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Forums - Politics - Shouldn't we give reparations to Native Americans?

SlayerRondo on 18 July 2013

Everyone in History has ancestor's that got screwed over by someone's else's ancestors at some time or another.

We should try to provide educational opportunities for the advancement of all disadvantaged people within our society.

But blanket giving money to some people because they lost there traditional lands is an absurd and racist idea.



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SlayerRondo on 18 July 2013
burninmylight said:
Egann said:
If Native Americans deserve reparations for something done 150 years ago, then I deserve reparations for all the generations my ancestors lived in serfdom for generations on end.

It doesn't work that way. Neither guilt nor claim to restitution are inheritable.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that the Native Americans didn't have a great claim to the North American lands, anyway. They weren't culturally utilizing any of its resources. It's true that the way the white authorities handled them was abominable, but it's also true that most Native American tribes were basically squatters, even by their own admission. The idea that they "owned" the land is incurably revisionist: Native American cultures have a weak concept of ownership, and practically none of it directed towards the land. To many tribes, saying you owned the land was like saying you owned the sky. These are not things they believed you could tangibly own, even as a collective.


Just because they had a different concept of ownership and property doesn't mean they (the people and tribes around in the 1400s and on) were any less entitled to the land than those that came in for colonial purposes and the extraction of resources. To call them squatters is flat out insulting; squatters take residence on land that or property that they don't have lawful permission to use. It sounds like the idea of them following buffalo on a set migrating path on unclaimed territory being "squatting" is the revisionist history here.


While i agree that all people should have a fair claim to land, why does that mean the Native American's get peperation's?

If i want land I have to pay for it. Should native American's not have to do the same as I?

We all lost out at some time but weve reached a point where we have to say that enough is enough and view everyone as an equal citizen. Should we help the disadvantaged? Yes of course we should , no matter what race they may be. 

But handout's do not work, opportunities and equal treatment do.



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Where you either win

or you DIE

SlayerRondo on 18 July 2013
the_dengle said:
kupomogli said:

I didn't, and it didn't happen to the indians that are alive now.  The acts of my forefathers have nothing to do with me and I don't feel people should have any special treatment because their forefathers had it hard.  Except for Mexicans, minorities already get too much special treatment.

Just for the sake of argument, if someone in a lot of financial debt dies, that debt doesn't just vanish.

Likewise, if one President or administration goes to war with another country and pisses them off, then they attack us during the term of his successor, "Don't look at me, it was my predecessor who attacked you," won't be a very compelling argument.

Most of the people who came to America were a lower class of people who's ancestors who had it hard at the hands of there past rulers.

We should all be better off than we are because we had ancestors who got screwed.

But I don't sit around complaining about how England owe's me reperation's for what happened to my ancestors, I went to university.

Providing opportunities for disadvantaged people not matter there race is the best way to improve the living standard of the native America community.

Lump sum reperation's are most certainly not the answer.



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Where you either win

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SlayerRondo on 18 July 2013
ijjawimisah said:
theman88 said:
If you havent noticed our country economically is still in the toilet. We cant afford to pay our bills, and we certainly cannot afford this. Nice idea.... but if this did happen then There would have to be African American reparations and we would be broke all the way to the birth of a second China in the western hemishere

Dude your country has  lower unemployment than 9/10's of the world's countries and higher gdp growth than practically all of europe. It's one of the top ten richest countries in the world (GDP per capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita) and despite all the complaing about the 99% America still has a huge middle class relative to the rest of the world. .

As an american, i don't think we should be using our economic situaition as an excuse for anything...

O and african americans aren't a cohesive group which can really be defined and located in the event we decided to pay them reparations native americans can't be compared to them.

Reparations are unrealistic but affirmative action should stay alive, at least in universities. MInorities should benefit from calamities.


Why should affirmative action benefit minorities and not the disadvantaged? Some disadvantaged white people don't get into university while there are African American's who are not disadvantaged who do get in with lower results despite having no reason for it.

I am for a few spots being put aside for affimative action, but only based on one's personal disadvantage's and not the presumed disadvantages of one's race or gender. And when i say gender i mean men and women as some university have lowered standards for men to balance the number's, something whith witch i totaly disagree.

I am also really surprised with your clearly childish statement "Minorities should benefit from calamities" as that is a completely absurd way to phrase what it is I think you're saying.



This is the Game of Thrones

Where you either win

or you DIE

SlayerRondo on 18 July 2013
burninmylight said:
Ssliasil said:
Dude, American Natives have the best living situations in the fucking country!

They get so many benefits, No taxes, Discounts on everything, huge food stamp benefits without questions, utilities are mostly paid for by the government, and they have Casinos.

What the hell more do you want?

It's been 300 fucking years, get over it for christs sake.


You've never met a Native American, have you?

And you think that reperation's are the way to go in solving these issue's?

