SC: Slavery reparations shd be included in new constitution

[carmenjonze]

Reparations for slavery should be included in any new South Carolina constitution, senator says

I'd settle for reparations for Jim Crow, paid out to the two generations still living that were forced to endure it.

And not just African Americans, either

Any new constitution for the state of South Carolina should include reparations for the descendants of slaves, one Democratic state senator is arguing.

Sen. Marlon Kimpson, D-Charleston, said Monday he would push to include reparations in any discussion of changing the state’s 123-year-old constitution, as some of his colleagues in the S.C. Legislature have called for.

“If the door is opened for a constitutional convention, last amended in 1895 to systematically disenfranchise African-Americans, I plan to introduce the subject of reparations for the descendants of slaves who built this state providing free labor,” Kimpson tweeted.

Several freshmen legislators announced plans last week to call a new constitutional convention, with the intent of moving power from the Legislature to the governor’s office. They hope the move increases accountability and breaks what they see as the hold of a few powerful lawmakers over state government.

Ohh, the hot tears of rage to be shed by the Dylann Roof party, were it to ever happen.

[glenfs]

I saw I believe Rep Waters recently bring up this topic. I thought it strange how it was never mentioned during Obama's 8 years. The time we should have had reparations has long passed. Passing them now will never happen. Because if it did it would be the end of the Democratic Party. It is just one of those things in history that cant be fixed.

On a related topic did you see where South Africa is getting ready to take land away from white owners.

[gounion]

glen thinks if you steal something, after a while, morally and legally it becomes yours.

[carmenjonze]

I saw I believe Rep Waters recently bring up this topic. I thought it strange how it was never mentioned during Obama's 8 years. The time we should have had reparations has long passed. Passing them now will never happen. Because if it did it would be the end of the Democratic Party. It is just one of those things in history that cant be fixed.

On a related topic did you see where South Africa is getting ready to take land away from white owners.

I don't care about your confederate resentments.

[glenfs]

glen thinks if you steal something, after a while, morally and legally it becomes yours.

I am not sure where I stand on the S African deal other than some of the rhetoric reported by the press is pretty horrific. But, not wanting to dredge up an old subject other than to say there has to be some sort of time limit on reparations as well as perspective.

Your opinion that the land over 100 years later should revert back to the heirs from which it was taken. Sometimes legally some times not legally. Including all the improvements currently on that land, even if it happens to be a billion dollar building. Is just wrong.

There is a good chance that the land I live on was once the property of the Catawba Indians. There is also a good chance that no Catawba ever step foot on or even saw the land where I live. But according to you if 150 years ago some white man or Gov't stole the land from the Catawba's they should get to reclaim the land lock stock and barrel while I get nothing is just silly.

Not to mention the can of worms it would open up. As property after property would be held up in court. As for slave reparations why weren't they mentioned in the 8 years Obama was in office? No matter where you stand on the subject the fact remains the Democratic Party in this day and age would never pass them because of the political backlash.

However maybe 25-50 years down the road when people of color become the majority I am sure the repressed will become the repressors and show as much mercy and fairness towards whites as whites showed towards their ancestors so many decades ago. Just as apparently is happening today in South Africa. Where it has been reported elected Govt leaders have been quoted as saying we aren't calling for the killing of white land owners.....yet.

[glenfs]

I don't care about your confederate resentments.

It is a shame you can't discuss things like this beyond crying racism or looking towards your fellow lefties all of which will pretty much agree with you.

[carmenjonze]

It is a shame you can't discuss things like this beyond crying racism or looking towards your fellow lefties all of which will pretty much agree with you.

You sound bitter.

[gounion]

I am not sure where I stand on the S African deal other than some of the rhetoric reported by the press is pretty horrific. But, not wanting to dredge up an old subject other than to say there has to be some sort of time limit on reparations as well as perspective.

Your opinion that the land over 100 years later should revert back to the heirs from which it was taken. Sometimes legally some times not legally. Including all the improvements currently on that land, even if it happens to be a billion dollar building. Is just wrong.

