Slavery profits are aim of bill

I earnestly hope these initiatives are well constructed. Clearly, the method of 'legislative demand' is catching on.

I am in favor of such demand where there is reason to believe there is continuation of the exploitation of chattel slavery.

What is the value of having power if there is refusal to use it.

PEACE

Jim Chester

"The bill also comes against the backdrop of a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York in 2002 on behalf of 35 million blacks.

The lawsuit asks for billions in reparations from the bank FleetBoston (which is now owned by Bank of America), the insurance company Aetna and railroad company CSX for money that it alleges their corporate predecessors made in the slave trade."

"Involvement in slavery is difficult to track through human - or corporate - generations, Hood said.

"Going back and trying to punish companies involved with slavery is kind of like trying to punish people involved in slavery. It's impossible - they're dead"


Just like the individual citizen,.......... a group of citizens, an organization, a business, a corporate body, government itself, etc., all have the right to exercise their U.S. Constitutional rights, namely the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination.

Unless the plaintiffs in this lawsuit have done their own investigation to provide factual information in proof as to the names of the individuals, the circumstances, "the how ?", "the when?", "the what?", criminal intent, fraud, theft, civil tort violation, the actual practice of slavery for profit, etc., slim chance exists that any of the individuals, owners, companies, etc., are going to volunteer such information, that will incriminate them, to which they can be held responsible for damages.

************************

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fugitives15apr15,1,7127790,print.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

THE NATION

10,000 Arrested in U.S. Fugitive Roundup
The sweep was led by the Marshals Service but included 3,100 officers from across the country.

By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer

April 15, 2005

WASHINGTON "” In an operation that was equal parts police work, public relations and lobbying, the Justice Department said Thursday that it had conducted an unusual weeklong sweep with state and local authorities that led to the arrest of more than 10,000 fugitives wanted for murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and drug offenses.

The dragnet, which the government said it orchestrated to coincide with National Crime Victims' Rights Week, involved more than 3,100 law enforcement officers from across the country and a cross section of agents from 25 federal agencies, led by the Marshals Service.

The sweep, accompanied by camera crews whose footage was aired on news programs after the arrests were announced, netted 162 murder suspects, 154 alleged gang members and 106 unregistered sex offenders, as well as guns, drugs, cash and property.

The elaborate statistics were rolled out at a news conference at which officials said the exercise was an opportunity to show the benefits of cooperative law enforcement in an age of terrorism "” and to score points with members of Congress.

The roundup was funded under a program that Congress established four years ago requiring the Marshals Service to help state and local authorities clear the streets of the most violent criminals. The program has netted more than 147,000 fugitives.

The arrests represented a fraction of the number of fugitives taken into custody by law enforcement authorities every year, and 1% of the nearly 1 million fugitives in the FBI national database, according to the Marshals Service.

Officials conceded that most if not all the suspects picked up during the weeklong roundup, which began April 4 and ended Sunday, eventually would have been apprehended.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales said the effort had yielded "the highest number of arrests ever recorded for a single initiative of its kind."

The operation had its own acronym, FALCON "” for Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally.

Among those taken into custody was an alleged sex offender with prior arrests for arson and drug dealing who was caught in the cellar of a home in Atlanta. Police in Dallas arrested a man sought in connection with a shooting in February.

The arrests included 16 international fugitives, 11 of whom authorities said had committed crimes in the U.S. and fled to countries including Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Britain and Canada.

Also arrested were four suspects wanted in Mexico for homicide who had entered the U.S. illegally.

One of the Mexican fugitives, Sebastian Obando, had been the subject of a warrant outstanding since November 1997 in connection with a kidnapping and extortion plot involving a Mexican businessman who was killed.

He was arrested April 7 by the Marshals Service in Los Angeles after Mexican authorities had approached U.S. officials in March with tips on his whereabouts.

Andres Jimenez, a Marshals Service inspector in Los Angeles, said the nationwide operation hastened the arrest by increasing the surveillance that agents were able to conduct.

"We had three possible locations for him, and so instead of watching one for 24 hours, we were able to go to all three, and they dragged him at one of the three," Jimenez said.

There were 176 arrests in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

In all, the government said 10,340 fugitives were apprehended, with more than 40% of the cases involving drug suspects.

Officials said they were able to clear 13,861 arrest warrants. Some fugitives had more than one warrant outstanding; others turned out to be dead.

