It is long, but I feel it's worth the time.
**This post can also be found at Black & White Blog a forum for both sides of controversial issues.**
So how about I actually discuss the reasons why reparations make sense? How about we actually talk about American slavery and not detract from the subject in discussion of eras and societies that are not American?
There were millions of slaves that were forcibly taken from Africa to America, and died. That means families experienced the loss of fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, in a boat under duress. Murder is punishable, and as we have abundantly seen with the OJ Simpson case, profitable. Genocide, since this was a willful act done repeatedly to a singular and specific group of people, would seem to up that exponentially.
Of the surviving Africans, they were sold of without regard to their families or any factor other than their perceived ability to work, in the most humiliating manner. They were placed on display similar to a car in a showroom, with potential buyers pawing and prodding them. That is further duress and suffering.
Once sold, the slaves were guaranteed a lifetime of work. This work was menial at its best, without breaks, without pay, without time off. Medical care, which was not guaranteed, could range from intense to minimal and provided no guarantee of time off to recover.
Slaves were routinely beaten, mutilated, physically and mentally abused, sexually harassed and raped while forced to work. Any one of these is enough to cause the employer to be jailed, then or now, if it were done to another human being.
Slaves were denied their right to freedom of religion. They were denied an education. They were fed and clothed just enough to allow them to continue to work. They were denied freedom of speech. They were denied the right to have and/or raise a family.
Slaves built cities, roads, infrastructure, and agriculture. Every aspect of any business and establishment that exists in America today that has a tie to colonial America is connected to the slave workforce. That’s North or South.
If the average slave worked only 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 360 days a year for 4 decades of life that’s 158,880 hours of work per slave. If we assume that there were 3 million slaves from 1619 to 1865 (which is a low-ball estimate) then that is 476,640,000,000 hours of work done. Those are BILLIONS of hours. This does not even touch the Jim Crow era. Assuming a pay of just .05 cents an hour in 1865 money (no adjustment for actual worth in money today) that means $23,832,000,000. If I adjust by taking an increase of just 10% for each year for 55 years that’s a 9150% increase to $2,180,628,000,000. That’s TRILLIONS of dollars, adjusted just 55 years at 10%. There’s still another 87 years to go and we are adjusting from .05 cents. If anyone feels that more than TRILLIONS of dollars of work did not change America, they are stupid in my opinion.
In addition
“Jim Crow and other equally repressive laws and actions hindered Black African Americans. Incidents have occured even in the 20th century and include the Tuskegee syphilis experiments in the 1930’s, the destruction of Tulsa’s Black neighborhoods in 1921 and the loss of life and property when the all-Black town of Rosewood was destroyed by a white mob in 1923.”
Continued in part 2...
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