Comments

1
I have read the Reparations piece from the Atlantic Monthly. A very well written and informative article. While I remain at great odds with Coates, I do read a lot of his material mostly from the Atlantic.

I highly recommend this article as well:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/upshot…

Needless to say, there still is a great racial divide.
2
Can we count some of the $15 trillion spent on the War on Poverty as reparations?
3
The police officer does have facial bone fractures to include a blown out eye socket.
4
@3 seems like every day the officer's supposed injuries magically worsen, according to right wing "news" sites and commenters like yourself. By the end of the week you'll be telling us that Michael Brown took his head clean off and shot himself six times.
5
@4 Keep arguing with facts.
6
Reparations are hardly going to work. Given that the US gov't is in huge deficit spending. It is better to aim for those who suffered under segregation.

If reparations are aimed to correct a wrong, then it is better to put the money in things that help all those that suffered racism and poverty, like affirmative action and fighting housing discrimination..
7
Just when I think Kid Herz couldn't get any dumber.....

Thanks for the laughs anyway, clown.
8
I'll support the concept of reparations when it includes all parties brought to the "New World" under force or false pretenses, then subject to servitude, abuse and forced labor. African slaves, Irish slaves, Chinese laborers, etc.
9
Coates seems to find it unbelievable that Brown attacked the officer and tried to take his gun. I don't claim to know whether he did or not, but Slog readers here in Seattle recently saw video of police shooting victim who tried to do exactly that. If I remember correctly, Ansel was all keen to play up that incident as part of his cops-abuse-brown-people narrative until the video made it hard for him.
10
@4: I don't think that CBS is a right wing news organization:
The Ferguson police chief said Wilson has been on administrative leave since the Aug. 9 shooting. Wilson was treated for injuries after the incident, said Jackson, who told CBS affiliate KMOV that the officer "was hit" and the "side of his face was swollen."


Forensics will tell us the exact time that occurred, we hope. Until then remember that we are entitled to our own opinions but we are not entitled to our own facts.
12
@10 "swollen face" doesn't necessarily mean "multiple fractures with blown out eye socket." I should know, I played hockey growing up. Yes, I eagerly await the results of a proper investigation, as do we all. I'm specifically referring to the claims of the unregistered commenter @3.
13
Ferguson police chief? Oh, he's totally reliable. Also, there was a TV interview with a woman who says she heard from Officer Wilson that Brown charged him, so case closed.
14
The pattern couldn't be more clear if you open your mind enough to see it. Black people's bodies belong to the police, and they can do whatever they want with them, and if anybody says different they bring out the armored vehicles and camo uniforms and mounted weaponry to make you shut up. The war on black people is still going on. You can argue about the fine details of who did what but the truth is, black people are interfered with without cause every day in this country. Usually it's a routine humiliation, a spread on the sidewalk, but sometimes it's a fatal choke hold or a handful of bullets. And we know exactly why it is that way.
15
More than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop's version of events.
https://twitter.com/ChristineDByers/stat…
16
Enough time and generations have passed, not to mention all the waves of white (& passable as white) immigrants, that reparations could only serve to divide the very people who should be united-all who have been adversely effected by our economic system and national policies.
Lets build up social services, lets ad hand-ups to our hand-outs, lets rebuild our public education and public infrastructure systems, lets close tax loopholes for the rich and make it harder to profit from exploitation. Reparations is only good as a soundbite.
18
@11, if it's not "handing cash to black people" can you tell us exactly what "reparations" are being proposed? I started to read that article then realized it's about 50 pages of "here are some more ways blacks have been fucked in the US throughout history" and I never got to any actual proposition of what should be done about it. So, in all honesty what are "reparations" if not money?

I realize that blacks used to have a really shitty time in the US. I also realize that blacks have a fairly shitty time in the US now. Clearly we have to improve the situation. Getting the police under control, fixing our idiotic drug laws and fixing the educational system would all be a good start. What won't help is people like me (my ancestors weren't even here during slavery and even if they were I have never once owned a slave) paying living people for something that happened to distant ancestors.
20
@18: Not only couldn't you be bothered to read the article to find out what the author means by reparations, you couldn't even be bothered to read the whole post you are replying to, which answers your question in the second fucking sentence. The second of two whole sentences in the post. Here, I'll highlight it for you:
@6, He's not talking about handing cash over to black people. If you read the attached article (more importantly, the link at the end describing pending legislation in congress to initiate the process) you would see that it's about a systemic analysis of the effects of slavery, racism, and discrimination on African-Americans living today, with the goal of identifying measures that can be taken to rectify it.

"Measures that can be taken to rectify it" means things like "getting the police under control, fixing our idiotic drug laws and fixing the educational system." You know, things you think should be done.
21
@19,
By that reasoning, why should we have any sympathy for soldiers killed in battle or firefighters killed on the job... or police killed on the job either for that matter?

After all, their deaths are all easily foreseeable consequences of the lives they chose.
22
@21: To be fair to @19, he left out one of the poor life choices made by Michael Brown that led to his death: He chose to be born black in the United States.
23
Your angelic Eagle Scout Rhodes Scholar Nobel Laureate was caught on video holding a convenience store owner half his size by the throat and shoving him. This occurred fifteen minutes before Brown got shot.

Sorry, but your So Totally Not a Grand Narrative is bullshit. Deal with it.
24
The "not sure" response was left out of the analysis (25% of whites, 40% of Hispanics, 18% of blacks). The *uncertainty* is a big part the story, even if it doesn't fit with the "white people don't care about black people" narrative. Yes, the data support that argument, but not nearly so well as Mona Chalabi or Ansel Herz would have you believe.

