Okay, then sue the Feds. Even though I think you’d have more success if you went after CA. Start local and work your way to the top. I feel the same way about JC victims, by the way.
For some reason, unlike others in this thread, the idea of someone saying to the government “hey, it sucks that you permitted this to happen and you should pay for it” doesn’t get my panties bunched. Why should it?
Because the government and its money are you. The “institution” is some mythical construct that doesn’t exist. You are the institution now. Suck it up. You want me to pay you, and I want you to pay me. How’s this going to work out? Let’s drop the “I’m more deserving!” thing, 'cause I’m going to win. Gays continue to suffer more damage than Jim Crow, and not only that, but blacks are complicit in it. You so totally owe me.
Didn’t I just write that I have no problem with gays seeking redressal over Prop 8 or any other piece of discrimination? I coulda swore I just wrote that, like less than 10 mins ago.
All this talk about “the government and its money are you” looks rather stupid seeing how I’m all for people receiving reparations if they can make a convincing case of government-caused harm. Save the foam for someone who doesn’t. Thirty or 40 years from now, when the country is a more enlightened place and we look back on Prop 8 and other anti-gay laws like we do Jim Crow, inevitably there will be someone complaining about those rabble-rousing gays trying to get the government (me? you? us?) to acknowledge its wrongdoing.
What side will you be on?
Huh. I thought you were going to stop posting to this thread.
If you had made any good points, Sampiro, I’d say so. I’m not the best debater in the world, but I do consider myself a fair listener. I really do try to hear the other side. But for all your verbosity, you haven’t convinced me that a person, an individual, is never justified in take their own government to court for violating their civil rights. You haven’t convinced me that a person, an individual, is never justified in seeking compensatory damages for those violations. Until you do this, you will not get an “attaboy” from me. And I’m unapologetic about that.
I work for my state’s environmental agency. Do you know what’s the number one thing that keeps us on one toes, minding our ps and qs? The threat of lawsuits. If a citizen suspects their drinking water has been contaminated and that the agency knew about it and tried to cover it up, they can take us to court. Water treatment facilities can take us to court if we go overboard with regulatory actions. Non-profit environment groups can take us to court if they find suspect we’re pussy-footing assessment standards. We’re always under scrunity because we know that people are going to hold us accountable not only to the law, but the intent behind the law. They are just waiting for us to screw up. So we really try to do a good job.
How do we hold our governments accountable if we can’t sue them? How do we keep the law-makers, enforcers, and implementers on their toes if the citizen–the little person–is discouraged from exercising the full range of options available to them to get redress? Voting them out of office? How does that work, when you’re in the minority? Besides picking up and moving to another town, state, or country, the only other option left is to take them to court. We would still be living in Jim Crow if people did not exercise this option.
Sampiro, I’ve distilled your argument down to this: “Unless the government took your property or stole your money, you should get nothing!” Do you have a problem with individuals suing other individuals for much lesser crimes and being compensated? How are reparations for government misbehavior any different fundamentally?
Mind you, I don’t want to live in a society where people are suing their governments over petty, minor, nitpicky crap. But depriving people of fair and equal treatment under the law? Withholding educational opportunities and keeping people from voting? Looking the other way when people are killed, robbed, or injured? These are not petty, minor, or nitpicky. I don’t want to live in a society where the government can do these things to people and the people are expected to just roll over and forgive and forget. And I don’t understand why you would want to.
I’d like to say that it’s really sad that the gay posters in this thread have taken to blaming individual black Dopers for Prop 8, for no reason other than their race. I’m bothered by this not only because it’s in keeping with the pathetic tradition of one minority pitting itself against another, but because if the shoe was on the foot? If monstro was accusing levadrakon, Sampiro, or any other white person (and God forbid it be a southerner) for being personally responsible for Jim Crow? My laws, the atrocity that would be. We’d be seeing another “kiss my White Lily ass” thread in the Pit or whatever that hotmess is.
I did too. But, as this thread seems predicated upon, things change.
You cite urban legends about paper bag tests that appeared in one discredited source (which was accusing a black college of making the rules to begin with) as evidence of… uh… something, and yet when it’s explained why the case of the Japanese interment by direct order of the president is different from a century long general underclass imposition you can’t acknowledge a point has been made. This does not evidence a mind that is open to argument.
Mmm. I consider myself a Brad Pitt lookalike. Some may disagree.
Ah, I’m sorry. I thought the subject was whether Jim Crow Reparations should be paid. The goalposts in this thread are rather on trucks, don’t you think?
Actually, what I said was
Emphasis on don’t and grammatical clumsiness original. I can understand how you interpret that as saying I do blame them I suppose. Yeah.
In any case, I’ve said it before but this time I mean it-
I’m out of the thread for a few days at least (and it will probably be below the horizon when I return) to do Thanksgiving stuff.
I wish everybody here a happy holiday, don’t eat too much, enjoy any time you have off from work, drive safe, and all happiness wished sincerely to you and to those you love. We have a new president in the White House who, I personally believe, is much to be thankful for in addition to our health (such as it is ;)*) and those who love us, so let us spend some time dwelling on the positive. L’chaim.
*chosen to salute my new ‘one-eyed’ status
Well, cry me a river. Gays have always been all for other minorities. Excuuuuuse us for being pissed off when we got betrayed.
But it’s even worse. Us gays? We’re black too. You fucked your own kind. Okay, I’m not black, but gay blacks are my gay family. You fucked us, you fucked your fellow blacks. Sorry, gotta go eat Thanksgiving dinner and try not to be pissed off for awhile.
