U.S. owes black people reparations for a history of 'racial terrorism,' says DELUSIONAL U.N. AFFILIATED panel

Ishaan Tharoor
Washington Post
Wed, 28 Sep 2016 16:09 UTC

© Fox Searchlight Pictures

Image from the movie 12 years a slave.

The history of slavery in the United States justifies reparations for African Americans, argues a recent report by a U.N.-affiliated group based in Geneva.

Comment: That's odd. The United States should pay today for the ex post facto crimes of 8% of its families in 1860? Wait, Americans can't all be descendants of just 8%, can they? Also, the United States was sold only about 3% of the 10,700,000 African slaves (that survived the journey), the rest went to South America (You know, the US' backyard). Can't they just send them the bill? In the end, that comes out to about 388,000 African slaves in the US. Today there are about 37,000,000 Blacks in the United States, so how are reparations gonna be divvied up?

This conclusion was part of a study by the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a body that reports to the international organization's High Commissioner on Human Rights. The group of experts, which includes leading human rights lawyers from around the world, presented its findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday, pointing to the continuing link between present injustices and the dark chapters of American history.

Comment: Curious. Human Rights Lawyers. How convenient they find evidence of a need for their services...

"In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent," the report stated. "Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching."

Comment: Some 640,000 civil war casualties; not a real commitment. More people died in the war to eliminate slavery than there were slaves.

• Civil Rights Act of 1964: Title VII (Equal Employment Opportunities) (FindLaw)
  Prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.

• Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Intentional Employment Discrimination) (FindLaw)
  To amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to strengthen and improve Federal civil rights laws, to provide for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination, to clarify provisions regarding disparate impact actions, and for other purposes.

• Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (FindLaw)
  Protecting persons in institutions (including residents in government-run nursing homes, and prisoners) from unconstitutional conditions.

• Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (FindLaw)
  Provides for equitable and impartial relief operations, without discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, nationality, sex, age, or economic status.

• The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (FindLaw)
  Prohibits creditors from discriminating against credit applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or because an applicant receives income from a public assistance program.

• Fair Housing Act (FindLaw)
  Prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability.

• U.S. Code Title 42, Chapter 21 -- Civil Rights (FindLaw)
  Title 42, Chapter 21 of the U.S. Code prohibits discrimination against persons based on age, disability, gender, race, national origin, and religion (among other things) in a number of settings -- including education, employment, access to businesses and buildings, federal services, and more. Chapter 21 is where a number of federal acts related to civil rights have been codified -- including the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act.

• Voting Rights Act of 1965 (FindLaw)
  Prohibits the denial or restriction of the right to vote, and forbids discriminatory voting practices nationwide.

No, nothing at all.

Citing the past year's spate of police officers killing unarmed African American men, the panel warned against "impunity for state violence," which has created, in its words, a "human rights crisis" that "must be addressed as a matter of urgency."

The panel drew its recommendations, which are nonbinding and unlikely to influence Washington, after a fact-finding mission in the United States in January. At the time, it hailed the strides taken to make the American criminal justice system more equitable but pointed to the corrosive legacy of the past.

"Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another, continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African Americans today," it said in a statement. "The dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion amongst the US population."

In its report, it specifically dwells on the extrajudicial murders that were a product of an era of white supremacy:

Lynching was a form of racial terrorism that has contributed to a legacy of racial inequality that the United States must address. Thousands of people of African descent were killed in violent public acts of racial control and domination and the perpetrators were never held accountable.

The reparations could come in a variety of forms, according to the panel, including "a formal apology, health initiatives, educational opportunities ... psychological rehabilitation, technology transfer and financial support, and debt cancellation."

Comment: We hate to be the ones to point this out, but two wrongs don't make a right. Not to mention the fact that this simply isn't going to happen. Even if you could argue in general for its moral correctness, it's not economically practical. The only thing these suggestions do is pander to the left and enrage "the right." This is all just fanning the flames of "The Race War", dividing society along ideologically insane lines.

To be sure, such initiatives are nowhere in the cards, even after the question of reparations arose again two years ago when surfaced by the groundbreaking work of American journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Separately, a coalition of Caribbean nations is calling for reparations from their former European imperial powers for the impact of slavery, colonial genocide and the toxic racial laws that shaped life for the past two centuries in these countries. Their efforts are fitful, and so far not so fruitful.

When asked by reporters to comment on the tone of the American presidential election campaign on Monday, the working group's chairman, Ricardo A. Sunga of the Philippines, expressed concern about "hate speech ... xenophobia [and] Afrophobia" that he felt was prevalent in the campaign, although he didn't specifically call out Republican candidate Donald Trump.

"We are very troubled that these are on the rise," said Sunga.

Take it away, Dave Chappelle:

Comment: Something really needs to be said about xenophobia, afrophobia, transphobia and all these other nonsense phobias.

It all started with a public relations coup by homosexual activists and writers (e.g. Andre Gide), where they put out the idea (or implied it) that all or many men were secretly homosexual. This implication has, and still does, saturate media - especially films and literature.

This tactic was based on the "I know you are, but what am I?" schoolyard game, where a reversive blockade is used with projection to insist that a person criticizing you is doing so only as a projection of their internal feelings, which are hidden. The term itself is from a porn rag of the 1960s called Screw, and the term was coined by George Weinberg, a psychologist and activist who was instrumental in getting homosexuality removed from the DSM.

Because of the years of often playful insinuation that those who dislike gays do so only because they "doth protest too much", the term quickly mixed its original pseudo-scientific semantics with this popular idea, and therefore had a great deal of implicit meaning.

To call someone homophobic was and still is to imply that they secretly are homosexual, but are just a "closet case."

The success of this term in debate and rhetoric was at first devastating as it was covertly ad hominem, and mild-mannered conservatives and fist-pumping evangelicals would quickly become flustered at the insinuation, in some cases becoming enraged and saying irrational things.

The modern acceptance of homosexuality has dulled the term's teeth a bit, but there's life in it yet.

Social Justice Warriors in the media and on the internet, with little understanding of semantics and language, wanted to borrow the power of the term homophobic, so they began adding "phobia" to any identity they wanted social justice for: transphobia, afrophobia, islamophobia, xenophobia ...

Unfortunately, this doesn't really work. No one believes that anyone who doesn't like trans-people secretly wants to be one, because there hasn't been a long-standing media and film narrative to lend it credibility. No one who is called islamophobic secretly wants to convert to Islam; they are emotionally-toothless terms. The only power they hold, is the immediate power of structural censorship - the so called "No-Platforming" on various media outlets and websites.