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Home Front: Culture Wars
Great News -€“ Reparations demand causing Dem fissure
2016-01-24
[Legal Insurrection] Author Ta-Nehisi Coates
...son of a former Black Panther by one of his four wives (some of whom appear to be baby mamas -- Wikipedia is vague about this). Mr. Coates is a one-note writer about the institutional racism which led him to a senior editorship at The Atlantic, a visiting professorship at MIT, and status as a public intellectual. He would no doubt want us to know that he is an atheist and a feminist, though whether the latter is related to growing up in a close-knit family with five half-siblings and their mothers is not to be asked...
is hot, hot, hot in progressive circles.

His demand for Reparations published in The Atlantic pushed him into the stratosphere. But it was an empty, amateurish effort, as I wrote at the time, The dead-end Case for Reparations:

Coates never gives the answer as to who gets what and how.

And that's ultimately the problem with reparations arguments that are not based upon the people causing the harm paying the people directly harmed by specific conduct soon after the conduct is remedied.

If you can't answer the question of why a Vietnamese boat person has to pay reparations for the conduct of white plantation owners more than a century earlier, then you can't make the argument.

If you can't answer the question of why two successful black doctors living in a fashionable suburb should get reparations paid for by the white children of Appalachia, then you can't make the argument.
Posted by:Besoeker

#17  They want money, fine. Here's the deal, you take the money, you renounce US citizenship and you LEAVE. You may never come to the US again. You want to stay, no money for you.
Posted by: Silentbrick   2016-01-24 22:54  

#16  I kinda feel like I'm starting to identify as black . . . .
Posted by: gorb   2016-01-24 22:34  

#15  Since Obama's ancestors were never slaves i n America, is he entitled to reparations just because of the color of his skin?

How about a recent immigrant from Ghana?
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia    2016-01-24 20:49  

#14  Just say "No".
Posted by: Canuckistan sniper   2016-01-24 20:24  

#13  We owe you a debt; great! We have a 20 trillion dollar debt that you can have, take it quick while interest rates are still historically low. You have 30 years to pay it off and we can finally shake hands and call it even.
Posted by: Airandee   2016-01-24 17:24  

#12  Are you saying my daughter is wrong? But she's got college degrees and stuff!
Posted by: Glenmore   2016-01-24 16:40  

#11  ...actually they've benefited from something called democracy or a republic, governing for the benefit of the majority (who just happen to be white) rather than an oligarchy, monarchy, aristocracy...et al. "Diversity" is modern progressive term for anti-democratic institutions and programs. Something socialists hold dear.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2016-01-24 16:36  

#10  ALL whites have to pay for slavery. Because by the very fact of their whiteness they have benefitted from racism for at least the last 150 years. Or so my daughter says.
Posted by: Glenmore   2016-01-24 15:47  

#9  Asking questions about reparations is racccccissssst.

It's Rape-a-Nation, not reparation.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2016-01-24 14:49  

#8  by all records my ancestors immigrted (legally) from Sweden and Norway in the late 1800's. Always lived in the north anyway.

Do I have to pay reparations? And why?

I
Posted by: CrazyFool   2016-01-24 14:21  

#7  My family was landed gentry in Northern Virginia.

The head of the family freed all of the family slaves shortly before the Revolutionary War because he developed a belief slavery was immoral.

Do I have to pay reparations even though my family freed slaves, educated them, fed and clothed them until they could find employment?
Posted by: Bill Clinton   2016-01-24 14:12  

#6  Let's do no more on this issue unless & until we hear from the Union dead at Andersonville.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2016-01-24 13:48  

#5  My father's family emigrated here from Moravia in the 1880's.

Slavery was ended in 1865.

Even I can do that math. I don't owe anyone a damned dime.
Posted by: Barbara   2016-01-24 12:25  

#4  Kiss my White Irish Ass Ta-Nihisi
Posted by: NoMoreBS   2016-01-24 12:09  

#3  Time to make popcorn!
Posted by: Nguard   2016-01-24 11:38  

#2  ...over 250,000 white Northerners died to put the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments on the Constitution, in a world where slavery was and had been common in all of history. That was in a population one tenth the size of today. Can you even comprehend let alone image something to sacrifice for that would cost 2 and a half million lives today? Debt was paid in blood and body.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2016-01-24 09:25  

#1  Add to that descendents of a Pennsylvania farmer who fought in the Civil War to free slaves....
Posted by: Sven the pelter   2016-01-24 09:02  

00:00