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Family history lesson

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ant

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Re: Family history lesson

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Harry Marks wrote:
ant wrote:
The point of penance is to acknowledge that a wrong was done, and to make an honest effort to undo it for the sake of my own conscience
Anything to help you find peace of mind, Harry.
You're a good man, obviously. Despite being ruggedly handsome.
ant wrote:Are my Mexican ancestors worthy of your guilty conscious, Harry?
Probably not. The Yankees broke a big slice off Mexico in 1848, but it isn't clear this cost anybody much, besides the ruling elite. And we all know they never deserve any compensation.

Mexican-Americans in the U.S. might be a harder case. But lets say someone came to the figure 50 billion for compensation. Divide by the 300 odd million Americans, and my share comes to about 170 dollars. And that's to all people of Hispanic descent in America, so my check to you would be for less than a dollar. I doubt it is worth our time. :bananadance:[/quote]



I'll take it.
Last edited by ant on Tue Nov 27, 2018 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Litwitlou

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Re: Family history lesson

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ant wrote:

I'll take it.
He's laughing at me and he's getting a buck from Harry Marks. A good day for ant.
Last edited by Litwitlou on Tue Nov 27, 2018 5:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DB Roy
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Re: Family history lesson

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I'm not in favor of reparations. Unless, you personally lost your business, your property, money or freedom then why should you be paid back for what you didn't lose? Some Japanese-Americans have received reparations for the Internment but I never have and I wouldn't accept it if it were offered since I wasn't personally touched by the Internment. Anybody who was a slave deserves reparations but they're all dead now. So how do we determine who now should get reparations and how much should they get? Same with the Indians. I don't want reparations for that. Nobody took any land from me or put me in one of those horrible boarding schools. I had some relatives that were sent to those but they are all dead now. Thanks to my parents, I lived a pretty good life. Not a life of privilege but I certainly wasn't rolling in the gutter. I didn't grow up on a res or anything. I had a middle class Northern Mid-West upbringing free of religion but rich with music and literature. I'm self-sufficient, well-paid and don't need anybody's handouts or charity. I put four daughters through college--well, one has graduated, one is about to graduate, one still has 2 years and one just started.

I've also been tracing my white ancestry back to Europe. It seems it came from Ulster. Back in the days before King James, Ireland was just Ireland. It was divided into provinces, the northernmost being Ulster. It was composed of nine counties. The northernmost 6 counties became Northern Ireland after James. When these Irish chieftains rebelled against James, he banished them from Ireland. Their lands were in Ulster. James then turned Ulster into the Scottish Plantation. Scots were allowed to emigrate to Ulster and were given some of this land as their own and they had to farm it. They had to be Protestant (most Scots are Presbyterian) and they had to speak English (although virtually all of them spoke Gaelic as well). That was the start of all the trouble in Northern Ireland. Today, the Protestants of Northern Ireland consider themselves British subjects. The Catholics do not.

My family name is actually Hannah although my father took his step-father's name so I am not named Hannah even though I am one by blood. This name appears to have originated in Scotland among a group known as the Strathclyde Britons. A strath is a wide, shallow valley surrounding the inlet known as the Firth of Clyde and hence Strathclyde. This area is actually quite close to Ulster, just a short shuttle across the water. These Britons interbred with the Picts to form the Scottish race. The Highland Scots are actually interbred with a tribe of Vikings and have some cultural ways that they inherited from Scandinavia. The Ulster Plantation apparently had a few Highland families but most were not Highlanders. Not all farmers on the Ulster Plantation were Scots either. Most were, in fact, Irish who were loyal to Britain.

The name of Hannah is listed as being Irish (it is more commonly spelled "Hannay" in Scotland). Specifically, it is Northern Irish. Most Hannahs in Ireland live in Ulster. So my white family either were Hannahs from Scotland who went to Ulster or they were Irish who already lived in Ulster. Either way, that's where my white family originated. How English and Welsh blood crept in, I don't know. When the Church of England wanted to claim dominion over the Ulster Scots (as they called themselves), they fled Ireland and came to North America and settled in Eastern Canada and down along the eastern seaboard of the United States and throughout the Appalachians, Blue Mountains, Great Smokies and like that--the Piedmont area, southern Ohio and Indiana, etc. So most New Englanders and Southern whites are all descended from the Ulster Scots and renamed themselves the Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish (actually that term appears to have been invented by Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century). In fact, the "Klan" part of Ku Klux Klan refers to the clan system of Scotland and specifically refers to the Scotch-Irish whom virtually all white Southerners were descended from.
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Re: Family history lesson

