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Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

150 points by samclemens 6y ago

seph-reed 6y ago
This seems like an absolutely indispensable technology for achieving reparations. Most black Americans have ancestors who (slavery) worked a lot of unpaid hours. Having clear metrics on how many slaves there were is a step towards having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be. There are some places in the US which have started, but they're just kind of pulling numbers out of a hat and I don't see that being scalable. But reparations should be paid, if for nothing else, at least for the unpaid hours. Next we need to figure out who profited the most from slaves and where that money is today.
- thegrim33 6y ago
  You do realize that every civilization that has ever existed has both enslaved others and been enslaved in the past, right? Where do your reparations end? Are you going to forcefully take money from me because African Americans were enslaved generations ago, but then forcefully have money taken from them for the other Africans and other races they themselves enslaved in Africa before that? Where does it end? Do you honestly think that forcefully stealing money from someone at the threat of imprisonment if they don't pay is really going to fly? Do you think putting a gun to my head and taking money from me really makes sense when my ancestors emigrated here only a couple generations ago? How do you foresee this working? How do you foresee this helping anything? Of course my language is extreme, but that's what taxes and similar payments are. It's backed by the force of the government and if I don't pay, eventually someone with a gun will come to put me in prison, and if I refuse, that gun will be pointed at me.
  - fredlindemann 6y ago
    > You do realize that every civilization that has ever existed has both enslaved others and been enslaved in the past, right? Do you realize that's an extraordinary claim? You have proof for this, right?
    - SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
      Not defending that guy's claim, but relevant: do you know where the word 'slave' comes from?
    - icebr9 6y ago
      Well.. slaves comes from slavs how have been sold by Tatars. Here in my Slavic country we even have some classical books that write about slavery of our people
      - knolax 6y ago
        Ah yes the two genders: American and Tatar.
    - thegrim33 6y ago
      I know they don't teach real history in school or in the media anymore and you have an entirely skewed perception of history at this point, but it's the truth. Or course the word "every" is probably too much, because there's been exceptions. Just pick any random country/civilization and google "history of slavery in X". For example England, Ireland, Turkey, any country you enter, you'll find a history of it.
      - rsynnott 6y ago
        > Ireland Warning; while there really was slavery in Ireland at one time (indeed Dublin was one of the biggest markets in Europe before the Normans suppressed it in the 12th century), if you Google for this you are likely to get a good bit of nonsense. Decent summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_slaves_myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_slaves_myth
    - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      This seems relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery Obviously GP's claim is a dumb one, because all you have to do is say "Here is one counter example, you're wrong". But looking at that page makes it very clear that slavery is a big part of most of world history.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - generalizations 6y ago
    I'm also curious how far back these reparations are supposed to go, and where exactly the responsibility is supposed to lie. Should the people who 'employed' the slaves be responsible, or should the people who enslaved and sold them also be considered at fault? If the second, then note a lot of slaves were initially captured and sold to white slavers by their own kind. [1] [1] http://www.understandingslavery.com/index.php-option=com_content&view=article&id=368&Itemid=227.html http://www.understandingslavery.com/index.php-option=com_con...
    - seph-reed 6y ago
      Well, doing something like this right would obviously be a big discussion. But IMO, if we can figure out how much time/money was stolen and who benefitted the most from it, we can start to have some idea of what's fair. I'm a big fan of UBI as well, and it'd make a lot of sense to have the ancestors of slaves be the first to get onto UBI. But, obviously, this is a group decision and should be based off logic and records; not feelings.
      - generalizations 6y ago
        I want to know the principles involved, and the logic behind them, before we talk about calculating backpay. Those should be stated and defended successfully before anything else. For example, there's examples (IIRC) of former slaves owning slaves themselves; how is that addressed? What moral principles are in play, which can be logically applied to figure out if such a person's progeny receive reparations?
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > I'm a big fan of UBI as well, and it'd make a lot of sense to have the ancestors* of slaves be the first to get onto UBI. But, obviously, this is a group decision and should be based off logic and records; not feelings. *descendants The same issues that make UBI a bad idea will probably preclude the individual payment approach to reparations
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > I'm also curious how far back these reparations are supposed to go, and where exactly the responsibility is supposed to lie. Should the people who 'employed' the slaves be responsible, or should the people who enslaved and sold them also be considered at fault? All those people are dead. The only entities left to sue are legal entities that aren't natural persons. > If the second, then note a lot of slaves were initially captured and sold to white slavers by their own kind. Then governments, corporations, etc. in Africa and Europe can be held to the same standard.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - seph-reed 6y ago
    The following is all just an opinion, and obviously this type of subject is a discussion. Doubly so because I'm white. I don't think anyone should pay any more than they benefitted from slavery. The average person has no ancestors who owned slaves, and the only benefits they got were things like cheaper goods and services. Added up over a lifetime, it's probably not a lot. But some people come from ancestors who made a LOT of money off slavery, and the benefits of that have been passed down to them one way or another. So I think different people should be in different brackets based off how much they benefitted from slavery, and those brackets should be proportion of wealth tax over 20-30 years. Not so much to bankrupt anyone, but enough to pay the off the debt. Also, I think it should be treated as the alpha version of UBI. Basically, the ancestors of slaves should be the first to get on the list for UBI because they're kind of opposites of each-other.
    - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      > Doubly so because I'm white This is a logical fallacy (though a popular one). An idea is either good or bad. The traits of the person speaking the idea are irrelevant, and do not make a good idea bad, or a bad idea good. Further, an idea doesn't become more or less "subject to discussion" as a result of the race of the person speaking it.
      - seph-reed 6y ago
        I agree strongly with what I'm saying, but seriously: there's a good chance of bias here, so it really should be a discussion including all sides. I'm basically claiming, ofc I think my idea is good, but I really don't want to assume it.
    - horns4lyfe 6y ago
      We should probably also consider charging the Europeans that made vast wealth shipping slaves, and the Africans that profited from capturing and selling their countrymen.
      - deleted 6y ago
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  - danso 6y ago
    > Do you honestly think that forcefully stealing money from someone at the threat of imprisonment if they don't pay is really going to fly? How many American citizens went to prison because they refused to send in their contribution to the reparation funds for Japanese internment?
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > Do you honestly think that forcefully stealing money from someone at the threat of imprisonment if they don't pay is really going to fly? Yeah its called taxation. > You do realize that every civilization that has ever existed has both enslaved others and been enslaved in the past, right? I'm not convinced that this is true. do you have any documentation? > Where do your reparations end? Are you going to forcefully take money from me because African Americans were enslaved generations ago, but then forcefully have money taken from them for the other Africans and other races they themselves enslaved in Africa before that? Where does it end? Claims are against the legal institutions that still exist. People aren't held responsible for the sins of their ancestors, rather the same institutions that benefitted still exist and can be sued for damages. There's a pending claim against them. > Do you think putting a gun to my head and taking money from me really makes sense when my ancestors emigrated here only a couple generations ago? You didn't know that we collect taxes here when you immigrated? > Of course my language is extreme, but that's what taxes and similar payments are. It's backed by the force of the government and if I don't pay, eventually someone with a gun will come to put me in prison, and if I refuse, that gun will be pointed at me. If you're opposed to taxation, arguing against reparations is probably the worst possible way to make your point. Slavery and taxation are quite similar (some would say the difference matters but those people are pro-tax).
