How to End the Slavery Blame-Game - Henry Louis Gates

[TomSea]

Right off, you might not know or remember who Henry Louis Gates is... he's the guy that there was that kerfuffle with including Obama, when Gates, the Harvard Professor got into it with the police, Obama said the police's actions were "stupid" and then, the beer summit called?  Remember him?

Larry Elder mentioned this on his show this past week and, I haven't read this fully but it sounds like Larry Elder is saying Gates does not see the reparations idea as good and I mean, afterall, this is the guy who had all that trouble back a few years.

Opinion | How to End the Slavery Blame-Game
Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Cambridge, Mass.

THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.

There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.

While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others.

<snip>

How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html

https://www.larryelder.com/

[Fishrrman]

"How to End the Slavery Blame-Game"

It is NEVER going to "end".

So long as there is one race that cannot achieve what another race has achieved,  the former will blame the latter for its failures.

The issue of slavery will be used to stoke the fires of blame and hatred, but that really isn't the core of "the problem".

The problem is one of genetics.
Until that can be overcome, it will remain a problem that cannot be solved.

[Absalom]

"How to End the Slavery Blame-Game"
It is NEVER going to "end".
So long as there is one race that cannot achieve what another race has achieved,  the former will blame the latter for its failures.
The issue of slavery will be used to stoke the fires of blame and hatred, but that really isn't the core of "the problem".
The problem is one of genetics.
Until that can be overcome, it will remain a problem that cannot be solved.

------------------------------------
On the mark.
Plato (the Republic) asserted that each is unique and all unequal because of the Soul.
Rousseau (the Social Contract) asserted that all are equal (Egalite').
Plato was a wise man while Rousseau was a noisy propagandist and genetics proves it!!!