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DB Roy wrote: Some Japanese-Americans have received reparations for the Internment but I never have and I wouldn't accept it if it were offered since I wasn't personally touched by the Internment.
Same with the Indians. I don't want reparations for that. Nobody took any land from me or put me in one of those horrible boarding schools. I had some relatives that were sent to those but they are all dead now.
I've also been tracing my white ancestry back to Europe. It seems it came from Ulster.
So if I followed this right, you are part Ulster Scot, part Indian and part Japanese. Pretty interesting.

Do you think reparations would help Americans see all backgrounds as "us" or would they drive people apart?
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Harry Marks wrote: So if I followed this right, you are part Ulster Scot, part Indian and part Japanese. Pretty interesting.
I guess. It certainly isn't a mix you'll run across very often. My daughters add Mexican to the mix since my wife is full Mexican. She was born in San Antonio but has family throughout Mexico. She's afraid to go visit them now because they may not let her back in. She's even taken to carrying her birth certificate in her purse. She's very Mexican-looking so she's easy to single out and it happens a lot. It's like we're living in Apartheid. It really IS a form of apartheid.
Do you think reparations would help Americans see all backgrounds as "us" or would they drive people apart?
Definitely would drive people apart. People would get very resentful. It ratchets up that pathetic American self-pity: "They spend OUR money to help THOSE people!! When's someone gonna help ME???" Boo-fucking-hoo. It's funny because if we send money overseas (which is a very miniscule portion of the budget), they whine about how we should be spending that money here. Then when we spend money here, they whine that it isn't being spent on them. And, yes, I'll guarantee you there are whites who believe that THEY deserve reparations!!! I mean, look at ALL they've had to put up with!!!! And they can can say it without a hint of irony or shame. The level of self-pity is astonishing. If you want the white public to vote for you, that's all you have to do: tell them THEY are the truly the most persecuted minority in this country and non-whites just play the race card all day. Tell them that these others just sponge off them and that if it wasn't for the white race, they'd all be living in caves. I read this stuff all the time on the internet. Now, I don't mean to say that all white people do this crap but the fact that you can talk this way and win the majority of white voters and even get into the White House is very telling.

So, anyway, no reparations unless you personally lost something or your parents did. Otherwise, the self-pity squad sounds off. "Wahh!! You didn't give any money to me!!!!"
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Re: Family history lesson

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DB Roy wrote:I'm not in favor of reparations. Unless, you personally lost your business, your property, money or freedom then why should you be paid back for what you didn't lose?
If slavery was the only wrong that reparations attempted to compensate you might have a point. But reparations would also attempt to correct other massive injustices in American history and current society. One broader injustice is the theft, prevention, and destruction of wealth accumulation in the black community. As one tiny example, consider the famous Homestead Act of 1862, where the government donated 160 acres of land to families in exchange for building housing and farming it for five years. The government was willing to give away massive amounts of land, but not one square inch to black people. If they had that opportunity, black families could have accumulated significant wealth from farm income and real estate values over the past 157 years. American society precluded infinite numbers of wealth accumulation opportunities from the black community over the past 400 years.

Enormous amounts of wealth have been stolen from the black community. Our multi-tiered justice system ensured nothing could be done to prevent confiscating property or money from trumped up fines, etc. Ongoing bank loan practices, employment discrimination, separate but unequal segregation, and our education system were also set up to steal wealth. Back to slavery, consider the incredible amount of wealth that was extracted from the black community over a 250 year span. That was not very long ago: slaves who lived to be 100 could have seen the 1960s.

Patriotic Americans also destroyed vast amounts of wealth in the black community. Race riots were one of many types of destruction. There have been quite a few in our history, but consider just one in Tulsa OK 1921 - black soldiers in WWI returned to this.
The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 blocks of the district, at the time the wealthiest black community in the United States. More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and more than 6,000 black residents were arrested and detained, many for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead, but the American Red Cross declined to provide an estimate. When a state commission re-examined events in 2001, its report estimated that 100-300 African Americans were killed in the rioting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot


