Surviving Japanese citizens were given an apology and $20,000 in compensation – for 2-4 years of detention. Native Americans were given reservations. They are recognized as nations within the United States. There’s an Indian Health Service. In both cases, there’s limited form of reparations, some of which continue to this day.
Black Americans are the only ethnicity who were brought over and bred for the purposes of providing low-cost labor to feed the exploitative capitalist machine. America is many things - not all of them bad, many of them good. America is an idea and an ideal, but the reality of the black experience in America is that they are the human equivalent of coal, of bitumen, of natural gas. They’ve been exploited as a resource, and often treated not much better than that. And though they were promised reparations, unlike Native Americans and the interned Japanese, that debt was never realized. In fact, they ended up enduring another 100 years of American apartheid.
Nice to see you’ve been doing well and the thought you put in, asahi, keep it up.
As far as massive ideas go, I kind of like, in theory, the proposal Cory Booker has been touting. As is also the case with some affirmative action beneficiaries, I’d hope access to sagacious guidance would be available for all. Advocates of reparations would not label these as such, while undeniably some priorities overlap.
I’m not sure whether simple cash is a good idea or not, I could be persuaded either way but the principle behind it is noble and fair. You identify the most disadvantaged children and give them the most help. Race simply does not have to come into it. If black communities are the most disadvantaged then they get the most help but under the same scheme and same criteria you also get similarly disadvantaged children from all ethnic groups being helped. Fair and equal. The ones that need it most, get the most.
However, I think this is where you have to be careful with words. I know what those figures above mean but reported like this with no context would present the less progressive in society with a gloriously misleading headline to use for nefarious purposes. just imagine “Look, a poor black kid deserves more than a poor white kid!!!”
Then by that logic the violence and discrimination carried out by the US government against the Black population is done on behalf of its tax payers.
If the reconstruction period continued unabated, I’d agree with you, but Blacks in the US were systematically terrorised and disenfranchised and demonised by parts of the US government way up until the 1960’s. Saying that there’s no need for reparations, and not acknowledging the obstacles for the Black community to generate their own wealth in security (Tulsa 1921 anyone?) And participation in government (Wilmington insurrection 1898) Is ignoring the economic as well as the cultural and political effects of not only slavery, but the systemic discrimination that community has faced and which has held them back.
Rather, many of us grew up with the reality that people are treated differently because of the color of their skins. Many of us were raised to know the lie in that word “should.”
How does that relate to generational poverty? Even men have daughters. White people do not necessarily have black kids.
What is generational about being old?
There is something to that, but unlike being black, being gay is not plastered all over your skin. And, once again, it is not generational. There is no tendency for straights to raise straights, and gays to raise gays, as there is a tendency for black people to raise black children.
You mean asian americans? There may be somehting there as well. You can do some resaearch and see what types of harms that are still ongoing, and determine if they are creating the asame sorts of disparate outcomes as we see in black communties.
Mexican americans, you mean, or jst mexicans? If they are mexicans in mexico, then we don’t owe them anything at all. If they are mexican americans, then if they can show the kinds of harm that has befallen them, then maybe we owe somtthing there too.
Fuck yes. We stole this entire contentint from them. How to make up for that, how to “pay them back”, I have no idea, but it seems that we are hiding from a debt becuase it is too large to pay.
No, I only see how silly you insist it must be once you have chosen to completely misrepresent everything and anything said.
If nothing else, if you had paid any attention whatsoever to my posts, I say that a cash payment should be the last and least of showing the repentance of our harmful actions, so your confounding as to do with all the other people that our society has had from time to time caused harm to is irrelevant in the first place.
Such as? What reasons would you say that one group of people take up the opportunities offered to become prosperous, and the other group ignores those opportunities in preference to be impoverished?
I personally cannot think of a reason why a group of people would collectively decide to stay in poverty should they have other opportunities, but I am willing to hear out your argument as to why people choose poverty.
On an individual level, I agree.
On the group level, then we need to find a justification for why one group of people outperforms another group of people, when given the same opportunities.
You can either say that there are some inherent flaws in the poorer group of people that destine them to perpetual poverty, or you can see that they are not being given the same opportunities.
What logic, reason, or evidence do you present to challenge the assertion that if you have two groups of people, if they have widely diverging outcomes, then that indicates that they had different beginnings as well?
Given that it is not just logic and reason, but also evidence that people coming from poorer backgrounds tend to perform more poorly in school, for reasons of malnourishment, both pre and post natal, having parents who do not place the same value on education, and even if they do, have fewer resources to encourage and assist their kids with their learning: are very obviously not being given the same opportunities as a kid who is better off.
Race is a factor, because not only are they starting from a lower point, they will also be facing more obstacles in their future.