Also have you ever met a person who would not say that large amount of money would solve all their problems?



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SlayerRondo on 18 July 2013
burninmylight said:
Ssliasil said:
burninmylight said:
Ssliasil said:
Dude, American Natives have the best living situations in the fucking country!

They get so many benefits, No taxes, Discounts on everything, huge food stamp benefits without questions, utilities are mostly paid for by the government, and they have Casinos.

What the hell more do you want?

It's been 300 fucking years, get over it for christs sake.


You've never met a Native American, have you?

I live in Maine, they are all over the place, I have some native blood in me as well. 

 

Doesnt stop my point from being correct. 


You haven't said a single thing proving yourself correct. I live in Oklahoma with my girlfriend, a Navajo from New Mexico. She'll be the first one to tell you that you're mostly full of it. For one, you can't lump every single American Indian together under the same umbrella. Every tribe has its own government that gives out most of those benefits that you speak of, not the federal government. In other words, the benefits that they receive are dependent on the tribe's budget and resources. That's why they're allowed to have casinos: to raise money. But as with all groups of people, some tribes are bigger than others, and that effects the kind of benefits give to the masses. The Navajo and Cherokee (my tribe) are two largest tribes, and they struggle to accommodate every single pure member; I'm not even going to get into the battle over freedmen and those with partial ancestry, because that would take all night.

No taxes, discounts on everything: Thanks for the wonderful laugh. NAs pay any state, federal, income or whatever taxes just like any other American citizen. The tax exemptions and discounts I assume you speak of come from purchases and services through their respective tribal governments. My girlfriend can't just stroll into Wal Mart and buy a bunch of groceries discounted and tax free just because she's Navajo. However, if she were to to venture into a store on a reservation sponsored/supported by a tribal government, she may be eligible.

Huge food stamp benefits without question: Again, bullshit, but I can't speak for every state and county's DHS laws, only Oklahoma's. And again using my girlfriend as a reference, she recently began receiving food benefits in Tulsa County. She had to fill out the same paperwork, go through the same procedures and be subjected to the same scrutiny as anyone else. She has to provide the same ID, proof of address and proof of employment as anyone else. The color of her skin and her race doesn't affect her food benefits one bit, just like it didn't affect mine when I received them.

Utilities paid for by the government: If there's some awesome state or county out there paying for the utlities of NAs as a way of saying sorry for the genocide, we'll start looking for employment and apartments there immediately. Otherwise, it again is a tribal thing. And trust me, you'd take paying utilities over living on a reservation any day. Spend a week in one and you'd feel like you were staying in a third-world country.

If there's one benefit that the federal government does issue NAs liberally, it's scholarships. Even still, you have to meet a certain academic standard for many of them. Oh wait, you know who else gets scholarships for being a minority? Blacks, Jews, Hispanics and almost any other minority in this country. Wanna know something funny? I missed out on a Cherokee scholarship as a freshman because my high school grades weren't up to par, but I was able to get a couple African American scholarships to pay most of my tuition my freshman year. The Cherokee scholarship was state-sponsored, but the others came from priveate organizations.

TL;DR: You haven't proved a damn thing. Most of the benefits you mentioned come from the tribe, not from the state or fed, so please stop speaking on a subject you know nothing about. Having "some native blood" in you doesn't change that. That's like saying you fixed Africa because you retweeted "Kony 2012."

Then you're reperation's should come from the tribe not the government, since that was the intention to begin with.

And maybe if you did not get the scholorship, then you should have either studied harder or got student loans, you know those things the rest of us had to get to go to college?

Nah, handout's are all the better right, i mean i did'nt recieve any special help getting into university but I can't tell who fucked my family over when so no reperation's for me.



This is the Game of Thrones

Where you either win

or you DIE

SlayerRondo on 18 July 2013
the2real4mafol said:
Yes they should but what could they give them to make up for it? Nothing could make up for the massacres, destruction of their cultural and livelihood, their food supply. I say just respect their way of life, give them their land back and move on. Nothing can bring them all back, but just respect what is left to ensure they don't die out completely


They were NOT fucking massacred by us, their ancestors were massacred by some white people's acestor's. 

Also seeing how you're the reborn Mao, what about China's far more recent annexing of Tibet? That happened in the mid 20th fucking century, and there destroying their cultural identiy as best they could.

People have been moving around the globe masacreing each other for millinium, but at some point we have to say no more masacre and no more blaming someone's ancestors for what they did to your ancestors.



This is the Game of Thrones

Where you either win

or you DIE

danasider on 18 July 2013
spurgeonryan said:
danasider said:
Even though it would be fair and ideal, in the real world life isn't fair. What would it take to make amends with these broken people? In order to repair what America destroyed, how much is enough? Just look at the African Americans, reparations didn't change their trajectory much because throwing money or land does very little against several generations of suppression and hate.

