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Originally Posted by swa(y)

it does effect people.....but in ways that are stupid. i, swa(y), nor anyone i know ever did anything wrong. i dont even know if my ancestors had slaves or not...and when ya think about how many people moved to the united states AFTER slavery...i just see it as a pointless gesture.

i also see it as a gesture that incourages, even if its at a small scale, people to remain angry at something they, nor anyone they personnally know, experienced.

im not being racist when i state this, im being honest...there are still towns here in the south (and it is rare) where people still feel as if they are "owed" something. owed what? acres they were once promised? money? i have no idea. id be willing to bet they feel this way though because they have been raised to feel this way...from generation to generation..traditional anger...its sad, and its fucked up.

and there are indeed a small handful of people out there (when looking at the big picture, it is small), some white folks, that wish slavery was still in existance.

i grew up in a town with a lot of the first, and a small amount of the latter, mentioned groups of people.

i dont live in AL, but i live close enough. such an apology has the potential to seriously invoke anger on both ends of the spectrum.

no one will ever get an apology out of me for something im not responsible for. and AL? what the fuck is that???? just the name of a piece of land...thats all. it might as well be georgia, tennessee, wherever.


i do understand where yr coming from, but i just have to dissagree with ya on that one.

yeah but you see, the apology wasn't directed at you-- a white male--- that's my very point. it's meaningless to you because it's not for you and you lack the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. if you could, you would understand.

and yeah i think the past shouldn't be forgotten, and more importantly its consequences in the present shouldn't be forgotten. so yes people are owed something because something was taken away from them.

i support paying reparations to the descendants of slaves just like i support paying reparations to holocaust survivors. of course not everybody is going to agree with me, i don't expect that. but a lot of the wealth of this country was built on the back of slaves and they never saw a dime of it. payback would be simply a return on their involuntary investment.

also: georgia, tennessee etc are not "pieces of land", they are states, i.e., they are political entities vested with power; "they" are able to enter contracts, make laws, raise funds, tax their people, jail people, organize militias, etc. they are also able to apologize for their fuckups. i know this sounds to you like a work of fiction, but it is these legal fictions that allow us to live in large, non-tribal societies.