You cannot control how racists will troll. I can see that being a headline on Infowars or even Fox , where the entire point is that they are trying to cause division between fellow US citizens based on skin color. They want people to be resentful towards a poor black kid, that is their goal, and it doesn’t matter what the actual facts of the matter are. They will roll with headlines like your example even if the black kid gets just one cent more than the white kid for a week, even if the white kid gets far more than the black kid the other 51 weeks a year.
People are always so worried about other people, and what other people are getting, and are so worried that someone will get something that they don’t deserve.
And if you can show that the poor black kid has a harder life than the poor white kid, wouldn’t you agree that they deserve more?
No, we didn’t all grow up that way. There are many racists and bigots out there who grew up with the idea that they are better, and deserve more, than the other people who don’t look like them.
Unless you can find a way to prevent people from being raised as racists, then we will have to acknowledge that racism exists, and we will have to take steps to acknowledge it and to reduce its impact.
But thats what I mean. Yes, we were told that some people were being mistreated for the color of their skins. For example it was wrong blacks had to sit in the back of the bus or were excluded from swimming pools. But we were told NOT to do it. To treat everyone the same. We were the generation that was going to change things.
But now, we are told certain groups should be treated differently. For example, if they want to exclude certain people - thats ok and we should accept that they dont want us in say a certain building or at an event.
And now with reparations we are told that because what happened in the past, we all owe that person money no matter what out past is.
re: Booker’s proposal (and anyone’s for that matter)…let’s just call it a hypothesis, an experiment, and accept that it could fail.
As a white man, I think that’s what I find difficult to reconcile, which is the idea that we had this magic program (the New Deal, Great Society, whatever) and while it addressed one set of problems ignored another.
My thought is that some ideas to help facilitate equality - true equality - in this country could fail. I’m okay with that, as long as we don’t keep throwing money and guilt at the same solution. I don’t think the perceived ‘failure’ or ‘inefficiency’ or ‘waste’ or ‘fraud’ of a program justifies eliminating any and all programs.
Reparations should be funded by the states that perpetrated slavery, proportional to how long they had slavery as an institution. That means Virginia, which started it first and kept it till the bitter end, owes the heaviest debt. As a Virginian, I’m fine with that. All of the original 13 states had it for some time. Pennsylvania, the first to abolish in 1780, owes the least. States that never had slavery from the time they were first organized as territories, starting with Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan, are off the hook. Kentucky was the first state to expand slavery westward. What was the last one, Texas? Relatively less liability timewise (although the Juneteenth observance reminds us that Texas squeezed an extra 2 months out of it, which they should still pay for). Even Arizona, which probably had some slavery while it was occupied by Rebs, should be on the hook to some extent.
That’s in addition to the federal government’s liability, what with the three-fifths rule, Fugitive Slave Act, Dred Scott decision, etc.
That wasn’t the argument I was responding to and I don’t think that a “group” makes a decision at all. Individuals make a decision.
That wasn’t my point either.
correct
excluded middle, The possibility also exists that the same opportunities are there for all to exploit but that cultural, educational or other factors mean somedon’t know about them or are somehow dissuaded from choosing them. It does not necessarily mean that those opportunities do not exist.
I don’t and didn’t challenge that.
I agree with all of those points and note that you didn’t have to use the word “race” to make them.
I don’t agree with that as my definition of opportunities seems to be different to yours.
So give the help to whoever needs it now and remove barriers to minimise obstacles in the future. There is no need for race to be factor for either of those courses of action.
Absolutely, it is human nature. So far better to avoid fuelling such divisions in the first place. There is no need to present such a policy in language that racists will grab onto.
If the policy is fair and equal the race element need not be emphasised, it is not needed because the help goes where it needs to go and in the case of the USA it will quite rightly be skewed towards certain ethnic groups.
I wouldn’t bring race into it all. I’d say that if child A has a harder life than child B then child A needs more help.
But that is the point that I am making. If you are not disagreeing with my point that we can see disparate difference in the outcomes of groups of people, and that those disparate outcomes should indicate to us that there is a disparity in opportunities that are offered, then you are not addressing what I have said. If you are making a different point, then that’s fine, but you made it in reply to my post, so I thought you meant it to be relevant.
I specifically said that looking at the individual doesn’t work the same, because not only does the individual make decisions, and individual is also influenced by luck and fate and chance in a way that a larger sample size should eliminate statistically.
Then what was your point? You said that there were reasons that one group would not take advantage of the same opportunities, even if those same opportunities were offered, but failed to give any reason, logic, or evidence for this.
But those educational factors are part of the opportunities that I am talking about, and the only “culture” that I see that precludes advancement is the post traumatic mindset that is a reaction to poverty and oppression, not a culture that is chosen by any group.
If someone doesn’t know about an opportunity, or is dissuaded from that opportunity, then that opportunity is not as available to that person as it is to someone who does know and is encouraged to take advantage of it.
Were there other factors that you see in play?
Okay, but I thought that that was the entire point of your posts and rebuttals. That both groups are presented the same opportunities, but only one group uses those opportunities to prosper, while the other ignores them in favor of poverty.