The cost to the Marshals Service was $900,000, mainly for state and local police working overtime, according to Robert Finan, the Marshals Service assistant director for investigative services. Agents also suffered three dog bites, Finan said. Another officer was injured in an auto accident, he said.

The show of force drew on an array of federal resources, including officers from the inspector general offices of the Social Security Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department.

Such sweeps not only take fugitives off the streets but can send a message to criminals that "the long arm of the law is still there and that they can't stop looking over their shoulder," said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston.

"But that assumes these dragnets are done repeatedly, not just one time during victims awareness week," Fox said. "If that were the case, the fugitive would probably take a vacation during victims awareness week and go hide. The element of surprise is important."

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

************************
In the article above, the authorities have the names, the circumstances, "The what?", "The when?", "The how much was stolen?", the names of the perpetrators and the victims, etc.

The actual perpetrators are both alive, and on the run!

...as for going after those who were involved in the slave trade, it is going to be very, very, very difficult if not impossible, because the perpetrators are dead, the slaves are dead, and it is going to be exceedingly difficult to prove that any heir of a perpetrator contributed to, participated in, or benefited from slavery.

I'm willing to bet heavily that, few, if any, of the surviving heirs of any perpetrator, or group of perpetrators are going to volunteer any information to incriminate themselves, to the point that the evidence can be used to pay any claim against their assets.

"The how?", "The what was stolen?", "The who's responsible?", "The when as to the specifics of when it happened?" are very cloudy at best, and slim chance exists where any surviving heir is going to incriminate any living or dead relative, in the name of providing evidence to support any claim for slavery reparations.

Unlike the 10,000 fugitives on the run who are still living, and who have been caught with the loot,....... slim chance exists that the perpetrators involved in slavery for profit, or otherwise, will be brought to justice, because chasing a ghost is a mission impossible!

Sincerely,

Michael Lofton

Lofton, have you ever heard of the terms "Subpoena" or "Discovery"? Both are instruments to acquire the "who's", "whens" and how muchs" that you believe are so difficult to obtain.

quote:

Originally posted by Kweli4Real:
Lofton, have you ever heard of the terms "Subpoena" or "Discovery"? Both are instruments to acquire the "who's", "whens" and how muchs" that you believe are so difficult to obtain.

Subpoena- A supoena is a command to appear at a certain time and place to give testimony upon a certain matter.

Source: Blacks Law Dictionary 5th Edition

(This definitely does not equate to volunteering information because this is an order to appear.)

Discovery- In a general sense, the ascertainment of that which was previously unknown; the disclosure or coming to light of what was previously hidden; the acquisition of notice or knowledge of given acts or facts.

The pre-trial devices that can be used by one party to obtain facts and information about the case from the other party in order to assist the party's preparation for trial.

Source: Blacks Law Dictionary 5th Edition.

(Discovery does not equate to volunteering information because the information is acquired by legal remedies to forcefully gain access to the records.)

What else is new!

Again, be it a subpoena, discovery, or otherwise, no individual, group of individuals, company, the government, etc., are going to volunteer any information that will incriminate them.

The plaintiff(s) must provide the basis in proof for criminal or civil indictment, or provide the strength of the case, to force any suspect or otherwise to incriminate themselves.

In any situation, to where an individual, group of individuals, an organization, a government entity, a company, a corporate entity, etc, are falsely accused and/or have property confiscated from them without cause......

...the situation could backfire, and the individuals or group of individuals responsible for filing the false criminal or civil indictment, may themselves be subjected to criminal or civil indictment, and/or face a claim for damages for any harm done to anyone falsely accused!

Sincerely,

Michael Lofton

quote:

Again, be it a subpoena, discovery, or otherwise, no individual, group of individuals, company, etc., are going to volunteer any information that will incriminate them. The plaintiff(s) must provide the basis in proof for criminal or civil indictment, or provide the strength of the case, to force any suspect or otherwise to incriminate themselves.

and the following by Lofton...

Spoken like a person truly ignorant of the law. I won't speak to why your statements are ignorant because, frankly, I don't believe you would understand or accept my explanation.

quote:

Originally posted by Kweli4Real:

quote:

Again, be it a subpoena, discovery, or otherwise, no individual, group of individuals, company, etc., are going to volunteer any information that will incriminate them. The plaintiff(s) must provide the basis in proof for criminal or civil indictment, or provide the strength of the case, to force any suspect or otherwise to incriminate themselves.

and the following by Lofton...

