My Answer to the "Irish" Question

?

The history

of the Irish, first with the British in Ireland, then with the English/German

extraction Americans here in the colonies/states. The difference between the

Irishman who came to the states and was greatly mistreated is very different

from the plight of the Black American. Irishmen were more like the typical

unwanted refugee, the Jew, the Italian, etc. many of all came as indentured

servants, basically indebted?for the opportunity to come to America for

hopefully a better life rather than starve under the near genocidal policies of

the English.

?

The

difference was they were eventually?allowed to "be white"

to?the extent?that in certain regions the Irish became the powerful,

from cops to bankers to shop keepers?and doctors and lawyers.

Whereas,

Black folks were enslaved for centuries, born into a slavery they could not

work their way out of. Most of the wealth in the US is built on the backs of

unpaid labor to Black folks. The family wealth was transferred, not only in

southern cotton fields, but in the great buildings of commerce, the banks,,

education, hospitals, libraries, the great churches, in New York, Chicago and Boston,

the roads and bridges and railroads from the black family to white families,

foremost to the wealthiest families, but even down to yours and mine.

As much as I

respect and honor FDR, all the new deal policies were designed to help White

Americans, but were written in ways to prevent Black families from getting the

very aid that let my family survive the great depression, Black farmers, 90% of

them lost their farms in the intervening years because while white farmers had

the Farm Home Loan?and Farmers Administration, Black folks were

specifically excluded from receiving?federal assistance.?

When the GIs

came?back from WW2, white soldiers were given the GI bill to go to ANY

school they could get in (including Harvard and Yale!). Black soldiers did not

get a penny.

Up until you

and I were well grown, bankers redlined Black neighborhoods so no one could get

a loan to buy a house there, this depressed the values of Black families homes

so they could not acquire the wealth the rest of us could take advantage of.

In America,

most family wealth is acquired through the increased valuation of property,

especially homes. But for Black families, when the house I bought in Pt St

Lucie in 1989 for $53,000 sold in 2004 for $159,000, and the House I bought for

$180,000 in West Palm in 2012 sold for $280,000 in 2019, in 30 years, I earned

$200,000 over the cost of rent (in fact, I owned nicer homes than I could have

rented for the same money). But if I had been a Black family in East Stuart, or

north west Jensen Beach, I would have paid $40,000 for the same house, and it

would have sold for $50,000, and then the next home if I had taken the $50,000

and bought into Rivera Beach, would have been worth $60,000 in 2019, earning

1/10th the family wealth, even though I had to pay almost as much to get into

the home.

Also, in my

entire life, I have never had to compete with a Black man for a job. I have

worked at places where there were Black folks in the same entry level job where

I started, making the same entry level pay, even though they had been there for

many years when I started, and even though I was promoted several times within

5 years, the Black folks were never seriously considered for the positions I

got. It was worse before WW2, but if all we had to go on was the last 70 years,

we owe Black people an adjustment for the wealth that was systematically stolen

from them, in EVERY state in the union. Not to mention the wealth stolen by the

cotton plantations, the NYC and Boston (Irish) bankers for the generations

before and WELL AFTER the Civil War.

?

?

?

Actually, the

black chief who sold his people to the white European slave traders was guilty

of doing wrong, but there are a couple of things to consider. One, in

historical Africa (and most of the rest of the world) captives form wars were

often kept as slaves and sold or traded by the winning countries, but the idea

of slavery was more like your ancestors indentured servitude. There was no way

the Tribal leaders knew the Europeans would commit the sort of Atrocities they

did.

Second, many

of the leaders were co-opted by the European forces, including but not limited

to the East India Company.

But even if

the tribal chiefs are as guilty as you presume, that in way gives the Europeans

a clean slate. Think for a moment, if I went to your brother-in-law’s house,

and stole his car. You knew I stole it, but I offered you a bill of sale saying

I had the right to sale it to you, and I charged you a tiny fraction of its

value, say $100.

If your

brother-in-law came to you and said, “Hey that’s my van, some guy stole it from

me!” Could you show him the bill of sale and be innocent of stealing his car?

Would you not have an obligation to return it to him?

We white

folks in the west are holding the car, we are saying, hey, this guy sold it to

me. I own it, I don’t owe anyone for it.

?

No, we do

owe. We owe indigenous people their lands, but we owe both the descendants of

slaves and even those who cannot prove their lineage back to slavery, but have

been systematically stripped of their wealth, their rights as an equal human

being for a generation, a lifetime, or for hundreds of years.

How much do

we owe? I don’t know, more than we can comfortably pay, but then, our comfort

is not really the issue. We should ask those who have been harmed, who are

still being harmed, what are the damages? What do we owe? There are small

scattered efforts by some institutions to do this, but even there, the calculus

is typically flawed and scrawny.