Black people can’t fuck with time machines, man !
This misses the point of course, since I was responding to the objection that its impossible to draw lines between different levels of injustice. But it’s amusing to me that even in this non-sequitur you betray an ignorance about the history of American racism, suggesting that it ended generations ago.
As I pointed out, it is perpetuated by people like you. And as long as people like you have any influence on policy, it will never end.
I’m shocked that you’ve offered yet another non-sequitur! Who could have predicted?
So now I’m responsible for red-lining am I? Must have sleep-promulgated some regulations.
You advocate and promote racial discrimination. Surprise! If you do that, racial discrimination will never end.
No, but if Nazis stole your father’s art, you can sue to get it back.
Threads where reparations are discussed are always amusing, in a sad sort of way.
In 1870, reparations couldn’t be paid because it would require expropriation of private property. In 1894, they couldn’t be paid because it wasn’t the federal government’s responsibility. In 1960, reparations couldn’t be paid because we didn’t know enough about the impact of slavery. In 1989, we couldn’t study the impact of slavery because it might lead to reparations. In 2015, we can’t pay reparations because everyone who was directly affected is dead.
Yo. You might want to look into a few things (like the origin of the term ‘ghetto’) before you start going on about who needs what kind of history lesson.
Jews in America have had it relatively well, especially compared to black people historically. That doesn’t mean we weren’t oppressed. And while on one hand, I don’t like to play oppression Olympics, I also don’t generally get people telling me “What do you know, Jewish guy? It’s not like there were ever systemic efforts to intimidate, rob, and despoil your people in history ever! And it’s certainly not like they happened over a long period of time!”
American slavery and its legacy, especially in the rural South, was very much its own thing. But after that? Being a despised minority who lived in bad parts of the inner city? That’s been done a lot. Being hated and intimidated by the KKK? The Catholics also would like a word or two. And no industrialized nations have tried to exterminate the African-Americans in the past century to my knowledge.
And if you can’t compare harms, as you say, then you can’t actually say “Black people’s suffering is uniquely bad and deserves a unique level of reparations.” So either we can order suffering, and we can say that Jews should get some multiple or fraction of affirmative action reparations for the historical actions of plunder against them, or we can say that we can’t order suffering, and that we can’t offer any reparations because we can’t say that anyone’s suffering is worse than anyone else’s.
I don’t disagree with anything you wrote. I think, then, we can say that the school administration, whether liberal or not, is acting in a misguided manner.
You inability to draw connections between one case in which obnoxious government actions deprived one’s ancestors of wealth and another case in which obnoxious government actions deprived one’s ancestors of wealth is noted, as is your level of discourse.
What if it worked? What if we had evidence that these approaches helped black and white students to be more accepting of each other? Reduced black students sense of victimhood, helped them attain a more positive sense of “belonging” to the general American culture?
On the other hand, suppose it does not? Do we never try anything else, because this did not work? Or are we obligated to make the effort? Doesn’t the very fact of effort make a statement of support, of recognizing that a problem exists, that we empathize with the victims of racism and are willing to make such changes as may be needed? That we are willing to do what is needed even if it costs us something in time, money, comfort or effort?
In a sense, I am suggesting the mirror image of the Terr Doctrine, which is that any recognition of race is a form of racism, and perpetuates racism. In essence this is a semantic game, a game of definitions and excruciatingly precise distinctions, and founded on nothing more than a dogmatic insistence that It Is So.
If you want to end racial discrimination maybe you should not racially discriminate.
Simple concept. Apparently beyond the “enlightened” understanding.
Simple in the same way that telling a doctor, if you want your patient to be healthy maybe you shouldn’t wound him.
Sometimes the real world is more complicated than your simple concepts admit.
I know. The “f*cking for virginity” argument. Very complex.
Except that they’re not all dead. There are still hundreds of thousands of people alive who were actively discriminated against by redlining and similar policies, as well as the current victims of the War on Drugs and other abuses endemic in law enforcement.
Discrimination against black people wasn’t just in the distant past, it wasn’t just against dead people, and it still exists to a significant extent.
That’s not actually what the argument is. Try the “surgery for cancer” argument.
More like “cancer for cancer”.
Your argument is nothing more than a semantic paradox, like the irresistible force and the immovable object. You define both the disease and any effort to cure the disease as the disease. And your only evidence that it is true is the way you define your terms.
Edit: y’know what, let’s go with this. The patient has cancer. I’ve got a way of modifying cancer cells to inject into the patient that will fight the bad cancer cells and reduce the tumor, improving the patient’s health. You reject the very idea, based on nothing more than a chant of “CANCER IS BAD YOU MUST LOVE CANCER YOU CANCERLOVER.”
In that sense, and only that sense, yeah, it’s like “cancer for cancer.”