Serious Q: isn’t this already covered under the Statute of Limitations?
Regarding slavery, there’s no practical way to define who’s eligible and not, and who should pay and not, and how much. There’s also the argument that 600,000+ lives paid for it already in the Civil War. There’s the even better argument that civil rights laws and affirmative action programs are the most just way possible, as well as the most practical, to compensate for the effects of the past on the society of today and the future.
And that’s the point - no matter what happened the past, there’s still the problem of living in the present and making a better society for the future. We all have to live together on this planet, and normally side by side with people with whom we have mutual reasons for distrust based on the past. The challenge is to make it work, today and in the future. Starting with “On this battle on that date, our ancestors won and yours lost, so suck it” does not permit that process to occur. When it can be replied to with a similar statement about a different battle in a different generation, you need to have a good explanation as to why your battle is the definitive one. If you do that, you need to recognize that you’re asking for another one that in turn can be portrayed by the other guys, if they win, as definitive. You can’t stop that cycle by continuing it.
(bolding mine)
The end result of such a statute is that those with the upper hand will simply drag their feet in paying restitution to their victims until it’s too late to hold them accountable. That’s what happened with American slavery, that’s what is happening for Jim Crow survivors, and more than likely that is what will happen to the Palestians whose land was taken.
Yes. Even if “victimhood”, whatever the OP may think it is (and those who use the word tend to use it in a way that suggests it’s just self-pity) isn’t transferred to subsequent generations, poverty and land loss and cultural loss certainly are. What does the OP suggest be done about them?
I guess I did not express the thesis as well as I would like.
The issue is not framed as a strictly legal one, but rather one of policy or morality: whether or not one should approve that righting historical wrongs, to the extent possible by law or political action? [“historical” meaning wrongs against people no longer alive whose immediate kin are also no longer alive, because of the passage of time]
For example, clearly there is no obvious “legal” basis for US slavery reparations - slave-owners and slaves are both long dead; but reparations may be made, by the government on behalf of said dead slave-owners and to the descendants of slaves, if the political will existed to make them.
But as a poster above mentioned, who has the property or land from several generations ago? I will say that I am a white American and my lineage has never been oppressed in the last few centuries that I know of. I don’t own any title to land that my grandparents or further back owned. The whole idea of reparations is that modern day blacks would own these vast tracts of land with money in the bank and compounded interest for a hundred and fifty years. It makes no sense.
There is never any suggestion that “those with the upper hand” pay anything at all; the suggestion, as I understand it, is that the government pay on their behalf.
The problem with that is that people who have had no hand in victimizing anyone find their taxes are paying to correct a historical wrong they have nothing to do with. Naturally, they in turn will want their particular historical wrongs addressed as well.
The problem is that any attempt to address one set of historical greivances necessarily requires valuing that paricular set above someone elses’ set, often for reasons that totally contradict the purpose of making reparations - the “favoured” group is capable of mustering the political support necessary to get their grievances aired.
Take the Palestinians, since everyone appears to insist on using them as an example. We have done this exercise before: approximately an equal number of Palestinians fled what was to become Israel, as Shephardim (or more properly Mizrahim) Jews fled to Israel from other lands in the ME. These Jews by and large lost everything - just as the Palestinians did. The various plans to have Israelis pay off the Palestinians would, to these people, appear awfully like them having to pay twice over - where there was, basically, an exchange of population; since there is no realistic prospect of the ME countries paying Israelis for the expulsions they have suffered.
Now, one might reply, what of poverty? some groups are just plain worse off than others - again, the Israeli Shephardim are doing far better than Palestinians (mainly because Israel took them in and made them citizens while by and large the ME countries confined Palestinians to festering camps). But poverty, lack of education, and other indicia of deprivation should be remedied, not because of historical greivance, but because they are bad in and of themselves.
That’s usually because the government was complicit in the wrongdoing. That was the case in American slavery and Jim Crow, and the Japanese internment. But seeking redress from non-governmental entitities (such as companies) is not exactly unheard of.
And if these people have a case to be made for reparations, then they should be allowed to make that case. But nothing should be bestowed to anyone just because someone else received something. Furthermore, if someone truly deserves something, denying them that opportunity simply because someone else might try to get reparations as well is patently unjust.
The whole “I didn’t do anything so why should I have to pay!” complaint is not a solid justification for withholding reparations. There are many highways that I don’t use, and yet my taxes go to paying for those roads. I don’t have children, but my taxes pay for schools and child healthcare programs. Government-reparations work no differently than any other expenditure. So denying reparations on that basis flies in the face of precedent.
