It was 155 years ago that slavery ended. For context, that is only like 2 consecutive Harrison Fords or Iron Sheiks.
When you consider that when slavery ended, there were 4 million people thrown into the body politic with no provisions. Most of them were illiterate with little training in anything but the lowest paying jobs.
There is still a considerable amount of wealth in the U.S. that was acquired through slavery and the subsequent underpaid black labour, and conversely a lot of poverty from slavery. This is why reparations are not an unreasonable proposition. It wouldn't need to be direct cash handouts, but rather things like interest-free loans for entrepreneurs and forgivable government scholarships. Or just more investment in black communities in general.
More than 50 years ago, MLK made the case for reparations.
It's 1862. Abraham Lincoln announces the Emancipation Proclamation. Three years later, the Union wins the Civil War. The United States ratifies the 13th Amendment, banning slavery. Hooray, racism is over! Yeah, no. The former slaves are now "free", but most have no homes, no possessions, no education. Many freed slaves had no other choice but to work the cotton fields for their former masters (albeit their labour now had to be paid...poorly).
Meanwhile, the United States was experiencing a period of rapid westward expansion. Some states, like Oregon, passed racist laws forbidding black people from moving there. The Oregon black exclusion law would not be repealed until 1926. Concurrently, the Homestead Acts were giving away land (land that was stolen from Native Americans, but that's an entirely different topic) for free to white European settlers. If you were a white peasant farmer from Ukraine, the US government gave you 160 acres of farmland. If you were a black peasant farmer from Mississippi, you got to go back to work for the landowner who abused and exploited you for years.
To this day, in 2020, many of the most opulent estates and mansions in the South are former slave plantations. The descendants of the slave owners have passed down their unearned family wealth for generations. The descendants of black slaves, who started with nothing, still largely live in poverty 150 years after they were freed.
Last edited by MarchHare; 06-09-2020 at 11:53 AM.
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Originally Posted by MarchHare
This scene is particularly relevant when people are discussing changing police tactics to be less confrontational/authoritarian/militaristic and more community-oriented:
Bunny knows his business.
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I mean, you call something a war and pretty soon everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when you at war, you need a f***ing enemy.
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More than 50 years ago, MLK made the case for reparations.
It's 1862. Abraham Lincoln announces the Emancipation Proclamation. Three years later, the Union wins the Civil War. The United States ratifies the 13th Amendment, banning slavery. Hooray, racism is over! Yeah, no. The former slaves are now "free", but most have no homes, no possessions, no education. Many freed slaves had no other choice but to work the cotton fields for their former masters (albeit their labour now had to be paid...poorly).
Meanwhile, the United States was experiencing a period of rapid westward expansion. Some states, like Oregon, passed racist laws forbidding black people from moving there. The Oregon black exclusion law would not be repealed until 1926. Concurrently, the Homestead Acts were giving away land (land that was stolen from Native Americans, but that's an entirely different topic) for free to white European settlers. If you were a white peasant farmer from Ukraine, the US government gave you 160 acres of farmland. If you were a black peasant farmer from Mississippi, you got to go back to work for the landowner who abused and exploited you for years.
To this day, in 2020, many of the most opulent estates and mansions in the South are former slave plantations. The descendants of the slave owners have passed down their unearned family wealth for generations. The descendants of black slaves, who started with nothing, still largely live in poverty 150 years after they were freed.
To add to this, if you're ever in Atlanta I'd recommend heading to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. There are a bunch of amazing things, but the sheer absurdity of the Jim Crow laws and recency of some of them was shocking to me. Obviously slavery itself ended a couple of lifetimes ago, but racism and laws surrounding segregation certainly raged on. I think on the 3rd floor they have a wall with all of the laws and when they were repealed. Honestly, the number that were in the 1990's and 2000's was just stunning.
Meanwhile, the United States was experiencing a period of rapid westward expansion. Some states, like Oregon, passed racist laws forbidding black people from moving there. The Oregon black exclusion law would not be repealed until 1926. Concurrently, the Homestead Acts were giving away land (land that was stolen from Native Americans, but that's an entirely different topic) for free to white European settlers. If you were a white peasant farmer from Ukraine, the US government gave you 160 acres of farmland. If you were a black peasant farmer from Mississippi, you got to go back to work for the landowner who abused and exploited you for years.
Thomas Jefferson actually proposed reparations and colonization of unpopulated areas of the U.S. using freed slaves trained as farmers as early as 1,800. He owned more than 600 slaves in his life time and believed in racial superiority, but he also acknowledged that the institution was not sustainable and that uprisings were inevitable (especially after Haitian independence). He also thought that a sudden and immediate emancipation would cause issues and proposed a gradual transition.
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I don’t have a link but Last Week Tonight was amazing. He goes off on Police Unions and the fact they’re complicit in all this. It’s not just the Police brotherhood that’s basically a criminal empire, it’s the Unions.
Yeah. Because people thought I was joking when I said Police are 'Above the Law' because they effectively cant be disciplined for their transgressions.
Someone does something bad and they either circle the wagons to protect him or they just all do it....'cant fire us all!'
Again, I'm not going to deep-dive into the pros and cons of Organized Labour because there absolutely are benefits but the current state of some Unions has transformed from their original purposes and mandates and effectively just become Gangs.
And Police Unions are a hilarious caricature of that.
These guys stand together against the world!
Um? You mean....the population that you're sworn and employed to protect?
Unions have a tendency to be inherently adversarial. They have desires but are notoriously adverse to change, and even if they are willing the sheer Bureaucracy that they involve makes it either prohibitive or impossible.
The Union concept is a good one and I believe in workers having the right to bargain collectively, but the state of Unions in this day and age is not that.
It is broken. As current events have made clearly apparent.
Police need protection, but it cant be immunity from consequences.
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According to my friend in Seattle (who is at home with a newborn and not on the ground at the protests, so he's relying on second-hand information), the demonstrations in Capitol Hill have since been 100% peaceful once the police were gone and no longer instigating violence.
Imagine what it's like to be so dumb that you tweet at the guitarist of a band named Rage Against the Machine, whose biggest hit song contains the lyrics "Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses" and "You justify those that died by wearing the badge, they're the chosen whites", to tell him that you no longer like his music since he supports Black Lives Matter protesters.
Imagine what it's like to be so dumb that you tweet at the guitarist of a band named Rage Against the Machine, whose biggest hit song contains the lyrics "Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses" and "You justify those that died by wearing the badge, they're the chosen whites", to tell him that you no longer like his music since he supports Black Lives Matter protesters.
Rain started falling at midnight. The violent threat had not materialized on the ground, though the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club showed up ready to defend, armed with guns and marshmallows.
