Judge Dismisses Slave Reparations Case

[Fla_Dem]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=718&e=10&u=/ap/20040126/ap_on_re_us/slave_reparations


CHICAGO - A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by descendants of slaves against corporations they say profited from slavery, saying the plaintiffs had established no clear link to the companies they targeted.



The court still left the door open for further litigation.


"Plaintiffs' attempt to bring these claims more than a century after the end of the Civil War and the formal abolition of slavery fails," U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle said.

[David Dunham]

1. There's a Huge Statute of Limitations Problem for Plaintiffs Here

[toopers]

2. As well as being able to show damages

to the plaintiff.

[AP]

6. Damages is the easy part. You make a person work for a lifetime without

pay, give SOME of them 40 acres and a mule, deny them all the right to vote for 100 years, and look around and see black communities in poverty while we create more wealth for the people at the top than any nation in the history of the world has created, and we look at ridiculously high black incarceration rates.

I think it's going to be VERY easy to prove damages.

[Adapter44]

11. Actuall they can NOT prove damages

Please show me one person alive today who was at one point in his/her life a slave. If you can do so I will FULLY support reparations to that person.

Ohhh... I get it. Here comes to flaw in your argument. It's ANCESTORS.

What's even more bogus about this argument - people who have NEVER been racists are expected to pay for what their ANCESTORS did.

Tell me... Has anyone in your family line ever killed someone? Raped someone? Assaulted someone? If so, are you willing to submit your self to reparations for damage?

Let's even make this more fun. I am of german heritage. Am I now supposed to pay for what my ancestors did to select groups of people before I was even alive? Shit. There's going to be a lot of law suits I have to get ready for now.

If you want to start bringing racial tension back to this nation you are going to get it REALLY fast. Somehow I believe that when people start having to pay money (unfairly) for something ANCESTORS did they are going to be pissed. Who are they going to pissed at? What will the result of that be?

Instead of working to end racism you just want to increase racial tension on bogus grounds. (or you are expecting a cut of the action. either one)

[Buffler]

12. I can show you many

Please show me one person alive today who was at one point in his/her life a slave.

I can show you many persons. But they were not slaves in America. They were slaves in Africa, and still today there are many slaves in Africa.

[Adapter44]

13. Nice way to go way off topic

Care to discuss any in the states?

[Buffler]

15. Off topic?

Please show me one person alive today who was at one point in his/her life a slave.

I don't see any qualifier in this request such as "in the United States".

I met your challenge. You are just upset I did.

[Adapter44]

16. The context of this thread

is slave reparations IN THE UNITED STATES.

No, I did not specifically state in the united states. However it should be obvious that a thread dealing with the United States courts and slave reperations in the united states is framed in the context of the states NOT africa. You very well know this.

[treepig]

3. tell me about it!

i'm beating my head against the wall over the same issue (marco polo's entourage stole some of my forebearer's crops, but italian courts are doing nothing but protecting the bastard based on technicalities such as this one)

[AP]

7. Hello? American Indians and Holocaust victims?

Do we believe that the worse the attrocity, the less likely it goes unremedied?

I hope not.

[toopers]

9. Reparations to Holocaust victims

were paid to the living victims, not to the ancestors of the victims, unless they could prove that someone else possessed their property, which would mean it was stolen in the first place. Unfortunately, almost all people in the world have ancestors that were enslaved at some point in our ancestry. That was the way of the world. When does the statute of limitations expire?

[Astarho]

23. About the Native Americans

They have treaty agreements with the United States Government, somthing no other group in this country has. I'm no expert on treaty law, but I believe this was how Native Americans obtained their settlements.

[DoNotRefill]

25. I don't know....

it sounds pretty close to corruption of blood....

[Retrograde]

18. and the Mongol hordes

overran my ancestors' homeland. Not to mention the various barbarians from the east before that. And what are Moscow and Beijing doing about it? Huh?

linda

[Pax Argent]

20. What are we going to do about Marco Polo's patent infringement

on spaghetti? There's got to be some money in this somewhere!

Seriously, on the European front, how many folks of European ancestry were slaves of Imperial Rome? The Ottoman Empire? The list goes on. How about indentured servitude in the new world? Those folks died by the boatload. Should people be entitled to sue based on the workplace and safety violations of the India Far East Company (or whoever it was shipping folks to the new world; I don't have a history book handy)?

My feeling is that this is a highly divisive issue with no real legitimate legal basis that does way more damage to race relations than good. I'm all for ensuring that all elements in our great big melting pot are given the best possible chance for a fair play in our society, but this issue is a non-starter.

