[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by sgtlethargic

You have this reversed. I used to believe that ~90% of Black Americans are descendants of chattel slaves and ~10% of Black Americans immigrated here

Perhaps I've got it backwards, but then;

Of the over twelve million Africans forced into the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, four percent – roughly 470,000 men, women, and children – were sent to North America.

Half a million slaves were brought to North America, but each and every year thousands of black Africans legally immigrate, for hundreds of years.

Doesn't seem reasonable to me to conclude there are more descendants of the African slave trade, which ended many generations ago, than descendants of free immigrants, which has never ceased.

All that is a distraction from disentangling the problem of who is descended of slavery. What about the person who is 13% descended of a slave? Do they get 13% reparations?

What about the poor black folk who feel like they really need the "help", but do were descended of legal immigrants and therefore ineligible for reparations?

Then there's the fact that 100% of us are descended of slavery. How do we begin to bring justice to that history? Perhaps everyone can quit their jobs and research lineage and history back to the stone age to account for every single exploit, and then set about solving the problem.

The resources to compensate everyone will magically appear during this process, because that's where resources come from.

That's 3 of the hundreds of problems with this struggle session contrived by idiots.

Originally Posted by sgtlethargic

seem like thinly veiled attempts to deny the damage done and/or claim that reparations shouldn't happen.

I don't thinly veil, ever. Very clearly I stated that unless you have a magic DeLorean, you cannot deliver justice to history.

Chattel slaves and their descendants were obviously screwed over (to put it very mildly) for centuries, and reparations are long overdue.

Exactly, you get it completely. Reparations are due centuries ago.

Slavery in North America was a huge problem; one that was solved with much blood.

I like solving problems, but they have to be solvable. People forcing me to waste my time and effort to solve an unsolvable problem are contemptable.

We very bravely tilt at windmills, and shrink away at the dragon.

There are more slaves today than at any other point in history, and that is a solvable problem, but nobody is interested in solvable problems it seems.

The same goes for Native Americans.

They are the most privileged citizens in the US, having even their own nation. Look how well they're doing with all the "help". Maybe if we help everyone they will all be so successful.