There is a good chance that the land I live on was once the property of the Catawba Indians. There is also a good chance that no Catawba ever step foot on or even saw the land where I live. But according to you if 150 years ago some white man or Gov't stole the land from the Catawba's they should get to reclaim the land lock stock and barrel while I get nothing is just silly.

Not to mention the can of worms it would open up. As property after property would be held up in court. As for slave reparations why weren't they mentioned in the 8 years Obama was in office? No matter where you stand on the subject the fact remains the Democratic Party in this day and age would never pass them because of the political backlash.

However maybe 25-50 years down the road when people of color become the majority I am sure the repressed will become the repressors and show as much mercy and fairness towards whites as whites showed towards their ancestors so many decades ago. Just as apparently is happening today in South Africa. Where it has been reported elected Govt leaders have been quoted as saying we aren't calling for the killing of white land owners.....yet.

In the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, where blacks had built themselves a prosperous society - far better than their white neighbors - the whites attacked them, burned them out and forced them to leave live refugees from Rwanda, and took their land.

And never gave it back. Glen says too bad, so sad, it's theirs now, the whites have the rights, not the blacks, and that nothing should be done. Just because the land was illegally stolen from their rightful owners doesn't matter - after all, they were black.

And we need to realize that glen doesn't feel black people have any right to feel any anger over any mistreatment from whites, either in history or personal experience. If they do, then they are racist. And there's nothing that glen hates more than what he sees as a black racist. I found his anger and vitriol towards Carmen to be astonishing.

Isn't it funny how conservative's moral compass just spins round and round?

[ProfessorX]

BTW, South Africa definitely has problems. Jacob Zuma's attitude toward AIDs in his country was ridiculous and shameful. I could also quibble about some of their views on the ME.

However, Quartz has a nice piece on how overheated the rhetoric on this land reform has become.

South Africa’s much needed land debate is being turned into an international racist rant
https://qz.com/1223840/south-africas-mu ... cist-rant/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The motion is based on a policy decision taken by the African National Congress in December last year. It “resolved that this should be pursued without destabilizing the agricultural sector; without endangering food security in our country; and without undermining economic growth and job creation,” according to an ANC statement.

Nowhere did it say that the land was to be taken from white farmers, and yet that has not only become the headline, it has fuelled political jockeying ahead of South Africa’s 2019 election. It also distracts from a process that is essential to fixing the country’s enduring inequality.

The motion does not immediately trigger expropriation, but instead appoints a committee who will review South Africa’s liberal constitution, which already allows for land redress. The process is vague and will likely be a protracted bureaucratic matter. This, however, would not make for a dramatic headline and catchy slogan. In the absence of details, extremist views have choked out any real debate.

[snip][end]

Conservatives are now begging Trump - who of course notoriously wants to block refugees from elsewhere - to set up a special refugee program for SA whites.

[bird]

BTW, South Africa definitely has problems. Jacob Zuma's attitude toward AIDs in his country was ridiculous and shameful. I could also quibble about some of their views on the ME.

However, Quartz has a nice piece on how overheated the rhetoric on this land reform has become.

South Africa’s much needed land debate is being turned into an international racist rant
https://qz.com/1223840/south-africas-mu ... cist-rant/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The motion is based on a policy decision taken by the African National Congress in December last year. It “resolved that this should be pursued without destabilizing the agricultural sector; without endangering food security in our country; and without undermining economic growth and job creation,” according to an ANC statement.

Nowhere did it say that the land was to be taken from white farmers, and yet that has not only become the headline, it has fuelled political jockeying ahead of South Africa’s 2019 election. It also distracts from a process that is essential to fixing the country’s enduring inequality.

The motion does not immediately trigger expropriation, but instead appoints a committee who will review South Africa’s liberal constitution, which already allows for land redress. The process is vague and will likely be a protracted bureaucratic matter. This, however, would not make for a dramatic headline and catchy slogan. In the absence of details, extremist views have choked out any real debate.

[snip][end]

Conservatives are now begging Trump - who of course notoriously wants to block refugees from elsewhere - to set up a special refugee program for SA whites.

Re: your last sentence. I would favor placing whites from South Africa on his block list.

[ProfessorX]

Yeah. You know, many of them are not so bad. A lot opposed apartheid.

