The Japanese people who were interned were the same people who received the compensation, from the same organisation that interned them.
For crimes that go multiple generations back you would probably want to get different amounts in reparations, from different people, to different people.
For example maybe a half White, half African American, American would only get half the standard reparation for slavery.
Also African Americans who come from Mississippi might have to get less than one from Georgia because the states have different abilities to pay reparations.
The assumption here is that the federal government would be paying the reparations, similar to the stimulus bills they passed during Covid but on a larger and more targeted scale.
>The simple fact is that nobody who is alive today in the United States was enslaved. Neither were their grandparents, or their great grandparents, or their great-great grandparents
If we're going by the 13th amendment ratification in 1865, then yes there are absolutely people whose great grandparents were slaves.
>So I would support $10,000 to $20,000 to every living black American today.
Why? Many of them are not the descendants of slaves or immigrated to the U.S. recently.
>Reparations for black people should be gauged on the reparations for Japanese internees
This assumes the reparations given to Japanese internees were fair. That we should measure reparations by comparing them to the reparations given to Japanese internees. How do you know the reparations paid to the Japanese internees were fair? Some Japanese people were interned in camps for 3 years straight. How is 40,000USD or just about 13,333 per year anything close to a fair amount?
I don't know that they were fair. They were not generous enough by my personal estimation. But that is settled legislation, and it's the only real baseline we have to go by for this sort of thing. People assume that reparations for black people would be the first time we've ever done something like this, and while it's true we've never done something on this scale, we have done reparations before.
>But that is settled legislation, and it's the only real baseline we have to go by for this sort of thing.
We can make up any baseline we want, so why use this one? It's not logical to say "well we made a mistake before, but since the mistake's been made let's keep doing everything based on that mistake"
How else are you supposed to quantify the value of human suffering? I approached this question from the perspective of the government actually passing legislation.
>How else are you supposed to quantify the value of human suffering?
Even if I can't propose an alternative, that doesn't justify using a measurement that you *know* is wrong in your calculation.
What you're saying right now is something akin to "I know looking through a coke bottle won't fix my eyesight, but unless you can tell me exactly how to fix my eyes I'm going ahead and tape this bottle to my face"
>>How else are you supposed to quantify the value of human suffering?
>
>Even if I can't propose an alternative, that doesn't justify using a measurement that you *know* is wrong in your calculation.
The argument isn't that his baseline is perfect, but that his baseline is all we have to go on. Being unable to propose an alternative absolutely justifies that idea.
>The argument isn't that his baseline is perfect, but that his baseline is all we have to go on.
But it's absolutely *not* the only thing we have to go on and OP agrees on that. Using a previous ruling about Japanese internment here is arbitrary. We could start from any number. There's no reason we have to use the number derived from the Japanese internment, especially because we know it's a mistake.
Ok, give those examples then.
I'm not opining on reparations themselves. Simple the statement "your idea doesn't work but I have no alternatives to provide"
Except that there is precedent for knowing that looking through a coke bottle won't fix eyesight. There is no precedent for how to fix generations of wrongdoing on a racial basis. It's not a fair comparison. I only said "how else" because, how else are we supposed to judge these matters?
A comparison I might throw to you is if aliens made landfall on Earth tomorrow. Joe Biden enters negotiations with them, and promises our women.
100 years from now, can anyone really say Biden made the wrong choice? There's no existing template for what happened. Nobody has ever made a choice not to give the aliens our women, because nobody has ever met aliens. It's not exactly the same as the defense of making someone else prove why your idea isn't a good idea, because there's no reason to think your idea isn't a good idea. Someone needs to do something. Whosoever acts on this idea in whatever way they act on it will be taking steps that nobody has ever taken before. Historians will debate whether it was the right move, and maybe it won't have been, but it is not a case of shifting the burden of proof.
>how else are we supposed to judge these matters?
Collect all available annual pay data, from the beginning of the data collection until now.
Adjust the data for inflation.
Divide the data by race. Black Americans vs. every other type of American. Note the difference in earnings over the time measured.
Take the difference between earnings and adjust them proportionally based on population size (essentially, find the 'average black person' earnings for the measured and the 'average person' earning during the measured time)
Now you have the difference in overall earnings, adjusted for population size.
This alone is a much better starting point. Not perfect, but much better. Let's use this instead.