White people may need to read more Coates, but white, black, and brown people also need to be statistically literate.
25
@23: You are missing the point. It doesn't actually matter what kind of character Michael Brown was. It doesn't actually matter what he did fifteen minutes before he got shot. What matters are the direct circumstances of his shooting, and whether or not the use of lethal force by the police officer in this case was or was not justified under the law.

Why do all the racist dipshits seem to think that saying "Dude was a thug who needed killing" is any kind of justification in a lawful society? Why do they think that someone being an alleged (or actual!) criminal justifies the police also acting in a criminal manner?
29
"capable of redemption"

Mister Brown should have thought of that earlier in the day.
30

How about all the middle class people who were driven from their urban homes by Liberal tinkering in the late 60s and 70s?

Where's our reparations?

31
@27: Let's explore your fascinating personal ethics. Does the thought that the cop who shot Michael Brown might get away with murder bother you more or less than the thought that Michael Brown may have been murdered by a cop?
32
@30 Oh go fuck yourself. You got to be white in America. There's your goddamned reparations. The game of life dealt you a pair of kings. Not anyone's fault but your own if you couldn't make that into a winning hand.
33

#32

So it's not about justification for reparations, it's about more welfare because you say so?
35

#31

What bothers me most is that this story is seeming less and less authentic and more like one of those posts about bearded hipsters wearing monocles and 14 year olds winning science fairs with cures for hepatitis.
36
@25 It's equal parts funny and sad that your whole race circus is heading towards a brick wall, a la St Trayvon. He started out as a "innocent chil' shot in the back by 'dat Klansman in blue". In reality a piece of shit suspect shot in the front while threatening a cop. That's seems sooooo unbelievable based on his past behavior? You can keep moving your goalposts but everyday more info comes out exonerating the cop. I get it though. When you're this invested in your narrative there's nothing else to do.
37
@36: You know all about being invested in a narrative; yours seems to be that it's okay for anyone to shoot and kill an unarmed black man as long as said black man was sufficiently "thuggish".

My narrative is more that it isn't okay for the cops to gun down anyone unless there is some very clear and present danger. And yes, I am invested in that, as I don't much care for police states and extrajudicial execution.
38
Simple tips on how not to get your ass kicked by the police!

youtu.be/QR465HoCWFQ
39
@33: It's about recognizing the vast gulf between your experience as a white male in the United States, and the experience of your entire social class, and that of black Americans as individuals and as a class. It's about recognizing the sorry canard of "reverse racism". It's about acknowledging privilege. It's about goddamned empathy.
40
Is the killer still off in hiding with the assistance of his co-conspirators?
41
I got mugged by a black man once. Does that mean I've already paid up?
42
act like a thug, get treated like a thug. zero sympathy here.

Lets hope the little thugster didnt procreate - thats the best that can come of this whole episode - one less criminal mouth to feed is a win for society.

logic 101.
45
@14
Yea Fnarf.
Keep preaching the gospel from Lilly White Phinny Ridge.
46
"He's not talking about handing cash over to black people."

...except that's exactly what reparations is. The rest of the stuff is social programs that could be done without the toxic label, but that's not what Coates is after.
48
Have they charged Mike Brown for strong armed robbery and resisting arrest yet?
49
@45 Put your fucking gun in your mouth already, you useless piece of shit.
50
@48 - yes. he was charged, tried and found guilty in less than a minute and summarily executed by Officer Wilson. . .

. . . you fucking miserable piece of shit.
51
"The Ferguson police chief, Thomas Jackson, said that it was around the time that Officer Wilson started talking to the two that he realized they fit the description of the suspects in the convenience store robbery."

Today's NYT. Looks like Officer Wilson knew about Brown's recent robbery.

"In that interview, Mr. Johnson admitted that he and Mr. Brown had stolen cigarillos from the store, said the lawyer, Freeman R. Bosley Jr."

OK, stop pushing that video that claims they paid for them.

" Fearing that the teenager was going to attack him, the officer decided to use deadly force. Some witnesses have backed up that account. "

All the bricks come tumbling down as the witnesses speak.
52
How about you and Coates take turns blowing me instead, Damsel. Sorry, but my family came to this country 20 years ago, and we will not be held liable for something that happened 200 years ago solely because we share a similar skin color to those people. If your white guilt is killing you so badly, feel free to donate your income to the nearest black person.
53
@49

There's that progressive tolerance I have heard so much about.
54
@53 Eat a bullet.
55
@53 Progressive tolerance? Who said I was a progressive, or tolerant?
56
@54/55

Looks like you have violent tendencies a problem with impulse control.
57
@20,
If he's suggesting fixing police, education, drug laws, etc then that is NOT REPARATIONS. Words have meanings. Reparations "the making of amends for wrong or injury done" usually in "money material or labor". I fully support fixing our broken system but that is not reparations. Using that word inappropriately does nothing but divide the very people whose support you need.
59
@57: Do you support the idea of taking steps to make amends for the wrongs committed against African Americans, yes or no?

If yes, quit quibbling over what to call it. Reparations. Social justice. Truth and reconciliation. Whatever, it is the principle that is important.

If no, what the fuck is wrong with you?
60
"If yes, quit quibbling over what to call it. Reparations. Social justice. Truth and reconciliation. Whatever, it is the principle that is important."

"Government enforced mugging"?

Please wait...

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