Spoken like a person truly ignorant of the law. I won't speak to why your statements are ignorant because, frankly, I don't believe you would understand or accept my explanation.

Well Kweli4Real,

....go for it. With all your proficiency in law, I'm willing to bet, that neither you, nor any followers of any reparations for slavery movement will collect anything substantial, be it tomorrow or one thousand years from now. Either way the reparations for slavery movement is dead!

The Leonard Deadwyler case being one vivid example, to which no one, including the government is going to volunteer incriminating evidence to hang themselves.

During the 60s, Ambulance chasing Johnny Cochran gave up crucial evidence, to Los Angeles City prosecution/defense attorneys prior to the pretrial hearing. Photographs taken by community residents to prove that the LAPD unlawfully killed Mr. Leonard Deadwyler, were in Johnny Cochran's possession,....that is up until he decided to betray the Deadwyler family, by giving up crucial evidence to the enemy camp.

Los Angeles City prosecution/defense attorneys destroyed this incriminating evidence, and changed the facts to clear the Los Angeles Police Department of any criminal wrongdoing. Los Angeles city officials representing the LAPD used the tools of subpoena and discovery to destroy incriminating evidence against the LAPD, incrimination evidence that could be used by any competent attorney representing Leonard Deadwyler, et al, in a claim for wrongful death against the City of Los Angeles.

So much for the tools of subpoena and discovery in that this process can be misused as well, to destroy the facts, in the event any incompetent attorney gives up crucial information during the pretrial stage.

To date, due to Attorney Johnny Cochran's negligence to entrust the Los Angeles prosecution/defense attorneys (the enemy camp) with crucial evidence, the heirs of the Leonard Deadwyler family have yet to receive so much as a dime, in a wrongful death claim, for a Black man pulled over for speeding, speeding to get his pregnant wife to the hospital.

I know enough about the legal process to know that reparations for slavery will not happen, and that is all that counts. Splitting hairs on how knowledgeable you are about the legal process versus me is meaningless to me!

Sincerely,

Michael Lofton

I know enough about the legal process to know that reparations for slavery will not happen, and that is all that counts. Splitting hairs on how knowledgeable you are about the legal process versus me is meaningless to me!---Michael

Well...we will see. Won't we?

With or without the law, I might point out to you that the winning is in progress.

The only remaining question is 'How big?'

PEACE

Jim Chester

quote:

Originally posted by James Wesley Chester:
Well...we will see. Won't we?

With or without the law, I might point out to you that the winning is in progress.

The only remaining question is 'How big?'