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > But reparations should be paid, if for nothing else, at least for the unpaid hours. You must be young to speak with such certainty. Post-slavery, black sharecroppers basically made nothing after expenses. So how much was their time actually worth? (An economist will ask this.) Post-slavery, norhern states, which had no slaves, paid the cost of welfare for millions of black families. So how does that factor in? Since there's intermarriage in America, what's a quanta of African blood? How much does one get paid per 1/32? (This is referring to the heated race arguments of the 1800s and 1900s.) Do you have any experience with the above? My family is from the Detroit area, so I'm one of few posters on HN that actually does know something about these issues. The US paid a heavy price during the civil war, one of the biggest issues being related to slavery. Do the northern states get reparations for freeing the slaves? That's the problem when you drag history into modern times. One of the biggest advantages that the US has over other countries is that we don't continue to fight the same battles over and over. Even before corona, black familiies in America struggled greatly with maintaining households and educating their children. Instead of virtue signalling, why don't you contribute to solving today's enormous problems?
  - Zigurd 6y ago
    Do the people who had their property stolen by the Nazis have to pay the US for liberating the death camps? Yeah, no. There are simple answers to several of your questions.
    - adventured 6y ago
      Now that you mention it. Modern Germany should pay the US enormous sums in reparations for our role in destroying Nazi Germany, saving Western Europe (which Russia did not do, Russia enslaved half of Europe), freeing people from Nazi death camps, propping up a post-war democratic Germany against the conquering monster to the East. Not just the US of course. Britain and France among others are owed a lot more in reparations for what Germany did and the long-term consequences. The US got repaid - only in part - for its war lending. It has never been paid reparations for its losses in WW2 (including 400,000 military deaths). What's the reparations tally for 400,000 dead, going by the numbers thrown around these days? $10 trillion? Germany and Japan can figure out the split on that and then write some big fat checks to the families in question.
- devindotcom 6y ago
  Yes, having even just a starting point for numbers on this would be very helpful. Part of the issue is people won't even countenance the concept of reparations, so no one gets as far as saying, well if your great grandfather was enslaved for X years under system Y, here's an estimate of the value of their labor that was stolen by that system. What are the limits? Who will be excepted? How will it be enforced? All good questions! But we can hardly answer them if we refuse to engage with the idea of reparations to begin with.
  - generalizations 6y ago
    > But we can hardly answer them if we refuse to engage with the idea of reparations to begin with. That's because the first order of business is to demonstrate that reparations are even a good idea. Engage with those who don't like the idea, and address the concerns they raise, if you can; then deal with minutae.
    - seph-reed 6y ago
      Literally paying a person for their time. If an employer was stealing money from their employees, why would you have to demonstrate they should have to pay off the debt? There is a measurable financial debt here. Also, it sets a precedent: if you care about your decedents and progeny at all, there is nothing to gain from cheating. You may benefit and die before repercussions occur, but all debts must be paid eventually. Justice is hard, but not when it comes to hours worked vs hours paid.
      - generalizations 6y ago
        If that's the principle involved, then I think, though IANAL, the statute of limitations applies. If my employer from 20 years ago cheated me of some pay, I'm pretty sure he's safe from litigation at this point. > if you care about your decedents and progeny at all, there is nothing to gain from cheating. You may benefit and die before repercussions occur, but all debts must be paid eventually. I really hope you're not suggesting that we set a precedent of digging through history to find old debts we might be owed.
- adventured 6y ago
  edit: expected downvotes of course; nobody dares to engage on this particular discussion about the vast sums the Europeans must be made to pay for their evil deeds (which they've skirted for hundreds of years now, like cowards) > Next we need to figure out who profited the most from slaves and where that money is today. The most? The Europeans. Where is the money? It's in London and Amsterdam among a few other former empires. The Europeans transported around 12.5 millions slaves to the Americas. They owe so much in reparations it will bankrupt half the nations in Western Europe. It's very interesting how the Europeans - who were responsible for African slavery in the Americas - never want to talk about it and how nobody in the US ever asks any questions about how much the Europeans are going to pay. The Europeans transported close to five million slaves to Brazil, nearly ten times as many slaves as were transported to the territory that became the US. One can imagine the reparations tally just for that alone to be in the tens of trillions of dollars. Britain and the Netherlands should just go ahead and write a check equal to 10% of their entire national wealth to African-Americans. That might get things started on the path to justice. All of the assets of the British throne should be liquidated as part of the process and put into the reparations pot.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    There were three primary groups of beneficiaries - planters in the America's, slave traders in Europe, and the Kingdoms in Africa who were among the procurers and sellers.
    - adventured 6y ago
      The European empires had all the power: they had the military dominance, they had the means, they had the transport, they had the economic controls, and they benefitted the most accordingly. They also spent centuries torturing Africa. 12.5 million Africans don't end up enslaved and heading to the Americas without the European empires making it happen. The US owes a lot for its part, no question (what I'm saying is not a reduction in the responsibility of the US, I'm properly adding the Europeans to it). The Europeans owe that much more, including for the other 12 million slaves in the rest of the Americas (which, again, nobody ever wants to talk about re reparations, not under any circumstances). Every discussion is always about the US paying reparations. The Europeans were primarily responsible, the US didn't exist yet and banned the import of slaves as one of its first major actions post formation in January 1808. The US has spent two centuries dealing with the consequences of what the European powers did. We have had to deal with the consequences of their slave trade, while they've skirted it almost entirely. What consequences have the Europeans suffered over the past two centuries, for what they did? Almost nothing. It's long past time for the Europeans to pay, big time. It will bankrupt parts of Western Europe. That's how big the reparations number very obviously is.
- thedudeabides5 6y ago
  People who are holding real estate exposure in the US are the primary beneficiaries. Then you add in redlining, and it starts to look systemtic. So the cure should be appropriate to the disease, make home ownership practical, affordable, and (if you are into reparations) subsidized. Or at least as subsidized as being a rich person is in the mortgage origination process (via that stealth socio-economic test that is your FICO score).
  - mfcl 6y ago
    Subsidized home ownership? Don't tell Thomas Sowell that idea. How would that work? You make it easier for people to own, then the prices increase. Do you subsidize more? If so, then it's just 2008 again.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      It can be done indirectly. Fund infrastructure that is needed for housing starts, do other things to remove obstacles to housing starts, etc.
      - cm2187 6y ago
        Let’s set up a state guaranteed mortgage guarantor so the banks can relax their landing standards. And let’s call it Fannie Mae, or perhaps Freddie Mac...
        maxerickson 6y ago
        Those are more or less direct subsidies.
      - emmelaich 6y ago
        Probably would not end well. https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/collins-v-mnuchin/ https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/collins-v-mnuchi...
        6y ago
- smt88 6y ago
  Disclaimer: my parents are immigrants, and I have absolutely no genealogical connection to American slavery. > having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be I just don't understand how someone can talk about a "well-founded number" for reparations in a serious way. How can you calculate a dollar amount, even within 5 orders of magnitude, for something that happened to millions of people for hundreds of years, affects millions of people today, and we don't have details about any of it? There are many people who: - had African ancestors who sold other Africans to slavers - have a mixture of heritage - immigrated from Africa long after slavery ended It's nonsensical to come up with a dollar amount for even a single person, so how can we possibly do it at scale? Should African Americans descended from slave traders be paying reparations to African Americans descended from slaves? Should African Americans pay reparations to Native Americans for living on land that was stolen from them? There are so few records for any of this, it just seems absolutely insane to me. I am a huge history nerd, and there aren't concrete answers for a lot of things that happened this decade, even with impeccable records.
  - D895n9o33436N42 6y ago
    I’m an immigrant, and I’ll never stand for any kind of reparations for descendants of former slaves. Invariably this will come out of tax dollars to which I’m contributing by way of income tax. Why should I be charged for wrongs - however horrible - in which neither myself nor my ancestors were involved? When there was still slavery in America, my people were enslaving members of their own ethnic group back in the old country. Forgive me for not wanting any part of this current dispute. And to those who will certainly tell me that I’ve benefitted from the modern spoils of slavery: I beg to differ. My first decade in the US was all about climbing out of the pit of “you’re not white enough for us because you didn’t go to a top school”. That shit still haunts me to this day.
