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The case of reparations analysis
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The United States as a country has no shortages of questionable actions. Some people say that the country has not paid for a few of the serious actions, although the country has. One of these questionable actions is slavery. The major question is how do people repay the African American Community for what the country did to them all those years ago. The U.S. government should not pay reparations to the African American community, the reason for this is because of lineage and the money problems the country. One reason why the citizens shouldn’t pay reparations is lineage, it would be very difficult and time consuming for the government to go through and trace back every slave from the 1700’s. According to David Frum, a first generation …show more content…
Reparations always use money because in order to pay people the government need money to pay them with. Even if the government increased education that would still take money in taxes. According to David Frum even if the citizens all wanted to pay the African American population the country would not have the money to do that. The only possible way is to increase taxes on everybody, making sure nobody has money because the citizens are all paying it in taxes to the African Americans for reparations (David Frum). Some people may say that people can pay reparations without money, such as increasing their public schools or supplying them with food. According to Kyle Smith (what news company) in hindsight, this might seem like a good idea, although the government can not increase public schools without taking taxes because they are funded by the government. Also the citizens of the country have to buy the food somehow, it always involves money (Kyle Smith). When the government taxes the American people there will always be out cry in what is a right tax and what is a wrong tax. The average white American pays 25% of their income in taxes. If the government would make another tax for say reparations, that would make it to be that over 25% of people's income is going to taxes and not to the
Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the article “The Case for Reparations” presents a powerful argument for reparations to black African American for a long time of horrendous injustice as slavery plus discrimination, violence, hosing policies, family incomes, hard work, education, and more took a place in black African American’s lives. He argues that paying such a right arrears is not only a matter of justice; however, it is important for American people to express how they treated black African Americans.
The article “The Case for Reparations” is a point of view that Ta-nehisi Coates looks into the life of Clyde Ross and what he went through in the African American society. Arranging reparations based off of what Clyde Ross lived through and experienced from the time he was a young child to his later adult years. Providing life facts and events comparing them to today and seeking out to present his reparations. Clyde ross explain that we are still living bound down as blacks to the white supremacy and in a new era of racism .Concluding the article the fact that it’s been far too long to live the way we are and it is time for a change to finally be made.
Why should American taxpayers, who never owned slaves, pay for the sins of their ancestors? What about all the Americans whose ancestors arrived here long after slavery ended? How would the economy be affected by reparations payments? How do you put a price tag on 2 1/2 centuries of legalized inhumanity? In what form would reparations be paid? How would you establish who's a descendant? It all still comes down to one basic question, Should the descendents of slaves’ masters have to pay for their ancestors’ direct involvement and economic compensations from the institution of slavery in America? The answer is yes, reparations should be paid to the descendents of slave’s. Since descendents of slaves’ masters still live off the wealth of companies, products, and labor that slaves generated over the course of four hundred years there should not be a doubt in anyone’s mind that slavery should be compensated.
According to Jim Meyers, in "Righting the Wrongs of Slavery," reparations for slavery wouldn't solve anything. He claims that it would just put an even bigger rift between white and black Americans. He argues that "white bitterness would be inescapable" and that white Americans would feel as though they owned everything that black Americans obtain with the reparations. He also poses the questions that many of the articles for and against reparations pose: Who will receive these reparations and who will have to pay them? Is it just based on skin color? Will all black Americans receive reparations even if they aren't descents of slaves or will they look at every Americans genealogy to discover who is and who isn't? What about white Americans who aren't descents of slave holders? Will Irish immigrants who came to this country in the 1920's have to pay these reparations? It's really hard to draw the line. The battle seems like a hard one to win when there are so many variables that can't be ignored.
The United States will forever have a bad rep for what happened to those who were once enslaved in this country. The two sides of this controversy, being Pro Slavery and the Abolitionists, set one of the main splits in this country that was supposedly a place for anyone to have “freedom”. What started this affair was the overall reality that African Americans were represented as unusually different, there were many reasons for the white man to justify slavery, and what became the practice of being racial prejudice. The ideas behind what the Pro Slavery activists believed versus the Abolitionists, each to their own, have an attitude towards what they thought was right and wrong for the well being of their country, but
In “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates sets out a powerful argument for reparations to blacks for having to thrive through horrific inequity, including slavery, Jim Crowism, Northern violence and racist housing policies. By erecting a slave society, America erected the economic foundation for its great experiment in democracy. And Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history. Paying such a moral debt is such a great matter of justice served rightfully to those who were suppressed from the fundamental roles, white supremacy played in American history.