PEACE

Jim Chester

**************
SLAVERY REPARATIONS:
A MISGUIDED MOVEMENT

SLAVERY REPARATIONS:
A MISGUIDED MOVEMENT

Professor Peter H. Schuck
Yale Law School
JURIST Guest Columnist
Let us stipulate -- because it is manifestly true -- that American slavery was a horrendous crime and a moral abomination. Let us further stipulate that this crime had countless victims and that their descendants still experience adverse effects today, seven generations later. Finally, stipulate that our society subscribes to an ideal of corrective justice that recognizes a legal duty compelling wrongdoers to remedy wrongfully-caused losses and to surrender wrongfully-obtained gains. Does this require the payment of reparations by the federal government to. . .somebody? Does it justify such reparations?
My answer to both questions is no -- and not just because of uncertainty about who the "somebody" would be, although as we shall see this poses a serious practical problem. My objections to reparations fall into three general categories: instrumentalist, consequentialist, and horizontal equity.
Instrumentalist objections
By instrumentalist objections, I mean problems of a practical or administrative nature that would be created by any serious effort to move from the status quo to an effective and just reparations regime. By "serious effort," I mean one that takes full account of the practical requirements of implementation. I take up the meaning of "effective and just reparations regime" in the discussion of the consequentialist and horizontal equity objections.
It may seem churlish to begin with the practical or technical obstacles to engineering a solution. These problems will surely strike some reparations advocates as too small-bore and nit-picking to mention in the same breath with the moral project of reparations. But mention them we must, especially because of the project's moral purpose. As the saying goes, if one wills an end, then one also wills the necessary means to that end. Ought implies can. Means, moreover, are not merely instrumental to desired ends; often, they also have normative dimensions of their own that must be considered. Finally, when policies that are attractive in principle fail at the level of actual implementation, the policies themselves are discredited.
Here are just a few of the numerous implementation problems that a reparations law would need to solve.
"¢ First, how would it define the beneficiary class? Would it include all blacks in the U.S. or only those descended from slaves? If the former, what about immigrant blacks and how would "black" be defined in an increasingly multi-racial society? If the latter, what about descendants of free blacks?
"¢ Second, how would the beneficiaries prove their entitlement? Absent a clear definition of black (who would judge?) or reliable documentary evidence of descent (surely lacking in most cases), what presumptions would be accepted and how could they be rebutted?
"¢ Third, would beneficiaries have to show that American slavery caused their current condition? What if they would otherwise have been killed or enslaved by their African captors, or sold to non-American masters?
"¢ Fourth, should all taxpayers bear the cost of reparations, or only those descended from slaveowners or from those who lived in the slave states? The list of such technocratic questions - none of them fanciful - could be extended endlessly.
Consequentialist objections
The actual effects of a reparations program, of course, will depend partly on the answers to these and other instrumental questions and partly on developments about which we can only speculate. To inform this speculation, however, we can draw on some historical experience with reparations or quasi-reparations programs to suggest what we might expect of this one, even conceding as I readily do that each program is different in any number of ways. Consider four such programs: post-war reparations; the September 11 compensation fund; affirmative action; and the payments to Japanese internees. (Again, space permit only the briefest characterizations). The treaties ending World War I required the Central Powers, especially Germany, to pay war reparations to the victorious Allies. In fact, the payments were grudging, delayed, incomplete, and raised new conflicts. For this reason, the payments brought little satisfaction to the recipients and the bitterness it engendered among Germans was skillfully exploited by Hitler and, according to many historians, contributed to his political support. The post-World War II reparations that Germany paid to Israel, although criticized by many as insulting and inadequate "blood money," were far more successful and helped to launch the new state.
The September 11 compensation fund is still in its early stages, but certain patterns are already evident. Although Congress assumed that this catastrophe was as sui generis as any event could be, the precedent it set has already produced an expansion of the program to include the victims of other terrorist-related disasters such as Oklahoma City and the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. And while the relatively small share of the eligible families who have received their awards so far surely value them, many recipients complain that the compensation's failure to remedy their loss adequately has inflicted an additional dignitary harm and reopened painful wounds. Far from assuaging their suffering, it seems, monetization sometimes aggravates it -- no matter what compensation scheme is chosen.
Even though affirmative action does not entail direct payments for past discrimination, most supporters view it as a compensatory program; the greater economic opportunities it affords its beneficiaries do constitute a kind of reparations and are intended as such. After more than 30 years of affirmative action -- and my work on a comprehensive article on this subject in 20 Yale Law & Policy Review 1 (2002) -- several effects seem clear. (Many other effects, both good and bad, are more debatable).
