Originally posted by: QueBert
Originally posted by: JS80
Originally posted by: AStar617
I'll just say this:
If the white people who take issue with these sorts of bills were smart, they'd just give the damn apology so that our leaders no longer have that as a bargaining chip. We would have to STFU about apologies every time a new Congress came into session, and you would likewise have to STFU about *alleged* reasons that all of this is an issue for you.
If my brother badly hurt another person, it's not so god-awful to consider apologizing on their behalf to the victim. The disconnect is not that you had nothing to do with slavery--it's that deep down, some of you honestly don't believe that slavery's lasting legacy on blacks from Reconstruction forward set us back as far as it did. But even if that's the case, throw us a fvcking bone so that the more vocal idiots can shut the fvck up when confronted about other unrelated issues and real progress can be made together as Americans.
I am black, and this thread is officially going nowhere.
Actually, an officially apology would lead to a slew of lawsuits for reparations. This "official apology" is the first step in claiming reparations.
well we did promise them 40 aces and a Mule...
40 acres and a mule is the colloquial term for compensation that was to be awarded to freed American slaves after the Civil War? 40 acres (16 ha) of land to farm, and a mule with which to drag a plow so the land could be cultivated.
The award?a land grant of a quarter of a quarter section (a common homestead size of the time) deeded to heads of households presumably formerly owned by land-holding whites?was the product of Special Field Orders, No. 15, issued January 16, 1865 by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, which applied to black families who lived near the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Sherman's orders specifically allocated "the islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river, Florida." There was no mention of mules in Sherman's order, although the Army may have distributed them anyway.
After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, his successor, Andrew Johnson, revoked Sherman's Orders. It is sometimes mistakenly claimed that Johnson also vetoed the enactment of the policy as a federal statute (introduced as U.S. Senate Bill 60). In fact, the Freedmen's Bureau Bill which he vetoed made no mention of grants of land or mules. (Another version of the Freedmen's bill, also without the land grants, was later passed after Johnson's second veto was overridden.)
By June of 1865, around 40,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) in Georgia and South Carolina. Soon after, President Johnson reversed the order and returned the land to its original owners. Because of this, the phrase has come to represent the failure of Reconstruction and the general public to assist African Americans in the path from slavery to freedom
