question was whether slavery existed as a legal concept, that is could someone be a slave in England (cases had also been brought with regard to the Slavs / slaves of Russians). Part of the reason for the American rebellion was concern that the colonies would be subject to English law effectively ending slavery as an institution. The colonies were not subject to English law so even if slavery was not legal (but not a crime) in England that did not make it so in the colonies.

ETA It is a bit like the witchcraft discussion, the crime was not the slavery, but the Tort inflicted on the 'slave' by the 'owner'. Since slavery did not exist there was no right to beat a slave. This was one of the early cases. The crime was beating not slavery.

 

[Vixen]

I don't think slavery was a crime. The legal question was whether slavery existed as a legal concept, that is could someone be a slave in England (cases had also been brought with regard to the Slavs / slaves of Russians). Part of the reason for the American rebellion was concern that the colonies would be subject to English law effectively ending slavery as an institution. The colonies were not subject to English law so even if slavery was not legal (but not a crime) in England that did not make it so in the colonies.

ETA It is a bit like the witchcraft discussion, the crime was not the slavery, but the Tort inflicted on the 'slave' by the 'owner'. Since slavery did not exist there was no right to beat a slave. This was one of the early cases. The crime was beating not slavery.

Small correction: Russians are Slavs. (Finns are not.)

 

[Emily's Cat]

Read what I said earlier. It is not a slanging match. I put forward the proposition that it is a myth that 'racists are nasty people. I am a nice person so therefore I am not a racist' is a fallacy. As an analogy, think of all the people who own pets. They are not nasty people either, yet some put their dogs or horses to work. Yet these same awfully nice people also once kept human beings as 'pets' or slaves to do their fetching and bidding or as beasts of burden to breed in order to carry on producing wealth from their labours. Some treated their (pets) slaves really well. Others were cruel. The fact is, keeping human beings as slaves is especially harsh, given they are from exactly the same species as their owner (Homo sapiens) so to rationalise what is obviously a tort to us today (enslavement and people trafficking is illegal now with up to life imprisonment) they have to build up myths that 'these people' were inferior, like animals, when common sense tells us they had exactly the same intelligence and sensibilities as any other of the species known as Man.

To claim that if you are opposed to reparations towards people held as slaves for generations on the basis that you believe you are being called a 'bigot' for opposing it, is exactly an evasion of an 'uncomfortable conversation'.

We are all 'nasty/awfully nice' in that anyone educated in Europe will have been inculcated with the myth of some 'races' being inferior and in a circular argument, the fact of their being enslaved proves their inferiority. For example anyone who has ever read Enid Blyton will know that the 'swarthy guy' = 'the baddie' without any further word being said.

Yes, of course women have also been dreadfully subjugated to their husbands down the ages - Hegel said the man-wife relationship was the earliest economic unit (family) - with low or no wages and cheated of inheritance and the right to vote. There are parallels but it is a fallacy to claim that those opposed to racial discrimination are not opposed to sex discrimination (or other injustices in society). The issue of racism isn't tantamount to needing to solve all the problems of the world in one thread. Sexism and class-cism are different again and need separate threads. There is nothing to stop you rallying against sexism at all by conceding that descendants of former slaves are entitled to reparation in theory at least.


Am I right in thinking that you have declared that 'I am being called a bigot!' and this is your excuse for exiting an 'uncomfortable conversation'?

No, you are not right. Again, I really don't think you actually read my post at all. Here, I'll bold the most salient elements of it for you to consider prior to coming back with weak sauce like this.

I'm not really a supporter of reparations. I don't think they make sense, because they're not a direct amends. The people paying for the reparations aren't the ones who committed the wrongs, and the people receiving the reparations aren't the ones who were wronged. It's not justice, it's visiting the sins of the father onto the sons for seven generations... only it's not even the actual father and the actual sons, it's more like visiting the sins of a hypothetical father onto any sons who vaguely fit the general description of "has a penis and had a father at some point in their life".

...

None of that, however, denies that black people, in general, have been mistreated and disenfranchised and discriminated against. They have, and quite blatantly so. Those inequities in the system need to be fixed.

I don't personally think that cutting someone a check actually fixes the problem, or even remotely addresses it. It's as naïve as thinking that giving people free money will "fix" poverty because then those people won't be "in poverty any more. It glosses over the causes and the systemic issues that trap people in poverty, it ignores the lack of jobs and prospects, it sweeps under the rug the massive impact of childhood disparity in educational and nutritional quality as well as parental stress.

It's not a solution. It's a pay-off. It's the guilty-white-guy version of cutting a check to the mistress so she won't tell your wife about the affair.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The problem with this argument is that women being discriminated against did not affect the wealth of their descendants, because if they had descendants that meant (in most cases) that they had married and formed a bond with a man. The husband benefited from the discrimination against women as much as his wife lost from it, so the net effect on the family was zero.

