https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB3121

I wonder if Minnesota will go down this road?

I don’t owe anybody reparations. First, I did nothing wrong – I owned no slaves, I bought no slaves, I sold no slaves. Second, we only pay reparations to the living (see Japanese reparations bill). Nobody who was enslaved in the United States before 1865 is still living. Third, the sins of the father do not pass to the next generation (or the seventh). Fourth, our country already paid in blood via the civil war – to end slavery in the USA.

If descendants of slaves want to go after money for what happened to their ancestors they should go after the actual slave sale transactions, those in the United States and those in Africa. I mean it won’t work – but that is better than trying to price some sort of collective guilt. Will Kamala have to pay (her ancestor owned slaves). What about all the Africans descended from those who enslaved and sold the persons brought to America? Should they pay? But for them, nobody could have purchased the slaves and shipped them to the USA.

The calculation is fraught with difficulty. Oh – and don’t forget to net out all the welfare payments. Oh – and don’t forget to compare the average annual income of a slave descendant in the United States today to the average African continent annual income today (as we have to compare how well off a person is here versus how they would fair had slavery never happened). Oh – and don’t forget to charge off the cost of previous riots (Watts riots, the George Floyd riots, the Portland riots, the Chicago riots and so forth). Perhaps we should charge the 600,000 who died in the Civil War, to end slavery, against all the lynchings that took place. Lets put a value on that.

I don’t think this commission is going to have an easy job and my guess is nothing ever comes out of it. I guess we will see.

I hope Minnesota doesn’t go down this road. It is not going to make race relations better – only worse.

I’m not sure what
“Parasite resistance predicts fitness better than fecundity in a natural population of the freshwater snail Potamopyrgus antipodarum,”
has to do with American racism or Confederate trappings.

I’m surprised they are renaming the prize. Don’t they know that this gives ammunition for cancelling Margaret Sanger?

Dear Colleagues,
The leadership of the ASA has recommended to the awarding organization – COPSS – that the R.A. Fisher Award and Lectureship be retired and that this year’s award be retitled. There is no principle of greater value than the principle of strengthening the statistical community by moving forward to form a more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive society. We are committed to future diversity and inclusion across the generations in the statistics profession.
We celebrate and commend the outstanding accomplishments of past award recipients and especially this year’s recipient….

(I’ve removed the name of this year’s winner not because I disagree with the choice — the selected person is quite deserving on honor — but to avoid any chance rickA or mikeN worm it into one of their dishonest takes on the situation. )

I think it’s a good decision. Nobody views this as eliminating him from statistics (which wouldn’t be possible anyway) and isn’t a reflection on his groundbreaking statistical work.

The idea that primary loyalty was owed to your state not to the coalition of states was a common attitude in the South and elsewhere. If it hadn’t been, there never would have been a secession fever and there never would have been large enough confederate armies to sustain a war effort for years. I’ve already mentioned this regarding the Confederate states: Many people North and South but especially in border states during the Civil War (Lincoln for example) had family members who went Union or Confederate on the basis of what they perceived as their primary loyalty. And anti- or pro-slavery was not the only reason.

If memory serves me, some northeastern states have also threatened to secede on occasion.

It may have actually have been the Civil War itself that weakened the “states-first” attitude in part by requiring soldiers to live, march, and fight over much of the U. S. landscape . (This was mentioned towards the end of the Ken Burns Civil War program that aired on public television.)

I thought I had mentioned that but either my post didn’t take or I thought about it and didn’t follow through.

It may be that some of the Confederate generals didn’t view their south as being apart from the United States, but I don’t think that excuses their choices and actions.

Re: Lionel A “… why should the memory of a traitor, a …

I think that you have the wrong Lionel A there Tyvor.

We should remember that after the end of the war for independence the U. S. started life as a confederacy not a federal union and it is clear from contemporary and later writings that many people at the time of the civil war, including Robert E. Lee, still thought of the American union as “the United States ARE” rather than “the United States IS” and therefore thought of their state as their country, with the union a useful voluntary arrangement for certain aspects of governance. Those ideas made allegiance to their state predominant in their minds. (Not entirely dissimilar to the way that many people’s loyalty to family and/or religion outweigh other loyalties in their minds.)

The statements and actions of President Lincoln, General and later President Grant, and many other Union officers show that they considered the war a tragic episode and did not want a vindictive aftermath to poison the Union for long thereafter.* That is why no Confederate officers or government officials were even tried for treason. Some (including Gen. Longstreet, Lee’s chief lieutenant) even held federal offices after the war. * And they had other things to get on with.

Now, 1/5 of the way into the 21 century, it past due that we should finally consider and honor the feelings of the descendants of those people who were slaves in the U. S. of the past and remove the remaining hurtful symbols of the Confederate past and any vestiges of the attitudes which allowed racism (and ethnic arrogance) to be allowed and even to flourish in those centuries. All the Confederate generals are long dead and any honor due to them is in the history books and in whatever of their military careers is still studied at West Point.

I’m still curious as to whether or not states such as Mississippi honor their Union war veterans and war dead along with their Confederate counterparts and if not why not.

Consider South Africa

The book ‘Long Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History’ by Erna Paris is worth a look:

Truths too hard to take

See also Greg Grandin’s ‘Empire’s Workshop’ and ‘Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala’ by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer for the US role in Latin America.

Destabilising of egalitarian socialist governments to protect corporate profits and the American right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, unalienable rights’ etc.

And yes I am also aware of Britain’s long history of similar in other pats of the world such as Asia, India and China.

I suspect memories of the Opium Wars are rising to the fore, necessary to pay for the increasing coercion of the Indian sub-continent.

I have many suggestions for reading up on that latter, including excoriating statements by British subjects themselves in collections of letters and other quotes.

Born into poverty in Randolph County, Missouri, he went on to become General of the Army and the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Omar Nelson Bradley would be an excellent choice.

Another would be Benjamin O. Davis — or one of those listed here.

https://www.theroot.com/call-of-duty-17-top-black-military-officers-1790868526