I sorry, but I called you out by name? Consider that there are others in this thread.
I appreciate your repetitive mentioning of the holidays and salutations, but you seem to keep returning with decidedly un-happy holiday snarkiness. The whole “nigger please” bit in the Pit thread was brushed off by monstro as trollishness, but I saw nothing but cowardly ugliness. I think you owe her an apology, not unfulfilled promises of disappearing.
But bye. Have fun.
I thought we were arguing about reparations, not about paper bag tests. But if you want a pat on the head for that contribution, then I’ll give you one. Good job!
I might be a little salty with you, given your disrespect to me in your Pit thread. But I have read your arguments and given them thought. I wonder if you’ve extended me the same courtesy, but it ain’t keeping me up at night. Like I said, I’m prepared to hit this subject a million times over. If you do a search on reparations, you’ll see evidence of this.
You’re being obtuse if you can’t see that a discussion about Jim Crow reparations is a discussion about the fundamental right of people to seek legal redress for civil rights violations. You’ve already admitted that people were harmed by Jim Crow. You’re a history buff, so I know you’re familiar with the supportive documentation. So then the only question left is should people be compensated for demonstrable harm? My answer is, why not? It works that way between individuals.
Your answer seems to be that the harm, while horrible, should be forgiven and forgotten simply because we’re talking about the government and we’re talking about injustices that aren’t tied to a specific dollar amount. But I doubt, based on your expressed politics, that you’d have a problem with an individual being compensated if their government poisoned their drinking water or falsely imprisoned them. And you’ve admitted you support blanket reparations to the interned Japanese, who didn’t have to prove harm or even direct ties to the actual event.
So I’m left wondering why it is you think you’ve argued well. The contradictions there are just too huge to ignore. I’m just being a big ole meanie for pointing this out to you, I guess.
If you want to talk about shifting goal posts, talk to your friend, ledvakon. He’s all over the place.
Hey, Prop 8 is more recent than Jim Crow. You don’t want to pay reparations for discrimination against gays because “you didn’t do it.”
Sall I’m saying.
You’re playing “gotcha” with your own dick. I know it must feel good, but the rest of us don’t want to see it.
Would anyone like to continue this discussion as a Great Debate?
Or should I simply move it to the BBQ Pit where most of you seem to want to hash it out?
[ /Modding ]
What is this? Another disgusting attempt to shut down the reparartions debate.
The modding here has been awful. The opponents to reparations have repeatedly dishonest by suggesting:
The reparations suggested will be paid to all blacks (or all blacks alive at the time)
That reparations are punitive
That Prop 8 has anything to with this debate
That Jim Crow was not clearly illegal (see amendments 13 14 15)
Get off your butt and do some modding and stop the lies
The majority of the posters in this thread make this board seem a step away from Stromfront…
If you really want this moved to the BBQ Pit, just say so, don’t make me guess.
I am not at all pleased about the personal invective that has characterized most of this thread, but you, Jesus Harold Christ, have done nothing to help this thread. Your “arguments” have been barely coherent as you have allowed other posters to do the heavy lifting for you and you have spent more energy launching personal attacks than actually providing a coherent argument for your position.
Let’s see you put together an actual argument consisting of a serious train of facts and logic leading to a conclusion or I am going to send this thread somewhere that all the fractious posters who are mad at each other can vent their spleens to their hearts’ content.
[ /Modding ]
Has anyone asked you about the irony of wanting to continue to set aside a class of people based on their skin color and handing them benefits, while at the same time decrying racism? How can a group all be equal if a part of it goes about demanding special treatment?
(My apologies if this has been discussed - I skimmed the thread and didn’t see anything)
It doesn’t seem to be that’s what the pro “Jim Crow reparations” people in the thread are advocating, though. They’re suggesting that the people harmed by Jim Crow get reparations. So you’re not giving benefits to people based on their skin color; you’re giving it to people based on the harm they suffered.
I’m not entirely convinced it’s a good idea, but it’s not the same idea that you’re portraying it as.
There’s something I don’t get.
Are you suggesting a civil lawsuit? Because I doubt whether that would go anywhere because of statues of limitations.
Are you suggesting legislative actions on the federal or state level? Because I think that’s a political nonstarter.
Are you making a moral argument, that victims of civil rights violations have a moral right to compensation? I’m guessing yes (among others), and it seems that you have acknowledged the problem that different victims received differing harm. Here I think you have a point except that,
a. this is rather cold comfort,
b. most of the (white) beneficiaries of Jim Crow are dead,
c. most (not all) of the said advantages I’m guessing were non-monetary and
d. as they say in Alabama, if you want to keep a man in a ditch, you have to climb in the ditch with him. Meaning that states with the worst Jim Crow tended to be poorest because as policy it made no (fucking) sense.
None of those points undermine the moral argument by the way: they just elaborate upon the sort of logistical complexity which monstro acknowledged.
I go back to the warfare example. Wars happen, vicious injustices occur and we move on. I understand that this offends the conscience. Monstro pointed out that some civilians in a few cases (my emphasis and qualifications) can apply for compensation due to US military action (though IIRC, the compensation is pretty paltry and is but an extension of a pacification program). I had not considered that. But I’ll extend the analogy and say there may be a role for partial reparations at the margin in a few cases. Tulsa and Tuskagee come to mind, as do certain murder cases.
But any general program runs into the problems in points 1 and 2 above.
I promised to drop out of this thread and I have kept that promise up until now; PLEASE send this abortion to the Pit and give me and others a chance to explain to the OP just exactly how we actually feel about him.
But maybe a close relative?