Who should pay reparations? Do living family members of Black African Slave Traders have to pay reparations? What about private business from around the globe that used slave labor for profit? What about the descendants of slaves who are now working taxpayers? Will they be untaxed because they are black descendants of slaves, and only tax the white people? Taxes are not charged based on race so they would be equally hurt as would other white descendant taxpayers.
Where are the reparations for the Egyptians who built the pyramids?
Chinese who built the Great Wall?
Romans who built an empire?
Mayans and Aztecs who built pyramids?
Builders of ancient Greece?
European castle builders and serfs?
Chinese Americans who built the railway system?
Every nation in the world at one time had slavery and/or were enslaved. Forcing the current American taxpayer to pay for crimes they did not commit, to pay for injustices done by others before most modern Americans had even immigrated from around the world, is just perpetuating injustice. The Civil War was the penalty of hundreds of years of slavery. A nation in shambles, an assassinated President, and 500,000 dead. That sounds like punishment enough.
Throughout history crimes against human rights have occurred in every nation in the world. But holding the current taxpayers responsible for the crimes of others is not justice, just greed, and hurts the innocent. My family moved to this country in the 1930's. No member of my family ever owned slaves. Yet again grifters want the taxpayers to pay for injustices that others have committed.
Slavery was a degrading, humiliation, torture, barbaric, cruel, a form of genocide, horrible squalor living conditions, chained in the bottom of a slave ship with no food, no water, no place to relieve oneself, getting seasick and throwing up where one sits, treated people like animals, separated and destroyed black families, and sold slaves on an auction block, rape the young girls and women, whipped them, and if anything positive can come out of the horrors of slavery is that most black Americans would still be living in Africa and not America. Given current world conditions I would rather be living in America than live in Africa.
The American black slave experience is unfortunately just one instance of slavery out of thousands around the world, it was a curse on all humanity that participated, the whole world should feel guilt and shame. Living in the past has no purpose other than to anger ex-slave descendants and shame ex-slave owner descendants. Slavery in America was not a unique situation and it is time for black Americans to realize its better to live in the present and future than to wallow in the unchangeable horrors of the past.
Select link for slavery statistics in the U.S.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/wahl.slavery.us