    - deleted 6y ago
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    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > Invariably this will come out of tax dollars to which I’m contributing by way of income tax. This is no different than paying taxes for any number of other social programs, however its a singularly bad place to draw the line. > Why should I be charged for wrongs - however horrible - in which neither myself nor my ancestors were involved? Because you aren't being charged. The government that legalized and regulated slavery is being charged. This government is (one of) the legal institutions that permitted slavery and benefitted from slavery that still exists. Therefore they are responsible for satisfying legal claims that are still pending. > When there was still slavery in America, my people were enslaving members of their own ethnic group back in the old country. Forgive me for not wanting any part of this current dispute. If you don't want any part of it then you are free to remain neutral in discussions of this issue. By arguing against reparations you are participating in the dispute. > And to those who will certainly tell me that I’ve benefitted from the modern spoils of slavery: I beg to differ. My first decade in the US was all about climbing out of the pit of “you’re not white enough for us because you didn’t go to a top school”. That doesn't challenge the assertion that you benefitted from the accumulated capital that was in part built on the forced labor of slaves. > That shit still haunts me to this day. I'm truly sorry for your traumatic experience. p.s. I've upvoted this comment because while I disagree with the substance, it raises important arguments that need to be responded to and the comment itself contributes to the discussion. I'd like to ask down voters to consider why they feel this comment needs to be suppressed because I disagree with their opinion on the value of the comment and its contribution to the discussion.
- NinjaSaves 6y ago
  "Achieving reparations" is difficult language for me to accept. It is "thinking past the sale" that does not treat the subject with the necessary fair-minded big picture consideration. It's not clear that reparations are a good idea in practice, or something to be "achieved," or even strived for (they might do more harm in practice to the group they intend to protect, as many well-intentioned and politically extremist ideologies do) not to mention any considerations involving whether it would be possible to sustain, or affordable, etc. Be careful with your thinking if you care about being even-handed with your empathy. Being empathetic is a fantastic thing, but don't allow cynical people to hijack your empathy.
  - throwaway535 6y ago
    > It's not clear that reparations are a good idea in practice, or something to be "achieved," or even strived for (they might do more harm in practice to the group they intend to protect, This is a very patronizing argument. If someone breaks into your bank account and steals your cash, then later is caught. There is no valid line of reasoning that goes "well I'll only give the money back if you tell me how you plan to spend it first". "Oh, you planned to spend it all on bubble gum and sweets? Then no I don't need to give it back, because I think that might do you more harm than good." Argue on the merits of the topic, not based on knowing what's best for people.
    - OptionX 6y ago
      Well, by your own analogy. If both you and the robber have been dead for 300+ years would it make sense to make the robbers family pay your descendants for it? Keep in mind none of the people had contact with anyone remotely involved with the original robbery or had any way to influence it or impact it. Should the sons pay for the sins of the fathers? Pretty sure I could find someone in your ancestral line that commit a crime, can I convict you for it? So, yeah, the merits are kinda low to.
      - throwaway535 6y ago
        Great discussion, let's continue. So my dad goes and steals your dad's land. He give me the land as his son. I split it in half and give half to a friend of mine. The investigation occurs and determine this land was stolen and should be returned. I don't think the argument of, "sorry won't return it because I didn't steal it, my dad did" holds much water. Nor the argument of, "nope I won't return it because a friend of mine that has nothing to do with the theft is benefiting from it" holds much water either as reasons for your family to not get their land returned. And related, possession of stolen goods is a fairly common legal concept. Regardless of penalty, at minimum once discovered the goods are returned, even if they'd previously be sold or given to someone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_of_stolen_goods#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_of_stolen_goods#Uni...
_iyig 6y ago
In a similar vein, George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate - today privately owned and operated as a living history museum - has an excellent series of exhibits which puts names and stories to the Washington family’s enslaved servants and laborers: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/groundbreaking-exhibit-mount-vernon-slaves-speak-and-history-listens-180960747/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/groundbreaking-exhibi... The re-enactors are all fantastic and very knowledgeable. It’s unsettling talking to a black re-enactor who’s firmly in-character as a slave, which I suppose is the point: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MVFdsqQby9o https://youtube.com/watch?v=MVFdsqQby9o
- RuggedPineapple 6y ago
  Washington is always the one that gets me. His will freed his slaves not when he died but when his wife died. So he knew what was right but intentionally allowed that only after he could be assured it wouldn't cause any hardship to him or his spouse. That feels more evil then just being a creature of the time. That's knowing better but making a conscious decision to embrace evil because it makes your life easier.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    > That's knowing better but making a conscious decision to embrace evil because it makes your life easier. The average middle/upper class person today is the same, living on the fruit of foreign slave and subsistence laborers for clothing, food, and toys, and eating from the suffering of factory animals.
    - RuggedPineapple 6y ago
      wouldn't disagree with that much.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    In my experience, this is the behavior of 98% of the population. You're welcome to judge it as you may, but it is not at all surprising.
  - 6y ago
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
A worthy cause. Too bad they feel the need to run their own platform instead of contributing to wikidata. They're using the same software, and the data falls squarely within Wikidata's scope. Even worse that they feel the need to stamp this with a CC license. Not only does this make it incompatible with the CC0/public domain requirement. I consider it borderline offensive to assert copyright over the basic facts of someone's life: https://enslaved.org/record/person/Q405665 https://enslaved.org/record/person/Q405665 This project obviously involves a lot of work. And, taken as a whole, some of that work is creative in nature. But individual records are not. Luckily, US law does not recognise copyright for databases.
- huskyr 6y ago
  I think there's something to be said for putting this data in their own Wikibase instance. There are a lot of items here, including many items like 'Inventory of person X in year Y'. Adding so many items to Wikidata would not have been without its controversy. Also, i could imagine they need a lot of properties that are not available, or aren't used in the same way on Wikidata. There is a reason why all museums and other heritage institutions use their own databases and thesauri instead of putting it all in the same database. However, the beauty of using a linked data platform is of course that it's easy to link back to other sources, like Wikidata. I could definitely see that in the future Wikidata could do an import of many of these items, or link properly to them using a new property. I do agree that it's unfortunate that they're licensing everything under CC-BY instead of CC-Zero.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
    Yes, there are legitimate reasons here, and the presentation is, indeed, very nice. There's some momentum enabling various hybrid models for wikibase, and allowing projects such as this to enjoy the freedom of an individual platform, while still using Wikidata as the backend for some or most or all of the data seems promising. I disagree with the idea that this data is inferior in some way to what is expected for inclusion in WD. Their sourcing seems to be impeccable, better than maybe 80 % of WD at the statement-level ("Imported from cebwiki") and certainly adequate on the item-level. Data on individual slaves also strikes me as far more useful for the possibilities that Wikidata offers than academic papers. The latter are important in their own right, but metadata on journal articles is of little use unless you're studying impact factors, academic careers, or the rise and fall of academic disciplines. Structured data on slavery neatly connects with geography, economics, culture, and really any aspect society today. I imagine there were changes in regions of origin over time, for example, and it'd be interesting to see if these can still be found in, say, regional culinary preferences, language, or music.
elliekelly 6y ago
Off topic but what does “tolerably spare made” mean? Is a euphemism for slightly overweight?
- neallindsay 6y ago
  I think it means skinny.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jazzyjackson 6y ago
  I like to use etymonline.com to find how a word has been used over time, for "spare" I find "sense of "lacking in substance; lean, gaunt; flimsy, thin; poor," is recorded from 1540" etymonline.com/word/spare
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    Thanks! That makes a lot more sense. I was thinking “spare” as in “extra” and I thought it was odd a slave would be overweight.
    - billfruit 6y ago
      Spare also means bare, lean, etc.
- jonnyone 6y ago
