In 2024 the California Reparations Task Force recommended that each black descendant of slaves living in California receive $1 million as “reparations” for slavery.
"Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity when some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?" -- Thomas Sowell.
Go ahead and present an evidence-based account of how black people are unfairly treated in America today (yes, they indeed were in the past) and what "privilege" white people currently benefit from.
Thank you for this excellent compilation. You could add the following thoughts to your list:
1. Since it was black Africans and Arabs who enslaved those sold to the Europeans...it is THEY who owe reparations to their descendants just as the person who stole my stereo and sold it to someone else is the person responsible for the crime.
2. Many American and European families made great sacrifices to free black slaves...sacrifices their own brethren did not make. Should not they be compensated for that service? As you point out...Europeans did not invent African slavery...but they did end it...something neither the Africans nor Arabs did.
3. African Americans, like Native Americans, also held slaves including such notable families as those of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris. Are they not just as culpable to pay in a reparation scheme.
4. Massive welfare payments and discriminatory "reparations" in the form of affirmative action have been given to people of color who did NOT experience slavery at the expense of people who did NOT practice or benefit from slavery. Do these payments and damages not also have to be budgeted for in reparations?
5. And a specific example: The Minnesota Somali community, a group whose ancestors were involved in the slave trade, have now stolen $19 Billion from the taxpayers of one state. Much of this money was sent back to Africa. Will Somalia be repaying these stolen funds?
Africans and their descendants in the rest of the world have no valid claim for reparations.
Your list of whataboutisms is just and attempt to deflate and misdirect so that reparations can continue to not be paid and inequities can continue to exist. The short answer is only those who participated and profited from chattel slavery should pay. Other instances of injustice have led to reparations. This is long overdue. It can be done.
Given that hardly anyone alive in Britain or the US today has "participated and profited from chattel slavery", that means there would be no reparations. Inequalities do indeed exist, but they are not the result of long-ago slavery (at least you've not attempted to make the case that they are).
There is no "systemic racism" against black Americans any more (yes, there used to be, but it had reduced to very low levels by the 1980s, and today most of the discrimination is in their favor).
In your piece you say that black Americans are more likely to be killed by police than whites, but that is because they are much more likely to be involved in violent crime (as Roland Fryer's analysis showed). The chances of a black American being killed by police if they are unarmed and do not resist arrest are tiny. Their chances of being killed by a black criminal are 1000 times higher.
If you have any specific rebuttals or critiques of any of the points in the article, please go ahead.
You, obviously, have a great deal to learn, so let me help you out. You are wrong that people alive in Britain, the U.S. ( and The Netherlands) today do not profit from chattel slavery.
First, white people today continue to have an unearned privilege that was developed to divide and conquer Black and white workers following Bacon’s Rebellion. That resulted in white laborers being free, while Black laborers were sentenced to lifelong hereditary enslavement. The division continues to be cultivated today and has detrimental effects for Black people in each of these countries.
Second, many of the businesses and industries around today grew because of the benefit of free and underpaid labor. They are making record profits on the seeds of work performed by enslaved and indentured people. They owe their descendants a dividend.
There absolutely IS systemic white supremacy against Black people. In the U.S. it permeates absolutely everything from substandard education, to job and wage opportunities to healthcare disparities. The most obvious is in law enforcement, the policies for which are rooted in slave patrols and fugitive slave laws.
You need to read my earlier article on Black crime. There are some instances in which they may commit more crimes, but, again, this is because of poverty and the legacy of slavery, not because they are Black. And the white supremacy of the criminal justice system means they are treated more harshly along every step of the way, from simple traffic stops to arrests to sentencing. Apparently, you also pay no attention to the news. Unarmed Black people constantly are killed whether or not they resist. The only reason they are killed by someone black is because most of those crimes are ones of passion and proximity. Black are around Black peopke more often. White people are around white peoples more often.
You make a lot of claims but don't back them up with evidence.
> ... everything from substandard education, to job and wage opportunities to healthcare disparities.
The US spends more on education per black child than per white child. The US really does put a lot of effort in doing its best to educate black children. Black people earn just as much as white people once matched for educational achievement. Healthcare disparities arise more from (for example) black women being more likely to be overweight.
> ... they may commit more crimes, but, again, this is because of poverty and the legacy of slavery, ...
No, it's not poverty. We know this because we can compare black, white and Asian Americans of the same income level, and it does not explain the vastly higher rate of violent crime among black Americans. And what *specifically* about the "the legacy of slavery" causes black Americans to commit crime today?
> Unarmed Black people constantly are killed whether or not they resist.
