Yes I acknowledge that our country has some terrible racist history.
Yes I acknowledge that - to a far lesser extent - that racism still exists.
Yes I believe our country has done a lot to improve and provide for minorities since the Civil Rights movement.
No I do not - in any form - support H.R. 40
I am a registered Democrat that is struggling with this party lately but would be over the moon if Tulsi Gabbard or Andrew Yang were to become POTUS (I know very very unlikely).
However, I listen to Corey Booker and others during the H.R. 40 congressional testimony and I not only think this bill is hyperbole and a ludicrous tactical error to placate the far left, but I also believe this will drive away moderate/centrist voters while not doing much other than to solidfy voters the dems were mostly getting anyway.
The only silver lining I see is that our current joke of a POTUS is doing everything in his power to ensure the history books rank his term at the White House and Marlago somewhere between Pierce and Buchannan.
So unload if you must, am I just “not progressive enough” or semi to full blown racist?
HR 40, if passed, would accomplish nothing more than study and research. If you think pushing for reparations in any way is a political error at this time and would hurt the chances of the Democrats, that’s one thing. If you don’t think any of this should be studied or researched at all, then that’s a different thing. Which is it?
There are racist and non-racist reasons for opposing the bill. So it depends on what your reasons are.
In general, I think the vast majority of opponents are just ignorant. They might be deliberately ignorant or not. But most, for example, think the bill is about reparations for slavery exclusively, and not a century of state-sponsored discrimination thereafter. Not to mention being uninformed about, say, federal housing policy in the period from 1945 to 1975.
I don’t think anyone has to support 100% of any candidate’s agenda. This bill is pretty harmless and even if you don’t support it, it’s not going to hurt you or anyone else.
Yes I am aware, that was the reason I mentioned her. She is - generally speaking - my “type” of democratic candidate. Military service, younger, moderately progressive. H.R. 40 is not a show stopper for my candidate choice(s).
Would it be fair to say that a large number of people are being snookered by the overheated rhetoric regarding reparations, and are forming their opposition to H.R.40 without understanding what the bill actually does?
I would be interested to know what the split is of registered democrats that believe this is more of a tactic than a serious attempt at actual reparations.
It is disingenuous of those who support possible reparations to assert that there is nothing to worry about with this bill because it would just authorize a study of reparations. Without such a study, reparations won’t happen. For anyone opposed to the idea of reparations, there’s no point in launching a study.
I would oppose any attempt at reparations for the fact of having enslaved Africans to work in the United States. My opposition is simple: you cannot “repair” what has been done because the people who were enslaved are long dead, as are their children. So all you are doing is either attempting to assuage your conscience over the fact that this happened in the past, or attempting to mollify modern-day descendants who (understandably) may harbor lingering resentment that the whole slavery thing happened at all. Alternatively, you could be offering reparations not so much for slavery, as for everything that has happened since the Civil War. But, if we do that, we open a real can of worms, because the country has suppressed the civil rights of so many groups of people that it would be hard to see how that wouldn’t mean an almost endless series of such requests.
Since I oppose the idea of reparations (and no, I don’t think that makes me racist), I oppose the idea of “studying” reparations.
I take it you opposed reparations for the survivors of Japanese-American internment, then? TNC (the most prominent journalist/writer advocate for HR 40) has advocated that reparations should start with the living Americans who were harmed by discriminatory policies like Redlining, segregation, and more.
I find myself unable to even imagine any set of reparations that would satisfy the nation. I don’t believe anything would ever be enough to make the majority of the black population feel like justice was done. I don’t think there’s any amount the majority of the white population would feel was appropriate. I don’t think any measure with “Reparations” in the title has a chance in hell in passing through Congress, let alone getting put into law.
I oppose the bill because quite frankly, I think the effort is nothing more than a huge waste of time, effort, and money that will never achieve practical results, but will simply add more fuel to the dumpster fire that race relations are in the US.