First, the number of individuals who are now eligible for preferences dwarfs the group that they originally and most compellingly targeted -- the descendants of slaves and the victims of Jim Crow. Today, the eligible groups include other categories (women, Hispanics, Asians, and sometimes the disabled) as well as millions of immigrants of color whose ancestors did not experience slavery here.
Second, law's inherently technocratic modalities have tended to (literally) de-moralize affirmative action programs. By implementing preferences through a system of contestable definitions, measurements, sanctions, regulations, and litigation, the law has politicized, bureaucratized, and trivialized what was once a moral project. As I discuss below, this moral imperative can be served better in other ways.
Third, affirmative action's unpopularity, even among many members of the beneficiary groups, has created new barriers to inter-racial reconciliation and heightened the salience and divisiveness of race -- precisely the opposite of the advocates' originally goals.
The most attractive model for black reparations is the program for the Japanese interned during World War II. The program is very recent, of course, and I know of no analysis of its effects but let us assume that they have been altogether positive - that the recipients are satisfied by the federal government's contrition and compensation, while the program is causing other Americans to reflect on the lessons of that dark chapter of our history. Perhaps this putative success augurs well for a black reparations program but I doubt it, for reasons already discussed. The surviving Japanese internees are a relatively small, easily identifiable group of victims who had been harmed in specific ways by a discrete event limited in time and space. None of the instrumentalist objections mentioned above applies to this group; for example, the beneficiaries are the surviving victims themselves, not innumerable, far-flung, anonymous descendants up to seven generations removed from us.
The German compensation schemes for Holocaust victims and slave laborers are not a close model for black reparations either, for many of the same reasons that distinguish the Japanese internment program. These German schemes, moreover, resulted from the settlement of strong legal claims based on unjust enrichment of specific banks, insurers, employers, and other companies that inflicted calculable losses on specific individuals and families.
Horizontal equity
Justice and fairness demand that similar cases be treated alike. We all know that every case is different in some respect from every other case, that the criteria of factual relevance and similarity are neither self-evident nor self-defining, and that classifying cases into categories for purposes of comparison is often a matter of judgment. We also know that the victims of grave injustice -- slavery, the Holocaust, other genocides, enforced subordination -- often regard their suffering as distinctive, if not unique; they tend to resist the notion that the victims of other grave injustices suffered more or in ways more deserving of remedy. To cite an extreme and maudlin but perhaps revealing example, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners, argues that even slaves were treated as less "socially dead" (in Orlando Patterson's phrase) than Jews were in Germany during the Nazi period.
The competition for greatest victimhood is almost inevitable both for political reasons and for a legal one; standard equal protection doctrine invites such comparisons in order to determine the appropriate standard of review. This competition is not an edifying sight -- and not just because we lack a common metric for measuring and comparing injustices of this kind. It often descends into an ugly struggle for public resources, recognition, recrimination, and moral status among people who have already suffered enough and who should be the last to view injustice as a zero-sum game. Is slavery the greatest injustice in American history? Probably so, but I would not expect Native-Americans whose ancestors were systematically exterminated by the U.S. Army to readily cede the point. Were the indentured servants of the colonial period or the Chinese coolies of the nineteenth century more harshly treated or less deserving of reparations than the Japanese internees? What about the internees' Japanese ancestors who were not permitted to own farmland, marry whites, or enter professions? What about the Irish immigrants who were forced by hateful discrimination to live in conditions arguably as degraded as slave cabins? Should we view their whiteness as an emblem of privilege sufficient to redeem their long suffering without further recompense?
I do not know the answers to these questions -- or even how to think about answering them. There is much to be said (as equal protection doctrine allows) for taking one step at a time toward a more just society. My point, then, is not that giving reparations to the descendants of black slaves would require, legally or otherwise, that they be given to the descendants of liquidated Native-Americans or near-enslaved coolies, much less that the former should not be first in line. Rather, it is that the politics and psychology of the competition for victimhood will make it difficult to stop there, and that the very effort to justify this stopping point will arouse new bitterness and magnify existing feelings of injustice.
Conclusion
The movement for black reparations, however well-intended, is misguided. Indeed, it is perverse in its propensity to discredit the very ideal of corrective justice that it invokes, to aggravate bitterness rather than assuage it, and to make reconciliation more difficult. Our obligation now is to engage with and learn from the past, and then to move forward by turning the page. As we turn it, we must not forget that we are leaving behind an endless catalog of crimes, tears, and scars of the lash, of prejudice, and of poverty. We must leave this human misery and injustice behind, but not out of mind or conscience. We already have a long agenda to challenge our moral faculties and remedial imaginations as we assess our responsibilities to one another both now and in the future.