So what’s the solution for this inescapable limitation? No redress for anyone? I don’t see how that’s fair for anyone. All that will yield is a government and other actors who are allowed to do whatever they want, with no expectation that they will ever be held accountable when the people being steamrolled speak out.
Based on what you wrote above, we shouldn’t be allowed to communicate our wishes and complaints to public officials, lest those who have more political clout be allowed to have more sway over the government.
Well, yes. But at the same time those clamoring for reparations are very pointedly trying to benefit at other groups’ expense, as well. The fact that the pushback against these inter-group transfer payments happens to benefit some groups at the expense of others is simply because what they’re pushing back against is also trying to benefit some groups at the expense of others. Not particularly mysterious or interesting.
I also am a white American, descended neither from slaves nor from slaveowners and therefore with no feeling of obligation to pay reparations to someone else. I do have ancestors who were dispossessed of land in both France and Germany just a few centuries ago because of their religion - but no one is seriously suggesting those governments pay reparations to the Huguenots or Mennonites, so I guess I’m out of luck.
I’ve seen the figure $40,000 bandied about for some reason. But anyway, slavery reparations is not nearly a mainstream, or even all that serious, a demand. There are far more pointed, and justifiable on both sides, situations elsewhere.
And we’re still waiting for Malthus to provide an actual number of years on his proposed Statute, to say nothing of a rationale for such a number. Dare we wonder why?
And that, just so xtisme sees it, is how Zionism got its start.
Are you sure you’re fairly representing the situation there, by discussing money rather than land, and the dispossessions that are underway today?
How do you propose doing so without addressing the land problem, or grievances that are being perpetuated in the present day?
That’s a red herring. How many decedents of slavery victims live in the ghettos? What set the generational patterns for them to be there? Jim Crow laws are still in living memory for many.
The key to this statute of limitations thing is whether the aggrieved/victimized party has had injustices properly addressed and if the inflicter of grievances has acknowledged any wrongs it committed.
The examples I thought of first involve Germany and Turkey. The idea of collective guilt for Germans has pretty much dissolved based on the country’s actions following WWII. On the other hand, Turkey’s continued vehement denial of the Armenian genocide prevents that case from being resolved. With the tack they’re taking, there’s no possible statute of limitations. The case will run forever on the engine of denial.
Well of course. They are trying to benefit at the expense of those they perceived gained from the perceived injustice.
It is the point some people are missing, I think, with respect to slavery reparations (with which I don’t actually agree). When people say “my ancestors never owned slaves” the argument of the reparationists isn’t that individual slave owners and their decendents own money to individual slaves and their decendents, but instead that ‘white America’ benefitted from slavery on an ongoing basis, and those costs, throughout American history, even after emancipation, have been born by ‘black America.’ Proving direct descent from a slave isn’t the point.
I don’t like the argument, because I think it makes the mistake common in American analysis of focusing on race to the exclusion of class. I don’t see the benefit to much of the white working class of slavery; as an inistitution it can only have completely distorted the wage system, and its legacy of racism did much to retard the growth of working class solidarity and unionism. A ‘reparations’ scheme that could get my support, and that I would think would still be valid (and needed) today, would be an extensive class based affirmative action program.
Certainly governments at the time were complicit in wrongdoings. The problem is to define to what degree governments should be imbued with moral responsibility for past actions. Same goes for specific companies. The Hudson’s Bay Company was incorporated in 1670. Today, it is just another department store. Should it bear responsibility for things done in the wake of the English Civil War?
No, it is not - the same sorts of considerations go into “limitations” in ordinary civil cases. Are all statutes of limitations “patently unjust”? Or only those that address emotional, historical greivances?
Why should it be the case that if I, personally, suffer a tortious wrong, I can only sue for a wrong suffered in the last few years - but presumably if my ancestors suffered a wrong, I could sue for wrongs suffered as far back as I please?
Why not? I don’t have to right wrongs in other contexts that I did not cause.
I disagree. Reparations are not like unto roads and schools. We do not have a moral obligation to provide roads and schools - we provide them to make society a better, more convenient place.
A good case can be made that one should provide for the disadvantaged in exactly the same way as roads and schools, yes. But no such case can be made for tying this provision to historical grievance - that gets into the problem I alluded to before: that of picking and choosing based on some criteria (grievance) rather than need favours one group over another for no good reason.
Take a practical example: in one case you have a dirt poor White kid, parents addicted to Oxycotin, limited schooling, small prospects. In another, you have a poor Black kid, parents addicted to Crack Cocaine, limited schooling, small prospects.
