All negros want is a pat on the head from mzungus
The debate rages on:
[SIZE=7]McConnell on reparations for slavery: Not a ‘good idea’[/SIZE]
McConnell spoke a day before a Democratic-led House subcommittee was scheduled to hold a hearing on reparations.
Author: LAURIE KELLMAN , Associated Press
Published: 3:48 PM CDT June 18, 2019
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday rejected reparations for slavery in part because it would be hard to know whom to pay.
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The Kentucky Republican spoke to reporters on the eve of a rare House hearing on what compensation, if any, the U.S. might owe for the economic and other damage done by slavery. The session Wednesday before a Democratic-led subcommittee is Congress’ first on the issue in years.
see video.
Asked about reparations, McConnell responded: “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea.”
“I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” McConnell said. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We elected an African American president.”
“I think we’re always a work in progress in this country, but no one currently alive was responsible for [slavery] and I don’t think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it,” McConnell added. “No, I don’t think reparations are a good idea.”
The Senate majority leader made his remarks one day before the House Judiciary Subcommittee is scheduled to have its first hearing on reparations, an issue which the current group of Democratic presidential contenders have expressed varying degrees of support for.
Wednesday is “Juneteenth,” a celebration of the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with the news that the Civil War was over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas were free.
What all this Immigration Debate in the US is all about:
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Fiery debate has erupted at the first congressional hearing in a decade to explore whether the descendants of US slaves should be compensated.
Some witnesses said reparations would damage the relationship between white and black Americans, while others said it was imperative to achieve justice.
Several Democratic White House hopefuls have taken up the idea of reparations.
But Republican leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear no reparations bill will pass while he controls the Senate.
The House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee on the constitution, civil rights and civil liberties said Wednesday’s hearing would examine “the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice”.
Lawmakers considered a bill proposed by Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson-Lee to set up a commission to study the question of reparations for slavery.
Hundreds of people lined up outside the hearing venue and filled the overflow room to watch.
[SIZE=6]What are the arguments against reparations?[/SIZE]
Republican witness Coleman Hughes, an African-American writer and New York student, argued during the hearing that such restitution “would insult many black Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors”.
“If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further, making it harder to build the political coalitions required to solve the problems facing black people today.”
The second Republican witness, African-American former NFL player Burgess Owens, also rejected the idea, saying: “What strangers did to other strangers 200 years ago has nothing to do with us because that has nothing to do with our DNA.”
Congressman Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was booed as he spoke against “the injustice of monetary reparations from current taxpayers for the sins of a small subset of Americans from many generations ago”.
The hearing was held on Juneteenth, which commemorates 19 June 1865 when Texas slaves finally learned they were free, two-and-a-half years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
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Actor Danny Glover, whose great-grandmother was a slave, testified in favor of reparations.
[SIZE=6]What was the case in favor?[/SIZE]
Actor Danny Glover told the panel that reparations would cure “the damages inflicted by enslavement and forced racial exclusionary policies”.
“A national reparations policy is a moral, democratic and economic imperative,” Mr Glover said.
Economist Julianne Malveaux emphasized that she wanted lawmakers to address structural inequalities affecting black Americans.
“When zipcode [postal code] determines what kind of school that you go to, when zip code determines what kind of food you eat - these are the vestiges of enslavement that a lot of people don’t want to deal with.”
Lawmakers also heard from writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose 15,000-word cover story for the Atlantic magazine in 2014, The Case for Reparations, reignited the whole debate.
He said: “Enslavement reigned for 250 years on these shores. When it ended, this country could have extended its hollow principles of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to all. But America had other things in mind.”