Guest Post by Michelle Hackman
Change would help quantify eligibility for reparations should the government agree to pay them
The U.S. government is considering asking Black Americans on federal forms, including the census, whether their ancestors were enslaved.
In a proposed update to how the government tracks Americans’ race and ethnicity, the Biden administration is asking the public for input on how it might go about differentiating Black people who are descendants of slaves in America from those whose families arrived more recently as immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean or other countries.
The idea of adding more-detailed categories to the census has been gaining currency among some Black Americans, who say society too often conflates their experiences with those of Black immigrants, who only started moving to the U.S. in meaningful numbers in the past few decades. Roughly one in five Black people in the U.S. are immigrants or their children, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
Supporters of the change say one reason they are pushing it is to quantify who would be eligible to receive reparations for slavery should the government ever agree to pay them. An effort to make such payments has stalled in Congress, though local efforts have gained some steam. In San Francisco, the city’s Board of Supervisors is debating a proposal to award eligible Black residents up to $5 million per person in restitution, one of a menu of preliminary recommendations that include free homes, guaranteed incomes and debt and tax relief.
Research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and by researchers at Duke University, among others, shows that Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved tend to lag behind in wealth and education compared with more-recent arrivals.
“America sees Black people as a monolith,” said Chad Brown, spokesperson for the National Assembly of American Slavery Descendants, which backs reparations and is pushing for the change. “When you say all Black people are the same, you are ignoring differences in culture, ancestry, economics, and you are doing a disservice to everyone lumped into that group.”
The potential change is one of several the Biden administration is thinking about adopting to redefine how race and ethnicity are measured on government forms, which typically dictate how other institutions collect demographic data.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors this month received a preliminary report on a proposal to make restitution to eligible Black residents.Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
The Biden administration has proposed combining existing race and ethnicity questions so that “Hispanic or Latino” would no longer be a separate question, but instead would be one of several choices on the race question. It has also proposed creating a new race question category for Americans of Middle Eastern or North African heritage. Unlike for those changes, the administration didn’t include a formal recommendation about identifying Black Americans’ ancestry, but rather solicited comments from the public on how it might do so.
Supporters of the change want an additional question should a respondent select “Black or African American” on a government form where they could indicate that their ancestors were slaves. In its proposed rule on those broader changes, the administration asked whether the term “American Descendants of Slavery” or “American Freedmen” would be the best terms to describe the group. Some have suggested the term “Foundational Black Americans.”
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which is spearheading the race-category overhaul, declined to comment on the idea.
Last year California became the first state to require that Black state employees be allowed to specify that they are “African American descendants of persons enslaved in the United States” on employment forms. The law, which takes effect next year, would allow self-identification by Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean and require that statistics be published each year.
A working group in California, which is drafting a reparations proposal for the State Legislature to study, is looking at partnerships with genealogy websites including 23andMe and Ancestry.com to potentially help verify a Black person’s lineage should she or he apply to receive reparations. The census and other federal surveys rely on respondents’ self-reported descriptions and typically don’t ask for verification.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, said subdividing the Black population in the U.S. is a harmful step that would further divide American society. “Government shouldn’t be in the business of separating people by immutable characteristics,” he said.
Mr. Gonzalez, who has written extensively on issues of race, said he favors reinstating a question removed after the 1970 census that asked respondents to list where their parents were born. Using that information, he said, researchers could group categories as they wish.
If the slavery-related change were adopted, it wouldn’t only be used on the census but also on forms that Americans encounter on a more routine basis, such as applications for federal student loans and home loans.
So far, thousands of members of the public have left comments on the proposed race-category overhaul. Michael Hicks, an administrator at a historically Black college in Louisville, Ky., recently logged into a government website and typed up a 400-word comment in favor of the change for Black respondents.
Jon Cherry for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Hicks said he became interested in supporting politicians who more directly represent the interests of slavery descendants after becoming disillusioned with former President Barack Obama. During Mr. Obama’s presidency, Mr. Hicks said, many Black Americans felt left behind as their neighborhoods gentrified and their incomes couldn’t keep pace. According to surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve, Black families’ wealth is less than 15% of white families’ wealth, and lower than any racial group.
“His election and his presidency was landmark, but it didn’t help most Black Americans except symbolically,” he said. Mr. Hicks and other supporters of this designation have pointed out that Mr. Obama isn’t descended from slaves—his father was an international student from Kenya and his mother white.
“If America wants resources to go to the populations that need them the most, we must accurately recognize who is affected and why,” Mr. Hicks wrote in his comments in support of the new category.