It's sad, but this country, especially in the current global economy which its state affects so easily, can't afford to do what's right with the Native Americans. I'm neither racist nor apathetic to either Native Americans or African Americans, but I am a realist and don't see our country even pondering something like this when we're scratching ourselves out of a seemingly bottomless ditch of debt.


We give the poor and minorities plenty of help. We go above and beyond to help them. No matter how much we are in debt.


Yes, I know this and I am in no way disagreeing with the idea that Civil and Human rights matter.  I think it's great that the US tries to make up for generations of redtaping and other institutional suppression that has kept down minorities and is one of the reasons this country is so great.  I, myself, am 100% Puerto Rican, a minority once part of the lower class who has been fortunate enough to have a family (immediate only because the rest of my family is inner city, very uneducated, and very poor) that moved up to the middle class.  I don't want my prior post to mislead anyone into thinking I am some right winged nut who doesn't believe in helping others and only looks at the bottom line, because I know what struggle is.

I'm just saying that despite what we've done so far as a country (not enough of course) like allowing Native Americans to go to (I'm guessing public) universities for free, setting them up with casinos and giving them reservations, the people suffer because we uprooted them from their lands.  I don't think the damage is just one of material value but of an identity as a people (in terms of individual tribes because these native peoples are so varied that it'd be ignorant to lump them up into one identity).  I took an english course about Native American literature taught by Ron Welburn, a Native American professor and author, and to this day, many of these peoples, the newer generations as well as those lost to history, saw the land as a part of them and not something that anyone "owned".  This almost religious idea of the land being their extension makes me think that no amount of money would fix the problem because the problem isn't simply materialistic.

What we've done cannot be undone and I don't see anything short of giving them back America as a way to even the score.  Obviously this is impossible, but what amount of money could the government give these peoples to make things right?  Not enough, in my opinion and any amount even close to what they deserve would bankrupt this country even further into oblivion.



the2real4mafol on 18 July 2013
SlayerRondo said:
the2real4mafol said:
Yes they should but what could they give them to make up for it? Nothing could make up for the massacres, destruction of their cultural and livelihood, their food supply. I say just respect their way of life, give them their land back and move on. Nothing can bring them all back, but just respect what is left to ensure they don't die out completely


They were NOT fucking massacred by us, their ancestors were massacred by some white people's acestor's. 

Also seeing how you're the reborn Mao, what about China's far more recent annexing of Tibet? That happened in the mid 20th fucking century, and there destroying their cultural identiy as best they could.

People have been moving around the globe masacreing each other for millinium, but at some point we have to say no more masacre and no more blaming someone's ancestors for what they did to your ancestors.

Americans didn't stop the massacres though did they? So they are no better than their European ancestors. 

And i'm not Chinese, i just have a avatar of Kim Il Sung (a Korean). And no i don't agree with what's happening in Tibet. But it's like the mess in Palestine/ Israel and Chechnia and many other areas around the world. So much fucked up stuff going on.

And yes i agree we should move on, but we can't forget otherwise History will start to repeat itself. 



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burninmylight on 18 July 2013
SlayerRondo said:
burninmylight said:
Egann said:
If Native Americans deserve reparations for something done 150 years ago, then I deserve reparations for all the generations my ancestors lived in serfdom for generations on end.

It doesn't work that way. Neither guilt nor claim to restitution are inheritable.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that the Native Americans didn't have a great claim to the North American lands, anyway. They weren't culturally utilizing any of its resources. It's true that the way the white authorities handled them was abominable, but it's also true that most Native American tribes were basically squatters, even by their own admission. The idea that they "owned" the land is incurably revisionist: Native American cultures have a weak concept of ownership, and practically none of it directed towards the land. To many tribes, saying you owned the land was like saying you owned the sky. These are not things they believed you could tangibly own, even as a collective.


Just because they had a different concept of ownership and property doesn't mean they (the people and tribes around in the 1400s and on) were any less entitled to the land than those that came in for colonial purposes and the extraction of resources. To call them squatters is flat out insulting; squatters take residence on land that or property that they don't have lawful permission to use. It sounds like the idea of them following buffalo on a set migrating path on unclaimed territory being "squatting" is the revisionist history here.


While i agree that all people should have a fair claim to land, why does that mean the Native American's get peperation's?

If i want land I have to pay for it. Should native American's not have to do the same as I?

We all lost out at some time but weve reached a point where we have to say that enough is enough and view everyone as an equal citizen. Should we help the disadvantaged? Yes of course we should , no matter what race they may be. 

But handout's do not work, opportunities and equal treatment do.

I"m not arguing for or against reparations in the form of giving back land, but you can't compare yourself to them. If you were forced out of your neighborhood and into a small, rickety shack in the wilderness, you'd be arguing for the restoration of your home without having to pay for it. I'll assume you or your ancestors from a couple hundred years ago never had that problem, so naturally it's going to be harder for you to understand.