What is going to make this process even more odious is that the powers that be will have to determine degrees of discrimination. Either they will have to give every Hispanic/woman/Chinese/Irish/gay person the same $ amount as they gave each black person, or they will have to scale it up or down to a certain proportion of it.
They would have to determine, for instance, that a Hispanic has suffered “only 60%” the discrimination that a black person has suffered, so only gets 60% the amount of reparations. And maybe a gay or lesbian has suffered a bit more; so perhaps 73%.
There’s no way to come up with a calculation like that without causing tremendous revulsion.
Or maybe tons of other possibilities, like focused community investment, that you haven’t considered. But if you prefer to create a straw version of reparations to knock down, then that is your right.
Study and research aren’t far out ideas, IMO. YMMV.
If you and Coates and Congress will simply agree that checks are right out, then we can have that discussion. But as long as million $ checks are on the table, this ain’t going to get anywhere, and people are going to be angry and disappointed that no checks are forthcoming.** As they can’t be. **
How about an addendum specifying an upper limit on how much will be paid out? Part of the resistance, ISTM, is the open-endedness. As well, as mentioned above, managing expectations.
So, no matter what is found, we aren’t going to pay out more than, say, $100 million. Or, pick a figure - $500 million? A billion? $10 billion? A trillion?
The Japanese-Americans got, IIRC, $20K apiece. $20K for every black American is $840,000,000,000. That seems like a lot to me. Is there a different figure you think might be better?
But HR 40 doesn’t mandate any payment at all, or anything beyond the study and a report/recommendation. Congress would have to pass another bill to actually take any action regarding reparations.
Just for housekeeping, since there are currently two active threads that are related to reparations, let’s try to focus this one a bit to avoid the general overlap.
This one is specifically about HR40, and whether opposition is semi-racist. Please focus on that topic in this thread. A more general discussion about reparations and related issues should be had in this thread here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=877397
On that note, I don’t believe opposition to HR 40 is necessarily racist or semi-racist, and IMO it’s possible to be skeptical of reparations for a variety of non-racist reasons.
It is not disingenuous to point out that this is just promoting a study. There is a difference between opposing a study on the problem and opposing a particular solution to the problem. The latter, of course, has far more non-racist reasons possible, simply because it would be more specific. If someone opposed ever discussing reparations, there would be even fewer non-racist reasons. And if they opposed the entire concept, there are even fewer (because now they have the problem of opposing reparations paid in the past.)
That said, of course you can oppose it for a non-racist reason. But this is such an obvious truism that I can’t see how that is the question directly. The OP appears to be asking if the specific reason he gave counts as a non-racist reason.
My response “Yes, but.” There’s nothing racist on its face to say this bill is hyperbole and a token appeal to the progressive crowd that will only drive away more moderate voters. But the devil is in the details. You’d have to investigate why you believe that to be true.
Every thought you have has some sort of underlying assumption. I can’t tell you what those assumptions are. All I can say is that you need to investigate them.
I definitely could conceive of “semi-racist” reasons someone might come to that conclusion. For example, deep beneath it all, they see reparations as them black people trying to get unearned money from the government. Assuming the advocates’ motivations are bad like that isn’t quite racist, but I’d be fine with “semi-racist” when you apply it to black people in general.
But, ultimately, only you know the answer for what assumptions lead to your conclusions. I myself have little interest in this bill after seeing it. I do not think it would galvanize centrists or moderates against anyone, even if it is only a bone being thrown to progressives.
I think your position is the common one: moderates and further left who oppose it aren’t really all that passionate about it. Anyone who would change their vote over this is probably already going to vote R or is so picky they were going to vote third party or not vote anyways.
