The person who posted this “I’m not interested in reparations for anyone who wasn’t “actually harmed”.” It appeared to be you.
So then,** who gets the reparations? Who doesn’t?**
I’m hopeful that the process I’m advocating would lead to those living Americans who have been harmed by various discriminatory policies and practices of our society receiving some measure of justice, which may involve cash payments, community investment, a combination, or some other solution.
So, you have no idea. No idea of amounts, no idea of the process, no idea of who would get any reparations.
And thus, really you dont know why, then. If you can specify who, you dont know why.
Look, none of my ancestors ever kept a black slave (well, perhaps back in Roman times or something, or perhaps they were slaves…). On my Father’s side, they fought for the Union, but came into the USA about that generation (apparently drafted right off the boat, but didnt do much fighting, made railroads instead). On my Mothers side, there might be some serfs in Carthpatia we owe a sincere apology to, but no blacks.
Nor have we ever owned a bank or even shares in a bank.
So, why do I owe?
You want to pick *my *pocket, make my tax ten times higher to assuage your guilt for something neither I, nor my ancestors had a part in (well, except for helping free those slaves, but according to you, that dont count).
Look, the number’s tossed around are like $200,000. You go ahead and write a check to the NAACP for $200K, and then come back. I dont want to pay anything, I dont owe* anyone *anything (well, maybe those serfs…)
If there were ANYTHING that would give Trump a realistic shot at reelection in 2020, it would be the Democratic nominee pushing hard for “reparations for black slavery 160 years ago.”
Absent that, Trump is pretty much toast next year.
Because this is the devious plan. Let’s get people to agree that reparations must be paid-* then* hit them with the $60 Trillion dollar bill.
*That’s *why they dont want to talk numbers or logistics.
Doesn’t matter. Millions and millions of black people were born into a country that has 2 1/2 centuries of slavery, another century of apartheid, and another 5 decades of various forms of institutionalized slavery still in effect. They were placed at a disadvantage whether your parents had something to do with it or not. Honestly, who gives a toss whether your relatives fought on the Union - it doesn’t mean a piece of piss. The Civil War’s outcome barely, just barely, improved the lives of black freedman.
The USA is just 243 years old, so your math and your other facts- are quite wrong.
How about the native Americans? We stole their nation.
The Chinese in the West?
The gays?
The list goes on.
Bad things happened. We fixed them. More bad things will happen, and they too, will be fixed.
But you’re talking about spending ten times the annual budget, increasing everyone’s taxes tenfold, just to assuage your personal guilt over something you had no control over.
It’s just too complicated to estimate the past harm done and apply restitution based on that calling it justice. We are never going to have sufficient information about the overtly sanctioned forms of oppression carried out in times when historical and ancestral records were less thorough. Even if I had access to a plethora of research about that, I couldn’t begin to guess how much blame to assign to that versus the cost of unofficial and insidious manifestations of discrimination, in more modern times in particular. Some social institutions such as the mechanisms toward incarceration, while flawed and at times administered by deeply flawed individuals, are ambiguous in net effect. It isn’t realistic to extend an open mind to the offer of reparations to non-black others who faced discrimination due to their ethnicity because this is so incalculable. This is all further complicated when some have unidentified biological parent(s) and grandparent(s) and/with the increasing proportion of people whose ethnic admixtures can be described as fairly novel.
In a lot of cases, financial redistribution on its own would be foolhardy. Young people such as these battleground vets would generally be better off with subsidized community programs that can improve their holistic wellbeing than a windfall. I’ll get behind emphasizing the need to continue to research the present and some of the past that has direct relevance to disadvantaged folks. Leave the rest of the past be, except as a guide to learn from. Young people living in the moment don’t care about race. In some places they do, as progress is uneven. For the most part they can get along with others in diverse areas without giving much of a flip; they think it’s silly to take it so seriously in much of their day to day lives and they joke about it ways that razz their friends or are self-deprecating. I am on my knees pleading that if a large scale impetus must come through to redress old harms, racial justifications are minimized and justifications are married with socioeconomic status. It is the people who creatively work often exhausting, thankless undertakings who are chipping away.
If a long term controlled experiment like iiandyiiii is proposing were doable, I think it might be easier if someone with hundreds of millions of dollars got a team of academics and funded it. ISTM quite a bit of research on racial disparities is fairly redundant or abstruse, so I’ll grant it would be an interesting use of resources. But the risk of compensation not working as intended is contingent on all these variables in different places. I don’t know how much could be learned from that. If there are other assists that would come with the reparation package in the experiment, what would they be if they are not things we aren’t already attempting in some localities, investment advice?
I have plenty of ideas (especially about process) . That’s what we’ve been talking about. I think we should do some very in depth research, to a level that’s never been done on a large scale before. You can feel free to disagree, though I don’t know why some find the prospect of such research so scary.
But the rest of your post, which I’m snipping, shows me that you don’t really care about any ideas regarding reparations. You just don’t want to pay, because you don’t think you’re responsible.
