when they’re asked about whether they support the idea?
Cite?
[Moderating]
SIick, you might want to become more familiar with how this board is laid out, in particular reading the descriptions of the various forums. “Why do people of this political persuasion do this” is not a question that lends itself to a factual answer, and hence does not fit in General Questions. It’s more suited for our Great Debates forum, where I’m moving this.
Sometimes you should support things because they are the right thing to do, even if you don’t expect they’ll actually be done.
I support a lot of political positions that are extreme long-shots. I don’t have any realistic expectation that they’ll happen in my lifetime. But if someone asks me how I feel about them, I’ll tell them, and I’ll do my darndest to convince them that they should support them too. Because they’re the right thing to do.
So, presumably Democrats who support reparations and also don’t think they’ll ever happen support them because they believe they are just.
Got it.
That’s a pretty good answer.
A bluff? Say you’re in favor of something you know you’ll never have to put your money where your mouth is?
Demand what you know, for sure, you won’t get. Rave, holler, snort, throw the fits of conniption. After a while, after they get thoroughly sick of your ass, allow as how, maybe, we might be willing to settle for less. Like what we really want. “Fine!” they say. “Here, take this, just don’t come back tomorrow asking for more, because this is it!”
Agree, grab it and run, promise to never ever no we swear! not come back for more. Gotta hurry, gotta get to the planning meeting for doing just exactly that. Rinse and repeat until we have a country that is just, fair, and free.
OK, maybe never. Got anything better to do?
I think the Overton window has been shifting for reparations over the last few years. It’s still very far from a mainstream, widely-accepted position, but it’s no longer anathema just to consider.
Politically speaking, we have entered an age of big ideas. Voters have made it clear they don’t want business-as-usual at the national level. Reparations as a political talking point fits that bill.
In addition, it is a fairly low risk claim. The candidates who are talking about it are fairly certain that anyone who would find the idea objectionable are not going to vote for them anyway for a long list of reasons. The media on the other side will rant and rave about them asking for Reparations, but that’s baked in. ANY policy position they take will get the media opponents screeching.
Must-read for anyone regarding reparations.
I count reading this article as one of the most important moments in my long transition out of conservatism.
…What? There are probably many swing or light-blue voters who would find a platform of reparations-for-black-people to be objectionable.
Thanks.
The more jaded view might be: they support things that are popular among their constituents. And things that will never actually happen but are popular with your voters are like the best issues to support. You get political credit for voicing support, but you aren’t ever expected to accomplish anything!
I expect there’s some of both.
I would also tend to take the more cynical view. Most elected Democrats who seem to express support for reparations don’t do it IMO because they really think it’s ‘right’ (some might). They do it at the appropriate phase on an election contest, like now for president, when it’s a contest for the activist base. You make friendly noises about the idea at that stage, but don’t pin yourself down to actually supporting what most people would think of as reparations, checks to particular people based on their race. That’s probably 80-20 or more unpopular if it came to a concrete bill in Congress (I think a hypothetical poll would probably understate the degree of opposition), besides possibly unconstitutional. You leave room to redefine your position in a general election as meaning a general expansion of the welfare state, phrased as ‘more opportunity for the disadvantaged’.
Same as the Green New Deal. You can support it at this stage and assume it won’t turn off too many non-base voters later if you say ‘well I do support, it as an aspiration’ (IOW, ‘no of course we’re not going to actually do that as written’).
I don’t see GOP politicians in any more of a soft and glowing light BTW. 
To be offset by the previously non-voters who become enthusiastic supporters.
That was a great article and certainly opened my eyes to alot of things.
However it doesnt offer alot of concrete proposals.
Frankly I have always thought of the writer as certainly good at writing a good story, but fails in he rarely seems to come out of his New York office and go and actually talk to people. For example, he doesnt talk to anyone who opposes reparations in the article. He doesnt visit anyone outside Chicago.
Years ago Coates would allow comments on his writing and even answered some questions now and then. I even got him to respond to a couple of my comments. I often asked him to come visit Kansas City to get a midwestern perspective on his ideas (for example, I suggested he come and visit our Negro Baseball League Museum). He always declined.
So to me, I’m not really sure Coates himself is really for reparations at least not some big program to hand every black person a check. His writing seems to suggest something more targeted to those directly affected by racist programs of the past.
I find them highly objectionable. I mean, sure, we should have given something to the slaves. But simply being black? And how do we define being black? Note that in the USA it’s self-identification. Reparations are racist as hell. And stupid.
Should a person who recently emigrated from Liberia get the reparations? How about someone who just claims to be black but has blue eyes, fair skin and blond hair?
The idea is unbelievably foolish.
He didn’t intend for that article to offer any concret proposals. From my reading, the biggest message he wanted to send with that article is “reparations for various forms of persistent institutional discrimination and brutality is not a totally crazy idea, and should be seriously considered as a policy that would improve the state of the country and the condition of the American people”.
And it wasn’t intended to be a talking tour with a bunch of people with a wide variety of viewpoints on reparations – it was his own views and his own arguments based on his own research and understanding of historical data and fact.
We’ve had this discussion before, but I’ll reiterate that this is an extremely simplistic view of reparations. Reparations have been proposed for a variety of forms of discrimination, including things like redlining that have affected many living people, and it’s a far, far more nuanced and complicated set of issues than just “give money to black people in America”.