  A search on Google Books for "spare made" gave me this: http://tiny.cc/2ip6tz http://tiny.cc/2ip6tz Which gives us "spare made", "well made", and "well set" as descriptions. A similar "ethnography" (http://tiny.cc/3ip6tz http://tiny.cc/3ip6tz) gives me this: "Although from their wiry and spare conformation of body, the Villees look tall, they are not so in reality." Which I would think implies thin.
Zigurd 6y ago
To all those who say it is "impossible" to right the wrongs of history: My family were refugees from a war that resulted in both the Nazis and Soviet Union expropriating property in their home country. Eventually they, and other branches of my family got their property restored or compensated. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, property in many of the former Soviet Union nations was returned to rightful owners, or compensation was issued. Expropriated property is restored in many cases. Compensation for expropriation is commonplace. American slavery was a business, and businesses keep records. There are no valid excuses.
- iaHN 6y ago
  There is a pervasive fear that admitting that the US owes the descendants of slaves something could potentially validate the complaints black people have about other issues in America. See the posts about Timnit Gebru for comments depicting the demands of black people as "too disruptive".
  - 01100011 6y ago
    Really? I think the resistance to reparations comes from folks like me who don't see a reason we should pay anything. Most of my ancestors are German immigrants to the northeast US who arrived after slavery was abolished. The remainder were poor Scotts Irish who continued to live in poverty in northern Appalachia. I understand, but do not agree with, the logical hoops many jump through to justify indebtedness to all current Americans. I also do not think direct reparations are the best approach to resolving the continuing racism in America.
    - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
      A reparations law suit would most likely involve a court of law in which victims and benificiaries are identified, damages are calculated, and assets change hands. This fantasy where you just have to give up your personal property for no good reason is just a fantasy. It's not the way the law works. There will be a reason, it will be documented by a trail of papers and professional judges and attorneys will agree that it is fair. If there is no paper trail saying that you are a beneficiary of human trafficking, you will not pay reparations. In order to understand this, you and also the justice system need to evolve to see the world more granularly than just "race". Slaves had names, they had families, they had descendants. Those descendants have legal standing in the most basic sense: they have been deprived of property. Justice demands that those stolen assets be returned to the rightful, legal owners. Forget "resolving racism". That's a red herring. Just return the stolen property to the rightful owners. That's a much more concrete, actionable goal. Edit: please post response instead of downvoting. Why should this comment disappear?
godmode2019 6y ago
I have a pretty good idea, its about investing in Africa. America has a lot of assets, in the black population, they should encourage people to visit their homeland, on a paid trip. Helping the African economy and helping African Americans create business connects to Africa. Then there should be a programme where African Americans get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land in Africa. France is doing something similar but Americans have a much higher advantage something like 30 million people of African decent. After visiting Africa I think will also help people expand their mind set about the world and that Africa is not a bad place and has lot of opportunities. Africa has a lot of future, plenty of growth. China knows this and has invested a lot into Africa. Taiwan does something similar with a paid trip to visit Taiwan to learn about the culture and history and create business connection between the people. It would not cost anything as well, you just reallocate aid money. To a degree European Africans have been doing this for a long time, plenty of YouTube videos about people moving to Africa to start a business. Fun to watch too. Many of these European Africans have positions of power in the government or private sector. Thoughts?
- zozbot234 6y ago
  It's not a new idea - it was tried in the newly-made country of Liberia. The country has a very screwy subsequent history where, to put it short, the former U.S. slaves became a new oppressing elite and there was all sorts of backlash from the natives.
- winter_blue 6y ago
  > to visit their homeland This might trigger some people. If you used a term like "ancestral region(s)" or something, it might've been less triggering. Firstly, the word "homeland" is not one typically associated with one's country of ancestry. I've rarely ever heard someone use that term. On the contrary, I have heard people say "my ancestors came from X country", or like "my great-grandparents came from Italy". The term "homeland" is usually used for the region where a person's current home is. And this not to mention that even a first-generation immigrant who has lived in X country for a long time, could consider X country to be his true homeland. Secondly, there's an implicit assumption here that "Africa" is the "homeland" of African Americans. I don't need to explain why that's troubling. Thirdly, many of my "African American" friends are of thoroughly mixed ancestry. One such friend did a 23andMe test, and it turned out he had 54% European ancestry (even though physically "he looks black"), 30-something% African ancestry, and a smattering of other ancestry groups (including Native American) for the rest. It would be inaccurate and inappropriate to consider him as someone "of African ancestry" (even though he looks somewhat so). The phenotypes a person's genome expressed do not necessarily correspond to a person's actual genetic ancestry. I could go into more reasons as to why it's not a great term to use, but I think these three reasons make a good case. ---- > get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land While the underlying motivation behind your idea is pretty decent (and a fairly lofty goal I might add); I, for one, would rather prefer direct foreign aid (not loans, but literal foreign aid grants with no expectation of return). There's too much of a risk of corruption with your idea, and bad incentives are baked right into it. Just increase the current foreign aid to developing countries across the board. Do something like the Marshall Plan, where in exchange for free-market economic policies, we directly invest in education, infrastructure, and other things in developing countries. On a secondary note, domestically, I would rather focus on just getting some kind of actual, concrete, meaningful (maybe financial) reparations bill passed through Congress. That alone seems like a huge and almost insurmountable political challenge, and I want to see that tackled somehow. We want to improve the quality of life and access to opportunity for the poorest economic classes in the US, so they can pursue their ambitions and dreams from a similar starting point as more well-off Americans. Achieving this alone would be a huuuge deal in and of itself.
joshxyz 6y ago
Mindblowing this was just 220+ years ago, like even the Egyptian Greek Roman Mongolian Chinese Japanese Spanish empires, always blows my fucking mind how much better our conditions are right now.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  There's likely more slaves now than then. We are doing better on the percentage but doing just as much or more collective harm.
TT3351 6y ago
Often in histories of slavery, the slaves don't speak. If you want to hear their voices, read "Slave Testimony," edited by John Blassingame. It's stunning in length and detail. Not all suffered the same slavery we know today. This passage is by an enslaved (interviewed by the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission) in Kentucky, 1963, named Charlotte "I belong to Gen. Thos. Strange. I have two boys. I pay a dollar a week to him, and support myself and children, and pay my house rent. I have been hiring myself for over fifteen years; I get along very well, and keep the hire paid up. You couldn't pay me to live at home, if I could help myself. My master doesn't supply me with anything -- not even a little medicine -- no more than if I didn't belong to him. Each of my children pays him $2.00 a week. They work in tobacconist shops. I support them. One of my boys is thirteen years old and the other seventeen. They get $2 a week pay. If the boys make more than $2 a week a piece I get what is over; if they don't make that, I have to make it good to him. He has got to have it Saturday night, sure. I have not had good health. Sometimes I am ailing, but I always keep up enough to try to make my wages. I have only one room, and pay three dollars a month for it. I live by washing."
- danans 6y ago
  > Not all suffered the same slavery we know today. What is the "slavery we know today"? Do you mean "American slavery as we understand it today", or "Slavery in the current day"? If the former, then how is the passage you quoted different from our understanding of American slavery? Do you mean to say it was better, worse, or in some other way different?
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    Charlotte's family weren't the well known field slaves or house slaves. They were tenants, renting their own lives from their legal owner for $2/week.
    - bigyikes 6y ago
      What does it even mean to rent from somebody that owns you?
golemiprague 6y ago
TBH I am a bit tired with the obsession with American slavery imposed on the rest of the world. There were far more serious situations all over the world and much more recently. People were serfs, people died in genocide, people were living under totalitarian regimes, people were sent to all kind of "camps". All this happened in the 20th century and some of it happens even these days yet all we hear about is blacks in the US and their slavery, as if this is the most important issue in the last 200 years. Give me a break, I don't want to hear this whinging anymore, slavery ended long time ago and the black in the US live in a far better situation than 80% of the world.