You’re not responsible for slavery, or Jim Crow, or lynching, or segregation, or any of that, assuming you’ve never taken part in it. You weren’t responsible for the Japanese American internment, either, and by the logic in your post, you must have disagreed with those payments, too, since I’m advocating that only Americans who have been harmed (like those interned Japanese Americans) should receive any ultimate benefit. But IMO you have the same responsibility as any and every American - help make the country a just, fair and equitable place for everyone.
You’re entitled to your opinion. You’re entitled to be comfortable with the status quo of how black people, Native Americans, and others are treated in this country. But you’re not convincing me of anything aside from your own selfishness.
They haven’t been fixed. Not even close. A great deal of progress has been made… but fixed? What an ignorant statement.
Or maybe we actually want to do the research, first, and we have absolutely no interest in any hyperbolic amounts that would break the country’s economy. The plan is to make the country more fair, equitable, and prosperous, and I’d certainly oppose any plan that I didn’t think accomplished that.
But carry on with straw men, rather than actual discussion, if that’s what you’d prefer.
The USA as a nation-state is 243 years old, but it inherited and incorporated legal and political systems that predate the Constitution. Having missed that obvious fact, I think I’ll simply disregard the rest of your post.
Surely the way to a “fair and equitable” society is properly enforced legislation that is seen to be enforced and equal opportunities for all regardless of the colour of their skin? Of course it is a tedious slog to get there, requires a generation to die off and an new enlightened one to come to power and doesn’t have the glamour or simplistic elegance of a cash payout but ultimately it has the potential to be far more effective.
I’d be right on board with substantial time, money and effort being spent on policy and enforcement but would be completely against any initiative whose decisions hinge on the ethnicity of a person.
Singling out a single (but actually undefinable) ethnic group for any sort of payment, for a hurt they haven’t personally suffered, to be underwritten by themselves plus people who had no part in it…seems like a divisive and pointless exercise. I see no good coming out of it and the pretty gentle back and forth of us in the dope of a liberal nature would pale into insignificance should such a policy actually come to pass.
Imagine, a rich, mixed-race child of wealthy parents and privileged upbringing would somehow be due a cash windfall where his dirt-poor white classmate, a product of generational neglect by parents and state gets zip? Good luck making a logical case for that which will not lead to even greater resentment and division.
This mostly disregards what I’ve been actually advocating for – once again, I’ve been advocating for very in depth and detailed research (much more so than any research ever done before) to identify the actual living Americans who have been harmed by various discriminatory policies, how they were harmed, and how this harm might possible be addressed in a just and fair manner.
We already see something awfully close to this with race-specified academic scholarships, FWIW.
Well, if you have to be asked if you support an idea, you’re probably not a rah-rah cheerleader about it. Like most politicians, a lot of what is said is to play to your base. I’ve seen general numbers around that seem quite low, but I’d be curious what percentage of African Americans want reparations?
Put a tax on confederate flags and use that to fund your study.
If it’s not enough, I know of some statues that can be melted down for their scrap value.
Personally, to me, the first step of reparations is to stop doing harm. We have to stop doing harm before we can tell how much harm has been done and needs to be made up for.
Getting rid of government sponsored displays of celebrations of slavery and discrimination would decrease the harm that is being done. Discouraging, (though not legally prohibiting) private displays of the celebration of slavery and discrimination would also be useful. After that, we can address discriminatory voting practices and other ways that minorities are prevented from engaging in their rights as fellow citizens.
We need to address the disparities in access to schools and to gainful employment, access to and ability to partake in consuming nutritious foods, access to adequate healthcare, as well as housing.
Once all that has been done, and probably a few other steps that I did not list in this non-exhaustive list of ongoing harms, then we can see if there is still a need for a direct cash compensation.
Then we hardly need government studies. Anyone who thinks he or she has been harmed can file suit against whoever they think discriminated against them, and present the evidence that shows how and to what extent they have been harmed. The burden of proof is on those making the claim, of course, but that is as it should be.
Regards,
Shodan
I think the harm is great enough and complex enough that it’s not realistic that this will happen, especially when that harm is likely to have caused very reasonable distrust in the entire justice system of the country. And if I’m wrong, the only cost would be the cost of an extensive research program, which would undoubtedly give us a lot of interesting data anyway.
Generations don’t just disappear once they’ve borne more offspring; there are multiple generations alive at any time. And the newest generations are simply living in the environment that the older generations have passed down to them, whether it’s the spoils of race-based capitalism or enduring the racism that has created the community in which they are raised.
But they have suffered it. There’s a reason why there are ‘black’ neighborhoods in cities throughout the United States. It’s not because they all immigrated from Africa and decide they decided to establish their own enclaves, which is not in any way to minimize the hardships that immigrants have faced in enduring their own discrimination.
This is typical of white majority thinking.
If you dare try to do anything we don’t agree with to ‘repair’ the injustice of racism, then we’ll become resentful. As if there’s not already resentment being felt by black Americans. Of course there is resentment; it’s just that, black resentment has not ever been, is not now, and never will be as important an issue to address as white resentment.