The government’s proposal comes in the midst of a broader debate among Black Americans over how much experience the descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. share with those whose families came to America voluntarily. Many Black immigrants say they face much of the same discrimination, particularly at the hands of police. Black people from Africa were also brought to the Caribbean and Latin America as slaves. But many of those whose ancestors were enslaved in the U.S. believe they should be considered a distinct ethnic group.
That belief is based at least in part on limited data showing that Black immigrants and their children on average find higher-paying jobs and accumulate more wealth than people whose families have lived here for decades or centuries. Several studies suggest that Black immigrants and their children are overrepresented on elite college campuses—particularly if they emigrated from the African continent.
Because the Black population isn’t systematically categorized along such lines, research on these outcomes is limited.
“There’s still a lot we don’t know, and it would be easier to start knowing those things if we could better document the Black population,” said Camille Z. Charles, a professor of sociology and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania who has researched Black student populations at elite schools and supports more-detailed data collection.
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Are they also going to ask black americans if they OWNED slaves.
Every state in the original 13 and then the newer states that were slave states.
Then ask how many white people owned slaves.
Then ask the white people decendants if they came over on slavery lite ” indentured servitude”
And while we are doing that lets keep ignoring the original peoples who were here a long time before any black or white faces showed the fuck up
“lets keep ignoring the original peoples who were here a long time before any black or white faces showed the fuck up”
Why exactly? The American Indians practiced genocide and slavery with war captives. It is widely documented, thanks to Europeans who knew how to write things down.
The proxy war in Ukraine is genocide and all soldiers are slaves. So what’s your point? The Indians did it, so it’s ok or what?
Commenter said Amindians should be left out of a historical accounting of slavery, (suppose that could have been sarcasm, but sarc is not always obvious). I pointed out that Americans Indians widely practiced slavery . The original context in both posts was the presumption that slavery is not a good thing. The point in each case was where the accounting should stop. Clear?
Don’t forget the ritual sacrifice of the Central and South American natives.
Yeah, but they did it right…. There isn’t anyone for them to pay reparations to.
Ya know, cuz they cut their hearts out.
Green tip reparations.
As a victim of black violent crime.
I’m due my reparations.
Just rip a niggers eye out case closed.
I can trace all of my ancestors back to crossings from Canada in the late 1800s/early 1900s (and into Canada in the century before that from various European countries). Nobody will EVER ask me any of that. They will just DEMAND my money.
Time to repatriate alla you dirty snowbacks who slink through the frozen Minnesota woods at night to steal all our hockey goalie jobs for half of what we Americans are paid. Get the fuck oot.
};^D
I have immigration papers for ALL of them. Perfectly legal entry…you know, the way it used to go. And NONE of them ever ended up on welfare and ALL became legal citizens. But then we had a free country back then that was expanding and creating wealth because we had a gold standard, no income taxes, no female suffrage, no government welfare, no central bank, nearly no federal bureaucracy, etc. And they crossed into Vermont and NY, like so many illegals are doing today.
But you brought global cooling with you. You owe us for our rising heating bills.
#reparationsforBTUs
Yeah I have Native American ancestors, Ojibwa. Were is my money?
You spent it all on fire water.
They should ask Americans if they owned slaves and if they didn’t they should not taxed for slavery.
That’s a good idea. Have two new questions:
1) Were you personally ever a slave in the United States?
2) Did you personally ever own a slave in the United States?
People who answer “no” on question one do not GET reparations.
People who answer “no” on question two do not PAY reparations.
23 and me and ancestry.com are scams to collect peoples DNA. People have sent in animal blood and got results of ancestry back.
People who have done meticulous family trees probably have more reliable data than those 2 companies do. But most people, including blacks don’t have meticulously studied family trees.
Black African written languages were created FOR THEM by white missionaries.
When you get down to it, blacks have contributed little to nothing to the world.
They only consume and destroy.
Like their Red Sea pedestrian cousins.
Animal blood! Now I know this world is screwed up!
A sister did this DNA thing. But she never supported Ron Paul so that explains that…his smarts about the screwed up world.
Wonder is anyone has discovered they are related to Pygmies?
Something like project veritas had an jew executive at 23 and me admitting to faking results to mess with the goyims and maybe make them less racist.
It is on record.
If I sent in chimpanzee blood or gorilla blood, I bet I know what the results would say.
If I sent in chimpanzee blood or gorilla blood, I bet I know what the results would say.
Ooh eee
Ooh Ah ah
Ting tang,
Wallawalla bingbang?
.
I will check yes even though my blood is scots-irish. Many of my relatives arrived here as indentured servants.