150 points by samclemens 6y ago

This seems like an absolutely indispensable technology for achieving reparations. Most black Americans have ancestors who (slavery) worked a lot of unpaid hours. Having clear metrics on how many slaves there were is a step towards having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be. There are some places in the US which have started, but they're just kind of pulling numbers out of a hat and I don't see that being scalable. But reparations should be paid, if for nothing else, at least for the unpaid hours. Next we need to figure out who profited the most from slaves and where that money is today.

thegrim33 6y ago
You do realize that every civilization that has ever existed has both enslaved others and been enslaved in the past, right? Where do your reparations end? Are you going to forcefully take money from me because African Americans were enslaved generations ago, but then forcefully have money taken from them for the other Africans and other races they themselves enslaved in Africa before that? Where does it end? Do you honestly think that forcefully stealing money from someone at the threat of imprisonment if they don't pay is really going to fly? Do you think putting a gun to my head and taking money from me really makes sense when my ancestors emigrated here only a couple generations ago? How do you foresee this working? How do you foresee this helping anything? Of course my language is extreme, but that's what taxes and similar payments are. It's backed by the force of the government and if I don't pay, eventually someone with a gun will come to put me in prison, and if I refuse, that gun will be pointed at me.
- fredlindemann 6y ago
  > You do realize that every civilization that has ever existed has both enslaved others and been enslaved in the past, right? Do you realize that's an extraordinary claim? You have proof for this, right?
  - SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
    Not defending that guy's claim, but relevant: do you know where the word 'slave' comes from?
  - icebr9 6y ago
    Well.. slaves comes from slavs how have been sold by Tatars. Here in my Slavic country we even have some classical books that write about slavery of our people
    - knolax 6y ago
      Ah yes the two genders: American and Tatar.
  - thegrim33 6y ago
    I know they don't teach real history in school or in the media anymore and you have an entirely skewed perception of history at this point, but it's the truth. Or course the word "every" is probably too much, because there's been exceptions. Just pick any random country/civilization and google "history of slavery in X". For example England, Ireland, Turkey, any country you enter, you'll find a history of it.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      > Ireland Warning; while there really was slavery in Ireland at one time (indeed Dublin was one of the biggest markets in Europe before the Normans suppressed it in the 12th century), if you Google for this you are likely to get a good bit of nonsense. Decent summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_slaves_myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_slaves_myth
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    This seems relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery Obviously GP's claim is a dumb one, because all you have to do is say "Here is one counter example, you're wrong". But looking at that page makes it very clear that slavery is a big part of most of world history.
- deleted 6y ago
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- generalizations 6y ago
  I'm also curious how far back these reparations are supposed to go, and where exactly the responsibility is supposed to lie. Should the people who 'employed' the slaves be responsible, or should the people who enslaved and sold them also be considered at fault? If the second, then note a lot of slaves were initially captured and sold to white slavers by their own kind. [1] [1] http://www.understandingslavery.com/index.php-option=com_content&view=article&id=368&Itemid=227.html http://www.understandingslavery.com/index.php-option=com_con...
  - seph-reed 6y ago
    Well, doing something like this right would obviously be a big discussion. But IMO, if we can figure out how much time/money was stolen and who benefitted the most from it, we can start to have some idea of what's fair. I'm a big fan of UBI as well, and it'd make a lot of sense to have the ancestors of slaves be the first to get onto UBI. But, obviously, this is a group decision and should be based off logic and records; not feelings.
    - generalizations 6y ago
      I want to know the principles involved, and the logic behind them, before we talk about calculating backpay. Those should be stated and defended successfully before anything else. For example, there's examples (IIRC) of former slaves owning slaves themselves; how is that addressed? What moral principles are in play, which can be logically applied to figure out if such a person's progeny receive reparations?
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > I'm a big fan of UBI as well, and it'd make a lot of sense to have the ancestors* of slaves be the first to get onto UBI. But, obviously, this is a group decision and should be based off logic and records; not feelings. *descendants The same issues that make UBI a bad idea will probably preclude the individual payment approach to reparations
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > I'm also curious how far back these reparations are supposed to go, and where exactly the responsibility is supposed to lie. Should the people who 'employed' the slaves be responsible, or should the people who enslaved and sold them also be considered at fault? All those people are dead. The only entities left to sue are legal entities that aren't natural persons. > If the second, then note a lot of slaves were initially captured and sold to white slavers by their own kind. Then governments, corporations, etc. in Africa and Europe can be held to the same standard.
- deleted 6y ago
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- seph-reed 6y ago
  The following is all just an opinion, and obviously this type of subject is a discussion. Doubly so because I'm white. I don't think anyone should pay any more than they benefitted from slavery. The average person has no ancestors who owned slaves, and the only benefits they got were things like cheaper goods and services. Added up over a lifetime, it's probably not a lot. But some people come from ancestors who made a LOT of money off slavery, and the benefits of that have been passed down to them one way or another. So I think different people should be in different brackets based off how much they benefitted from slavery, and those brackets should be proportion of wealth tax over 20-30 years. Not so much to bankrupt anyone, but enough to pay the off the debt. Also, I think it should be treated as the alpha version of UBI. Basically, the ancestors of slaves should be the first to get on the list for UBI because they're kind of opposites of each-other.
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    > Doubly so because I'm white This is a logical fallacy (though a popular one). An idea is either good or bad. The traits of the person speaking the idea are irrelevant, and do not make a good idea bad, or a bad idea good. Further, an idea doesn't become more or less "subject to discussion" as a result of the race of the person speaking it.
    - seph-reed 6y ago
      I agree strongly with what I'm saying, but seriously: there's a good chance of bias here, so it really should be a discussion including all sides. I'm basically claiming, ofc I think my idea is good, but I really don't want to assume it.
  - horns4lyfe 6y ago
    We should probably also consider charging the Europeans that made vast wealth shipping slaves, and the Africans that profited from capturing and selling their countrymen.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- danso 6y ago
  > Do you honestly think that forcefully stealing money from someone at the threat of imprisonment if they don't pay is really going to fly? How many American citizens went to prison because they refused to send in their contribution to the reparation funds for Japanese internment?
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Do you honestly think that forcefully stealing money from someone at the threat of imprisonment if they don't pay is really going to fly? Yeah its called taxation. > You do realize that every civilization that has ever existed has both enslaved others and been enslaved in the past, right? I'm not convinced that this is true. do you have any documentation? > Where do your reparations end? Are you going to forcefully take money from me because African Americans were enslaved generations ago, but then forcefully have money taken from them for the other Africans and other races they themselves enslaved in Africa before that? Where does it end? Claims are against the legal institutions that still exist. People aren't held responsible for the sins of their ancestors, rather the same institutions that benefitted still exist and can be sued for damages. There's a pending claim against them. > Do you think putting a gun to my head and taking money from me really makes sense when my ancestors emigrated here only a couple generations ago? You didn't know that we collect taxes here when you immigrated? > Of course my language is extreme, but that's what taxes and similar payments are. It's backed by the force of the government and if I don't pay, eventually someone with a gun will come to put me in prison, and if I refuse, that gun will be pointed at me. If you're opposed to taxation, arguing against reparations is probably the worst possible way to make your point. Slavery and taxation are quite similar (some would say the difference matters but those people are pro-tax).
redis_mlc 6y ago
> But reparations should be paid, if for nothing else, at least for the unpaid hours. You must be young to speak with such certainty. Post-slavery, black sharecroppers basically made nothing after expenses. So how much was their time actually worth? (An economist will ask this.) Post-slavery, norhern states, which had no slaves, paid the cost of welfare for millions of black families. So how does that factor in? Since there's intermarriage in America, what's a quanta of African blood? How much does one get paid per 1/32? (This is referring to the heated race arguments of the 1800s and 1900s.) Do you have any experience with the above? My family is from the Detroit area, so I'm one of few posters on HN that actually does know something about these issues. The US paid a heavy price during the civil war, one of the biggest issues being related to slavery. Do the northern states get reparations for freeing the slaves? That's the problem when you drag history into modern times. One of the biggest advantages that the US has over other countries is that we don't continue to fight the same battles over and over. Even before corona, black familiies in America struggled greatly with maintaining households and educating their children. Instead of virtue signalling, why don't you contribute to solving today's enormous problems?
- Zigurd 6y ago
  Do the people who had their property stolen by the Nazis have to pay the US for liberating the death camps? Yeah, no. There are simple answers to several of your questions.
  - adventured 6y ago
    Now that you mention it. Modern Germany should pay the US enormous sums in reparations for our role in destroying Nazi Germany, saving Western Europe (which Russia did not do, Russia enslaved half of Europe), freeing people from Nazi death camps, propping up a post-war democratic Germany against the conquering monster to the East. Not just the US of course. Britain and France among others are owed a lot more in reparations for what Germany did and the long-term consequences. The US got repaid - only in part - for its war lending. It has never been paid reparations for its losses in WW2 (including 400,000 military deaths). What's the reparations tally for 400,000 dead, going by the numbers thrown around these days? $10 trillion? Germany and Japan can figure out the split on that and then write some big fat checks to the families in question.
devindotcom 6y ago
Yes, having even just a starting point for numbers on this would be very helpful. Part of the issue is people won't even countenance the concept of reparations, so no one gets as far as saying, well if your great grandfather was enslaved for X years under system Y, here's an estimate of the value of their labor that was stolen by that system. What are the limits? Who will be excepted? How will it be enforced? All good questions! But we can hardly answer them if we refuse to engage with the idea of reparations to begin with.
