Not very close at all. My actual rationale is threefold:
(1) Actual damages. Millions of enslaved African Americans provided billions (trillions?) of hours of labor, mostly in cotton fields, for which they were not paid and did not volunteer. Their descendants (as heirs) are due repayment for this labor, with interest.
(2) Pain and suffering and (3) punitive damages. The U.S. government not only tolerated the brutal institution of slavery but actively enforced it, included it in the Constitution, etc.
Furthermore, as even Andy understands but you can’t seem to grok, I have great affection and sympathy for African Americans. Their forebears lacked the capability to resist the organization and techological aptitude of Europeans, which was bent toward a truly evil purpose. After centuries of exploitation, rape, and racial terrorism, the dominant white hegemons finally said “oops, our bad: you are free—kinda.” Then another century later, de jure freedom was mostly guaranteed for real. But too little was really done to reckon with the moral responsibility for a people who had been so ravaged for centuries, who could not possibly be expected to simply pull themselves up en masse by their bootstraps once they were guaranteed de jure protection from explicit discrimination.
This is yet another misunderstanding (and not coincidentally, a Euro-centric misunderstanding) of history. The actions and advocacy of African Americans were a vital and necessary part of abolition and Civil Rights. It required the cooperation of the largely white-controlled US government, but it wouldn’t have happened without pioneers and advocates like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, MLK Jr., and the countless black foot-soldier advocates they worked with.
Not enough “affection and sympathy” to refrain from spreading horrible bullshit white supremacist pseudo-science that has been used to justify literally the most abominable atrocities in American history, and could well be used to justify future atrocities. If you really, truly cared for African Americans as human beings, and not in a bullshit paternalistic way, you wouldn’t want to spread such fact-free nonsense.
Okay, but Dibble expressed doubt that I was even telling the truth in saying Obama is my favorite president. Though I guess his most recent post ITT (right above yours) is basically an admission that it was all just blatant trolling—so fine, I was whooshed for actually believing he was casting sincere doubt on the question. I’ll try to ignore him.
I never claimed otherwise, so I don’t know who you think you’re arguing with.
You very conspicuously left that out of your post (either purposefully, or more likely IMO, due to your knee-jerk racism that automatically causes you to discount the contributions of African Americans). For a random poster I might not presume the worst, but for self-described racists who have shown wild misunderstandings of both history and science, usually for the worse for black people, I see no reason to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah, it turns out it’s not particularly difficult to independently verify every single number in my post. You just have to not be stupid (another bar which you unfortunately cannot clear). In fact, if I thought you were capable of learning from it, I’d do it for you.
How about this: I will provide you links to every single number in my post, provided you agree that you will publicly acknowledge that you were wrong if I do so.
Or, you could just look up the numbers yourself. No wait, you can’t. You’re stupid.
As I’ve pointed out before, the real monsters are those who justify atrocities based on a group’s inborn deficits, intellectual or otherwise. The Nazis were like that: they murdered people, including children, who had Down Syndrome or other disabilities. In modern American society, we guarantee the rights of the disabled, provide taxpayer funding to support them, and have a strong social taboo against mistreating them. But by your bizarre logic, I suppose we ought to avoid even mentioning their disabilities, and pretend they don’t have any, in case the Nazis get back in power and use our diagnoses to “justify further atrocities”.
By my logic, you should stop spreading fact-free white supremacist bullshit (and thus rhetorically aiding these Nazis you proclaim to despise). Fuck you for continuing to do so. Decent people don’t spread fact-free white supremacist pseudo-science. Liking Obama and advocating for reparations doesn’t excuse your advocacy of false white supremacist pseudo-science.
I didn’t even address EE’s upthread slur against me that I want to give blacks a pittance in reparations to enable police to freely murder them. But I probably should have, lest someone take my silence as a tacit admission of some kind. So let’s note that (1) in the same post where I spoke up in favor of reparations, I also said all police everywhere should be required to wear body cameras at all times, that cannot be turned off; and (2) as I have noted many times before, I spearheaded a march and rally to protest police brutality against an innocent black man in the town where I used to live. So, yeah: fuck off with that shit.
Sure, I’m guilty of “paternalistic racism”, and have been open about that. But don’t disregard the paternalistic part! I am an actual father of four children. The youngest one cannot be trusted not to run in traffic: does my “paternalistic” love for him somehow translate into a desire for him to be mowed down, rather than the opposite? Jesus fucking Christ, get a clue.
Sigh. :rolleyes: EE, you’re being dense again (I won’t call you an idiot though, as your spelling and grammar precludes such a judgement). I noted in my post that I was by necessity condensing the debate (including every quote of the extended back-and-forth would make for an insanely long post, and there was plenty of redundancy to cut). So, yes, you used “equivalent” because you were continuing in the same vein as an earlier post. In that narrow sense, you’re right! Congratufuckinlations. <pat pat>
What you have failed to understand is that my “suddenly” was not meant to reference that exact post only, but that overall turn you took in changing goalposts, a turn which includes both of those posts and some others from around the same time. Understand now? Okay, run along now.
Now I have provided the cite (again, unlike EE in his “proved Slacker was wrong” post). The “FBI statistics dismissed as fake news” bit was someone else, not you, although that was pretty recent—either in this thread or “Living while black in America”, I believe.
I left it out because it’s not relevant to the question of why I support reparations for slavery, and that’s the question I was answering. I assume you too support reparations: do civil rights leaders factor into the reason you support them? If so, why?
None of this excuses your rhetorical aid and comfort to neo-Nazis by spreading bullshit white supremacist pseudo-science. Stop doing that before you whine about not getting credit for some of the non-hateful things you might do.
So you have no actual answer for my point that Nazis had a policy of throwing those with physical or mental abilities at the lower end of the bell curve into furnaces, while we support them with laws, funding, and social opprobrium against those who might so much as mock them.
It’s a pathetic attempt to distract from your refusal to stop advocating for white supremacist pseudo-science. That’s what I’ve criticized you for, over and over again. You don’t even try to deny it. You just deflect. I think part of you recognizes that it’s wrong, but your ego (or something) is holding you back from admitting it. It’s okay. Let the decent side of you win. Please, cast off every single semblance of white supremacism that is still a part of your mindset.
Okay, here’s an answer to your incredibly stupid and obvious point – what the Nazis did was monstrous, and is entirely irrelevant to our conversation. So I answered your question. Why won’t you stop spreading bullshit white supremacist pseudo-science?
I know, right? It’s like watching that scene in Get Out where the white dude approaches Kaluuya at the party and was like (paraphrased) "I would’ve voted for Obama for a third time if I could". White folks believe that voting for Obama provides evidence that the white voter is not racist; while also holding the contrary view that voting for Trump is not evidence that the white voter is racist. This cognitive dissonance makes the conversations with them both painful and pointless. I don’t even know why you’re trying especially when the dude openly admits to being a paternalistic (wtf does that even mean?) racist. This trashbag wants to rage against a person of color on the Internet because he’s unable to do it in real-life. Didn’t one of these confederate flag waving thots post your picture in an effort to smear you? Dude, fuck 'em. I mean that seriously and completely. Not to get all Oprah and shit (Start at 0:55) on you but to quote Maya Angelou “When someone shows you who they are, believe them”. These people won’t ever change and they don’t deserve your input.
