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Question: Reparations for slavery !.!.!. persuasive letter ending!.!.please help!!?
i have- intro, 1st paragraph about debt if we gave reparations, then 2nd paragraph about slavery was in the past not today, blah blah its not our responsibility!.!.!. now i need 1 more paragraph!. what should i do!? what should i write about!?Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Many black Americans argue that only whites benefited from slavery, which is why whites should pay!. However, slavery created a wealth not just for whites, but also for all Americans, and if it created wealth for all Americans then it created wealth for blacks, too, as well as the descendents of slaves (Horowitz)!. According to Horowitz, blacks in America enjoy a twenty to fifty percent high per capita income than the blacks living in nations where they were sold!. This means that they too benefited from their ancestors being slaves, they have it much better in America than anywhere else in the world!. Since black Americans benefit from slavery as well as whites, this is another reason why reparations should not be paid!.
Reparations in terms of human life have already been paid!. When the Civil War was finally over about 359,000 union soldiers lost their life (Catton)!. The Civil War wasn’t fought to free the slaves, but a union victory guaranteed the freedom of slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation, which made it illegal to own a slave!. If the lives of over 300,000 people dying and your descendents gaining freedom aren’t enough reparation, then nothing will be!. Many people against reparations feel the Civil War is payment enough, and rightfully so!. Due to the staggering deaths of union soldiers, who fought and helped gain black freedom, reparation should not be paid!.
Fortunately, not all black Americans were slaves in America!. However, this means that unless there are written records of the names of slaves (which there are in a small number of cases) it’s impossible to know which blacks have descendents, which were slaves and which blacks have descendents that were not slaves!. Since it’s virtually impossible to know who came from a slave family and who didn’t, reparations wouldn’t be a good idea because people might be getting money they don’t “qualify” for!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

TO this day, more Americans died in the Civil War than ALL our other wars COMBINED!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.white men killing white men so black men could be free and the nation preserved!.!.!.!.!.!.!.all those men , cut down in the prime of life who would have had 50 years of earnings and living and families ahead of them, at a time when America was just about to take off in the Western Expansion and the Industrial Revolution!.!.!.!.!.how many farmers and inventors, how many Fords and Carnegies and Rockefellers and Edisons died before their time!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

An interesting point to bring up is how to prove which people would be entitled to reparations!. How would a person be able to prove that, somewhere down the family line, he/she was a direct descendant of a slave!. What kinds of records would be required or accepted as proof!?

Hope that helps!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I like the first answer; to discuss the difficulties in proving that a person is actually a descendant of a slave!.Www@QuestionHome@Com