- generalizations 6y ago
  > But we can hardly answer them if we refuse to engage with the idea of reparations to begin with. That's because the first order of business is to demonstrate that reparations are even a good idea. Engage with those who don't like the idea, and address the concerns they raise, if you can; then deal with minutae.
  - seph-reed 6y ago
    Literally paying a person for their time. If an employer was stealing money from their employees, why would you have to demonstrate they should have to pay off the debt? There is a measurable financial debt here. Also, it sets a precedent: if you care about your decedents and progeny at all, there is nothing to gain from cheating. You may benefit and die before repercussions occur, but all debts must be paid eventually. Justice is hard, but not when it comes to hours worked vs hours paid.
    - generalizations 6y ago
      If that's the principle involved, then I think, though IANAL, the statute of limitations applies. If my employer from 20 years ago cheated me of some pay, I'm pretty sure he's safe from litigation at this point. > if you care about your decedents and progeny at all, there is nothing to gain from cheating. You may benefit and die before repercussions occur, but all debts must be paid eventually. I really hope you're not suggesting that we set a precedent of digging through history to find old debts we might be owed.
adventured 6y ago
edit: expected downvotes of course; nobody dares to engage on this particular discussion about the vast sums the Europeans must be made to pay for their evil deeds (which they've skirted for hundreds of years now, like cowards) > Next we need to figure out who profited the most from slaves and where that money is today. The most? The Europeans. Where is the money? It's in London and Amsterdam among a few other former empires. The Europeans transported around 12.5 millions slaves to the Americas. They owe so much in reparations it will bankrupt half the nations in Western Europe. It's very interesting how the Europeans - who were responsible for African slavery in the Americas - never want to talk about it and how nobody in the US ever asks any questions about how much the Europeans are going to pay. The Europeans transported close to five million slaves to Brazil, nearly ten times as many slaves as were transported to the territory that became the US. One can imagine the reparations tally just for that alone to be in the tens of trillions of dollars. Britain and the Netherlands should just go ahead and write a check equal to 10% of their entire national wealth to African-Americans. That might get things started on the path to justice. All of the assets of the British throne should be liquidated as part of the process and put into the reparations pot.
- MrMan 6y ago
  There were three primary groups of beneficiaries - planters in the America's, slave traders in Europe, and the Kingdoms in Africa who were among the procurers and sellers.
  - adventured 6y ago
    The European empires had all the power: they had the military dominance, they had the means, they had the transport, they had the economic controls, and they benefitted the most accordingly. They also spent centuries torturing Africa. 12.5 million Africans don't end up enslaved and heading to the Americas without the European empires making it happen. The US owes a lot for its part, no question (what I'm saying is not a reduction in the responsibility of the US, I'm properly adding the Europeans to it). The Europeans owe that much more, including for the other 12 million slaves in the rest of the Americas (which, again, nobody ever wants to talk about re reparations, not under any circumstances). Every discussion is always about the US paying reparations. The Europeans were primarily responsible, the US didn't exist yet and banned the import of slaves as one of its first major actions post formation in January 1808. The US has spent two centuries dealing with the consequences of what the European powers did. We have had to deal with the consequences of their slave trade, while they've skirted it almost entirely. What consequences have the Europeans suffered over the past two centuries, for what they did? Almost nothing. It's long past time for the Europeans to pay, big time. It will bankrupt parts of Western Europe. That's how big the reparations number very obviously is.
thedudeabides5 6y ago
People who are holding real estate exposure in the US are the primary beneficiaries. Then you add in redlining, and it starts to look systemtic. So the cure should be appropriate to the disease, make home ownership practical, affordable, and (if you are into reparations) subsidized. Or at least as subsidized as being a rich person is in the mortgage origination process (via that stealth socio-economic test that is your FICO score).
- mfcl 6y ago
  Subsidized home ownership? Don't tell Thomas Sowell that idea. How would that work? You make it easier for people to own, then the prices increase. Do you subsidize more? If so, then it's just 2008 again.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    It can be done indirectly. Fund infrastructure that is needed for housing starts, do other things to remove obstacles to housing starts, etc.
    - cm2187 6y ago
      Let’s set up a state guaranteed mortgage guarantor so the banks can relax their landing standards. And let’s call it Fannie Mae, or perhaps Freddie Mac...
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        Those are more or less direct subsidies.
    - emmelaich 6y ago
      Probably would not end well. https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/collins-v-mnuchin/ https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/collins-v-mnuchi...
      - 6y ago
smt88 6y ago
Disclaimer: my parents are immigrants, and I have absolutely no genealogical connection to American slavery. > having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be I just don't understand how someone can talk about a "well-founded number" for reparations in a serious way. How can you calculate a dollar amount, even within 5 orders of magnitude, for something that happened to millions of people for hundreds of years, affects millions of people today, and we don't have details about any of it? There are many people who: - had African ancestors who sold other Africans to slavers - have a mixture of heritage - immigrated from Africa long after slavery ended It's nonsensical to come up with a dollar amount for even a single person, so how can we possibly do it at scale? Should African Americans descended from slave traders be paying reparations to African Americans descended from slaves? Should African Americans pay reparations to Native Americans for living on land that was stolen from them? There are so few records for any of this, it just seems absolutely insane to me. I am a huge history nerd, and there aren't concrete answers for a lot of things that happened this decade, even with impeccable records.
- D895n9o33436N42 6y ago
  I’m an immigrant, and I’ll never stand for any kind of reparations for descendants of former slaves. Invariably this will come out of tax dollars to which I’m contributing by way of income tax. Why should I be charged for wrongs - however horrible - in which neither myself nor my ancestors were involved? When there was still slavery in America, my people were enslaving members of their own ethnic group back in the old country. Forgive me for not wanting any part of this current dispute. And to those who will certainly tell me that I’ve benefitted from the modern spoils of slavery: I beg to differ. My first decade in the US was all about climbing out of the pit of “you’re not white enough for us because you didn’t go to a top school”. That shit still haunts me to this day.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > Invariably this will come out of tax dollars to which I’m contributing by way of income tax. This is no different than paying taxes for any number of other social programs, however its a singularly bad place to draw the line. > Why should I be charged for wrongs - however horrible - in which neither myself nor my ancestors were involved? Because you aren't being charged. The government that legalized and regulated slavery is being charged. This government is (one of) the legal institutions that permitted slavery and benefitted from slavery that still exists. Therefore they are responsible for satisfying legal claims that are still pending. > When there was still slavery in America, my people were enslaving members of their own ethnic group back in the old country. Forgive me for not wanting any part of this current dispute. If you don't want any part of it then you are free to remain neutral in discussions of this issue. By arguing against reparations you are participating in the dispute. > And to those who will certainly tell me that I’ve benefitted from the modern spoils of slavery: I beg to differ. My first decade in the US was all about climbing out of the pit of “you’re not white enough for us because you didn’t go to a top school”. That doesn't challenge the assertion that you benefitted from the accumulated capital that was in part built on the forced labor of slaves. > That shit still haunts me to this day. I'm truly sorry for your traumatic experience. p.s. I've upvoted this comment because while I disagree with the substance, it raises important arguments that need to be responded to and the comment itself contributes to the discussion. I'd like to ask down voters to consider why they feel this comment needs to be suppressed because I disagree with their opinion on the value of the comment and its contribution to the discussion.
NinjaSaves 6y ago
"Achieving reparations" is difficult language for me to accept. It is "thinking past the sale" that does not treat the subject with the necessary fair-minded big picture consideration. It's not clear that reparations are a good idea in practice, or something to be "achieved," or even strived for (they might do more harm in practice to the group they intend to protect, as many well-intentioned and politically extremist ideologies do) not to mention any considerations involving whether it would be possible to sustain, or affordable, etc. Be careful with your thinking if you care about being even-handed with your empathy. Being empathetic is a fantastic thing, but don't allow cynical people to hijack your empathy.
- throwaway535 6y ago
  > It's not clear that reparations are a good idea in practice, or something to be "achieved," or even strived for (they might do more harm in practice to the group they intend to protect, This is a very patronizing argument. If someone breaks into your bank account and steals your cash, then later is caught. There is no valid line of reasoning that goes "well I'll only give the money back if you tell me how you plan to spend it first". "Oh, you planned to spend it all on bubble gum and sweets? Then no I don't need to give it back, because I think that might do you more harm than good." Argue on the merits of the topic, not based on knowing what's best for people.
  - OptionX 6y ago
    Well, by your own analogy. If both you and the robber have been dead for 300+ years would it make sense to make the robbers family pay your descendants for it? Keep in mind none of the people had contact with anyone remotely involved with the original robbery or had any way to influence it or impact it. Should the sons pay for the sins of the fathers? Pretty sure I could find someone in your ancestral line that commit a crime, can I convict you for it? So, yeah, the merits are kinda low to.
    - throwaway535 6y ago
      Great discussion, let's continue. So my dad goes and steals your dad's land. He give me the land as his son. I split it in half and give half to a friend of mine. The investigation occurs and determine this land was stolen and should be returned. I don't think the argument of, "sorry won't return it because I didn't steal it, my dad did" holds much water. Nor the argument of, "nope I won't return it because a friend of mine that has nothing to do with the theft is benefiting from it" holds much water either as reasons for your family to not get their land returned. And related, possession of stolen goods is a fairly common legal concept. Regardless of penalty, at minimum once discovered the goods are returned, even if they'd previously be sold or given to someone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_of_stolen_goods#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_of_stolen_goods#Uni...

