Query: would Daily Gotahm take an ad from Barclay's or reject it? Are you willing to put all your adverstisers through the same test?

My guess is that if this project were popular in the area, the Barclay's issue would not have been raised by the locals, although I do not rule out that it would eventually have been raised by Charles Barron, or even someone sane.

I also assume that if a German bank had any intent of putting such an edifice near Borough Park, it would have offered up some local reparations before hand, announced a groups discount rate for large Hasidic weddings, and avoided the problem (the Satmar just love posing in pictures with Hungarian and Romanian dignataries). My guess is that an offer of reparations to Caldwell and Daughtry would have accomplished the same; obvious they only reached out to Bertha.

Guess it all depends on the context. If Virgil Goode took his oath of office on a Jefferson Bible (actually inconcievable, given its contents), many would regard it as another cracker gesture from the folks who brought us "Lay Down Sally", but Keith Ellison doing so on Jefferson's Koran was universally hailed for its sweet irony, without anyone even noticing the bitter irony that Jefferson was a slave-holding hypocrit who did not even follow Washington's example of willing his living property their freedom upon his death.

The whole thing makes a wonderful object for debates, but does anyone really think we'd be giving this so much (as opposed to any) discussion were it not for the controversy over Atlantic Yards itself. I suspect without the pre-exisitng issue this would be no more than a one day side bar.

Would we take those ads? I don't know; we recently reset the software that kept on serving us John McCain ads.

Thing is, though, that Daily Gotham isn't slated to make a half billion in profits or get $200 million in public money. We're also not confiscating people's property to build new web servers or the like. So, frankly, the comparison fails on quite a few levels.

Again, the question is this: why, when blacks raise historical issues, do some people inevitably use language like 'playing the race card', which implies that it's nothing but a move in game, or for crying out loud, the term 'race war'? When Jews call for a boycott of Swiss banks, nobody would use the phrase 'playing the holocaust card' (at least nobody with good sense or good taste or common decency). Nor can you imagine a hypothetical situation where the Hudson Bay Company (still around) tried to build a stadium on land expropriated from an Indian reservation with no eyebrows raised.

It does seem that whenever a black person raises an issue in racial terms, there is a huge amount of outrage at the sheer gall of that. So yeah, I think there's a double standard.

"It does seem that whenever a black person raises an issue in racial terms, there is a huge amount of outrage at the sheer gall of that. So yeah, I think there's a double standard"

Don't disagree. My point, though, is that when a white person like Gersh Kuntzman or Dan Goldstein raises a black issue in racial terms, it is generally a red herring, and it seems a waste of good material not to examine the matter in terms of quantifying the exact amounts of sheer gall which can be extracted from it. Or as Mole pretty much says "when you got lemons make lemonade, so any weapon to hand"

You say:

My point, though, is that when a white person like Gersh Kuntzman or Dan Goldstein raises a black issue in racial terms, it is generally a red herring[...].

Thing is, though, that the media (and most advocacy organizations) are run by (or feature prominently) whites, so if you're saying that us Caucasians shouldn't take these positions, I don't see how there could be a public debate. You're also positing a race-based assumption of convenient insincerity that is a bit circular and a classic ad hominem, frankly.

"When Jews call for a boycott of Swiss banks, nobody would use the phrase 'playing the holocaust card"

Mike, while some of your analogies make a salient point, the one above blows.

The Swiss banks in question failed in their fiduciary function to protect the assets of their depositors. Many of those depositors were still alive. Others had heirs with actual cognizable claims to the property in question. Were these people allowed to reclaim their own PERSONAL property? No. Why not? I think we know the answer. Boycott seems a pefectly reasonable solution, albeit not one usually involved in a torts claim.

Comparing this particular situation to the Barclay's sceanario is probably a bit of a stretch.

Thing is, last I checked, Letitia James, Hakeem Jeffries, Rev. Daughtry and Roger Green were black. And they seem somewhat displeased.

Re: the Swiss banks, I'd note that descendants of slaves are still around; the fact that their legal claims stretch further back in time, and aren't per se what's driving this debate, doesn't seem relevant to the comparison you seek to make. My argument here isn't about tactics, it's about the reaction to claims made by differing groups, and the reception those claims receive.