Peter H. Schuck is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law at Yale, and author of the forthcoming Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance (Harvard/Belknap, April 2003) and The Limits of Law: Essays on Democratic Governance (Westview, 2000).

December 9, 2002
****************
Dream on, Reparations for slavery will not happen.

......Besides there are too many other incidents to seek redress than to waste finite valuable resources seeking reparations for slavery that will not happen!

Sincerely,

Michael Lofton

quote:

Originally posted by James Wesley Chester:
I earnestly hope these initiatives are well constructed. Clearly, the method of 'legislative demand' is catching on.

I am in favor of such demand where there is reason to believe there is continuation of the exploitation of chattel slavery.

What is the value of having power if there is refusal to use it.

PEACE

Jim Chester

JWC,

What I do not understand is why America pretends that none of the wealth generated from slavery exists today.....I am sure the money and wealth was passed down many generations and not disposed of after the civil war. And the negroes who fight against any form of corrective measures whether it be affirmative action(which benefits white women the most) or reparations are probably the descendants of those who were happy to be slaves or their offspring who lived seeing themselves as natural subordinates of white people......

"What I do not understand is why America pretends that none of the wealth generated from slavery exists today.....I am sure the money and wealth was passed down many generations and not disposed of after the civil war. And the negroes who fight against any form of corrective measures whether it be affirmative action(which benefits white women the most) or reparations are probably the descendants of those who were happy to be slaves or their offspring who lived seeing themselves as natural subordinates of white people......" by Kevin41

Affirmative Action, AFDC benefits, Social Welfare benefits" have not been beneficial to the masses. Heck AA, AFDC, and Social Welfare benefits have been more destructive than beneficial.

Furthermore, it would be a tremendous service to the Black community to reject Affirmative Action, AFDC, and Social Welfare benefits.

"....being happy to be a slave" by Kevin41

"....being subordinate of white people" by Kevin41

"....being a negro to fight against AA, etc., etc."

.....have no bearing on the outcome. The odds that reparations for slavery will materialize are between slim and nill.

Peter H. Schuck is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law at Yale, is an authority on this subject, and he is very knowledgeable about the legal process.

JWC,

What I do not understand is why America pretends that none of the wealth generated from slavery exists today.....I am sure the money and wealth was passed down many generations and not disposed of after the civil war. And the negroes who fight against any form of corrective measures whether it be affirmative action(which benefits white women the most) or reparations are probably the descendants of those who were happy to be slaves or their offspring who lived seeing themselves as natural subordinates of white people......Kevin41

Of course, it is pretense. The pretense in needed not only for transferability of the responsibility, but for the mental health and guilt response of the persons own and/or operate these entities.

A language and culture has been constructed which 'laundered' the 'assets and benefits' of slavery gained by ongoing entities such as corporations. The accrued value of those assets are humongous.

Charlie Rose did an interview are Harvard Business School (I think) over the weekend with the CEO of JPMorgand-Chase. Rose addressed the issue. The CEO said they had hired a consultant to investigate, found evidence of such dealings by two acquired banks, and 'resolution arrangement' was developed.

He kept on steppin'

There something like 1200-plus slaves documented in the transactions. That number of slaves a pre-civil war value would have exceed one million dollars.

Today's value EXCLUDING WORK DONE would be about 20 times that. The bank settlement offered, and accepted by the way, was $5 million dollars.

America has to pretend to value in today's market, and will until the decision of a federal court.

I am not getting the gist of your intent with 'happy to be slaves' reference.

Please explain.

PEACE

Jim Chester

What I meant is that those who firht against reparations that are black must be the descendant of those types.......because they are willing to let someone else be born into wealth off of the sweat of their grandparent's back and be born into poverty themselves and not have a problem with it. It is their way of saying, "its okay that my granpa slaved to make you rich and that the u.s. allowed me to remain poor even though My grandpa was the one that did the work".........in other words, they are willing to accept whatever is done to them in their quest to have white folks like them.......

quote:

What I meant is that those who fight against reparations that are black must be the descendant of those types.......because they are willing to let someone else be born into wealth off of the sweat of their grandparent's back and be born into poverty themselves and not have a problem with it. It is their way of saying, "its okay that my granpa slaved to make you rich and that the u.s. allowed me to remain poor even though My grandpa was the one that did the work".........in other words, they are willing to accept whatever is done to them in their quest to have white folks like them......." by Kevin41

....it was hard enough to de-segregate the schools. Integration being a collosal failure, and the majority of Caucasians removed their offspring from public school rather than be coerced into being associated with Blacks, or Hispanics. Gifted Black students, from affluent Black families, were coerced into situations that did not challenge their abilities, etc., etc.

*******************************************

The Federal government has been insensitive to the will of the people. The uses of federal forces to end race segregation in schools, or otherwise, did not work then, and will not work now. At the state level, activity to desegregate education opportunities at the university level was already in progress. Desegregation of high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools is more difficult to accomplish. The student body should reflect the neighborhood. The concept of integration for education works best when the parents own homes or reside in the community closest to the school of choice to which they plan to send their offspring to school.

In looking at this ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, although the separate but equal desegregation movement did much to advance the cause of desegregating the public school system, it did little to change the hearts and minds of Caucasian parents whose children attended the public schools in mind for desegregation. Furthermore, desegregation did not apply to other public facilities, or any private facility.

