Yes, and that wonderful article, altho it indeed went on about many injustices for Blacks in America, didnt both to mention other similar injustices other minorities had. Such as Asians, the Irish, Italians, and so forth. Many injustices against the Chinese. Yes, America did pay out to those Japanese Interned. And of course see, that’s pretty easy to do : if you were placed in a Japanese internment camp, you got the check. No racial tests, no tests to see who was harmed more- if you were in those camps, you qualified. Even so, the reparations were flawed: However, we didnt pay out to the Italians and germans interned. Why? I mean, if we had only paid $20000 to the various American citizens of Japanese descent who were interned that’s one thing, but we paid to all.
Redlining? That wasn’t a official US government thing- sue the banks that did it. In fact some have done so and gotten paid.
Now if the Government wanted to investigate redlining, and levy a special fine on those banks that profited by it, and then hand that out to those who were harmed by redling, that’s fine- as indeed other minorities were so harmed. But that’s not 'reparations".
**But “reparations” are racist. *They benefit only one race, which is impossible to define, *and would reward all of that race, even if they werent harmed. It’s a pipe dram, and impossible to set up in any way that is even close to fair.
I think it’d be a hijack to go into detail about why most of your assertions about reparations are factually incorrect, so I’ll just suggest that anyone interested in that discussion look at this thread (which features my attempts to refute most, if not all, of these assertions by DrDeth about reparations): https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=826720
EDIT: Looking at that thread again, DrDeth, you make the same bogus argument about redlining that you did here – but later in the thread, when I show you that in fact redlining was US government policy, you admitted you were wrong. I think it’s notable that you’ve since reverted to your previously incorrect position.
No, I most certainly did not. Yes, high risk loan areas were a Government idea. But “redlining” as used by banks to discriminate vs banks was not. In any case, The Government then stepped in, fined the most egregious of the banks, then changed the law so it couldnt happen again, That was in 1964- 1975.
So, how is the US Govnt responsible? Yes, Redlining turned out to be a mistake, but was corrected. The guilty banks were fined and indeed, victims sued and got damages.
Thus reparations for redlining are bogus as the banks have already been fined and victims have already collected.
If there has been a wrongful act against an individual, the victims should pursue that in court. This is the only form of reparation that can be carried out legitimately.
That’s not what they want, however, Chronos. They want reparations for redlining, and for other civil rights issues. Also, there are few records kept, so we really dont know who is a descendant of slaves.
The key part of the statement you responded to is a need to address the case individually in civil court. The whole reason people would propose going around the courts and reaching a political solution is that people very seldom can prove in real civil courts that wrongful acts against distant ancestors are torts by institutions (companies, the govt) of today.
Whereas once you make it a political solution, assuming the votes, there’s no reason to pretend it’s the same thing as a civil court proceeding, or pretend it’s based on individual wrongs to known ancestors.
Everyone is the descendant of slaves. That’s not to be a wise ass. Even under the assumption ‘we all know this isn’t about all slavery in history’, which exact form of African slavery of modern times, as related to the US, is it about? Holding blacks as slaves in the US, surely. Holding blacks as slaves in the Caribbean and Latin America?, the effect of the slave trade on people in Africa never taken anywhere (or died en route)?
This whole idea would be more realistic if by some time warp it had become a remotely plausible politically (and it’s still only remotely now) prior to the 1965 immigration reforms, and prior to interracial marriage being socially acceptable and fairly common. Now a significant proportion of people in the US considering themselves black have a lot of recent non-black heritage, and/or heritage from recent immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa,though not necessarily to the exclusion of heritage of people enslaved in the US.
But there are two main reasons IMO why even race based college admissions are probably on their way out. The patent unfairness in most people’s view of giving people who just came to the US of their own volition a preference on account for their skin color; and the rise of the black elite. Both also count against the political feasibility of any program of reparations. Although race based college admissions also have the problem of favoring/disfavoring other races, the very diverse and vague ‘race’ of Hispanics also being favored, Asians being disfavored. Although, although, some attempts I’ve heard by elected Democrats to defend reparations (and this thread is about the politics) have included programs to ‘boost opportunity in the black and Latino communities’, so in one sense diffusing the high degree of unpopularity of specific slavery reparations, but on the other adopting the formula that’s one reason college race preferences are so persistently unpopular.
Every case of people on the left saying more and more extreme things does not necessarily mean the ‘Overton Window’ is ever going to open for those things to happen. I’d predict race conscious college admissions practices will be abolished in the US before there’s any program enacted which is admitted to be ‘reparations’. And if there’s any program enacted that supporters think is slavery reparations, I predict among the ‘nuances’ will be to deny that’s what it is is.
Hell, a lot of people who actually were slaves had “a lot of recent non-black heritage” due to their mothers or grandmothers having been raped by white men, for example. I don’t think that automatically disqualifies their descendants from reparations, even if those descendants more recently interbred with white people in a more voluntary fashion.