If not, then what exactly is your thesis here?
And yet, there is a group of people in this country that have been discriminated against since well before the countries foundation, and were done so at the behest of the govt within living memory, and are still discriminated against by private individuals, in many places with the tacit permission of govt, who happen to have particular skin color, and so not noticing that this skin color tends to be correlated with a certain type of discrimination that results in and aggravates these disparities in opportunity means that the only ones who treat people of color differently are the ones who treat them poorly.
I guess, what do you define as an opportunity?
Personally, I define it as anything that is freely offered to a person that can be taken advantage of to advance one’s personal prosperity.
I take it that you see it as something that is a more of a possibility? That someone who is 7 feet tall has the same opportunities to be a basketball player as someone who is 4’6"? They both can play basketball, and there are probably 4’6" people who are better at basketball than some 7’'ers, so would you consider them to have the same opportunities to get a college athletic scholarship an a career in the NBA?
As race is a factor in consideration of racists and bigots, being color blind is to not acknowledge that the main source of differential treatment that a black person faces is negative. In order to be “fair” it only stands to reason that they occasionally encounter some preferential treatment due to the color of their skin as well.
I don’t know that race needs to be mentioned in the legislation that addresses such things, but the actual negative treatment that is presented to people with more melanin in their skin than I does need to be taken into account. If we do a “color blind” treatment, then we will not actually address the problems that come up due to racism.
It was the racists in your example who brought race into it, by yelling and complaining that a poor black person deserved more than a poor white person. I am just saying how that racism should be responded to, in that a poor black kid does have it harder than a poor white kid.
I disagree that differences in outcomes *always *come from a difference in opportunities and that merely assuming it must be the case can lead you to take the wrong course of action.
now, it may be the case in some circumstances e.g. The opportunities to rise to high level in the Catholic church are definitely restricted for women. The opportunities are simply not equal for all groups.
However, sometimes it is not the case. The HPV vaccine is offered, completely free, to all school-age girls in the UK and yet we still see differences in uptake rates for various groups. That isn’t explained or dealt with adequately if your immediate assumption is that they don’t have equal opportunity…when they clearly do.
Or look at Sweden, A model of liberal equality. Opportunities in further education are equal for both genders and yet…in 2016/17 57% of new entrants were women, 43% men. There is something else going on that is not explained by a simple lack of opportunities for men.
So that hopefully gives some context as to what I mean by “opportunity” or lack of and some examples of where inequality of outcome is not a result of equality of opportunity.
You know Bookers proposal might be just dandy. I think it might even help, with a single solitary problem. Even though it isn’t ‘reparation’ and more aimed at poverty stricken folks. (Welfare?)
Who handles the money?
And I didn’t say always. But rather, I have said that seeing massive disparities in outcomes should lead you to believe that there may be disparities in opportunities that can be addressed.
That would be a case of discrimination.
I don’t see how that is relevant in the slightest, actually. We also see difference in uptakes for hot dogs and hamburgers between different groups.
There may be something that should be looked into there, but we are talking about a much, much smaller disparity in outcomes there than we do when we look at the outcomes between people of different skin color in the US.
I also fail to see how gender inequality can possibly have a generational aspect to it as racial inequality does.
I guess, but as your context is that you consider an opportunity to be to get the HPV vaccine, and the outcome to have gotten it to be the same sort of idea tht I am talking about that encompases prenatal and childhood nutirion, engagement, education, social structure, safety and security, and finally access to gainful employment, I think that we are coming from entirely different places.
but crucially that is not what you said and the actual tone of your original claim was far more absolute.
This is what I read and responded to.
Which is a different claim. A very definite position that it must be the opportunities on offer that are different. There seemed to be no room in that statement for the possibility that other factors were at play. I think that is a simplistic position that can lead to bad decisions and that’s why I responded. If you now have clarified your position as your first statement above suggests then we are pretty much in agreement.
and an example I gave for clarity and a clear concession that sometimes inequality of outcome is a direct result of inequality of opportunity.
The general point I was making was that such a difference in uptake, whether food or vaccination, does not necessarily stem just from an inequality of opportunities.
Investing in more burger vans for group A, or even specifically for group A is not a sensible course of action when group A already has the same opportunity as everyone else to buy a burger right now.
But the point stands. Assuming that a outcome difference *must *be due to a lack of opportunity is a bad starting point. It should definitely be included as an avenue for investigation but not as the start and end point.
Really? I think gender inequality is as old and pervasive as any based on race.
The HPV example was a simplistic one in order to get across of the concept that inequality of outcome is not necessarily a direct result of inequality of opportunity.
I did not compare it to the complicated, interconnected web of issues at play regarding racial discrimination, deprivation and social mobility. It is relevant though, because such a complicated issue will not be tackled by starting with a viewpoint that a lack of opportunity must be a the heart of all of it.