Really? How many black Americans who were unarmed and did not resit arrest do you think are killed by police in a typical year? Can you give examples from the last 5 years?
> Black are around Black peopke more often. White people are around white peoples more often.
Yes, but the black-on-black murder rate is eight times the white-on-white murder rate.
I can and will back those things up, though they are commonly known and understood issues. That was the short readable version. It also appears in architecture, in the use of language, bodily autonomy, the military, and the environment. In short, there is no part of American society it didn’t touch and where it did not leave lasting consequences. There is only so much room in an article of 1,000 words, which is what everything I write here runs.
I’m writing a book called “America’s Plantation Mindset” that lays out every bit of it over hundreds of pages, so you can see why I couldn’t do it all here. I’ll be sure to put you on the contact list for when it comes out.
In the meantime, I invite you to subscribe to “Mixed Feelings,” where you will see these issues discussed in full over time. I also suggest that you subscribe to Dr. Stacey Patton who has been at this longer and actually published daily, which leaves her with a broader range of work, at this time.
You, obviously, have a great deal to learn, so let me help you out. You are wrong that people alive in Britain, the U.S. ( and The Netherlands) today do not profit from chattel slavery.
First, white people today continue to have an unearned privilege that was developed to divide and conquer Black and white workers following Bacon’s Rebellion. That resulted in white laborers being free, while Black laborers were sentenced to lifelong hereditary enslavement. The division continues to be cultivated today and has detrimental effects for Black people in each of these countries.
Second, many of the businesses and industries around today grew because of the benefit of free and underpaid labor. They are making record profits on the seeds of work performed by enslaved and indentured people. They owe their descendants a dividend.
There absolutely IS systemic white supremacy against Black people. In the U.S. it permeates absolutely everything from substandard education, to job and wage opportunities to healthcare disparities. The most obvious is in law enforcement, the policies for which are rooted in slave patrols and fugitive slave laws.
You need to read my earlier article on Black crime. There are some instances in which they may commit more crimes, but, again, this is because of poverty and the legacy of slavery, not because they are Black. And the white supremacy of the criminal justice system means they are treated more harshly along every step of the way, from simple traffic stops to arrests to sentencing. Apparently, you also pay no attention to the news. Unarmed Black people constantly are killed whether or not they resist. The only reason they are killed by someone black is because most of those crimes are ones of passion and proximity. Black are around Black peopke more often. White people are around white peoples more often.
On the economic issues, I deal with this in the piece above. Slavery was an economic dead end. It benefited white people at the time, yes, but over the long term prosperity comes from technological innovation. And that did not come from slavery systems.
It is simply factually wrong to say that white people are benefitting from intergenerational wealth that derived from the slavery era and has been handed down the generations. The median white American receives an inheritance from their parents of less than $10,000. That is less than the subsidy that the median black American receives from the taxpayer every year.
As detailed above, the US government is paying about a trillion dollars every year to support black Americans. How is that not "reparations"? If a trillion dollars a year is not enough, what would be enough?
From my piece: "The total government spends on black Americans (welfare, social security, education, Medicaid, Medicare, etc) amounts to about $1.5–1.8 trillion a year, whereas total taxes (Federal, State, Local, etc) paid by black Americans comes to about $450–530 billion. This adds up to a net transfer of $21,000—$28,000 per black person per year, ongoing ...".
If you think that that calculation is wrong, or that any of the other points in my piece is substantially wrong, please present your rebuttal.
There is no basis for paying reparations at this point. A list of historic grievances, when looked at objectively would, if anything, require Africans and Arabs to pay reparations to Europeans and Americans. Are you advocating for this?
You're not thinking about this clearly. My friend the Babbling Beaver reports that MIT has mathematically solved the Reparations problem. And that is, by calculating everyone's Oppressed/Oppressor Inheritance Index (OOII). :)
MIT develops AI to calculate fair & equitable reparations payments
The oppressor/oppressed dichotomy espoused by critical theory is not based on a "fundamental misunderstanding" of how the world works, but rather a childish understanding.
This also leaves out that from 1600 to 1699, more white Irish slaves were sold into the Americas than any other ethnicity. Redhead Irish girls were bred as livestock to create "house slaves". $5 for a white girl, $20-$50 for a black child.
After that was illegal there were indentured white servants, usually Irish.
They were indentured servants, not enslaved chattel. There are huge differences, including they contracted voluntarily, there was an end date, and it wasn’t an inherited state. Also, the descendants of those people are considered white and have the privileges that go with that skin color, whereas the descendants of chattel slaves continue to live under the disadvantages of theirs.
