Posts by Peckerwood

Now you are making me laugh. I guess I do know more than you on this subject. Civil or civic or citizen's rights have been around since the dawn of the republican form of gov't. What you are referring to is the Civil Rights Act of 1964(&1991) This Act furthered the rights granted by the 14th amendment, and guaranteed ALL citizens the right to equal opportunities regardless of race, etc. Now affirmative action benefits only those who have suffered from discrimination in the past. Incidentally, it does not require anyone to prove that they had actually been individually discriminated against. Affirmative action is inherently unconstitutional due to violations of the equal protection clause of the same 14th amendment.

The first time the words "affirmative action" were uttered in the United States, was by John F. Kennedy in 1961. In Executive Order 10952, an order that created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Kennedy ordered public employers to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during their employment, without regard to race, creed, color or national origin." Thus, the original meaning of "affirmative action" was that the federal government should take an "affirmative," or active, role to end racial discrimination.

Kennedy never mentioned racial preferences, goals, timetables, or any other jargon implicit in current use of "affirmative action." The Civil Rights Act of 1964 fulfilled his initial goal of "affirmative action." This piece of legislation barred racial discrimination in public and private employment, private business practices, and federal government programs.

It was, however, the Philadelphia Plan, created in 1970 during President Nixons administration, that defined contemporary affirmative action: the one that involves racial preferences, goals, and timetables. As a response for the discrimination blacks received from federal construction employers in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Plan enacted federal mandated set-aside programs and racial preferences to counteract past discrimination against minorities and women. So, I guess two wrongs do make a right.

I have a hard time understanding why the federal government would enact another law instead of enforcing an existing one, especially when the Philadelphia Plan contradicts the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This has been one of the problems Ive had with the current state of affirmative action. I truly believe that considering the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there is no use for affirmative action, and affirmative action is, in fact, a violation of that Act.

The Amistad incident does not apply to US laws on the subject of slavery. The Amistad Africans had been illegally enslaved by a Portuguese slave trader, who bought them from their fellow Africans and sold them to a plantation in Havana (then a Spanish colony) Spain's own laws against international slave trading were simply upheld. This was never viewed as legal precedent against slavery in the US which continued to exist, under rule of law, for several decades.

You have not answered my previous questions. Can I then assume you do not dispute my claims?

64

Reparations & Protest

by Larry in

jw
friends

this weekend i'm going to dc for the reparation march.

i know this is an highly volatile subject for some so i'm not even going to ask for opinions.

but, for the record here's my stand - i'm for reparations based on principle.

Peckerwood

LDH,

I appreciate the notable change in tone in your last post. I think I have already addressed your key point, but I will try to put it another way, for clarity. Your point hinges on someone commiting a crime, if no crime occured, the point dissolves, right? What I am saying is that when these events took place they were not crimes by the standards of the day. The 9th Amendment states:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

So, even if a right to own slaves was not in the constition of that time, it didn't disallow it either.

Americans detained for being of Japanesse decent, had their civil rights violated. The uneqivocal language of the Constitution of the United States that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, and despite the Fifth Amendment's command that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The difference is the due process of law statement, and that slavery had been abolished already. Slavery is the loss of liberty among other things, but due process was upheld for slaves, by the common law that slavery was legal.

I am not asking anyone to like it, I certainly do not look at that time as our best, but please dont defend anyone telling me we broke any law and must pay damages.

We have to stop hating one another. Bigboi, have you ever seen or heard of a black person doing something as equally heineous to a white person? I think you have. Why? Racially motivated hate. Its the same on both sides my friends. Lets try to look at both sides of the larger picture before we jump to conclusions. Whites were indeed slaves too at one time. That doesnt make it right, but it should make us equal, in the larger scheme of things. Sometimes I secretly wish aliens would invade the Earth so mankind can truely come together and see just how alike we are, but I fear once we kicked some alien butt and they left, we would go right back to squabbling again, so whats the point?

I recommend people listen to what the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson has to say. I havent heard all he has to say, but what I have heard makes sense to me.

LDR, I have a question for you, do white people have the right to form a group that peacfully advances our race? without being automatically labeled racist? What about losing a job, although I may have been more qualified, due to affirmative action? Doesnt that violate my 5th amendment right to persuit of happiness? or equal protections under the law? This is the context of my life and the lives of many whites that are frustrated because we already are paying for what our ancesters did, and now they want more, and more and more, when does it stop?

tired...must sleep....I will seek the answers more tomorrow

G'nite all

64

Reparations & Protest

by Larry in

jw
friends

this weekend i'm going to dc for the reparation march.

i know this is an highly volatile subject for some so i'm not even going to ask for opinions.

but, for the record here's my stand - i'm for reparations based on principle.

Peckerwood

LDH,

First of all, I never addressed you directly so for you to assume that I was referencing you in any way is somewhat conseited and egocentric of you. This thread is not about you or your beliefs alone. It is concerned with whether or not Americans desended from slaves have a LEGAL right to receive reparations. I guarantee that before this question is closed, it will be decided by the judicical branch using tenets of law, not 'gut instinct' or even morals.

