to think in america it is right for respiration to be paid

[swimmering]

by the party that caused slavery (the democrats) vote away.

All women were property til not so long ago. I demand reparation!

First slaves in America were brought to Jamestown Colony in 1519. So the British government should pay reparations since they started it!!

The Brits are owed reparations from all over the place, the Danes, the Italians, the Norwegians etc, etc.

Don’t forget the Normans.

Leave the Romans out of it though - after all, they did a lot for us

The Normans? Excellent. How much does DH owe little old serfy me?

As others have said, completely impractical and where would the line be drawn?

"Baby bonds" for all babies in all poor families would be a better idea--fairer, less divisive, and actually workable.

My ancestors were abolitionists. Some fought in the Union Army to end slavery.

If anyone should pay reparations it should be the southern states who fought a war to preserve slavery.

If a government addresses current discrimination and disadvantage, that's likely to work out better for all concerned. Otherwise you get decades of people fighting about whose ancestors were the most disadvantaged and who did what to whom on various levels: all stuff that people long dead did to one another and which can't be fixed or changed now. As with contested wills, the only people who end up with the price of a pint afterwards are the lawyers.

What did the Romans ever do for us?!

My Scottish half is pretty cross about the Highland Clearances and the Irish half is fucking spitting, possibly at the Scots.

I think you probably owe me a few quid too for the 800 years of oppression. PayPal is fine thanks.

I don't imagine that reparations would ĒVĒR be paid from party funds, if that's what you mean.

😂😂😂 OP you do know that the Republicans and Democrats switched platforms in the US, right?

At the time when slavery was about the Republicans were the more liberal party and the Democrats were the right-wing conservatives, soooooo

YABU

And ignorant.

Just sitting here in NI waiting for you to send over some air, so we can all breath safely. Thank you OP.

My family has always been common as muck and I suspect would have been serfs forced to work for the nearest Laird. I'm ready to fill out the forms, bring me forms.

Do you actually believe Americans were the ones who invented slavery?

YABVU and absolutely ridiculous.

The stupidity is strong with this one.

Maybe Massachusetts should pay as I believe they were the first state to legislate the right to slavery. Or Louisiana, since I think it was New France that really industrialised slavery-based agriculture in the Americas.

I can't imagine what you could possibly be getting from this thread OP. Why haven't you provided a reasoned argument?

So bored with all this bloody apologising. If you personally had a hand in something that needed an apology - yes. Something historical - no, fuck off.

The parties had switched positions by the 1930s. Everyone knows that.

Abraham Lincoln was a Republican in the 1860s but would without a doubt have been a Democrat were he alive today. The present day Republican Party would be unrecognisable to him.

And likewise, Democrats from back then would vote Republican today.

The Democrats caused slavery?

PMSL.

Go away and learn some history and come back when you realise that slavery existed a long time before the Democratic Party, and that it was actually something that existed as long as the (British) North American colonies.

That is to say, it was under British rule that slavery got its start in north America. The money generated by the labour of slaves benefited millions of people in Britain.

It became capital that was invested back into plantations and into British factories and mills and canals and railways and insurance companies and property and banks and virtually every single aspect of the British economy.

Long after the abolition of slavery in British colonies Britain continued to prosper by dint of the milling of cotton eagerly imported (because it was cheap) from the slave states of the US.

And maybe while you're at it, look at a chronology of American history and take note of when the parties had their beginnings. Hint - it wasn't in 1610.

:) respiration, reparation, and the best one was repatriation.