You are forgetting about Cromwell who slaughtered the Irish. Compared to that, selling them into slavery was merciful. They were a ready source of labor. You may also be forgetting that the Puritans that fled England for the new world were persecuted for good reasons. It was the reaction to Cromwell's horrific murderous reign.
There are still "redlegs" in the Carribbean who are descended from Irish slaves. Red haired, freckled, and skin that burns red in the Caribbean sun. The fact that both were chattel slaves also helps to understand why pirate crews were mixed race, and why those pirates fought so savagely rather than be captured alive. Slave owners bred Irish girls to black slaves to produce more slaves for market. This is part of why there are so many black Americans with freckles. The other part is that they formed relationships and had children if they escaped, or were freed. The Irish also have a large presence on native American reservations. They were sympathetic to the natives because of their experience.
In records handed down from the later indentured period, the black slaves often pitied the indentured whites because they would burn in the fields, and had trouble with the heat. Also, the last thing a plantation owner wanted was a free white man who had finished his indenture that hated him and might kill him.
The idea that indentured servitude of Irish in the colonies was "voluntary" is at least as false as the idea that all who take menial jobs today do so "voluntarily". For Irish indentured servants, the top side of voluntary was to escape the oppression by the English and dire, grinding poverty on the edge of survival. The others ranged from prisoners of war, to convicts, and to those too poor to feed themselves.
I recommend "Slaves in the Family" by Edward Ball, although he mostly concentrates on black slaves and doesn't have much about the pre-1700 period.
"Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity when some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?" -- Thomas Sowell.
The legacy of slavery under which white peoples benefit from privilege while Black people suffer under it is why reparations are necessary.
https://substack.com/@rebeccarbibbs/note/p-192553809?r=5dsiiv&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Go ahead and present an evidence-based account of how black people are unfairly treated in America today (yes, they indeed were in the past) and what "privilege" white people currently benefit from.
Thank you for this excellent compilation. You could add the following thoughts to your list:
1. Since it was black Africans and Arabs who enslaved those sold to the Europeans...it is THEY who owe reparations to their descendants just as the person who stole my stereo and sold it to someone else is the person responsible for the crime.
2. Many American and European families made great sacrifices to free black slaves...sacrifices their own brethren did not make. Should not they be compensated for that service? As you point out...Europeans did not invent African slavery...but they did end it...something neither the Africans nor Arabs did.
3. African Americans, like Native Americans, also held slaves including such notable families as those of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris. Are they not just as culpable to pay in a reparation scheme.
4. Massive welfare payments and discriminatory "reparations" in the form of affirmative action have been given to people of color who did NOT experience slavery at the expense of people who did NOT practice or benefit from slavery. Do these payments and damages not also have to be budgeted for in reparations?
5. And a specific example: The Minnesota Somali community, a group whose ancestors were involved in the slave trade, have now stolen $19 Billion from the taxpayers of one state. Much of this money was sent back to Africa. Will Somalia be repaying these stolen funds?
Africans and their descendants in the rest of the world have no valid claim for reparations.
Your list of whataboutisms is just and attempt to deflate and misdirect so that reparations can continue to not be paid and inequities can continue to exist. The short answer is only those who participated and profited from chattel slavery should pay. Other instances of injustice have led to reparations. This is long overdue. It can be done.
https://substack.com/@rebeccarbibbs/note/p-192553809?r=5dsiiv&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Given that hardly anyone alive in Britain or the US today has "participated and profited from chattel slavery", that means there would be no reparations. Inequalities do indeed exist, but they are not the result of long-ago slavery (at least you've not attempted to make the case that they are).
There is no "systemic racism" against black Americans any more (yes, there used to be, but it had reduced to very low levels by the 1980s, and today most of the discrimination is in their favor).
In your piece you say that black Americans are more likely to be killed by police than whites, but that is because they are much more likely to be involved in violent crime (as Roland Fryer's analysis showed). The chances of a black American being killed by police if they are unarmed and do not resist arrest are tiny. Their chances of being killed by a black criminal are 1000 times higher.
If you have any specific rebuttals or critiques of any of the points in the article, please go ahead.
Actually, the data show that white Americans are more likely to be killed by police than black Americans when one adjusts for criminal behavior.
You, obviously, have a great deal to learn, so let me help you out. You are wrong that people alive in Britain, the U.S. ( and The Netherlands) today do not profit from chattel slavery.
First, white people today continue to have an unearned privilege that was developed to divide and conquer Black and white workers following Bacon’s Rebellion. That resulted in white laborers being free, while Black laborers were sentenced to lifelong hereditary enslavement. The division continues to be cultivated today and has detrimental effects for Black people in each of these countries.