During the period of segregation, "In 1930 the southern states as a group spent $44.31 on each white student, $12.97 on each black"(Carnes, M.C., Garraty, J.A., 2003), which indicates a substantial inequity as it pertains to per capita student educational expenditures. The quality of a school should be based on the quality of instruction, quality of a neighborhood, and equitable distribution of assets earmarked for education. Emphasis should be on improving the quality of instruction of neighborhood schools, rather than using de-segregation, which as reality would have it, has resulted in continued segregation of Black, Caucasian, and Hispanic schools.

The act of busing to desegregate schools, from the 1970s, until the present, in Los Angeles County for instance, did little to improve the quality of educational opportunity for minorities being bused to the valley from South Central Los Angeles. Over time Caucasian parents have removed their children from public school to place them in private schools. The result being, before long, the children being bused from the "inner-city" to the valley, were being bused to schools with a heavy influx of minority students.

The negative aspect of busing resulted in a "brain drain" of both students, and teachers from the "inner-city", which caused enrollment, positions of employment for minority teachers, and funding to drop, and has contributed to the deadly or unhealthy environment that exists within the "inner-city".

Heck, many parents from the inner-city are using false addresses, and other fraudulent means to enable their kids to attend public school in the suburbs, activity which if prosecuted may result in criminal action against the parents in question, which would defeat the purpose intended. Integrating public schools for the sake of integration is not a "Win, Win" situation. The neighborhood school concept of providing quality instruction, equitable funding, and community involvement will do more to enhance the quality of education for minorities, than busing them across town to satisfy any de-segregation decree.

Reference:

Radcliffe, J. (2004). L.A.s Busing Battles. Los Angeles Daily News, May 15, 2004. Retrieved May 17, 2005. http://www.dailynews.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,200%257E31734%257E2150403,00.html

Carnes, M.C., Garraty, J.A. (2003). The American Nation, A History of the United States, 11th Edition. Longman Publishing Co., p. 783.
************************************************8

....to achieve reparations for slavery, a much more difficult case to win, is even more out of reach, meaning an impossibility, and it is not just me saying so.


Sincerely,

Michael Lofton

quote:

Originally posted by James Wesley Chester:
I know enough about the legal process to know that reparations for slavery will not happen, and that is all that counts. Splitting hairs on how knowledgeable you are about the legal process versus me is meaningless to me!---Michael

Well...we will see. Won't we?

With or without the law, I might point out to you that the winning is in progress.

The only remaining question is 'How big?'

PEACE

Jim Chester

______________________________________________________________________________________
JWC,

This is what happens when people run to a source that says what they want to hear...and lean on that person's position as a professor or something. Now I get dismissed all the time....but check out this cat's views:
N.J. College Stunned at Professor's Views

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Jordan Ingram always thought his history professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University was a little quirky. Jacques Pluss certainly had an unusual style, Ingram recalled. But Ingram, who is black, never thought his professor was a racist-until after Pluss was fired.

Pluss said he was dismissed in March because university officials learned of his involvement in the National Socialist Movement, which bills itself "America's Nazi Party."" School officials said he was let go for missing too many classes.

The 51-year-old professor bristles when he is called a white supremacist or racist.

"The world is made up of different cultures, all of which have a place, all of which have a direction and all of which should have a say in determining their own futures,"" he said.

University officials declined to elaborate on Pluss' ouster. It was unclear what role"” if any"”Pluss' political views played in the decision.

Pluss, who had taught at the university since 2002, said he joined the neo-Nazi group in February but kept his views a secret on campus.


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Just after dismissal, Pluss went on "White Viewpoint," a radio show on the National Socialist Movement Web site. He talked about FDU as a "Jewish plutocratic university" and described the school's men's basketball team as "nigger to the core."

"They [the players] have absolutely no right to be in that classroom because they do not possess either the merit or the enhanced intelligence to be there," Pluss said on the show.

Those views shocked many of Pluss' former students, including Ingram, a sophomore who earned a B-plus in the professor's Western Civilization class.

Ingram had thought so highly of Pluss that he considered asking him for a recommendation for a job or academic program. His opinion quickly changed.

"To come in every day and know you're going to have class with a white supremacist, that's definitely going to affect me,"" Ingram said.

