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Reparations For Descendents of African Slaves in America
Slavery has been entwined with American history ever since Dutch traders brought twenty captive Africans to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Slavery in America is a subject with minimal truths and stories rarely told. The public school system excludes the fact that eight of the first twelve American presidents were major slaveholders. Emancipation brought freedom, but not approximation. The civil rights movement killed Jim Crow, but shadows remained. Affirmative Action created opportunities, but racism continues.
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.
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines reparations as the act of making amends for a wrong. Money paid by a defeated nation in compensation for damages caused during hostilities, is also included in the definition.
It is essential to locate the claim for reparations within a framework of law and justice. The following four propositions are truths that attempt to conceptualize a legal framework for the formulation and prosecution of the claim for reparations.
First, the evil enslavement of Africans was a crime against humanity.
Secondly, domestic and international law recognizes that those who commit crimes against humanity mus...
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“Slavery is an American embarrassment” (Breen/Innes 3). The history of slavery can be very complex. While most people believe that slaves did not have the chance to advance, Breen and Innes prove that theory wrong. At least slaves had the opportunity to purchase their freedom on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Breen and Innes also point out that the relationships between blacks and whites are also not how we originally thought they were. They were not one sided relationships; they could be considered co-dependent relationships.
When choosing which race to put into slavery there were three options to choose from: Native Americans, poor whites indentured servants, or Africans. A positive to choosing Native Americans would have been that they were already there so shipping costs would be eliminated. Native Americans were determined to be a no good because they were already familiar with the area and it would be easy for them to rebels and escape. The white servants were an option because their norms and language were the same as the Europeans and it would generally be an easy collabo...
Today I am here to convince you that although slavery happened hundreds of years ago, it still affects black people in America today.
...ories of why dinosaurs went extinct abound, and as there is no theory yet to be truly confirmed as the “right one”, my theory of dinosaur cannibalism is also purely anecdotal. The discovery of the cannibalistic Majungatholus atopus in Madagascar is an important scientific find because it confirms a long-standing theory of cannibalism among certain carnivorous dinosaurs. Behavioral patterns of extinct animals are difficult to establish; however, these bones give authentication to previous unfounded beliefs about the ancient feeding practices of some dinosaurs.
...oceans. Anthropogenic systems such as the combustion of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution have greatly increased the rate of acidification to levels where negative impacts ensue. Negative impacts occur both to marine organisms that rely on certain water conditions to maintain vital functions and the environment which is damaged by highly acidic waters. There is great variation in the acidity of each of the oceans, differences caused by the chemical composition of the ocean and biogeography. Understanding of the potential impacts of ocean acidification is relatively new to the scientific community and therefore little is known on how to counteract anthropogenic influences. Although reducing the amount of carbon dioxide produced will in turn reduce the lowering of the oceans acidity levels and reduce negative impacts on the environment and marine organisms.
For 246 consecutive years, blacks have been kidnapped, whipped to death, mutilated, and raped. From 1619 to 1865, these generations of slave families were living as property rather than human beings. History would agree that the crimes done against these set of selected people do not compare to those of other races. Many people don’t know that there were sex slave farms that practiced a process known as “buck breaking”. “Buck breaking” was when a slave master would bind and whip his male slave for defiance. Then this master would proceed to rape the slave in the presence of all other slaves. It has been 151 years since such horrific tragedies, and the ruined descendants of these slaves have yet to be given reparations. Reparation is defined as “the act of making amends, offering expiation, or giving satisfaction for a wrong or injury”
What’s far less certain, however, is what kind of debt is owed to the descendants of those slaves.” They also said “many groups of influential lawyers and scholars have profited from slavery.” This goes to show that the people responsible for the enslavement of hundreds of people are profiting from slavery, and that if they did want to pay reparations, they’re unsure how to give it. The article then goes on to mention other cases of reparation that have been paid, like Germany paying $60 billion to Holocaust survivors, and the United States paying $20,000 to over 100,000 Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II. Ta-Nahesi argues that blacks today still bear the scars of slavery and the decades of discrimination that followed, and blames the institutions, not the individuals.
