From: Olga Bourlin (fauxever@sprynet.com)
Date: Mon Jul 30 2001 - 08:49:46 MDT
From: "James Rogers" <jamesr@best.com>
There are even ethnic trends
> and problems among some white ethnicities today that can be traced back to
> officially tolerated abuse during the 19th and 18th centuries. If you
> support reparations for blacks in principle, you are allowing reparations
> for groups too numerous to count that can claim legitimate grievances. I
> simply don't see the value in resurrecting every single historical wrong
> ever perpetrated in this country.
Couldn't let this one slide. Every single wrong perpetrated in this country
does not need to be resurrected. Most of the wrongs have "corrected
themselves," anyway.
The black experience has proven to be more entrenched due to its length of
time (hundreds of years), and due to unique particulars. There may be some
similarities (of wrongs experienced by blacks to those experienced by other
ethnic groups) ... but there's fundamentally no comparison:
Ten million to twenty-five million (estimates vary) Africans dead on slave
ships before arriving to our shores for the privilege of being sold; 246
years of slavery (something not experienced by any other
ethnic/racial group) (rape, murder, torture, and lynching of slaves legal);
100 more years of de jure segregation (rape, murder, torture and lynching of
black American citizens tolerated); still ongoing de facto segregation after
all those hundreds of years of mean yesterdays; a broken underclass - like
no other underclass in the United States - today.
Olga
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