Reparations time. Pay what you owe!!

[Boxingraya]

They should give everybody about 3fiddy.

[Robbie Barrett]

[Tony Trick-Pony]

[bigjavi973]

Black Democrat testifies against reparations

I agree with this guy 100% and HES A DEMOCRAT!




I agree with all of his points. Try to argue against it really but he makes solid sense.

imo the ones booing are the ones that are just looking at free money

[D4thincarnation]

Anyone with any bit of sense cannot agree with this reparations bull.

[GhostofDempsey]

Here come the Uncle Tom comments in 3, 2, 1...

[The Big Dunn]

I agree with this guy 100% and HES A DEMOCRAT!




I agree with all of his points. Try to argue against it really but he makes solid sense.

imo the ones booing are the ones that are just looking at free money

You agree with his points because you are against the idea of reparations. Not all black people are for reparations because all black people do not think alike, a point many of us keep trying to make.

His points and position are not right simply because he is black and is against the concept of reparations.

To make the issue of reparations equal to "wanting free money" shows an incredible bias against those that argue for it. If they choose to take a long look at the impact failure to provide reparations has had on the black community over hundreds of years, they have a right to do that.

[giant_king]

Whether we get it or not it's not going to stop us.we still out there kicking butt.but if we get it that's cool to.this country want be were it is today if it wasn't for the hard work my people's put in.and one thing for all you African American who read this just also no your history didn't begin with enslavement.before that you were king and queens some of the first people to rule this planet at the very beginning.you are the birth givers to all human kind the originaters.all races come from us.so know we're your history really began.peace have a blessed day

[bigjavi973]

You agree with his points because you are against the idea of reparations. Not all black people are for reparations because all black people do not think alike, a point many of us keep trying to make.

His points and position are not right simply because he is black and is against the concept of reparations.

To make the issue of reparations equal to "wanting free money" shows an incredible bias against those that argue for it. If they choose to take a long look at the impact failure to provide reparations has had on the black community over hundreds of years, they have a right to do that.

really?

what else would they want it for then?

Like he said, apologies have already been done and technically with the definition he provided no one right now (unless you are of a certain age) has been affected by jim crow laws and slavery etc (please argue if you want as I said before black judges, black lawyers, black millionaire businessmen, this kid in ivy league college black president of the USA)

again... unless you can explain to me why some want reparations.

[The Big Dunn]

Transcript below:

Editor’s note: Coleman Hughes delivered the following testimony at a United States House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Bill H.R. 40 on June 19, 2019. If passed, the bill would establish a commission for reparations.

Thank you Chairman Cohen, ranking member Johnson, and members of the committee. It’s an honor to testify on a topic as important as this one.

Nothing I’m about to say is meant to minimize the horror and brutality of slavery and Jim Crow. Racism is a bloody stain on this country’s history, and I consider our failure to pay reparations directly to freed slaves after the Civil War to be one of the greatest injustices ever perpetrated by the U.S. government.


But I worry that our desire to fix the past compromises our ability to fix the present. Think about what we’re doing today. We’re spending our time debating a bill that mentions slavery 25 times but incarceration only once, in an era with zero black slaves but nearly a million black prisoners—a bill that doesn’t mention homicide once, at a time when the Center for Disease Control reports homicide as the number one cause of death for young black men. I’m not saying that acknowledging history doesn’t matter. It does. I’m saying there’s a difference between acknowledging history and allowing history to distract us from the problems we face today.

In 2008, the House of Representatives formally apologized for slavery and Jim Crow. In 2009, the Senate did the same. Black people don’t need another apology. We need safer neighborhoods and better schools. We need a less punitive criminal justice system. We need affordable health care. And none of these things can be achieved through reparations for slavery.

Nearly everyone close to me told me not to testify today. They said that even though I’ve only ever voted for Democrats, I’d be perceived as a Republican—and therefore hated by half the country. Others told me that distancing myself from Republicans would end up angering the other half of the country. And the sad truth is that they were both right. That’s how suspicious we’ve become of one another. That’s how divided we are as a nation.

If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further, making it harder to build the political coalitions required to solve the problems facing black people today; we would insult many black Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors; and we would turn the relationship between black Americans and white Americans from a coalition into a transaction—from a union between citizens into a lawsuit between plaintiffs and defendants.

What we should do is pay reparations to black Americans who actually grew up under Jim Crow and were directly harmed by second-class citizenship—people like my Grandparents.

But paying reparations to all descendants of slaves is a mistake. Take me for example. I was born three decades after Jim Crow ended into a privileged household in the suburbs. I attend an Ivy League school. Yet I’m also descended from slaves who worked on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. So reparations for slavery would allocate federal resources to me but not to an American with the wrong ancestry—even if that person is living paycheck to paycheck and working multiple jobs to support a family. You might call that justice. I call it justice for the dead at the price of justice for the living.

I understand that reparations are about what people are owed, regardless of how well they’re doing. But the people who were owed for slavery are no longer here, and we’re not entitled to collect on their debts. Reparations, by definition, are only given to victims. So the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that: you’ve made one-third of black Americans—who consistently poll against reparations—into victims without their consent, and black Americans have fought too long for the right to define themselves to be spoken for in such a condescending manner.

The question is not what America owes me by virtue of my ancestry; the question is what all Americans owe each other by virtue of being citizens of the same nation. And the obligation of citizenship is not transactional. It’s not contingent on ancestry, it never expires, and it can’t be paid off. For all these reasons bill H.R. 40 is a moral and political mistake. Thank you.