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tazzygirl -> RE: African complicity in the slave trade.... (4/26/2010 11:21:31 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Silence8
quote:
ORIGINAL: Elisabella
So yeah. Reparations. Anyone who complains about slavery after receiving them will be fined an amount equal to the reparations they were given. I'd vote for it.
Reminds me of laws against holocaust denial...
Although, after all, the Jews did get Israel, err, right?
Oh get off your whiney ass soap box. You want to label me a bigot? have at it. im half sioux. I didnt support the bail out... but WE the people were not asked.
Reparations is one of those topics that keeps popping up from time to time to cause a shit storm in order to divert the attention away from the issues at hand.
Your ancestors were held in bondage (assuming they were) for 400 years.
So were mine.
They had to fight for their freedom.
So did mine.
Yours was given land and a mule.
Every inch of land promised to natives was taken away. They finally, in order to settle the unrest and killings of whites, gave the natives reservation land... in the desert.
A check wont help anyone. Education, health and a roof over their heads will. If you dont like the way education is run, get involved, local level on up. Demand changes. Work towards those changes. The Civil Rights movement began that way. There is strength in numbers.
Here is some interesting reading, since someone insisted i threw in a straw man argument.
Barriers to economic development
Today, other than tribes successfully running casinos, many tribes struggle. There are an estimated 2.1 million Native Americans, and they are the most impoverished of all ethnic groups. According to the 2000 Census, an estimated 400,000 Native Americans reside on reservation land. While some tribes have had success with gaming, only 40% of the 562 federally recognized tribes operate casinos.[139] According to a 2007 survey by the U.S. Small Business Administration, only 1 percent of Native Americans own and operate a business.[140] Native Americans rank at the bottom of nearly every social statistic: highest teen suicide rate of all minorities at 18.5 per 100,000, highest rate of teen pregnancy, highest high school drop out rate at 54%, lowest per capita income, and unemployment rates between 50% to 90%.
The barriers to economic development on Native American reservations often cited by others and two experts Joseph Kalt[141] and Stephen Cornell[142] of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard University, in their classic report: What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development,[143] are as follows (incomplete list, see full Kalt & Cornell report):
Lack of access to capital.
Lack of human capital (education, skills, technical expertise) and the means to develop it.
Reservations lack effective planning.
Reservations are poor in natural resources.
Reservations have natural resources, but lack sufficient control over them.
Reservations are disadvantaged by their distance from markets and the high costs of transportation.
Tribes cannot persuade investors to locate on reservations because of intense competition from non-Native American communities.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is inept, corrupt, and/or uninterested in reservation development.
Tribal politicians and bureaucrats are inept or corrupt.
On-reservation factionalism destroys stability in tribal decisions.
The instability of tribal government keeps outsiders from investing.
Entrepreneurial skills and experience are scarce.
Tribal cultures get in the way.
One of the major barriers for overcoming the economic strife is the lack of entrepreneurial knowledge and experience across Indian reservations. “A general lack of education and experience about business is a significant challenge to prospective entrepreneurs,” also says another report on Native American entrepreneurship by the Northwest Area Foundation in 2004. “Native American communities that lack entrepreneurial traditions and recent experiences typically do not provide the support that entrepreneurs need to thrive. Consequently, experiential entrepreneurship education needs to be embedded into school curricula and after-school and other community activities. This would allow students to learn the essential elements of entrepreneurship from a young age and encourage them to apply these elements throughout life.”[144]. One publication devoted to addressing these issues is Rez Biz magazine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#Societal_discrimination.2C_racism_and_conflicts
Just when you believe you have it so bad, along comes another group that has it worse. Gates should be advocating improvements in the educational system and health care instead of insiting on checks... checks that will quickly be gone, the people they were intended to help left with little to show for it, and not a single change in their situation.
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