Many of Chinese origin can also check yes. Chinese were imported by the millions to build railroads. But, they are ignored because they haven’t played the victim card for 100+ years.
https://medium.com/@theHun/truth-the-chinese-were-slaves-in-the-us-for-centuries-3ea5eafefe9
My heritage is the same; Scots-Irish, and, yes, our forebears were some of the original slaves in America. Where’s the census checkmarks for whites whose ancestors may have been slaves? How does restricting reparations to blacks pass constitutional muster? The thought of paying those grasping bastards even more for doing nothing really grates. . . and I’m not even American.
Fucking most coons don’t know who their fathers are. How are they even going to be able to know?
You could weed out a lot of Blacks by a question asking, “List your parents and grandparents on both sides.”
Watch the Jews get in on the act because they were enslaved in Egypt.
Good point! Never doubt something like that.
Do the Irish slaves in America count?
NEVER. (According to them…I’m fine with HONEST history).
They were Israelites for the record. And when Joshua took them across the Jordan the land prophesy was fulfilled.
Next time you see some “historian” claiming that the ancient Egyptians were Blacks, leave a comment demanding reparations from Blacks to Jews. Be sure to include 4,000 years of compound interest.
I’ve read about Israelites possibly , some of them, being black. Just commenting.
They’ve been ‘in on the act’ for thousands of years … the original ‘victims’ … how many times have 6,000,000 of them been victims of some sort of holoco$t or other?
And, of course, for all of their victimhood — they were among the larger slave traders in the New World — all the way to the farthest reaches of South America.
Does being a tax slave count?
How about reparations for descendants of the men and boys who fought in that disgusting, pre-planned war to free the slaves (we know that wasn’t the real reason for the war but that’s what is taught) who were killed or maimed and had to suffer the rest of their lives in unspeakable agony?
I am a descendant of slaves in ancient Rome. I want Roman numerals and spaghetti to be cancelled.
I am descendant of Greek slaves. I want spanakopitta cancelled. Oh wait, they invented homosexuality and butt sex. They’re ok.
More free shit for niggers. As if cradle to grave coddling and benefits aren’t enough for these fucking illiterate parasites.
I wonder if Ivermectin would make them repatriate.
No name, niggers are controlled here. I cannot tell you exactly where I live but the times they are a changing.
Sawee, it ain’t me babe.
Don’t hold back, say what you are really thinking.
I will identify as an angry black man with no daddy and a first grade education. My Nigga.
We’ll debit what they’re putatively “owed” from the trillion$ they’ve already received, plus their exorbitant maintenance costs.
The purpose of paying damages is to restore someone to the condition they would have been in if the original injury had not been done.
Every repatriation payment should include a trip back to Africa, and enough money to pay for a mud hut, a goat, and some aluminum cookware.
I heard they dropped pallets of hundred dollar bills to the Taliban in the 80s.
The result?
A cup of coffee cost a hundred dollars.
They had no change or smaller bills.
I have never tried to verify this story.
after nearly $10 trillion in direct payments, minority set asides, forced hiring due to ‘statistical racism’, lowering of every standard used anywhere to ‘lift’ that demographic and total destruction of education, etc, WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT WHAT THEY OWE US??!!
never let the left determine the field of discussion or engagement. on reparations, blacks owe America more than America owes them.
If that’s not an excuse to print another trillion or two I don’t know what is. Lol
Don’t the blacks owe reparations to like, everyone else?
That is a pretty hard question to answer when you have an entire demographic who really dont know who their daddys are………
If I play my cards right, and with some luck, I am going to get $5 million soon. It’s an opportunity I only recently stumbled upon. Wish me luck.
I want to know where to send a proper congratulations greeting card. What’s your mailing address?
};^D
As a proud black African negro nigger, you deserve those reparations, Svarga. That 5 mil is yours.
Fuck it.
Pay’em. Pay ’em trillions of dollars.
The country will tank alot faster this way.
After things fall apart and Fiat is worthless than nothing the people who know how to do shit will be in charge while the 13% of the population that don’t know how to do anything except ask “Where’s my shit” will be easy to spot and easier to deal with.
It’ll be nice to see the impoverished whites all robbing the rich niggers for a change.
There is a better way.
Ask if your ancestors were here before the end of the Civil War. If not, free pass because they were not here.
If your ancestors were here before the end of the Civil War, were they from The South? If so, target those people for reparations.
Final step: Put all the descendants of slaves into the same warehouse without windows and doors as the descendants of Southerners. No weapons other than each side gets a 100,000 pound hammer. Now let them have at it. The result will be a fight between the very low IQ after they proceed to kill many of themselves trying to use the hammer.
Forensic banking, surely the money didn’t vanish without a trace.