Second, many of the businesses and industries around today grew because of the benefit of free and underpaid labor. They are making record profits on the seeds of work performed by enslaved and indentured people. They owe their descendants a dividend.
There absolutely IS systemic white supremacy against Black people. In the U.S. it permeates absolutely everything from substandard education, to job and wage opportunities to healthcare disparities. The most obvious is in law enforcement, the policies for which are rooted in slave patrols and fugitive slave laws.
You need to read my earlier article on Black crime. There are some instances in which they may commit more crimes, but, again, this is because of poverty and the legacy of slavery, not because they are Black. And the white supremacy of the criminal justice system means they are treated more harshly along every step of the way, from simple traffic stops to arrests to sentencing. Apparently, you also pay no attention to the news. Unarmed Black people constantly are killed whether or not they resist. The only reason they are killed by someone black is because most of those crimes are ones of passion and proximity. Black are around Black peopke more often. White people are around white peoples more often.
You make a lot of claims but don't back them up with evidence.
> ... everything from substandard education, to job and wage opportunities to healthcare disparities.
The US spends more on education per black child than per white child. The US really does put a lot of effort in doing its best to educate black children. Black people earn just as much as white people once matched for educational achievement. Healthcare disparities arise more from (for example) black women being more likely to be overweight.
> ... they may commit more crimes, but, again, this is because of poverty and the legacy of slavery, ...
No, it's not poverty. We know this because we can compare black, white and Asian Americans of the same income level, and it does not explain the vastly higher rate of violent crime among black Americans. And what *specifically* about the "the legacy of slavery" causes black Americans to commit crime today?
> Unarmed Black people constantly are killed whether or not they resist.
Really? How many black Americans who were unarmed and did not resit arrest do you think are killed by police in a typical year? Can you give examples from the last 5 years?
> Black are around Black peopke more often. White people are around white peoples more often.
Yes, but the black-on-black murder rate is eight times the white-on-white murder rate.
I can and will back those things up, though they are commonly known and understood issues. That was the short readable version. It also appears in architecture, in the use of language, bodily autonomy, the military, and the environment. In short, there is no part of American society it didn’t touch and where it did not leave lasting consequences. There is only so much room in an article of 1,000 words, which is what everything I write here runs.
I’m writing a book called “America’s Plantation Mindset” that lays out every bit of it over hundreds of pages, so you can see why I couldn’t do it all here. I’ll be sure to put you on the contact list for when it comes out.
In the meantime, I invite you to subscribe to “Mixed Feelings,” where you will see these issues discussed in full over time. I also suggest that you subscribe to Dr. Stacey Patton who has been at this longer and actually published daily, which leaves her with a broader range of work, at this time.
A lot of what are supposedly "commonly known and understood issues" are just assertions that are often made but do not stand up to examination.
The claim that the legacy of slavery is a major cause of inequalities today has to be argued on actual evidence, and so far has not been.
You, obviously, have a great deal to learn, so let me help you out. You are wrong that people alive in Britain, the U.S. ( and The Netherlands) today do not profit from chattel slavery.
First, white people today continue to have an unearned privilege that was developed to divide and conquer Black and white workers following Bacon’s Rebellion. That resulted in white laborers being free, while Black laborers were sentenced to lifelong hereditary enslavement. The division continues to be cultivated today and has detrimental effects for Black people in each of these countries.
Second, many of the businesses and industries around today grew because of the benefit of free and underpaid labor. They are making record profits on the seeds of work performed by enslaved and indentured people. They owe their descendants a dividend.
There absolutely IS systemic white supremacy against Black people. In the U.S. it permeates absolutely everything from substandard education, to job and wage opportunities to healthcare disparities. The most obvious is in law enforcement, the policies for which are rooted in slave patrols and fugitive slave laws.
You need to read my earlier article on Black crime. There are some instances in which they may commit more crimes, but, again, this is because of poverty and the legacy of slavery, not because they are Black. And the white supremacy of the criminal justice system means they are treated more harshly along every step of the way, from simple traffic stops to arrests to sentencing. Apparently, you also pay no attention to the news. Unarmed Black people constantly are killed whether or not they resist. The only reason they are killed by someone black is because most of those crimes are ones of passion and proximity. Black are around Black peopke more often. White people are around white peoples more often.
On the economic issues, I deal with this in the piece above. Slavery was an economic dead end. It benefited white people at the time, yes, but over the long term prosperity comes from technological innovation. And that did not come from slavery systems.