I met a South African (white) couple in Europe about a decade or so ago. They were doing the tourist thing. They told me about some whites who had left their country, but they had opposed apartheid and were determined to stay.

They were very curious about how Americans could have elected "W." Bush (seemed amazing to them), and kept asking me what I thought of him. I said I was not a fan. I often wonder what they think of Trump now.

[bird]

Yeah. You know, many of them are not so bad. A lot opposed apartheid.

I met a South African (white) couple in Europe about a decade or so ago. They were doing the tourist thing. They told me about some whites who had left their country, but they had opposed apartheid and were determined to stay.

They were very curious about how Americans could have elected "W." Bush (seemed amazing to them), and kept asking me what I thought of him. I said I was not a fan. I often wonder what they think of Trump now.

I know some opposed it. I would bet much of the world shakes their head at our elections. Bush2 was bad enough but the asshat currently in the WH must really have them bewildered.

[carmenjonze]

glen thinks if you steal something, after a while, morally and legally it becomes yours.

It's almost funny to me -- almost -- that confederate whites seek to keep the conversation about reparations limited to "100 years ago."

It's their version of "about a hundred dollars" from Rainman.

What that means is that they won't have to discuss, as I've mentioned, that there are two generations of folks like my parents and grandparents age who were born into a violently segregated country and deliberately held back in every way, at their own taxpayer expense, so whites could thrive.

They're still around. Not from "100 years ago".

What it also says about them is that they simply think segregation was a justifiable act. And why not. They've been told their entire lives they are entitled to the biggest and best of everything, to be paid for by everyone else.

This, they call " freedom. "

Conservatives are grifters.

[J_dogg82]

Carmen, never lead with your settlement offer.

[Sam Lefthand]

Carmen, never lead with your settlement offer.

That truism applies almost universally, thus the word never, however the lone the exception are with public auctions, and perhaps this issue. In negotiating the lowest price at a public auction leading with, i.e. opening the bidding with your final offer is a very successful practice.

It's because it short circuits the emotional attachment others form for an idem being auctioned off.

Say an idem is worth 50 dollars and when the auctioneer asks for opening bids a bargain hunter gets in there first and opens the bidding at 5 dollars. Then the someone bids 10, then someone else bids 15 ... . And the idem sells for 75 dollars. What happened was several persons got involved and got emotional attached to buying that idem as the bidding continued with the price increasing gradually. When the price got to the idem value the incremental bidding didn't stop.

However If a person at that auction knows how, and has decided ahead of time what price they will be willing to pay is, then they can often close that emotional feedback loop by jumping in and saying 40 dollars when the auctioneer asks for an opening bid. That's real close to what is going to be the idem's final price. Someone might bid 45 and then the buyer will bid 50.

Very often though that 40 dollar opening bid will buy the idem because the opening price is above the bargain hunters range and they'll just let it go.

This reparations issue is a reversal of an auction, the bids start high and work down instead of starting low and working up, but the principle is the same.

What Carmen did was shrewd, she opened the bidding at a doable price. Had she loaded her initial offer to allow for her offer to be beaten down to the settlement price she was willing to agree to, everyone would have jumped in with their two bits and gotten emotionally attached to their position, no settlement would ever occur. The can would be kicked down the road. It probably will be anyway, but leading with a doable offer for an emotionally charged issue gives it the best chance its got.

[Viewer]

Yeah. You know, many of them are not so bad. A lot opposed apartheid.

I met a South African (white) couple in Europe about a decade or so ago. They were doing the tourist thing. They told me about some whites who had left their country, but they had opposed apartheid and were determined to stay.

They were very curious about how Americans could have elected "W." Bush (seemed amazing to them), and kept asking me what I thought of him. I said I was not a fan. I often wonder what they think of Trump now.

I've been friends with quite a few expat S Africans over the years....Anyway, interestingly, Trevor Noah, who grew up in South Africa, says he's not surprised that Trump won and apparently said that early on. He feels that Trump is not so different than many African leaders he's seen. (btw, I haven't been a great fan of the Daily Show for several years and didn't make it past his first show. But in more serious interviews, Noah seems like a knowledgable person.)