After all, people of a certain identifiable fraction of Native American descent can identify as members of Native American tribes and get various benefits associated with that status. I don’t think it’s politically or ethically unthinkable to say that people of identifiable enslaved-person descent in North America can qualify for reparations.
I’d also like to see a cite for the claim that “we really don’t know who is a descendant of slaves” among North American black people, since AFAICT it seems reasonable to assume that every black person whose ancestors had been in North America before the mid-19th century is a descendant of slaves. Yes, it’s very difficult to know exactly what their pre-slavery ethnic/family heritage would have been in their ancestral countries of origin, but if there really is reason to think that large numbers of North American black people have no enslaved-person ancestors, it should be specifically cited.
Politicians will pay lip service to reparations but never propose a plan. That way in the primary they can pretend that it means giving out money and court those votes and then in the general pretend that they meant some general program of uplift.
Payments to the Japanese who were interned totaled 1.3 billion. To do something similar for black Americans would cost at least 700 billion. Polling in 2014 showed that the public was against it by 68-15, and that was before the costs were specified. Reparations talk is just vaporware.
It took until 2008 for the US to officially apologize for slavery and Jim Crow laws. Reparations may happen eventually, but not for a long time. All the criticisms we left against Japan for their refusal to admit and apologize for their heinous behaviour during WW2 apply to a significant chunk of this country. In Southern states, the way that public schools teach about slavery reeks of denial. Hell, in seven states you can get a confederate flag on your official state provided license plate. Can you imagine the shitstormif Germany issued swastika license plates? Yet, here we are. Until the culture in our nation shifts away from glorifying the Confederacy – in all parts of our nation, mind you – we will not heal from these wounds.
Reparations for slavery are nonsensical. People who could receive them wouldn’t exist without slavery. There’s no alternate history where they’re better off because their ancestors haven’t been enslaved and victimized. The only two options for them were either existing as descendants of people who’ve been enslaved, discriminated against, etc… and never being born.There’s no loss or damage of any kind that they have suffered as a result of slavery, and that you could indemnify, at the contrary, they benefited from it in the most fundamental way : existing rather than not.
What I find amazing is that at the same time, there are tons of people currently alive who have been personally and directly harmed by institutional racism. Who you can’t deny have suffered at the very least a massive loss of opportunity as the result of segregation laws and such, and who should, in justice, be indemnified for actual and incontrovertible harm. But I assume that will only be done once they’ll be all dead or almost all dead as usually happens in similar situations. Justice for events involving millions is never served until pretty much everybody involved, be it as a victim or malefactor, has passed away, as a sacrificial offering to atone for what hasn’t been done.
The vast majority of serious discussions about reparations by those who actually seriously consider the issue include (and generally focus on) recent instances of discrimination and brutality that have directly harmed living Americans.
I’m continually dismayed by the knee-jerk opposition to even the idea of discussing reparations, which usually ignores the fact that most discussion isn’t just about slavery, or often isn’t about slavery at all.
If I had my druthers, congress would pass a bill that would put together a commission to formally and seriously study how various racist and discriminatory American institutional policies and practices have done financial/economic harm to living Americans of color. That would be a first step, and wouldn’t cost anything beyond the cost of a serious study. And IIRC, that’s specifically what Ta-Nehisi Coates advocates in his well-known article about reparations.
Formally and seriously? I can save them the trouble. Most likely everybody, black and white would be slightly richer if Jim Crow and the like had never happened. If you look at the state level the poorest states are the ones that did the most discrimination. This is true even if you only look at white residents. This is true despite the fact that since Jim Crow ended the south has been growing much more than the rest of the country.
The idea that much of the wealth of this country was passed down from a time of rampant discrimination. The highest earning and richest ethnicity in the country is Indian-Americans. They were pretty much banned from immigrating here until the 1960s which is around the same time as Jim Crow ended and since then they out earned every other ethnicity.
In my understanding the real facts of history are much, much more complicated than this. I think it’s very likely that Jim Crow hurt the overall economy, but that doesn’t conflict with the likelihood that it and related policies and practices disproportionately harmed black people.
This doesn’t appear to conflict with anything I’ve said.
Blacks in the US didn’t receive payment for their labour for the first 82 years of Americas existence. People are right, Italians and Eastern Europeans weren’t responsible for what happened, but that just makes the case that it should be the US government which should take up the mantle of how this works, and a structure of repayment is made in the here and now. Because, it’s not just the unpaid labour that is the issue, it’s also all the other terrible things that came with it, such as Jim Crow, and the complete absense of any sense of justice until the early 1960’s, because slavery imprinted on the conciousness of many people that they were not human beings but property, which facilitates the racism we see to this day.
I think reparations would go a long way in healing some of the issues that have festered, as the US government says we did wrong and we are big enough to admit that.