The practice of slavery in the US was uniquely violent
and disruptive wherein African Americans were foundationally and systematically
disconnected from knowledge of their geographies, languages, names, relatives,
and historic cultural practices.
Worse than the Arab slave trade, was it?
Tossers.
African Americans were confined
to segregated sections of state hospitals.
OK.
Healthcare discrimination against Black Californians is worsened by the fact that there are not
enough Black physicians in California to meet the needs of the Black population.
Umm, complaining about both is a little odd, isn’t it?
The recommendations are pretty good too:
Provide a one-time, lump sum payment of $5 million to each eligible person.
And, also:
The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) should remove barriers
to qualification for subsidized and Below Market Rate (BMR) rental units;
How many people with $5 million need a council flat?
Also:
Acknowledge the harm done to past generations of Black students in
San Francisco and take steps to prevent future harms.
And
Establish an Afrocentric K-12 school in San Francisco, similar to existing culturally specific
schools in SFUSD.
Bit of a contradiction.
The rest of this reparations committee report for San Francisco is a laundry list of everything anyone could think to throw in there.
Just those compensation costs, the $5 million each, look like being 100% of City GDP for a year.
Nonsense, obviously.
I was thinking about this the other day. Given how many ancestors each person has and given that empires rise and fall, tribes are at times victorious and at times defeated, and given the prevalence of slavery in Africa, it’s almost inconceivable that anyone of African descent wouldn’t have at least some slaves and at least some slave owners in their family tree.
Today, anyone of African descent probably owes themselves a lot of money.
I’m not sure that the status of being a victim does anybody any good. Making a minority group into permanent victims of hypothetical oppression doesn’t seem to have ever made the group better off.
And, if this is purely an initiative of SF city (not Oakland or various suburbs/neighbouring cities, who’s gonna stick around in SF to pay for it if they don’t qualify? What police are going to protect the lucky recipients from any Oakland denizens who missed out and wish to rectify that by direct action?
The social experiment is interesting. Come back every year and see who has taken advantage of the money to change their lives and who has blown it all.
The practice of slavery in the US was uniquely violent
Even if it was, they are not slaves.
In the 50 years that state largesse has been thrown at black Americans to no avail, millions of people from all over the world, including Africa, have come to the US and made something of themselves. One African chap I heard of came over, met a nice white lady, and his son became president. Fairy tale or what?
“an Afrocentric K-12 school”: anti-apartheid didn’t last long, did it?
If they doshed put that money the result would be that all the well off blacks would be wealthier and all the poor blacks would be poor. Within a decade, at least.
This experiment is done across the world and applies to all races. Lottery wins don’t make stupid or lazy people better off.
Half of NFL players are broke within a decade of retirement. And they generally have some earning potential related to their fame.
@Andrew C – “it’s almost inconceivable that anyone of African descent wouldn’t have at least some slaves and at least some slave owners in their family tree”
Given that there were many slaves outside Africa – for example in ancient Rome – there is no need to qualify that by African descent. Literally everyone has both slaves and slave owners in their ancestry.
” . . . not enough Black physicians in California to meet the needs of the Black population.”
Given the consequences of the Affirmative Action movement in colleges and med schools across the country, this may not be the bad thing they think it is.
San Francisco is about 45% white, 15% Hispanic, 35% Asian, and about 5% black. The city, while always a bit off kilter, has gotten absolutely kooky in recent years, with the kooks being substantially white, though the Asians have been trying to get a bit of a grip on that. However, from the black perspective, if you’re going to make a grab for free money now is probably the best chance they’ll ever have and they might as well ask for the moon. But yeah, we’re talking about taxing a lot of Asians and Hispanics to make amends for slavery. They’ll probably be expected to apologize too.
@Chalres “Literally everyone has both slaves and slave owners in their ancestry.”
But literally everyone isn’t wanting $5m for it.
Andrew C, you beat me to it.
Reparations? You won the lottery when your ancestors were brought in chains from Africa.
Didnt they already pay when they bought the slaves. Surely its the enslaver who owes? Not sure Africa can afford such a large bill.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/normans-and-slavery-breaking-bonds
Don’t need to go back to the Romans, somewhere between 10-30% of the population of Anglo-Saxon England were slaves, many getting sold on to the Viking slave traders (who did a roaring trade in Slavs – hence the name “slave”) in Denmark or Dublin.
Re the enslaver in Africa – yes mostly it was Africans enslaving Africans but the fact Arabs and Europeans created big markets for slaves is what drove a lot of the activity in the first place. There was also a limited amount of direct slave raiding by Europeans – the Portuguese did it in West Africa, for example. Buying slaves from African rulers was less hassle though, being less aggro (indeed a profitable relationship) with the locals in charge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lan%C3%A7arote_de_Freitas
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Barbary-Pirates-English-Slaves/
And though on a smaller scale, Barbary slave raids on southwest England were a problem well into the 17th century and thousands of European slaves were kept in North Africa until the early 19th century.
“Boy! Bring me popcorn!”
When was slavery finally got rid of in Ireland? Not the early Normans, I’d think – far too few of them? Did the 16th and 17th century Plantation people report seeing slaves?
Can anyone tell me why the Russian serfs were called, in English, serfs rather than slaves? Borderline case? Euphemism?
@dearieme
Because serfs were not saleable as chattels – serfs are tied to the land
Thanks, J: that must be it. WKPD announces “Peter I ended slavery in Russia in 1723”.
It goes on to say “Only the Russian state and Russian noblemen had the legal right to own serfs, but in practice commercial firms sold Russian serfs as slaves – not only within Russia but even abroad (especially into Persia and the Ottoman Empire) as “students or servants”.[citation needed] Those “students and servants” were in fact owned by rich people, sometimes even by rich serfs, who were not noblemen. Emperor Nicholas I banned the trade in African slaves in 1842, though there were almost no Russians who participated in it, but Russian serfs were still sold and bought.”
So the idea was corrupted at the edges. No surprise, I suppose.
By God, here’s more on mining in Scotland and England.
“While lifelong serf miners [like Scotland’s] did not exist on the same scale anywhere else in the United Kingdom, coal miners in Durham and Northumberland in northern England were bound by a yearly ‘miners bond’ to their colliery. If they broke the bond, they would be subject to arrest, trial and imprisonment. The much-hated practice was abolished in 1872.”
So until 1799 Scottish miners were serfs (this writer implies) and until 1872 miners in NE England were indentured labour.
And lastly, this makes a case for the Scottish being serfs rather than slaves. (Me, I’m glad I’m not either.)
“As the workers received wages, this was technically serfdom rather than true slavery.”
“If a coal mine or salt works was sold, its workforce was also transferred from one owner to another.”
https://www.south-ayrshire.gov.uk/article/26622/Coal-Mines-and-Salt-pans
dearieme
January 20, 2023 at 10:07 pm
‘Emperor Nicholas I banned the trade in African slaves in 1842, though there were almost no Russians who participated in it, but Russian serfs were still sold and bought.’
So it was wicked to sell people with black skins, but not people with white skins. Things haven’t changed so much after all.
@dearieme – “If a coal mine or salt works was sold, its workforce was also transferred from one owner to another.”
Same as today under TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006).