Secondly, the US constitution protects our citizens from laws that attempt to make penalties retroactive (coincedentally slaves were not counted as full citizens, but only 3/5ths, and only for purposes of determining representation and taxation amoung the several states; Article 1, US Constitution) Morally, how can you justify telling a citizen that they are free to pursue some course of action, then turn around and hold them criminally responsible for those actions that may now have become criminal? You can't according to the laws that regulate law-making.

I am reluctant to comment on tobacco cases, for lack of knowledge of the details of those cases, but I believe that they settled those complaints, without ever admitting wrong doing, however If it had come down to a judment, I can assure you it would not have been based on wether or not they had the moral right to sell their product, but rather, if they had neglected to inform consumers of known heath risks, and conspired to supress that information. These are laws that may have been broken, perhaps based upon morals, but you need to understand that no amount of morals alone would have resulted in a legal judgment against them. This is the way law works. You are right you could change the laws, but you couldn't make anyone pay until it is broken while it is in effect. By the way, this is fundamental civil right. You don't mean to tell me you support violations of our civil rights, do you? It's amazing how you can determine, all by yourself, whose rights are more significant.

Preserving the civil liberties of ALL citizens is important here, not any one individual or group, at the expense of another.

64

Reparations & Protest

by Larry in

jw
friends

this weekend i'm going to dc for the reparation march.

i know this is an highly volatile subject for some so i'm not even going to ask for opinions.

but, for the record here's my stand - i'm for reparations based on principle.

Peckerwood

Debate is nice, but what does the law say?

We all should know that most nation's codes of law have for centuries (even millennia if you consider ancient greek and roman law) precluded the punishment of children for the crimes of thier parents, or the wife for the crimes of the husband, or vice-verse, not to mention extended family. The only exception being if they had prior knowledge and were also found to be complicit or an accessory to the crime.

In cases where damages are sought, as in this one, they can only be awarded from the property of heirs, if the original crime is prosecuted under the common law, at that time, and within any applicable statute of limitations, and only if punitive damages were awarded by a judgement in that case. Now we must determine if there was a crime commited (slavery was still not considered, by US federal law, to be a crime even after the Confederate states seceded from the Union.)

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory. The confederates of course had years before seceded from the union, formed their own government with their own laws, which of course allowed the practice of slavery.

So what made slavery illegal? Of couse the 13th amendment, but which one? Indeed, there were at least three 13th amendments that I know of. I know this is hard to believe but read on, then I invite you to go and research it yourself.

The history behind this amendments adoption is an interesting one. Prior to the Civil War, in February 1861, Congress had passed a Thirteenth Amendment for an entirely different purpose--to guarantee the legality and perpetuity of slavery in the slave states, rather than to end it. This amendment guaranteeing slavery was a result of the complicated sectional politics of the antebellum period, and a futile effort to preclude Civil War. Although the Thirteenth Amendment that guaranteed slavery was narrowly passed by both houses, the Civil War started before it could be sent to the states for ratification.

But the final version of the Thirteenth Amendment--the one ending slavery--has an interesting story of its own. Passed during the Civil War years, when southern congressional representatives were not present for debate, one would think today that it must have easily passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Not true. As a matter of fact, although passed in April 1864 by the Senate, with a vote of 38 to 6, the required two-thirds majority was defeated in the House of Representatives by a vote of 93 to 65. Abolishing slavery was almost exclusively a Republican party effort--only four Democrats voted for it.

It was then that President Abraham Lincoln took an active role in pushing it through congress. He insisted that the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment be added to the Republican party platform for the upcoming presidential elections. He used all of his political skill and influence to convince additional democrats to support the amendments' passage. His efforts finally met with success, when the House passed the bill in January 1865 with a vote of 119-56. Finally, Lincoln supported those congressmen that insisted southern state legislatures must adopt the Thirteenth Amendment before their states would be allowed to return with full rights to Congress.

The fact that Lincoln had difficulty in gaining passage of the amendment towards the closing months of the war and after his Emancipation Proclamation had been in effect 12 full months, is illustrative. There was still a reasonably large body of the northern people, or at least their elected representatives, that were either indifferent towards, or directly opposed to, freeing the slaves.

So, now we know slavery wasn't a crime until the closing months of the civil war, and only adopted as such by southern states if they wanted to be represented in congress. By this time the practice of slavery had already been functionally obolished as the union armies advanced through the south, and they reestablished sovreignty.

I showed you two of the proposed 13th Amendments, long before the Civil War, a Thirteenth Amendment had been proposed for an unrelated purpose--see the following site for this story:

The Original Thirteenth Amendment: Titles of Nobility and Honour, An Essay

My Opinion:

It seems clear to me that the claim of some Americans decendant from slaves, that they are entitled to "40 acres and Bentley" are unfounded, and without merit, as no law was broken, that was on the books at time their slavery was in effect. The sooner people learn that they have to make their own way in life and stop looking for handouts or a free ride, the sooner they will prosper.