So why shouldn't the great-great grandchildren of those who worked for free and were deprived of education and were kept in bondage not be compensated? Why should American taxpayers who never owned slaves pay for the sins of ancestors they don't even know? Ask one question and it leads to another. How would the economy be affected? How do you put a price tag on over two centuries of legalized inhumanity? In what form would reparations be paid? How would you establish who is a descendant? Questions start debates.
Though, the African-American people have already been given some restitution for being victims to the system of slavery, not enough has been
Slavery was a practice throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and through slavery, African-American slaves helped build the economic foundation of which America stands upon today, but this development only occurred with the sacrifice of the blood, sweat, and tears from the slaves that had been pushed into exhaustion by the slave masters. A narrative noting a lifetime of this history was the book The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African written by Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was a prominent African involved in the British movement for the abolition of the slave trade. He was captured and enslaved as a child in his home town of Essaka in what is now known as south eastern Nigeria, later he was shipped to the West Indies, he then moved to England, and eventually purchased his freedom (Equiano). Olaudah Equiano, with many other millions of slaves, faced many hardships and was treated with inconceivable injustices by white slave masters and because of the severity of these cruel and barbarous occurrences, history will never forget these events.
“After 250 years of enslavement in America, African Americans were still terrorized in Deep South; they were pinned to the ghettos, overcrowded, overcharged, discriminated, and undereducated”. The best solution is to owe them reparations. To aid them out of their unjust inherit status. The novel is based on real life situations of many African Americans that had to face during slave, and post slave era in the United States of America. The purpose is to show that not having reparations for the African Americans lead to many downsides to the nation’s inequalities. In the novel “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, he uses just ethics and remorse obligation, to demonstrate the nation should to pay for the damage done to the black community.
African American history plays a huge role in history today. From decades of research we can see the process that this culture went through and how they were depressed and deculturalized. In school, we take the time to learn about African American History but, we fail to see the aspects that African Americans had to overcome to be where they are today. We also fail to view life in their shoes and fundamentally understand the hardships and processes that they went through. African Americans were treated so terribly and poor in the last century and, they still are today. As a subordinate race to the American White race, African Americans were not treated equal, fair, human, or right under any circumstances. Being in the subordinate position African Americans are controlled by the higher white group in everything that they do.
Imagine you’re young, and alone. If your family was taken from you and suffered horribly for your freedom, would you want to be repaid in some form? In the article “The Case for Reparations” Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses a great deal of information about reparations, and if they should be given. Reparations are when a person or people make amends for the wrong they have done. Ta-Nehisi believes that from two hundred years of slavery, ninety years of Jim Crow laws, sixty years of separate but equal, and thirty five years of racist housing policy, that America is shackled.
Reparations Although the talk of reparations of slavery has been in discussion for over a hundred years, it is beginning to heat up again. Within these discussions, the issue of the form of reparations has been evaluated and money has been an option several times. However, reparations in the form of money should not be obtained for several reasons. Firstly, it is not a solution to the problem, secondly monetary reparations have the ability to worsen discrimination, thirdly, who gets paid, and how is it regulated, and lastly, the money can be misused.
... as seen throughout the 20’s. Theo Balderston, economic historian, describes reparations as “a tax collected from German citizens by the German government acting as the Allies’ “fiscal agent.” However, this tax lacked the “moral legitimation” that normally accompanies tax collection. The German government and the society thought the allied assertions to be one-sided and unfair. . It became a double edged sword, not only being an economic issue, but had much to do with lowering of German morale and sparking anger. Balderston goes on to point out that reparations were like a levy received from Germans by their government assisting as the Allies “fiscal agent” (Feldman, 1997).
The United States rests upon a foundation of freedom, where its citizens can enjoy many civil liberties as the result of decades of colonial struggles. However, African Americans did not achieve freedom concurrently with whites, revealing a contradiction within the “nation of liberty”. It has been stated that "For whites, freedom, no matter how defined, was a given, a birthright to be defended. For African Americans, it was an open-ended process, a transformation of every aspect of their lives and of the society and culture that had sustained slavery in the first place." African Americans gained freedom through the changing economic nature of slavery and historical events like the Haitian Revolution policies, whereas whites received freedom