Thom Hartmann: ‘Caller- ‘Could Restitution For Slavery Work?’

Source:Thom Hartmann- talking about restitution for African-Americans.

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From Thom Hartmann 

I think Thom Hartmann actually nailed it on the head here and I don’t have much that I can use to improve on what he said. I would just add that once you go down the road for taxpayer funded restitution for every non-Anglo-Saxon (meaning English-American) racial and ethnic group in America, you’ll be driving on that road for the rest of your life. Because every non-Anglo-Saxon racial and ethnic group in America, can claim racial or ethnic discrimination in this country.

One big problem with restitution for slavery and that will be the one problem I’ll focus in this post, because it is a big enough problem by itself to make it a bad idea, is that it would open up new holes and other avenues for other communities to jump in. And say, “hey what about us, we’ve been discriminated against by the United States Government because of our race or ethnicity as well. Where’s our compensation?”

I’m not trying to put this lightly, but has the African-American community been through the worst or racial or ethnic bigotry in America? Maybe, but the American-Indian community who has it worst and has had it worst since the African slaves were officially freed hundred and fifty years ago. Could say, “the Europeans stole all of our land and we want to back.” They would be right to with that and they could say, “this is our country and we are going to decide who get’s to stay and who has to go.”

Japanese, Italian and German-Americans could say, what about us? How about World War II and being forced to live in those detainment camps simply because of our ethnic heritage and the Roosevelt Administration holding us against our will because they thought we were on the side of Japan, Italy and Germany during World War II.” Their motherlands even though a lot of these people had been loyal Americans for over hundred years at that point when they started immigrating to America from Japan, Italy and Germany.

Is racism still a problem in this country and do we still have racists? Sure. And by the way not all racists in America can track their roots back to Europe. No race of people has a monopoly on racism or tolerance. But the bigger problem and an issue that can be addressed by government that we could all fix together is empowering people regardless of race and ethnicity to be able to live in freedom. Making liberal democracy work for all Americans and that get’s to things like infrastructure. Having a real national infrastructure system that builds up the communities that have been left behind. And a quality education and job training system for everyone so we all can have the skills needed to live in freedom.

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