All of that wealth - prevented, stolen, and destroyed - has not been able to accumulate in the black community over the past 400 years. Perhaps America will begin to get an inkling of what that means as the costs of college increase. Children can no longer afford college on their own; graduating with $100K in debt is not sustainable. Education used to be a way out of poverty, not a road to it.* Only families with accumulated resources to draw on can send children to higher education.
*Sarah Kendzior

Other extreme injustices include the obvious fact that blacks in the South did not obtain freedom after passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865. Slavery by another name continued until very recently. This is where a black person was charged with a minor infraction such as vagrancy, penalized with a fine they could not pay, then chained up in mines or manufacturing companies for years as they worked off that false debt. This system continued into the 1960s. Domestic terrorism included slave patrols (pattyrollers), KKK, lynch mobs, rape, and the casual rage encountered hourly from most whites. It was open season on black women; nothing could be done to prevent or prosecute those crimes.

A truly massive debt is owed to the black community in the US, but it will never be paid. Our racist education system, where "black history" is taught separately from "American History" and relegated to historically black colleges prevents any serious consideration of these matters.
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Re: Family history lesson

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LanDroid wrote: If slavery was the only wrong that reparations attempted to compensate you might have a point. But reparations would also attempt to correct other massive injustices in American history and current society. One broader injustice is the theft, prevention, and destruction of wealth accumulation in the black community. As one tiny example, consider the famous Homestead Act of 1862, where the government donated 160 acres of land to families in exchange for building housing and farming it for five years. The government was willing to give away massive amounts of land, but not one square inch to black people. If they had that opportunity, black families could have accumulated significant wealth from farm income and real estate values over the past 157 years. American society precluded infinite numbers of wealth accumulation opportunities from the black community over the past 400 years.
But specifically who do you pay back for that now? Any ol' black guy walking down the street? I don't deny the injustices took place but it was THOSE people who deserved the reparations. If any are alive, they should be compensated but most blacks today didn't suffer any of those losses. How do you pay them back for what they didn't lose?

There's another problem as well: Pay reparations to blacks for these losses today by whatever method you choose and white people will instantly start up with this: "Now we're even! I don't want to hear anymore about inequality, police brutality, disproportionate prison sentences, lack of educational opportunities or any of that shit. We're EVEN now!! EVEN!!"

There were whites who said this when Obama got elected: "Okay, you have your nigger president, now we're even!"

As if money or a single election could in any wise erase the injustices. It doesn't even begin to indemnify those subject to this abuse. Reparations are an easy way out. Throw money at it and everybody's happy. Except everybody's not happy. Blacks see it for the superficial gesture that it is and whites see it as yet one more huge, backbreaking burden that they are being forced to bear in the name of the bearers of civilization. And when that money is gone, then what?

No. Keep your money. Or give it to Trump so he can build his precious wall.
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Re: Family history lesson

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I don't think you understand the effect that 400 years of wealth prevention, theft, and destruction has on the current black community. This didn't happen to some and not others, it affects all families. But relax, re-read the last paragraph in my previous post...
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When I think about penance, or restitution, I don't necessarily think in terms of undoing all the damage. If I were to cause an auto accident and I totaled the other person's car, I am not foolish enough to think that paying the price of the car makes up for all the hassle and anguish they go through. But it is, first of all, an obligation. If I did it, I should pay the direct costs. And secondarily, it is a good reminder to me to do better in the future. It concentrates the mind, as they say.

I agree with DB Roy about how the average white American would react. So I don't think we are ready for an involuntary, taxpayer funded program. But maybe we could start a beginning accounting, where people could make voluntary contributions now and expect that some of that would be refunded if a tax-funded scheme is ever launched. It would raise the profile of the injustice.

I still think there are community programs and other benefits that could be targeted to the African-American community without trying to identify individuals who suffered (or individuals who caused the suffering, or benefited from it). In some sense there has been a small amount of that for a long time, from the date of the War on Poverty. But maybe we could start by equalizing funding for schools in black neighborhoods, bringing them up to the levels in the suburbs.
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Re: Family history lesson

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Harry Marks wrote: I still think there are community programs and other benefits that could be targeted to the African-American community without trying to identify individuals who suffered (or individuals who caused the suffering, or benefited from it). In some sense there has been a small amount of that for a long time, from the date of the War on Poverty. But maybe we could start by equalizing funding for schools in black neighborhoods, bringing them up to the levels in the suburbs.
Okay, show me that spending more money per student works and I'll go with you on this one. Is there a correlation between the amount of money a school district spends per student and the academic success of the student? I'm not so sure.
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