African American Reparation Dbq

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Over the years the incorrect assumption that all African Americans were the slaves and all white Americans were the slave owners, or sellers of slaves during the late 1700’s until the 1860’s is a common misconception. Ever since the end of the Civil War in 1865 the American public, as well as politicians, have used this as a justification for repaying African American citizens for their many years of unpaid, arduous labor as slaves, and planned to repay these citizens by taking the money from white Americans and giving it to African Americans in the form of reparations. Even though idea of reparations is a nice idea, it is not practical because the United States is already paying reparations in other ways, and also because white Americans …show more content…

over the past years have managed to pay for reparations, that have benefited African Americans, in many ways. For one, ever since the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the creation of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of U.S. dollars have been spent on various forms of welfare and racial preferences, such as educational admissions, jobs contracts, and placements (Source A). Also, over the past 30 years affirmative actions programs have been set in place, which the government has spent large amounts of money to enforce and administer (Source B). More specifically, these programs make it easier for black Americans to get jobs and get into college (Source C). So why should the U.S. have to pay reparations to African Americans when the government is currently helping them in so many other ways? Black Americans have been granted opportunities even greater than their white equivalents in both the job force and when getting into college due to the many programs and organizations the United States has already created for them (Source C). Therefore, reparations are not something that is needed in the American society …show more content…

Primarily, only a very small amount of these Americans actually owned slaves. Even in the antebellum South only one in five, or 20% of white Americans were slaveholders (Source A). Despite the fact that this very select amount of people had been involved with slavery they still can’t be held responsible for their actions today because both them and their slaves are dead. Unlike in an Insurance claim, where there is a definite victim, and visual evidence of the incident that can show the damage caused by the person, there is no way of proving who can receive the reparation because there is no evidence of who committed the act and who was specifically affected by it (Source C). Lastly, white Americans can’t be forced to pay for reparations because many of their ancestors sacrificed their lives to end slavery by fighting in the Civil War, which would prove that they were against slavery, and therefore not involved with it. Anyways, these sacrifices, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, are what, “Make possible a new birth of freedom in the United States” (Source B), that every American, regardless of color, has benefited from. And so, there is no justification in making the entire white population pay reparations for taking part in the use of slaves because hundreds of thousands of their ancestors fought and died for the freedom of all slaves, which serves as a reasonable form of

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