[formernaderite]

21. Slavery was a deplorable institution but....

...it was part of a long period of human history. It was practiced by every sector of human culture against people of similar tribal backgrounds, across and within race etc.
I've never understood why America should have been any better than any other society in the world. The slave trade was an economic trade. When Britain decided to ban the practice of ownership and trade, African and Arab kingdom emissaries lobbied Parliament against the ban.
Human life and not just slaves, were not a highly valued commodity for most of human history. In some sense, slavery attached a value to a human. It annoys the hell out of me when we attempt to use 20th and now 21st century ethics to judge history. I am more upset with the treatment African Americans received after slavery and during our own period of Apartheid. I see affirmative action as one way of addressing the aftermath of segregation.
However, we still have much to do and neither the democrats or the republicans have done anything to address the horror of despair present in many inner cities. I had great hopes that Clinton... a democrat for goodness sake, would have taken on DC as a project. Finally saying enough is enough, this is the Nations Capitol!!! Nada...no one cares, and the status quo running the city is lining their pockets, and they're minorities so no one gives a shit. It's an American embarrassment.

[AP]

5. I don't think it's that huge. I think there's a strong case that, in the

interest of justice, you can't let people act so tortiously against so many people and transfer so much wealth just because it took 100 years from the deaths of the last people injured DIRECTLY for the justice system to catch up. We didn't even have serious enough civil rights reform until beginning in '64 for the descendants of directly injured people to even begin thinking that they had the democratic power for the justice system to even consider their claims.

Remember, we're giving Indian communities reparations for VERY bad behavior that occurred for centuries before 1865. And there were Holocaust victims from the 30s (and their descendants) who got reparations from Swiss banks and German corporations 70 years after the events which occurred.

If you take the damage caused seriously enough, and if you're sufficiently interested in sending a message to people that similar bad acts in the future won't go unpunished, then you can deal with the statute of limitations.

And note the word "statute" in "statute of limitations." This isn't the law of nature of god. Legislatures get to decide what the limitations period is.

[gimme a break]

4. I'm sorry

but really. The time passed, and then proving that you were in fact decended from a particular slave that was used to supply a product for that particular company at that particular time is imposible.

I have too many black friends too busy trying to be successful by working for it than to sue someone. My business partner started a corporation to help blacks. He change the name and the focus of the organization because he saw that blacks weren't the only ones who needed help, but all races needed help.

We get along so well, because we see people as people and not what color they are. I wish everyone would get over the race thing. There are far more important issues. (although it is amusing when my children call him uncle and people are trying to figure out how in the heck we can be related)

[AP]

8. I think the courts are going to find a way to give people a little bit of

justice.

[forgethell]

10. Good

not every judge has so much sense

[Buffler]

14. Let me know when the reparations crowd

starts filing suits against the ancestors of those who sold their ancestors into slavery and against those countries that profited from being centers of the slave trade.

Wasn't there an African nation that fought the elimination of slavery in America and other western countries because without the slave trade their economy would collapse and to 'put them out of business' was an illegal and harmful act?!? I swear I read about it a while back. Anyone know what I'm talking about here?

[bleedingheart]

17. How about we worry about the fact that slavery still exists today

instead of worrying about getting the descendents of slavery some sort of financial settlement?

My ancestors were serfs/slaves to the Czars of Russia but I am not waiting for my share.

Today there are children/adults being sold into sexual slavery in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa and not enough is being done to really help them.

Saudi Arabia is rumoured to still have an active slave market...but where is the press to report that???

[formernaderite]

22. There were quite a few muslim countries...

... that did not ban slavery until the mid-20th century. Slavery is mentioned in the Quo-ran, and is acceptable for non-muslims, which is why you will read about christians being captured to trade as slaves in the Sudan.
The Washington Post had an inter sting article on black Iraqi's. I had heard that the Arab word for black Africans is the same as slave, in Iraq this term (Abd)is still used when referring to the ex-slaves.

[Endangered Specie]

19. This reperation mess is absolutely ridculous and here is why:

1- The people alive did not directly suffer, and even if they did...
2- The people who should be punished are long since dead. YOu cannot punish the ancestors of criminals in any circumstance.
3- Technically speaking, the outlawing of slavery is not retroactive, hence slavery commited before its outlawing is legal.
4- There is a definite statute of limitations problem.
5- Imagine the Jewish survivors trying to force something like this on the Germans.
6- How are you going to determine who pays to whom and how much? YOu would have to find out the family of the person x who owned slave y and order them to pay reperation z to distance family a.

[JusticeForAll]

24. Sorry to stir up the pot even more

I know slavery and war are two different types of aggression...but this case makes me wonder what current and future generations in Iraq will believe that the US owes those who have been hurt, killed, injured, and financial devastated by the US-engineered war.

[Politicub]

26. Better yet, get * to promise reparations

He'll do it in a blink. It would be a great pander move for him in this election year. I hope everyone is bracing themselves for the upcoming faux diversity fest, otherwise known as the GOP national convention.

Really - * would have nothing to loose. With a $500 billion deficeit, the largest ever, what's another $500 billion or so added to the tally to pay for reparations?

[Muddleoftheroad]

27. He'd only lose the election

Picky, picky.