Did they? I was under the impression that the “40 acres and a mule” thing was a promise almost entirely unfulfilled.
Read my post 54, maybe 5000 got land, but no, there was no such promise.
That may be how you see it, but pundits left and right would be highlighting that “this is being paid for via taxation out of our pockets; yours and mine.”
The US Government has no money of it’s own, only that which is can collect from us, the taxpayers.
And the US Government freed the slaves, passed the 14th Ad, passed the Civil Rights act and so forth. Maybe all a little late, but it was done.
Yay, we fixed it all!!
Quite obviously, which is why the Overton window needs to be shifted before it could be enacted. I think the kind of study TNC suggested would be in the realm of acceptable in the present, and that could lead to further actions meant to shift the window, such as my proposed long-term single-community experiment. If that experiment showed that reparations had an enormously positive, long-term effect on a community, then that might help shift perceptions considerably.
Most of the same objections exist to a small-scale experiment as to a full policy.
Once we pay them, do they no longer get welfare? Do we reduce welfare for them, because the history that caused them to be on welfare has already been repaid?
OK, the Washington Monument was built partly by slave labor, who didn’t get paid, and the rest of the country got the value of the Washington Monument. The descendants of the slaves also got the value of the Washington Monument. How much do we deduct from the reparations to offset that?
Slaves were supposed to get forty acres and a mule. What do they get if they are half black - twenty acres and a border collie?
Plus the whole notion of “my ancestors did something bad to your ancestors, so you owe money to me” is flawed. Should I get money because a black guy mugged my grandmother? That’s a lot more immediate than 150 years ago.
And my ancestors weren’t even in this country during the antebellum period - they came over from Germany around the turn of the century. If blacks should get reparations because they were descended from slaves, then they will need to show that they were descended from slaves, and also prove that the people giving them reparations were descended from slave-owners.
It’s too late. Slavery was nasty, but everybody who was a slave or owned a slave is dead. We’re not going to give the country back to the Native Americans, and we aren’t going to give reparations to black people. The statute of limitations, so to speak, is over.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, we could debate the meaning of “promise”, but I’ll buy for the sake of argument that 5000 freed slaves got plots of land after the war.
Were they able to keep them, enjoy them, profit from them like any white landowner of similar holdings?
Systematic race-based oppression in America didn’t end when slavery did.
Arguably, it never ended at all.
Most of this is entirely irrelevant to what I’ve been saying, since I haven’t been advocating for reparations for slavery.
A whole lot of that is pretty much due to the widespread perception that reparations are essentially some kind of personal check from the Federal government to individuals for a crime perpetrated on their ancestors.
As such, it tweaks several things- first, there’s the notion that some black guy today doesn’t deserve a cash payout for something that happened to his great, great, great grandparents (for example). Second, there’s a sort of idea that it’s a sort of… admission of guilt by the government, and through it, by the American people for something that none of the currently living people did. I can see why people might think “That guy doesn’t deserve my money for something someone else 150 years ago did to his ancestors. I haven’t done anything to any black people.”
The politicians seriously proposing any sort of reparations that are not individual cash payouts ought to come up with another term- historical redress or something, and pitch it not so much as paying a debt, as redressing wrongs. I mean, few people are going to get that torqued about a Federal program intended to address the effects of redlining that happened in living memory, but a lot of people may get torqued at the idea that the government *OWES *it to them.
We already have a system in place, and have had for some time, that addresses the same goals without getting into the unsolvable mess of who specifically can trace responsibility for what to whom - it’s called affirmative action. The idea is based on awareness that the effects of racism (and all the other -isms, which is why it’s a better idea) that have historical roots continue to persist, that disadvantages are imposed on people of color even if unconsciously, and that direct action needs to be taken for some period of time to address those inequities. Only a fraction of today’s population is descended directly either from slaves or from slaveowners or even slavery-benefitters, but racism and unequal opportunities are widespread and endemic regardless of individual histories.
This is an obviously impossible task. Do you expect people to have documentary proof of being denied a housing loan fifty years ago? Or for an agency to have a record of every black person they wronged? When the government says that they are going to give free money for anyone with a sob story they will be deluged with people.
For example, when the USDA was sued by 401 black farmers who claimed they were discriminated against in loans. When the USDA settled the case and announced they were going to give money to black farmers who had been discriminated against they received over 90,000 applicants despite there only being 33,000 black farmers in the entire country. All people had to do was to have a relative swear that at some point in the time period they had attempted to farm.
There are two possible alternatives, either you require actual proof of harm which almost no one will have or you trust people’s word and be inundated with fraudulent claims. Either case will enrage people.
AA is meant to ensure black people and other discriminated-against groups have as fair a shot as possible in their educational and professional lives in a profoundly tilted/biased society. That’s different than the purpose of reparations.
There’s a third option – actually investigate with professional historians, lawyers, geographers, researchers, etc. Redlining isn’t ancient history – it’s within living memory. In most cases I think it’s reasonable to believe that it would be challenging, but not impossible, to accurately determine whether someone was or was not living in a redlined (or segregated, or otherwise harmed by various discriminatory policies) area. There are all kinds of records, including people’s individual records, that could be looked at, in addition to testimony. If Ann has proof she lived at 10 Spring St, and Carl has proof he lived at 14 Spring St, and then Bob comes and says he lived at 12 Spring St but has no proof, then we could ask Ann and Carl if Bob lived there.
Yes, because it’s comprehensive and societal. The purpose of reparations is far more limited and self-serving, but is still contained within the goals of AA, which does indeed address the continuing effects of slavery as well as most other forms of historic mistreatment.
There’s also a claim that slavery was *already *paid for, by the lives of over 600,000 people in the Civil War. FWIW.
I strongly disagree with your second assertion; I’ll quote myself from earlier in this thread on what I believe is the main purpose of the concept of reparations:
This is an utterly ridiculous claim, IMO.
I fail to see any disagreement. In fact, the societal problems that I point out are addressed with AA, although perhaps incompletely, would be only barely addressed if at all by cash payments.