Sorry, when did I get a vote on whether collective reparations were paid to Israel after WWII?
And I reject your assertion that race and ethnicity prejudice by individuals today are a responsibility of the US government or the US taxpayers.
BTW, while I chose to comment on the reparations issue because I find the topic interesting, that should not be construed as having any sort of relation to the OP.
And, actually, the fact that a question about abstract notions of racism and (concrete) political strategy was immediately hijacked with (a) accusations of anti-white racism, (b) accusations of “white guilt,” and © complaints about affirmative action, in some ways validates exactly what I claimed in the OP. Namely, that most Americans are incapable of having a rational discussion about racism, partly because certain assumptions have taken root in the conceptualization of it.
Since you are not a German citizen, it would be strange if you did. However, those reparations are generally accepted as justifiable, and certainly not as controversial as those proposed for the enslavement of blacks.
The fact that you can conjure up a certain image of the world does not mean that it bears any resemblance to reality. If X% of the difference in wealth between a white person and a black person can be attributed to the effects of slavery, would it not be justifiable to equalize that portion? Now, you may complain that it’s difficult–if not impossible–to calculate that, but that’s an implementation problem. At least in principle, it is sound.
Oh, and by the way, if you really believe this:
Then you should still support reparations for the survivors of Jim Crow.
I love the quote AND thought you made good points. Not everyone lives in Binaryistan.
You parsed it in a way as to not get a slap from a Mod, but dance as you may, your words show your statement to be untrue:
Well, since you seem to hunger so for substantive debate, how about answering that very practical question about when the cutoff is. Also, WHO should get reparations? Anyone with black skin? How about a person who voluntarily moved here from Nigeria in 1980? How about someone who has a black father whose descendants have been here for 300 years and a mother whose descendants came over on the Mayflower. Or how about if the mother moved here from Europe in 1975. And what do we do about the “blacks” who are 50%, 75%, 6%, 100% of African ancestry. Do they all get the same? How about the person who is 12% black and easily passes for white? Does he get the same amount as the person who is also 12% black but is clearly so? PLease, answer these very serious questions…since you’re so interested in substantive debate and all.
I was just answering the question, honestly. I believe that if blacks held a significant portion of the nation’s wealth, racism would be irrelevant.
Well, keep in mind that the money does not have to go to individuals. It can simply be used to fund community groups that focus on improving the lives of low-income blacks.
Heh, I wasn’t expecting such a concrete answer to an abstract question, but I see your point there.
But do you think these notions of racism being necessarily explicit and individual-based, rather than implicit and society-based, hamper robust discussion of racism?
Many African-Americans carry recessive European alleles that are virtually non-existent in Africans. Genetic testing could be used to screen for admixture. Indviduals with chattel surnames like Williams, Jackson, Jones etc would likely be easiest to pinpoint ancestry. In any case, doling out reparations would likely take years.
And further continue the notion that blacks are victims and are due some kind of handout. Wow, that would do wonders for ending racism and the problems facing blacks. And yes, that is extreme sarcasm.
The notion that the way to end racism is to institute racist practices is nonsensical.
That’s a start. But there are a lot more questions than that. And don’t you think that drawing out this overtly racist policy for years, with people arguing and fighting over how much they are “entitled to” might be one of the best ways to ensure that racism remains alive and well, if not increase it?
Somewhat. But I don’t think whites want to discuss racism at all. They’re fatigued. Which is precisely why I like the Lincoln administration’s idea as it allows the government to wash its hands of the matter once and for all (e.g. The Tuskegee Experiments).
<chuckles> I think OJ Simpson was probably quite amused at the frothing, post-trial hatred while he was sipping on magaritas in the Bahamas. I am gonna make a generalization and say that most blacks really don’t give a shit what whites think of them. It’s a cultural distinction that I don’t think I can quite express in words.
I was taught that after the U.S exterminated but a handful of the Indians, the government parcelled out federal lands for the Indians and gave them jurisdiction. Am I wrong?
Yes, Black Americans (i.e., African-Americans, the descendants of slaves) are victims of racism. They do not deserve a “handout”; they deserve to compete on an equal footing and not be hamstrung by the deleterious effects of past injustices. As declared by Martin Luther King.
