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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMitch McConnell: We paid for 'sin of slavery' by electing Obama
JUNE 19TH 2019When asked about reparations for slavery on the eve of a House hearing on the issue, McConnell said reparations "for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible," were not a good idea. Besides, he suggested acts, such as electing Barack Obama president, could be considered a form of compensation.
"We tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a Civil War, by passing landmark civil rights legislation, elected an African American president," McConnell said. "I don't think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it. First of all, it would be hard to figure out whom to compensate."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/19/mitch-mcconnell-reparations-slavery-compensation-not-needed-after-obama-presidency/1501650001/
dalton99a
(81,515 posts)FWIW Did he vote for Obama?
TheBlackAdder
(28,208 posts).
Like the slavemasters, he then works to metaphorically erase the 'rogue slave' and display that to all the others who want to follow in Obama's footsteps, that their lives are not important and that they will meet a similar fate if they try to break the yoke of oppression.
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Thomas Hurt
(13,903 posts)Words fail me. It wasn't a 150 years ago. It continues today you stupid fuck!
NotAPuppet
(326 posts)vote for President Obama? I cant wait for this toxic piece of excrement to bite the dust.
gademocrat7
(10,659 posts)Way past his sell by date.
usaf-vet
(6,188 posts).... super-rich like his Chinese wife is. An heir to a Chinese shipping family. Just asking how deep his hatred goes.
no_hypocrisy
(46,117 posts)1. "We're going to make him a one-term president."
2. Blocked and ran interference for every policy and bill proposed by Obama.
3. Refused to allow Senate hearings for Obama's choice for the USSC, almost one year before the end of his term.
So returning to "We paid for the 'sin of slavery' by electing Obama," disingenuous statement by McConnell, if not outright lying.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)I so want to see him gone this November. He just disgusts me.
catbyte
(34,402 posts)Proud Liberal Dem
(24,414 posts)And McConnell and the GOP continually showed how much more work remains to be done in terms of race in this country while Barack Obama was President.
ProudMNDemocrat
(16,786 posts)As well as when he pledged before the Heritage Foundation that his primary job was to make sure Obama was "a one term Presidnt.".
malaise
(269,038 posts)you see all men are not created equal and only the white man should be president - what a racist!
Ninga
(8,275 posts)KentuckyWoman
(6,685 posts)He must be popular in other parts of Kentucky but anywhere he goes that I've ever been they can't stand him, and haven't from day one. The man is boo'd outright if he shows up.
2naSalit
(86,646 posts)Maven
(10,533 posts)RANDYWILDMAN
(2,672 posts)and the people who support you are totally deluded
area51
(11,910 posts)kentuck
(111,101 posts)Even denying him a Supreme Court Justice.
handmade34
(22,756 posts).Reparations would involve an official apology for centuries of slavery and discrimination, and spending money to reduce their effects.
Theres a wrong way to spend that money: trying to find the descendants of slaves and sending them a check. That would launch a politically ruinous argument over who qualifies for the money, and at the end of the day people might be left with a $1,000 check that would produce no lasting change.
Giving reparations money to neighborhoods is the way to go.
A lot of the segregation in this country is geographic. In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, early-20th-century whites-only housing covenants pushed blacks into smaller and smaller patches of the city. Highways were built through black neighborhoods, ripping their fabric and crippling their economic vitality.
Today, Minneapolis is as progressive as the day is long, but the city gradually gave up on aggressive desegregation. And so you have these long-suffering black neighborhoods. The homeownership rate for blacks in Minneapolis is one-third the white rate. The typical black family earns less than half as much as the typical white family.
To really change things, you have to lift up and integrate whole communities. Thats because it takes a whole community to raise a child, to support an adult, to have a bustling local economy and a vibrant civic life. The neighborhood is the unit of change.
Who has the expertise to lift up whole neighborhoods? Its the people who live in the neighborhoods themselves. No outsider with a foundation grant or a government contract really knows whats going on in any neighborhood or would be trusted to make change. The people who live in the neighborhoods know what to do. They just need the resources to do it.
A few weeks before the lockdown I was in and around South Los Angeles. In Watts I interviewed Keisha Daniels from Sisters of Watts, which helps kids and homeless people in a variety of ways. I interviewed Barak and Sara Bomani of Unearth and Empower Communities, which helps educate and nurture young people in nearby Compton.
How can government focus money on formerly redlined neighborhoods and other communities?
National service programs would pay young people to work for these organizations. A National Endowment for Civic Architecture, modeled on, say, the National Endowment for the Arts, could support neighborhood groups around the country. A Social Innovation Fund would be a private/public partnership to fund such organizations. Moving to Opportunity grants and K-12 education savings accounts would help minorities to move to integrated schools. Collective impact structures could coordinate local action and use data to find what works.
In the progressive era, governments built libraries across the country, which remain vital centers of neighborhood life. Were about to have a lot of empty retail space. Why cant we build Opportunity Centers where all the groups moving children from cradle to career could work and collaborate?
..This tumultuous moment offers a chance to launch a new chapter in our history, and reparations are part of that launch. They offer a chance to build vibrant neighborhoods where diverse people want to live together, where the atmosphere is kids playing on the sidewalks and not a knee in the back of the neck.
bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)and destruction of their houses, wastage of their land
And don't forget how much they, the maligned whites, suffered under reconstruction. Why they were treated as if they had lost a war!
struggle4progress
(118,290 posts)Bad Thoughts
(2,524 posts)Will you back a Native American candidate for President?
How about Latinx?
Should all the historically oppressed minority just line up, making for decades and decades of presidents?
dhill926
(16,340 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,002 posts)budkin
(6,703 posts)His time is over.