https://www.investopedia.com/should-america-pay-slavery-reparations-5080415
«Estimated costs for the program fall somewhere around $16 trillion, the entire current-day book value of the four generations of slaves who lived in the United States from after the country’s independence in 1776 until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865.»
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/04/slavery-probe-harvards-ties-inseparable-from-rise/
I read another article a while ago about this that was a little sadder. Controversy among the various Black folks affected/involved on what should be done. Now I can’t remember it clearly, including whether they thought $100 million was enough. I know it sounds like a lot, but so is interest compounded over 300 years.
Harvard’s total endowment is $50 billion.
«I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.»
https://gizmodo.com/infowars-looks-to-dodge-sandy-hook-conspiracy-responsib-1848805709
Gizmodo’s headline wins.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html
Reconstruction *continues* to be unwound.
«Perhaps their biggest achievement was the establishment of that most democratic of American institutions: the public school. Public education effectively did not exist in the South before Reconstruction. The white elite sent their children to private schools, while poor white children went without an education. But newly freed black people, who had been prohibited from learning to read and write during slavery, were desperate for an education. So black legislators successfully pushed for a universal, state-funded system of schools — not just for their own children but for white children, too. Black legislators also helped pass the first compulsory education laws in the region. Southern children, black and white, were now required to attend schools like their Northern counterparts. Just five years into Reconstruction, every Southern state had enshrined the right to a public education for all children into its constitution.»
This is a good article. Noah Smith, former Bloomberg economist-type, tees off on American socialism, with links.
Jeez o Pete, dude, ease up.
“Yet even though it was the only ship he had seen destroyed, he was grimly certain there had been others. Indeed, he could see only one other vessel still fighting its hopeless battle, and he ground his teeth as yet another sea crashed over his own cog. The impact staggered the ship, and a fresh chorus of screams and prayers came faintly from the men and women and children packed below its streaming deck. His wife Matilda and their son Edward were in that dark, noisome hellhole of crowded terror and vomit, of gear come adrift and washing seawater, and terror choked him as he thought of them once again. He tried to find the words of prayer, the way to plead with God to save his wife and his son. He did not beg for himself. It was not his way, and his was the responsibility for bringing them to this in the first place. If God wanted his life in exchange for those so much dearer to him, it was a price he would pay without a whimper.”
Start reading this book for free: https://a.co/3fKhuuF
Ho hum more emo music from an emo singer.
And yet… isn’t it all emo? Really? I mean… aren’t we all dying? In our armchairs and our comfort?
Oh, wait, I’m emo. And drunk. NEVER MIND!
It was a dark and stormy night.
“Demon wind greeted pallid daylight with hell-howl fury. It was no true daylight, although somewhere above the clouds of seething black the sun had heaved itself once more into the heavens. It was only the devil’s own twilight, slashed with body-smashing sheets of rain and spray, the rolling concussion of thunder, the bellow of wind, and the endless keen of rigging and sodden percussion of torn canvas flailing to destruction.”
Start reading this book for free: https://a.co/iqjbZH2