In the one case, the parent’s ancestors fought on the side of the Confederacy, lost, and became shiftless hillbillies. On the other, the parent’s ancestors were slaves, and when freed drifted north to find jobs working in the auto industry. The “grievance” plan would presumably provide aid and support for the poor Black kid (ancestors were slaves) but not the poor White kid (ancestors were on the side of slaveowners). To my mind, that’s unjust - the kids cannot help who their ancestors were; both got where they are via their history. That does not even begin to address the problem that some slave ancestors are presumably not disadvantaged but would, one would assume, still receive reparations.
To my mind this is a strangely arbitrary way of enacting social improvement.
No “redress” for anyone not personally harmed; enact socialist measures based on need, not ancestors’ history.
People actually harmed would of course retain all legal rights for redress.
We shouldn’t be handing out packets of money to the squeaky wheel, of course. There should be rather more objective criteria than that.
A statute of limitations would have to be taken on a case-by-case basis and the following questions would have to be addressed:
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Was there a long period of systematic denial of wrongdoing and misinterpretation of law by the government, preventing direct victims from getting a fair shake in the court of law?
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Was the oppression so long-lasting, so pervasive in the society, that direct victims were confronted with an all but impossible task in seeking redress?
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Did the government make a promise to the direct victims for compensation and then never follow through with it due to political pressure?
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Can the descendents of direct victims demonstrate harm so pervasive and blatant that only an idiot would deny that institutional policy wasn’t at least partly responsible.
I don’t believe in a blanket statute of limitations. Every historical woe is different. Nor do I believe the government can really be trusted with setting up fair rules for dealing with historical grievances against itself. Imagine if Germany had been the arbiter of fairness for deciding when and how Holocaust reparations were handled. That’s like having like letting the thief decide his own sentence, isn’t it?
If not the government (presumably through the democratic process), then who?
Something like the Nuremburg Tribunal or the World Court?
Do you honestly think that a Jim Crow America could come up with a fair process for establishing a statute of limitations for reparations claims? I don’t think so. That’s why it would have to be an outside, objective entity. I don’t see any other fair way of doing it.
If a person can make a compelling case that present-day harm can be traced to that company, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to try to do so in court. Odds are if the wrong goes back to the 17th century, they won’t be able do that.
Statutes of limitations are not based on preventing people from receiving reparations just because other groups have, so I’m not understanding what this has to do with what you responded to in my post. Your argument was essentially that if we award Group A reparations for a long-ago atrocitity, then Group B will try to get reparations. And since this a Bad Thing (for reasons left unexplained), neither Group A nor B should get reparations.
Because the nature of oppression often prevents current survivors from having access to power that would enable them to fight for what they deserve. Case in point, the survivors of American slavery. These people did not have the means to sue because their oppression continued long after the Emancipation Proclamation. And their children inherited this oppression.
In the 90’s, our taxdollars went to paying the interned Japanese reparations, even though most of us weren’t even born when this happened. So history disagrees with you.
I’m sure plenty of the Nazis and their descendants ended up impoverished after the war, and not much better off than the Holocaust survivors and their descendants. And? So? Does that mean that reparations for the survivors and their relatives is unjust?
And of course at this point, the goal posts will shift so that this argument isn’t meant to apply to Holocaust reparations because “there are still survivors alive today!” But whether you’re talking about rewarding direct survivors or their descendants, you still end up in a situation in which the “grievance plan” would help out one set of people, while leaving others–who are also victims of circumstance–unhelped.
I don’t get this tendency of doing side-by-side comparisons of individuals when discussing reparations. Compared to whites, the descendants of slaves are inarguably poorer, die earlier, and have lower quality of life, so at a population level, this form of argumentation doesn’t withstand scrutiny. It’s quite easy to focus on the woes of poor white hillbillies when making a case against slavery reparations, but what about the parties who profited?
Just because not every descendant isn’t living in a hole in a ground doesn’t mean they weren’t disadvantaged by slavery.
Every case for reparations has to go through a rigorous court system. If a squeaky wheel presents a compelling case for reparations as determined by the courts, then so be it. That’s the way things should work.
This proposal gets less an less attractive. In order to achieve “fairness” in redressing historic wrongs we must throw out democracy as a notion, and accept some appointed world body with adjudicative and policy-making powers? Appointed by whom? How exactly is that going to happen? Germany was, as you will recall, conquored after a brutal world war leading to the Nuremburg Tribunal, something rather unlikely to happen any time soon to America (and particularly not by an enemy whose priority is to redress the historic grievance of slavery).
Strikes me that the “redress historic grievance” plan is opening up a whole can of bad unintended consequences, which is more or less exactly why a statute of limitations on such claims makes sense.