My guess?
A bunch of New Amsterdam bankers financed the Atlantic molasses, rum, slave trading routes.
My next guess, a bunch of bankers and their descendants of the slave trade still hold that money.
This can be solved simply by moving all Southern Hillbillies slave owner descendants into places like Chicago. Then watch what happens next.
One outcome is certain. The Southern Hillbillies would quickly die from the cold. Even in July as the temperature very seldom gets as hot as on the plantations and they don’t have the intelligence to comprehend how a furnace functions. This was proven not that long ago when the South had a rumor of an ice storm and the Southern Hillbillies proceeded to freeze because the temperature dropped below 80. Meanwhile, retirees from Cleveland were seen walking around outside in shorts and turned off the air conditioner.
Hillbilly slave owners?
You feeling ok?
I’ll have granny cook you up some potatoes with posum gravy. Plus, one snort from the jug. That’ll set your head straight.
For the meme with the puffin on it – it’s already been done in Liberia.
Also, … why does that meme have a puffin on it?
Ask the person I ripped it off from. Its also being done in Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark, etc.
2nd pic from the end: Angolan born António Johnson was also a time traveler and brought clothing styles and photography from 200 years hence into a shocked Virginia courtroom.
“I have seen the future and it is Wakanda Fo-eva, muh lily krakkaz.”, he pronounced in a passable impersonation of eventual descendant, Lyndon B. Johnson.
Unfortunately, the camera was stolen by his lawn boy and never seen again.
Everyone who answers yes gets a free one way trip to Liberia.
I’m really, really White and my ancestors fought for the North with Sherman’s army during the Civil War…but if there’s money in having slave ancestors then I’ll identify as a Black victim of slavery. Let the Libtards call me a racist with White privilege…I dare them.
I’ve been a tax slave/corporate slave all my life. What do I win?
https://usdebtclock.org/
Preparation H for your bloody hemorrhoids after 30 years of financial ass rape.
I identify as black until my check clears.
Hey? Free money is free money, and claiming I’m black (or any other absurdity) is in their rulebook.
What is that rule for radicals?
Make them try and live up to their own rules?
Pretty sure with the quicksand~like stability of their contemporary absurdity generating system, none of them are in full compiance with the current TeamSatanicDemocrat [TSD] policies.
If you don’t already identify as a black transgender lesbian you’re simply not playing the game correctly. Cannot wait to get my 5 mill!
I am all for it. Now we know where to send the bill….
https://worldyturnings.wordpress.com/2020/10/16/reparations-then-we-will-get-along-ok/
NO REPARATION(S) WITHOUT REPATRIATION(S)
NO NO NO!
What the US Government is “considering” is taking every fucking nigger in America for their WORD at face value.
Ain’t a nigger on the planet EVER turned down free money or lied to get it.
Tell us again where you’re getting all this helicopter money?
I feel a hand in my pocket. It ain’t mine and it ain’t scratchin’ muh ballz.
I think we have a problem.
Wait, you said you judge people as individuals, not in groups.
Weirdly inconsistent for a guy, not so much for a woman pretending to be male.
I guess you’re an e-tranny.
A single group is an “individual” for the purpose of determining motive.
So, I guess…fuck you?
Invest in Crisco, Newports, McDonald’s,Nike, KFC and Wafflehouse.
All positive buys.
I see a huge short term surge on the fiscal horizon.
“When EF Moses Walks
Pedestrians listen.”
Virtually all of them are also descendants of slave *owners* too.
Maybe they should pay themselves those reparations?
I support the “One Drop Rule”. Any person with even one drop of White blood does not qualify for receiving reparations, only for paying it.
I have a different “one drop rule” everyone with even one drop of any type of blood in them should start shutting the fuck up about reparations. The dead can talk it over with Hillary Clinton.
Believe it or not , in North Texas at the time the tune was played on all pop AM radio. And believe it or not , Austin , Texas was still REDNECK! People can screw things up.
Why not just ask them if they are slaves now? I mean for $5 million I would have no problem claiming I am currently a slave
How about those whose forbears came over as indentured servants of any color? How about native american slaves? Why not anyone who picked cotton or mined coal during the great depression? Pick enough scabs and the Gov. can pay everyone. Stupid to dig up the past of 5 generations ago.
It’s another burrito.
Shouldn’t those slaves children collect from the original black kings who ran the slave pickups in Africa? Not the Jewish middlemen, either.
Maybe we should identify the relatively few Slave Owners! We The People are not cumulatively responsible! If Government represents the people then they need to identify the ones who are responsible.
Historical facts proves white slaves in all of history out number black slaves 12 to 1