Fairleigh Dickinson, a private, liberal arts college, emphasizes diversity and teaching with an international perspective. It has frequent guest speakers from the United Nations, and about 1,000 of the school's roughly 10,000 students come from outside the United States.

A university is within its rights to remove faculty members for their political views under certain circumstances, said Robert Kreiser, a senior program officer at the Washington-based American Association of University Professors.

For example, if Pluss had given misinformation about the Holocaust, Kreiser said, that would be a legitimate cause for dismissal.

Pluss said he questioned the way the Holocaust is described as the killing of 6 million Jews in Nazi concentration camps. "I don't deny that a Jewish Holocaust of some kind occurred," he said. "However, I do believe that the Holocaust needs to be re-examined from a general vantage point."

Pluss said he joined the National Socialist Movement because he "was looking for alternative political parties that presented what I thought were more solid and sensible plans for the common good of America."

The group, whose members wear Nazi regalia at its meetings, sometimes has joint meetings with the Ku Klux Klan.

The party's 25-point platform includes limiting U.S. citizenship to non-Jewish, straight whites. Nonwhites should not be allowed to enter the country and those already here should be "required to leave the nation forthwith and return to their land of origin: peacefully or by force," it states.

Some former students did not think Pluss' views influenced his teaching, however.

Only in retrospect did Sharrod Young, a sophomore who had a class with Pluss in 2003, see signs of discrimination.

"When it was two people raising their hands, he called on certain students. It just so happened it was white males," said Young, who is black.

Pluss, who received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, is being paid through this semester. Adjunct professors at the school generally make between $1,500 and $3,000 per course. (AP)

Why I will never be patriotic:


High Court Won't Revive Race Riot Lawsuit By SHAUN SCHAFER, Associated Press Writer
Mon May 16,11:03 PM ET



The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to revive a lawsuit filed by hundreds of people affected by a 1921 race riot that reduced the city's then-thriving black community of Greenwood to ashes.

The refusal, which came without comment, left intact the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that it was too late for victims and their descendants to sue the city and the state of Oklahoma.

"I guess we just have to except whatever they do," said riot survivor Otis Clark, 102, who lost his home in the fires that erupted during the incident. "It would have been a good case if they would have done something about it. We never did get nothing for the place and the property they took from us."

Charles Ogletree, the Harvard law professor representing survivors, said the fight would continue.

"The justice system has once again denied the survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots what they so richly deserve ... their day in court," he said. "We will continue this fight in every venue imaginable."

The lawsuit arose from recent attempts to document the devastation of the riot, which was sparked by an accusation that a black man assaulted a white female elevator operator.

On May 31, 1921, armed blacks and whites clashed outside a courthouse where the man was being held. Ten whites and two blacks were killed.

Police deputized a white mob, setting off a wave of destruction to more than 1,000 homes. The confirmed death toll was 37, but some estimates range as high as 300.

A grand jury in 1921 exonerated whites for the destruction and blamed blacks.

More than 400 plaintiffs "” including about 150 survivors of the riot and 300 descendants of those killed or who lost property "” filed the lawsuit in February 2003.

Their attorney had argued that a report issued in 2001 disclosed new information about the riot, and it was not until after the end of the Jim Crow era in the 1960s that courts became receptive to civil rights lawsuits.

A federal judge in Tulsa threw out the lawsuit in March 2004, saying he could not find a reason to extend the statute of limitations.

"It's still a tragic time in the history of the state," Wellon Poe, assistant attorney general, said of the riot. "I think it is a good decision not to hold the state liable for something that happened more than 80 years ago."

Well...we will see. Won't we?

With or without the law, I might point out to you that the winning is in progress.

The only remaining question is 'How big?' by Jim Chester

....but the information as shared is going to be used by Caucasians, and the majority of the taxpayers as a means to support their argument against reparations.

Slim chance exists where the Black community is going to make Caucasians, or any other affluent community within the U.S. pay for the vestibule of slavery. The Black community is the least organized, least politically astute, least affluent of all the communities in the U.S.

Caucasians more so, than the Black community have the means to pay for this. As it stands, the average taxpayer will also use the same argument to avoid being responsible for any payment.

...Dream on though.

...Again I wish you luck. Count me out though, because this reparations movement will not happen, be it today, or a hundred years from now.

Sincerely,

Michael Lofton