Ocean acidity will spoil marine ecosystems if it remains persistent. Preserving sustainable fishing industries will become unmanageable if the carbon dioxide absorbed by the world’s oceans is not considerably abridged.
There has been a debate about what happened to the dinosaurs since they were discovered. There are many thoughts of what happened to the dinosaurs, the two main theories behind the extinction are scientific and religious. Proof for both theories do exist and debates between scientists are still going on to which one really happened. It is a mystery as much for Evolutionists as it is for Creationists about the extinction of the dinosaurs. The fossil record of dinosaurs was poorly know for a long period of time. During this time period was when the dinosaurs were thought to have gone extinct. The scientific reason for their extinction was that there was a giant asteroid that caused chain reaction and wiped out the dinosaurs. Some scientists say the dinosaur’s extinction came quickly. Evolutionists say the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. Creationists say that the dinosaurs weren’t able to survive the Earth after the flood. Both of the theories have supporting evidence and that is why there is an ongoing debate over what really happened to the dinosaurs. (WGBH Educational Foundation and Clear Blue Sky Productions, Inc. et al., 2001)
Knight, Matthew. "Oceans failing the Acid Test, U.N. Says." CNN. Cable News Network, 02 Dec. 2010. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
A big change that has occurred in the oceans all over the world is the Coral Reefs are dying and are predicted to be dead by the end of the century due to the rising acidity of the oceans caused by many different threats to marine ecosystems. Coral reefs cover less than 0.2% of our oceans but they contain 25% of the world’s marine fish species according to Endangered: Biodiversity on the brink, 2010: pg.45). If this is the case that means by the time the end of the century comes around we will have lost close to 25% of the worlds marine ecosystems.
“Scientists seek new clues to dinosaur demise.” Geographical v.73 i3, (2001): 10. In InfoTrac Onefile Plus [database online]. Cited 3 April 2004. Available from Ithaca College Libraries.
In From Slavery to Freedom (2007), it was said that “the transition from slavery to freedom represents one of the major themes in the history of African Diaspora in the Americas” (para. 1). African American history plays an important role in American history not only because the Civil Rights Movement, but because of the strength and courage of Afro-Americans struggling to live a good life in America. Afro-Americans have been present in this country since the early 1600’s, and have been making history since. We as Americans have studied American history all throughout school, and took one Month out of the year to studied African American history. Of course we learn some things about the important people and events in African American history, but some of the most important things remain untold which will take more than a month to learn about.
In the atmosphere carbon dioxide is chemically neutral, however when it dissolves in seawater it reacts with H2O to form a weak carbonic acid. Over recent years, oceans have become more acidic because of the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The acidity of the ocean is determined by the concentration of hydrogen ions which are then measured on a pH scale – where the greater the level of hydrogen ions, the lower the pH (Askins, 2008). As the pH of the ocean drops from the pre-industrial value of 8.2 to 7.8 by 2020, ocean acidification is predicted to have a great effect on the ocean. Many of the aquatic organisms are very sensitive to the acidity of water, and as a result there will be effects at all levels of the marine food web (Balch & Utgoff, 2009). The carbonate shells of marine animals for example can dissolve in acidic waters. Also coral reefs will also be impacted negatively by increased acidity in addition to the effect that warmer waters are already having on them (McCarty, Wolfenbarger,
Ellycia R Harrould-Kolieb and Dorothée Herr co-wrote the article Ocean Acidification and Climate Change: Synergies and Challenges of Addressing both under the UNFCCC which was published in the 2012 Journal of Climate Policy. The article describes how the release of climate-change-causing carbon dioxide into our atmosphere is causing ocean acidification but through international policies the effects of ocean acidification can be mitigated.