To my fellow nice white people; Stop being so goddam fragile please. If you can't cut it in a just world, that's exactly not a black person's problem. If being confronted with the fact that you were enriched by an unjust system makes you uncomfortable, good, sit in that for a nice long while. Don't expect absolution from POC, it's not their responsibility and it's not your right.

Signed, yr fellow nice white lady who struggles with this shit too, but is trying to sit down, shut up, and listen.

Also too, PAY THEM

Preach Granny!

Meh. Granny's mad about a thing and has had it with nice white ladies (and Joe Biden) saying the actively racist people aren't so bad because they're always nice to them.

But Mr Hitler didn't call ME a yid.
Neville Chamberlain, probably.

I am an unique entity churned out by the universe in a specific ripple of spacetime.

I do not owe, nor am I owed. I just am.

LOL

I'm guessing you weren't churned out black by the universe. And you can say "I do not owe,..." but if you are white, you have benefited significantly just from that alone. In a just world, you do owe. The system has been, and still is, rigged in your (our) favor.

(sarcasm)

If so, not very effective.

Southern asshats like to fly the Treason Flag™ and stare at Sedition Statues and name streets, schools, children, strip clubs, and so forth after various Loser McLosingtons under the guise of pride in their heritage. Yet when anyone talks about reparations suddenly that period of our history is too long ago, those people are no longer alive, we've moved on. Typical Reptards.

It's not just the southerners, though...I see shitbags driving around in jacked up diesel burning pickups in Ohio waving it around too. They don't get it. Or, as someone said in response to an earlier post of mine, they're just bored creeps who think they're being edgy.

I’ve seen it more in MN than I did in my entire childhood in Tennessee.

Also about that whole "What about all the whites who died during the Civil War" response: how many Africans died during the Middle Passage coming to N. America? How many more died prematurely because of brutal living and working conditions?

So, yeah, don't get all actuarial on me.

Plenty of black people died in the Civil War, too, so that's not a good argument anyway. But your point is well taken!

If you want to get actuarial about the Middle Passage: when you can jettison cargo and still be insured.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Yeah, I'd forgotten about that...

You didn't have to fight a war to try to make people work for free, or try to overthrow your democratically elected government. That was your call.

On some level, it's a distinction without a difference. Whether enslaved or enlisted, you lived and died per the whims of those with power over you. Sure, one was (kind of) a choice and one was not, but the end result was the same: You were owned, abused, used, and then dead as fuck.

The real issue is not whether you are personally responsible for slavery and Jim Crow--the real issue is the extent to which you've benefitted from it.

Positively as well as negatively. You may well have not materially benefited once, but you also haven't gotten the shit beat out of you by cops for being in the wrong neighborhood.

Every single person in America benefited from it....full stop. A vast amount of labor and goods were produced without having to pay any kind of wage. The entire economy of the US was truly formed around slavery, the act of using humans as laboring beasts. Therefore every person in America benefited from it.

Good debate here in a favorite movie:
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

It's amazing how many people don't know that a scallop is a shellfish

SER and Ta-Nehisi Coates are national treasures. Great post.

I believe that the 4th of July celebrations should include ceremonial treason flag burnings.

Since we're already lighting shit on fire.
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/I...

I'm thinking that if anything can get ugly, is will be the 4th in DC.

A couple of July 4's ago I drove many many miles to purchase one of these traitor flags to burn as they rightly don't sell them anywhere in the LA area. The fucking thing was made of suck crap polyester something or other that it sputtered and emitted noxious fumes. The fucking thing wouldn't die.

Too dignified for the traitor stars and bars, IMO.

That is the new confederate flag, isn't it?

I HATE the cop flag. I cringe every time I see it.

It's damn near universal around here in Cop Land. I'd say that one out of three cars I see every day (and I have a 94-mile r/t commute on extremely crowded highways, so I see a lot) has some version on it.

The beauty of Coates' takedown is that he cited events that the press could ask McConnell about. Ask him if he remembers George Stinney or Isaac Woodard. Make this shit personal and present.

I can't believe I'm actually almost sorta defending that turtleshit bastard, but in McConnell's defense, he was 2 when Stinney was executed, and 4 when Woodard was attacked. And I have to admit that I've never heard of them before today...my Black History knowledge is sorely lacking (and something I plan on fixing).

Don't feel bad. Every American's black history knowledge is lacking unless you educate yourself, because our schools sure don't do it. So much is suppressed. I organized putting up a historic marker at the site of an infamous KKK murder which resulted in a seminal civil rights ruling. No young people in my county, black or white, had ever heard of the murder. And the old people did NOT want to talk about it.

I wasn't born but I sure read all about it.

The best thing my mother ever taught me was that despite the fact that no member of our families were on US soil before 1901, slavery was still our history because we were Americans now, and we didn't get to pick and choose just the parts of US history that we liked.

Just thought of this. You know those Confederate states seemed, at the time, to know well and acknowledge the source of their wealth. They put it right there at the top of the currency.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media...

Huh! Sure enough. Good eye.

I’m old enough to remember when William FBuckley said that America wasn’t racist because The Cosby Show was number one in the ratings.

I have to mention the actual literature happening here. Coats is a genius and your article is brilliant and beautiful. Just a joy to read. Also true and we should pay up.

No shit. Coates is a genious with language, and Stephen is a graceful and persuasive writer.

I am a comic book artist by trade. About a year ago I got an email from Marvel Comics, asking me to draw at least some issues of Coates'sCaptain America. I even got an email about it from Coates himself. Unfortunately, I was already committed to another project and had to decline. I suspect I will regret that decision for the rest of my life....

I think he's one of the best authors in America. And I barely read anything!

My favorite part of people trying to refute the idea of reparations is they invoke the 300,000 Union soldiers who died in the war as a blood debt settlement.

Why yes, the people who claim this *are* usually southern, or from border states whose contribution to the Union war effort was basically 5 guys and a wagon. Cough Kentucky cough.

It was a really nice wagon... /s

Well said, Stephen. More of this, please.

it's interesting that white supremacists are all about the idea of inheritance until someone mentions reparations. then they pretend like no one in their family ever inherited anything--least of all their privilege.

TELL THE LADY WHAT SHE'S WON, BOB