[carmenjonze]

Carmen, never lead with your settlement offer.

duly noted

[carmenjonze]

I wish news organizations would quit writing these "that you never heard of" or "that you forgot" headlines.

Yes, plenty of us have heard about and have never/will never forget about these things. Anyway...

A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America - NPR

And contrary to what resident Rhodes Scholar glen thinks, people discussed reparations PLENTY during the Obama administration. So white Republicans can put away that box of kleenex; you're not being oppressed because someone talks about your f'd up history.

In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America's housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a "state-sponsored system of segregation."

The government's efforts were "primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class, lower-middle-class families," he says. African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.

Rothstein's new book, The Color of Law, examines the local, state and federal housing policies that mandated segregation. He notes that the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods — a policy known as "redlining." At the same time, the FHA was subsidizing builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions for whites — with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to African-Americans.

Rothstein says these decades-old housing policies have had a lasting effect on American society. "The segregation of our metropolitan areas today leads ... to stagnant inequality, because families are much less able to be upwardly mobile when they're living in segregated neighborhoods where opportunity is absent," he says. "If we want greater equality in this society, if we want a lowering of the hostility between police and young African-American men, we need to take steps to desegregate."

I can't wait till this book arrives! I've been talking about the HOLC maps for years, even here at RFL.

[glenfs]

In the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, where blacks had built themselves a prosperous society - far better than their white neighbors - the whites attacked them, burned them out and forced them to leave live refugees from Rwanda, and took their land.

And never gave it back. Glen says too bad, so sad, it's theirs now, the whites have the rights, not the blacks, and that nothing should be done. Just because the land was illegally stolen from their rightful owners doesn't matter - after all, they were black.

And we need to realize that glen doesn't feel black people have any right to feel any anger over any mistreatment from whites, either in history or personal experience. If they do, then they are racist. And there's nothing that glen hates more than what he sees as a black racist. I found his anger and vitriol towards Carmen to be astonishing.

Isn't it funny how conservative's moral compass just spins round and round?

Your so called logic makes as much sense as jailing a person for the crime his great grandfather did 100 years ago. Except it makes even less sense than that. Seeing how the land that was stolen in 21 probably is not the present day property of the descendents of tjose who stole it

Again if my great grandfather had a duesenburg that was worth 50 dollars at the time stolen from him in 21. Today the car would be worth a million. According to you that car if found 100 years later is my families property.

The thing about being a liberal is ypu need to be void pf common sense.

[Drak]

...families property...

The thing about being a liberal is ypu need to be void pf common sense.

Uh huh.

I LOL'd.

[RoyPDX]

So, Glen thinks liberals "lack common sense," and he's insulted all liberals like that before with worse slurs. If he's right, then he's the dumbest mf'er ever to live, since he comes on this board which is by and for those people he thinks so little of.

So, Glen, what's the story? Why do you hang out here? Maybe you'd be happier on Storm*Front.

[Drak]

Compensation for stolen property isn't unreasonable.

[carmenjonze]

Your so called logic makes as much sense as jailing a person for the crime his great grandfather did 100 years ago. Except it makes even less sense than that. Seeing how the land that was stolen in 21 probably is not the present day property of the descendents of tjose who stole it

Again if my great grandfather had a duesenburg that was worth 50 dollars at the time stolen from him in 21. Today the car would be worth a million. According to you that car if found 100 years later is my families property.

The thing about being a liberal is ypu need to be void pf common sense.

Uh-huh. Sure, it is.

The crap you conservative whites pulled "100 years ago" is still having an impact, right now, today. Especially on the two generations of people still living who had to live under your totalitarian laws and vigilante violence.

[Drak]

So, Glen thinks liberals "lack common sense," and he's insulted all liberals like that before with worse slurs. If he's right, then he's the dumbest mf'er ever to live, since he comes on this board which is by and for those people he thinks so little of.

So, Glen, what's the story? Why do you hang out here? Maybe you'd be happier on Storm*Front.

Yah. He thinks people here are commies, and he thinks that commies are the scum of the earth.

[carmenjonze]

Yah. He thinks people here are commies, and he thinks that commies are the scum of the earth.

Lol he's got something in common with actual "commies" who hate people here every bit as much as he does.