Blacks being discriminated against in housing, employment and elsewhere has certainly led to their descendants having less wealth than they would otherwise have accumulated.

It's okay, it netted out to zero. All of the people in group A suffered, but the people in group B benefitted. No big deal!

I get what you're saying... but seriously? Long historical discrimination an oppression is just not that big a deal because men benefitted from it, so it helped their (male) descendants too?

 

[Emily's Cat]

The inventories are 'kept all nice and neat'. How else do you think the slave owners were able to pass on their wealth in their wills? These wills can be found in public archives! There is no mystery about it at all. The University College London had no problem finding a complete list of slave owners and what their compensation value was.

Okay, do you get that this isn't the same thing at all?

This was the record of "livestock" held by the slave owner at the time slavery was abolished in Britain. The slave owners were compensated for their "lost property" when it was abolished. It tracked the number and quality of the slaves, but not the individual identities of those slaves. It was, in essence, calculating the value of livestock, and didn't care one whit about the individual "animals" at all.

Furthermore, this compensation was paid out at the time, not 150 years later. Slave owners at the time submitted documentation of their "property" so that the taxpayers could pay them.

This is entirely different from what you're proposing for reparations. For the kind of reparations that you have proposed, Britain would have needed to track all of the individual slaves, and all of their descendants, up to current times.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I've heard someone say it could give white Americans a ticket to dismiss any charges of discrimination they face, so they should shut up; they already got their payment.

It's hush-money. As soon as the reparations have been made, there's likely to be a lot less emphasis on fixing the broken parts of our system.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I've worked in insolvency practice. A company files for liquidation or is wound up by the High Court. My job is to put an ad in London Gazette and contact all known creditors and shareholders. Once you've worked out the value of their contribution you can declare a dividend based on how much of the assets you've managed to crystalise (less your fees of course). So, if the dividend declared is 0.10p in the pound, people who have a value of £9000 get £900 whilst those with only £1 get £0.10. Pro-rata is very easy.

How would you go about doing your job if the company that is being liquidated had become insolvent 150 years ago? And if the creditors and shareholders were from 150 years ago? And if many of those creditors were companies that had been liquidated in the intervening 150 years? And if the descendants of the shareholders hadn't kept records of the devalued shares that their great-great-great-great grandparents used to have?

Is it perhaps a little teensy bit more difficult to work out the value of the assets for a company that went under five generations ago? Is it perhaps a wee bit more troublesome to determine the value of the contribution for companies and descendants of individuals who may or may not exist anymore?

I've done similar work with a demutualization several years ago. Very similar concept. It was a year and a half process. I wouldn't call it "easy"... and we were working with predominantly current information. The oldest of the shares went back several years, but weren't credited to policyholders who had left more than five years prior to the demutualization - it was simply too difficult to track them down.

 

[cullennz]

Maybe America needs to ramp up it's game here. A moratorium on university admissions, trade school admissions and hiring on cis-het white males. Just educate them so they can read and write then shove them behind the wheel of a taxi or show them to a hotel room that needs cleaning until equality is achieved.

Cough

https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/10/25/white-women-slaveholders-q-a/

Unmasked: Many white women were Southern slave owners, too

In her new book, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, UC Berkeley associate professor of history, expands our understanding of American slavery and the 19th century slave market with an investigation into the role of white women in the slave economy. She found they were active participants, profited from it and were as brutal as men in their management techniques.

On Monday, Oct. 28, a panel discussion of her book will be held from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at 820 Barrows Hall. Part of the Social Science Matrix “Authors Meet Critics” book series, Jones-Rogers will be joined by colleagues Bryan Wagner, associate professor in the Department of English, and Leslie Salzinger, associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies.

 

[Vixen]

No, you are not right. Again, I really don't think you actually read my post at all. Here, I'll bold the most salient elements of it for you to consider prior to coming back with weak sauce like this.

To recap the topic, the OP asks how can we help? You seem to be focussed on concentrating on why we cannot help. Given that the institution of racism and social inequality is largely a result of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and conversely making the slave trade nations extremely rich, then it seems to me the simple solution is to recompense those who were forced to work for life, and their descendants to produce this wealth, often under conditions of extreme cruelty.

Since early modern history/medieaval times torts have been rectified by compensation of the hurt party. This is the simplest and earliest form of our modern justice today. Of course the offending party will object!!!

No surprises there.

 

[Vixen]

It's okay, it netted out to zero. All of the people in group A suffered, but the people in group B benefitted. No big deal!

I get what you're saying... but seriously? Long historical discrimination an oppression is just not that big a deal because men benefitted from it, so it helped their (male) descendants too?

This thread is about racism, not sexism. The topic isn't asking to right all the wrongs that ever existed.