The way to rectify racist policies that were rooted in a racialist ideology whose effects are felt to this day is to implement policies that don’t attempt to sweep history and social reality under the rug.
Like it or not, that is one of the many ingredients of racism. Your willingness to simply discount that factor is at odds with someone wanting to end racism. No? But that was not really the thrust of my point. Leave whites’ attitudes out of it. It poses a problem within the black community, as well. One that is already all to common: that you can’t do it yourself; that you shouldn’t be expected to be able to; that you are owed something.
The statement was that I didn’t call anybody a racist. I said that an idea was a racist idea. If that’s not an important distinction to you, I apologize for wasting your time; it’s an important one to me. I certainly said exactly what I meant, though.
Well, I sure do appreciate your interest!
I’m not in favor of reparations per se because of the kinds of issues you raise. I think there’s still a literal debt owed, but I think it’s to society as a whole at this point. I think our education system at its core is still an outgrowth of the same roots which were planted antebellum, and that white flight put the urban areas in a serious bind that’s going to be very difficult to fix, and so on, and I think we whites suffer along with everyone else from the overall detriments to society that these deficiencies create.
In other words, I’m not really worried about giving X dollars to every person who fits Y criteria; we waited too long for that. But just because we waited too long to fix it elegantly doesn’t mean we don’t have to fix it. Which turns us right back to the question posed by the OP; you might say that I believe that step 1 in this process is to stop arguing about whether modern racism exists, because of course it does, but as long as we deny that it’s in the room, we’re dragging our feet.
Blacks were the victims, for years and years and years, of crimes against their persons committed by the United States of America. At some point, the United States stopped committing the crimes, but it’s never paid its debt. The first generation victims are all long dead, but the second and third and fourth generations were born into a world that denied culpability for the wrongs initiated and instituted by those crimes. We still live in that world; the world where “the United States” spends a great deal of the time that it devotes to racial issues denying that the past crimes are still relevant. If you cut a man’s leg off, and then he can’t walk, is it still your fault he can’t walk after you put down the saw?
They shouldn’t be, given that many German citizens knew that the Jews were being persecuted and did nothing about it or actively helped, AND given that the interested parties were all alive at the time.
And the same can certainly be said of you, particularly given your next statement:
No, it isn’t sound at all.
Yes racial policies were part of the fabric of America. Yes, some racism lingers. The question, as per the OP, is how to have to move us from where we are TODAY to a post-racism society. I firmly believe that the more we simply refuse to tolerate it in any form, the more quickly we can get there.
You obliquely assigned the term to the person you were responding to. Please review for yourself. You did. Artfully enough to escape the Mods, yes, but it was done all the same.
I mostly agree. While I think that our education system is the single biggest problem standing between us and a post racial society, I think it is where it is for a couple of reasons. The “help” we gave blacks in the sixties concentrated them in inner cities. Welfare helped break what had been a very strong sense of family in the black community. Yes, white flight was not good for the inner cities, but you really can’t blame people for making a better life for themselves. The state of education in the inner cities saddens me greatly. Waves of poor people over the last 100 years inhabited the poor inner cities and subsequent generations made it out. How? Education. The one thing that gives me great hope is the Charter schools that popped up, initially in Milwaukee, and then in other poor city neighborhoods. The Public Schools are failing what is now a few generations of young blacks. As you point out, to the detriment of us all.
Of course racism exists. The question is, to what degree? And, as I mentioned, given an honest assessment of where we are, what’s the best route to get from A to B. I think that racism exists, but the degree to which it does makes the situation completely unlike the past, and calls for a different plan of action. I think we’re at the point that the quickest way to get where we want to go is to simply “get over it”. The more we can make it an individual problem rather than a race problem the better. Particularly for those who the change would benefit the most.
You assume there is some “debt” something than can be paid and someone is made whole. I think that’s the wrong paradigm. Your last line points to what I think is the biggest problem. If you cut off my great-great-grandfather’s leg, that has no bearing on who far I can walk.
So, let me get this straight. If Larry’s dad was a Nazi who got rich by pillaging Jewish homes during the Holocaust, and Larry inherits this wealth, Larry does not owe anybody anything and is fully entitled to said wealth? The fact that he has benefited from the suffering of others is irrelevant, so long as he was not directly involved in the infliction of suffering?