_iyig 6y ago

In a similar vein, George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate - today privately owned and operated as a living history museum - has an excellent series of exhibits which puts names and stories to the Washington family’s enslaved servants and laborers: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/groundbreaking-exhibit-mount-vernon-slaves-speak-and-history-listens-180960747/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/groundbreaking-exhibi... The re-enactors are all fantastic and very knowledgeable. It’s unsettling talking to a black re-enactor who’s firmly in-character as a slave, which I suppose is the point: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MVFdsqQby9o https://youtube.com/watch?v=MVFdsqQby9o

RuggedPineapple 6y ago
Washington is always the one that gets me. His will freed his slaves not when he died but when his wife died. So he knew what was right but intentionally allowed that only after he could be assured it wouldn't cause any hardship to him or his spouse. That feels more evil then just being a creature of the time. That's knowing better but making a conscious decision to embrace evil because it makes your life easier.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  > That's knowing better but making a conscious decision to embrace evil because it makes your life easier. The average middle/upper class person today is the same, living on the fruit of foreign slave and subsistence laborers for clothing, food, and toys, and eating from the suffering of factory animals.
  - RuggedPineapple 6y ago
    wouldn't disagree with that much.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  In my experience, this is the behavior of 98% of the population. You're welcome to judge it as you may, but it is not at all surprising.
- 6y ago

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

A worthy cause. Too bad they feel the need to run their own platform instead of contributing to wikidata. They're using the same software, and the data falls squarely within Wikidata's scope. Even worse that they feel the need to stamp this with a CC license. Not only does this make it incompatible with the CC0/public domain requirement. I consider it borderline offensive to assert copyright over the basic facts of someone's life: https://enslaved.org/record/person/Q405665 https://enslaved.org/record/person/Q405665 This project obviously involves a lot of work. And, taken as a whole, some of that work is creative in nature. But individual records are not. Luckily, US law does not recognise copyright for databases.

huskyr 6y ago
I think there's something to be said for putting this data in their own Wikibase instance. There are a lot of items here, including many items like 'Inventory of person X in year Y'. Adding so many items to Wikidata would not have been without its controversy. Also, i could imagine they need a lot of properties that are not available, or aren't used in the same way on Wikidata. There is a reason why all museums and other heritage institutions use their own databases and thesauri instead of putting it all in the same database. However, the beauty of using a linked data platform is of course that it's easy to link back to other sources, like Wikidata. I could definitely see that in the future Wikidata could do an import of many of these items, or link properly to them using a new property. I do agree that it's unfortunate that they're licensing everything under CC-BY instead of CC-Zero.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Yes, there are legitimate reasons here, and the presentation is, indeed, very nice. There's some momentum enabling various hybrid models for wikibase, and allowing projects such as this to enjoy the freedom of an individual platform, while still using Wikidata as the backend for some or most or all of the data seems promising. I disagree with the idea that this data is inferior in some way to what is expected for inclusion in WD. Their sourcing seems to be impeccable, better than maybe 80 % of WD at the statement-level ("Imported from cebwiki") and certainly adequate on the item-level. Data on individual slaves also strikes me as far more useful for the possibilities that Wikidata offers than academic papers. The latter are important in their own right, but metadata on journal articles is of little use unless you're studying impact factors, academic careers, or the rise and fall of academic disciplines. Structured data on slavery neatly connects with geography, economics, culture, and really any aspect society today. I imagine there were changes in regions of origin over time, for example, and it'd be interesting to see if these can still be found in, say, regional culinary preferences, language, or music.

elliekelly 6y ago

Off topic but what does “tolerably spare made” mean? Is a euphemism for slightly overweight?

neallindsay 6y ago
I think it means skinny.
deleted 6y ago
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jazzyjackson 6y ago
I like to use etymonline.com to find how a word has been used over time, for "spare" I find "sense of "lacking in substance; lean, gaunt; flimsy, thin; poor," is recorded from 1540" etymonline.com/word/spare
- elliekelly 6y ago
  Thanks! That makes a lot more sense. I was thinking “spare” as in “extra” and I thought it was odd a slave would be overweight.
  - billfruit 6y ago
    Spare also means bare, lean, etc.
jonnyone 6y ago
A search on Google Books for "spare made" gave me this: http://tiny.cc/2ip6tz http://tiny.cc/2ip6tz Which gives us "spare made", "well made", and "well set" as descriptions. A similar "ethnography" (http://tiny.cc/3ip6tz http://tiny.cc/3ip6tz) gives me this: "Although from their wiry and spare conformation of body, the Villees look tall, they are not so in reality." Which I would think implies thin.

