I was quite disappointed in the one sided comments and questions we heard in the debate on Friday. Since then, I have had time to realize many of you must not be truly informed of the issues surrounding slavery and reparations. I just wanted to post some ideas and enlighten those of you who might not truly understand the depth and seriousness of the tragic consequences of slavery. The affects of slavery did not end in 1865, nor did African Americans become void of suffering, pain, and torment caused by fellow AMERICANS or the U.S. STATE and FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. Slavery caused a chain of negative effects that strongly affect African Americans today. If we wanted to grant reparations simply based on the individual and joint suffering African American’s experienced, it would be completely justified. However, the simple reasons for reparations being granted should also be connected to the benefits we all experience on a day to day basis because of slavery. The labor slaves offered from the 1620’s until 1865 helped build the EMPIRE we know today. To not recognize these effort through reparations (memorials, scholarship funds, education grants, generational pay-outs etc.) would be a tragedy. In the debate, one student said, “it would be unfair to make individuals pay who had no connection to slavery. This ideology suggests that it is unfair to do the right thing. Was it unfair to millions of slave men, women, and children? Yes. Now it is unfair to do the right thing? These individuals have no hesitation to accept the benefits of slavery. We, as Americans, have no problem collectively accepting the day to day luxuries of a capitalistic society that was built on the backs of millions of Slaves. But, it is just too hard (sarcasm) to accept and properly do something about the negative effects of slavery that African Americans experience each day. “One horrific evidence of the federal government complacency towards and collaboration in dehumanizing and the disfranchisement of African Americans, is that while an estimated 3,386 people were lynched from 1882 to 1930, the vast majority of which were African America men (On average that is the equivalent of 1 person every 5 days for 48 years), an anti-lynching act could not be passed in congress. Do not confuse lynching to be an isolated act of violence. Lynching’s were generally social events. For example, in Ohio on June 18, 1897 a black man was lynched in front of a crowd of estimated 9,000 people. Lynching’s were not social responses to an individual, but individual examples to the entire black community regarding the power of whites over blacks. Furthermore, there are no records of any person associated with a lynching of being convicted from 1880 – 1905, which implicates local, state and federal governments as sanctioning lynching. Recently, another example is congress refusal to vote on a resolution to apologize for the United States role in enslaving people of African descent (where 50-60% of the approximately 20,000,000 people taken from Africa, died just in crossing, Middle Passage). Given the legal precedence set by the reparation paid to Jews and aid given to Israel; the reparations given to Japanese Americans; and the Marshall plan, when one looks at the facts (I suggest The Debt by Randall Robinson, Reparations by Arnold Schuchter and The Case for Black Reparations by Boris Bittker) the rightness of African American reparations cannot be questioned. For those who suggest that providing African American Reparation will not be easy, I say true. However, “difficulty” ought not ever be the criterion for determining if something is right or not. There is much debate still needed to determine how much, in what form and how will reparations be distributed. Nevertheless, there cannot be any question of should reparations be paid to African Americans. Any clear thinking informed person must answer, YES!