Monday, August 31, 2009

reparations for blacks?

Fred Reed writes a blog wherein he savages Prof Gates for talking about reparations to blacks for slavery. And makes all sorts of anti-black remarks.

Fred is either an idiot, a moron, or an imbecile--I'm not sure.

"I'm slow," he admits.

***

Anyway, the Jews got reparations from the Germans because the Nazis confiscated their property, their jewelry, their stores, their valuable paintings, whatever property they had. Maybe also because the Nazis killed 8,000,000 of them. Billions of dollars have been involved. Fair? I think so.

The Japanese interned in WW2 also got reparations. $20,000 apiece, I believe.

***
OK, let's imagine that black slaves in the US in the 19th century got paid. That they actually got money for their work instead of working for just food and a place to sleep.

They might have invested that money in real estate. Or in factories. Or opened stores.

Working for 40-50-60 years, you can make a lot of money--even if you're paid $10 a week.

AND YOUR KIDS CAN INHERIT THOSE THINGS.

But blacks over the years had nothing to inherit.

OK, Fred the imbecile-idiot-moron never owned a slave. But he benefits because the American economy benefited enormously from slave labor. How could countries compete with us when we didn't pay our black workers anything?

What if black workers had had money to buy houses? Or to go to college (assuming that they were allowed to)?

Black people in general would be much richer today --and more of them would be professionals. Fred might not have the cushy job he has today--he might be cleaning urinals in Omaha (a job perhaps not challenging his intelligence).

Blacks might own the house that Fred owns (assuming he owns one). It might have passed down from black family to black family. Or Fred might have paid much more for his house--and for everything else--if the demand for these things had been greater (because of blacks with money would have bid them up).

In other words, white people living right now benefited economically from black slavery in this country.

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I don't think reparations for blacks are practical. They might make prejudiced people like Fred even more virulent.


As for whether Fred is an idiot, an imbecile, or a moron, the truth is...

he is an imbecile who arrogantly believes that he is a moron.

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