Zigurd 6y ago

To all those who say it is "impossible" to right the wrongs of history: My family were refugees from a war that resulted in both the Nazis and Soviet Union expropriating property in their home country. Eventually they, and other branches of my family got their property restored or compensated. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, property in many of the former Soviet Union nations was returned to rightful owners, or compensation was issued. Expropriated property is restored in many cases. Compensation for expropriation is commonplace. American slavery was a business, and businesses keep records. There are no valid excuses.

iaHN 6y ago
There is a pervasive fear that admitting that the US owes the descendants of slaves something could potentially validate the complaints black people have about other issues in America. See the posts about Timnit Gebru for comments depicting the demands of black people as "too disruptive".
- 01100011 6y ago
  Really? I think the resistance to reparations comes from folks like me who don't see a reason we should pay anything. Most of my ancestors are German immigrants to the northeast US who arrived after slavery was abolished. The remainder were poor Scotts Irish who continued to live in poverty in northern Appalachia. I understand, but do not agree with, the logical hoops many jump through to justify indebtedness to all current Americans. I also do not think direct reparations are the best approach to resolving the continuing racism in America.
  - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
    A reparations law suit would most likely involve a court of law in which victims and benificiaries are identified, damages are calculated, and assets change hands. This fantasy where you just have to give up your personal property for no good reason is just a fantasy. It's not the way the law works. There will be a reason, it will be documented by a trail of papers and professional judges and attorneys will agree that it is fair. If there is no paper trail saying that you are a beneficiary of human trafficking, you will not pay reparations. In order to understand this, you and also the justice system need to evolve to see the world more granularly than just "race". Slaves had names, they had families, they had descendants. Those descendants have legal standing in the most basic sense: they have been deprived of property. Justice demands that those stolen assets be returned to the rightful, legal owners. Forget "resolving racism". That's a red herring. Just return the stolen property to the rightful owners. That's a much more concrete, actionable goal. Edit: please post response instead of downvoting. Why should this comment disappear?

godmode2019 6y ago

I have a pretty good idea, its about investing in Africa. America has a lot of assets, in the black population, they should encourage people to visit their homeland, on a paid trip. Helping the African economy and helping African Americans create business connects to Africa. Then there should be a programme where African Americans get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land in Africa. France is doing something similar but Americans have a much higher advantage something like 30 million people of African decent. After visiting Africa I think will also help people expand their mind set about the world and that Africa is not a bad place and has lot of opportunities. Africa has a lot of future, plenty of growth. China knows this and has invested a lot into Africa. Taiwan does something similar with a paid trip to visit Taiwan to learn about the culture and history and create business connection between the people. It would not cost anything as well, you just reallocate aid money. To a degree European Africans have been doing this for a long time, plenty of YouTube videos about people moving to Africa to start a business. Fun to watch too. Many of these European Africans have positions of power in the government or private sector. Thoughts?

zozbot234 6y ago
It's not a new idea - it was tried in the newly-made country of Liberia. The country has a very screwy subsequent history where, to put it short, the former U.S. slaves became a new oppressing elite and there was all sorts of backlash from the natives.
winter_blue 6y ago
> to visit their homeland This might trigger some people. If you used a term like "ancestral region(s)" or something, it might've been less triggering. Firstly, the word "homeland" is not one typically associated with one's country of ancestry. I've rarely ever heard someone use that term. On the contrary, I have heard people say "my ancestors came from X country", or like "my great-grandparents came from Italy". The term "homeland" is usually used for the region where a person's current home is. And this not to mention that even a first-generation immigrant who has lived in X country for a long time, could consider X country to be his true homeland. Secondly, there's an implicit assumption here that "Africa" is the "homeland" of African Americans. I don't need to explain why that's troubling. Thirdly, many of my "African American" friends are of thoroughly mixed ancestry. One such friend did a 23andMe test, and it turned out he had 54% European ancestry (even though physically "he looks black"), 30-something% African ancestry, and a smattering of other ancestry groups (including Native American) for the rest. It would be inaccurate and inappropriate to consider him as someone "of African ancestry" (even though he looks somewhat so). The phenotypes a person's genome expressed do not necessarily correspond to a person's actual genetic ancestry. I could go into more reasons as to why it's not a great term to use, but I think these three reasons make a good case. ---- > get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land While the underlying motivation behind your idea is pretty decent (and a fairly lofty goal I might add); I, for one, would rather prefer direct foreign aid (not loans, but literal foreign aid grants with no expectation of return). There's too much of a risk of corruption with your idea, and bad incentives are baked right into it. Just increase the current foreign aid to developing countries across the board. Do something like the Marshall Plan, where in exchange for free-market economic policies, we directly invest in education, infrastructure, and other things in developing countries. On a secondary note, domestically, I would rather focus on just getting some kind of actual, concrete, meaningful (maybe financial) reparations bill passed through Congress. That alone seems like a huge and almost insurmountable political challenge, and I want to see that tackled somehow. We want to improve the quality of life and access to opportunity for the poorest economic classes in the US, so they can pursue their ambitions and dreams from a similar starting point as more well-off Americans. Achieving this alone would be a huuuge deal in and of itself.

joshxyz 6y ago

Mindblowing this was just 220+ years ago, like even the Egyptian Greek Roman Mongolian Chinese Japanese Spanish empires, always blows my fucking mind how much better our conditions are right now.

maxerickson 6y ago
There's likely more slaves now than then. We are doing better on the percentage but doing just as much or more collective harm.

TT3351 6y ago

Often in histories of slavery, the slaves don't speak. If you want to hear their voices, read "Slave Testimony," edited by John Blassingame. It's stunning in length and detail. Not all suffered the same slavery we know today. This passage is by an enslaved (interviewed by the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission) in Kentucky, 1963, named Charlotte "I belong to Gen. Thos. Strange. I have two boys. I pay a dollar a week to him, and support myself and children, and pay my house rent. I have been hiring myself for over fifteen years; I get along very well, and keep the hire paid up. You couldn't pay me to live at home, if I could help myself. My master doesn't supply me with anything -- not even a little medicine -- no more than if I didn't belong to him. Each of my children pays him $2.00 a week. They work in tobacconist shops. I support them. One of my boys is thirteen years old and the other seventeen. They get $2 a week pay. If the boys make more than $2 a week a piece I get what is over; if they don't make that, I have to make it good to him. He has got to have it Saturday night, sure. I have not had good health. Sometimes I am ailing, but I always keep up enough to try to make my wages. I have only one room, and pay three dollars a month for it. I live by washing."

danans 6y ago
> Not all suffered the same slavery we know today. What is the "slavery we know today"? Do you mean "American slavery as we understand it today", or "Slavery in the current day"? If the former, then how is the passage you quoted different from our understanding of American slavery? Do you mean to say it was better, worse, or in some other way different?
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  Charlotte's family weren't the well known field slaves or house slaves. They were tenants, renting their own lives from their legal owner for $2/week.
  - bigyikes 6y ago
    What does it even mean to rent from somebody that owns you?

golemiprague 6y ago

TBH I am a bit tired with the obsession with American slavery imposed on the rest of the world. There were far more serious situations all over the world and much more recently. People were serfs, people died in genocide, people were living under totalitarian regimes, people were sent to all kind of "camps". All this happened in the 20th century and some of it happens even these days yet all we hear about is blacks in the US and their slavery, as if this is the most important issue in the last 200 years. Give me a break, I don't want to hear this whinging anymore, slavery ended long time ago and the black in the US live in a far better situation than 80% of the world.