those of you that have visited Point Lookout have seen the memorial to those that perished in the prison camps there during the Civil War. They committed no crimes, most were people indifferent to the North or South. Like the Californians who happened to have physical Asian traits, imprisoned in WWII.
So........are descendants of those camps entitled to reparations? Seems logical. Since we are dolling out money for a noble cause, why not?
Meh, the proposition is ludicrous, but it does remind us of a reality. A fair percentage of American wealth was generated via slave labor.
It would be difficult to find a single ethnic group that has not been enslaved at some point in history. Without the agricultural excess generated by helots, slaves, in Ancient Greece, there would not have been a class of persons with the leisure to develop democracy,money, commerce, banking, theater, poetry, logic, mathematics, navigation and astronomy.
Pretty much every thing we value and take for granted includes an element of suffering and injustice. Meat gets pretty disgusting when you visit the slaughterhouse. Those sneakers don't feel so good on your feet when you visit the Chinese sweatshop where they were made.
Life is unfair, ugly, vicious and cruel.
Should all blacks be forced to pay reparations to all whites for the crimes a large number of blacks perpetrate primarily against whites?
Mugging, car jacking, burglary, retail theft, welfare fraud, drug dealing, murder, rape.......
If American blacks want reparations for slavery, they're going to have to lay that claim on the Portugese, the Arabs, the Turks, the Spainish and the African tribes that took prisoners and sold them as slaves.