It is simply factually wrong to say that white people are benefitting from intergenerational wealth that derived from the slavery era and has been handed down the generations. The median white American receives an inheritance from their parents of less than $10,000. That is less than the subsidy that the median black American receives from the taxpayer every year.
As detailed above, the US government is paying about a trillion dollars every year to support black Americans. How is that not "reparations"? If a trillion dollars a year is not enough, what would be enough?
From my piece: "The total government spends on black Americans (welfare, social security, education, Medicaid, Medicare, etc) amounts to about $1.5–1.8 trillion a year, whereas total taxes (Federal, State, Local, etc) paid by black Americans comes to about $450–530 billion. This adds up to a net transfer of $21,000—$28,000 per black person per year, ongoing ...".
If you think that that calculation is wrong, or that any of the other points in my piece is substantially wrong, please present your rebuttal.
There is no basis for paying reparations at this point. A list of historic grievances, when looked at objectively would, if anything, require Africans and Arabs to pay reparations to Europeans and Americans. Are you advocating for this?
So, at bottom, the West, in a very real sense, has already paid, and continues to pay, reparations.
You're not thinking about this clearly. My friend the Babbling Beaver reports that MIT has mathematically solved the Reparations problem. And that is, by calculating everyone's Oppressed/Oppressor Inheritance Index (OOII). :)
MIT develops AI to calculate fair & equitable reparations payments
https://babblingbeaver.com/2022/06/21/mit-develops-ai-to-calculate-fair-equitable-reparations-payments/
You might be interest in my latest Substack. If so, please, like, restack and subscribe.
The oppressor/oppressed dichotomy espoused by critical theory is not based on a "fundamental misunderstanding" of how the world works, but rather a childish understanding.
Reparations are a logistical nightmare, unjust and a sure recipe for subverting a country.
No, MiT has come up with a process.
Wrong.
Excellent article! Thank you. Very rational and provides much needed context.
This also leaves out that from 1600 to 1699, more white Irish slaves were sold into the Americas than any other ethnicity. Redhead Irish girls were bred as livestock to create "house slaves". $5 for a white girl, $20-$50 for a black child.
After that was illegal there were indentured white servants, usually Irish.
They were indentured servants, not enslaved chattel. There are huge differences, including they contracted voluntarily, there was an end date, and it wasn’t an inherited state. Also, the descendants of those people are considered white and have the privileges that go with that skin color, whereas the descendants of chattel slaves continue to live under the disadvantages of theirs.
False. The Irish prior to ~1714 were chattel slaves, just like black slaves, written into American slave laws not just proclamations of the English.
https://search.syr.edu/discovery/fulldisplay/alma9971534433408496/01SYU_INST:SYU
You are forgetting about Cromwell who slaughtered the Irish. Compared to that, selling them into slavery was merciful. They were a ready source of labor. You may also be forgetting that the Puritans that fled England for the new world were persecuted for good reasons. It was the reaction to Cromwell's horrific murderous reign.
There are still "redlegs" in the Carribbean who are descended from Irish slaves. Red haired, freckled, and skin that burns red in the Caribbean sun. The fact that both were chattel slaves also helps to understand why pirate crews were mixed race, and why those pirates fought so savagely rather than be captured alive. Slave owners bred Irish girls to black slaves to produce more slaves for market. This is part of why there are so many black Americans with freckles. The other part is that they formed relationships and had children if they escaped, or were freed. The Irish also have a large presence on native American reservations. They were sympathetic to the natives because of their experience.
In records handed down from the later indentured period, the black slaves often pitied the indentured whites because they would burn in the fields, and had trouble with the heat. Also, the last thing a plantation owner wanted was a free white man who had finished his indenture that hated him and might kill him.
The idea that indentured servitude of Irish in the colonies was "voluntary" is at least as false as the idea that all who take menial jobs today do so "voluntarily". For Irish indentured servants, the top side of voluntary was to escape the oppression by the English and dire, grinding poverty on the edge of survival. The others ranged from prisoners of war, to convicts, and to those too poor to feed themselves.
I recommend "Slaves in the Family" by Edward Ball, although he mostly concentrates on black slaves and doesn't have much about the pre-1700 period.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/slaves-in-the-family_edward-ball/272020/item/6919262/#edition=2373848&idiq=954924
https://share.google/XYf5JW12fZi3Tz4Dp
The Irish were poorly treated, but they NEVER were subjected to chattel slavery. That is a myth that has been repeatedly debunked.
https://www.history.com/articles/5-myths-about-slavery
FFS - That is just wrong. Totally false. Do try reading things besides internet "debunking". Study the subject. Study the time period.
How about YOU studying something.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CDpSzbHss/?mibextid=wwXIfr