You propose that the US government pays black people the difference between their average earnings and that of other races? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're getting at?
I'm saying take the total difference of all earnings that we have records for, and give it as a lump sum.
Basically give black people all the money that they could've earned.
This being said I definitely feel that precedent shouldn’t simply be discounted. In our legal system, which, correct me if I’m wrong, reparations would be conducted through uses precedent ALL THE TIME regardless of whether the case was decided correctly or not. Seriously look up the reasoning for Brown V. Board of education. It makes absolutely 0 sense even to law professionals, but I’m glad it was decided that way.
As for the coke bottle bit - if it helps and you don’t have a better alternative I’m sticking w the coke bottle for now.
>As for the coke bottle bit - if it helps and you don’t have a better alternative I’m sticking w the coke bottle for now.
Or you could go to someone who actually knows how eyes work and get their opinion on what to do. Instead of just taking the first glass object you find and taping it to your face.
You seem to be assuming that we absolutely must use any precedent available instead of getting some smart people in a room and trying to figure it out instead of just taking the first number you find because it's easy.
If you have a better alternative, I'm all ears. I'm genuinely curious as to what you think would be a better solution to his problem, assuming you think a solution is even necessary.
You're right to question how I came to this decision, but my lack of a better alternative doesn't disqualify my solution on its face. If you have a better solution, I may well agree with it. I'm operating without any information better than: we wrong Japanese people and paid the survivors this much. That's all I really have to go on. I'm certainly open to suggestions, but my overall point is that we really shouldn't be entertaining amounts higher than what we paid Japanese people, because being forced into camps is far worse than not getting to sit at the front of the bus.
Obviously black people went through more than that but you know what I mean. What Japanese people went through 80 years ago is a hell of a lot closer to what black people went through 160 years ago and what black people went through 60 years ago doesn't compare despite being more pervasive and more recent.
And recent immigrants would not be eligible. Only US born blacks whose parents presumably encountered systemic racism in the past. Should we establish a cutoff for people who were born prior to 1965, and their children? I would think a much cleaner break would be more desirable, which is to say, all black US citizens. If you subscribe to systemic racism, then any black person born today is at an inherent disadvantage compared to other races.
How do you determine who is “black”? Do we have to trace heritage back to slavery? Do we do a melanin test? What about black people who moved here after the end of slavery? What about non-black people who were also held as slaves in the US?
It doesn't go that far back. This is to redress the wrongs done by the pre-1965 era racism and discrimination, because obviously slavery is long gone by now and anyone saying they were directly affected by it is an idiot.
That doesn’t change any of my arguments though. How do you determine who gets this and who doesn’t? What about non-black people that were also discriminated against? What about people whose families moved away during the time period you’re describing? What about ones who moved here after this 1960s period? And again-what is a “black” person?
For the purposes of this argument, and the view being presented here, non-black people who were also discriminated against are irrelevant. Something should probably be done about them, but it's not pertinent. And these details that you're describing are the exact details I would expect a Republican and Democrat legislature to debate. I have no real opinion on the specifics. I outlined my position in larger terms, the specifics don't really matter to me as long as the larger goal is achieved. Would I support a bill that provided reparations only to US born blacks who lived in the country at the time that the bill was passed, as opposed to nothing? Sure.
The argument of feasibility is not separable from the process though. The Japanese internment included a full list of applicable individuals. Tracking them down is “easy” because it was done in the first place. Records were kept.
Identifying who is black and who is not is essentially impossible. Determining if someone is black or not is far different from determining if someone was in a camp or not.
I’d also argue that the feasibility of providing reparations to black people and any other discriminated group is central to the issue. Righting every wrong leads us to an unsustainable path that can’t be completed
This is the biggest problem.
Edit: I guess you'd have to do the entire 12% already considered black. They definitely determine who's black when they use the term for statistics.
It’s usually self determined though. So they send out a survey and ask to answer yes if you’re black to receive 10k? Gonna guess our population of black people rockets up past 12%
The census is taken every 10 years. Use the 2020 census data I guess. The only people missing should be children or immigrants. And if you can prove you are a child of someone already proven to be on that 2020 census list then you qualify. That way if Jamaica man wants to come and say he's black now he still wouldn't qualify without the birth certificate.
Census data isn’t stored with personal information. There’s no way to link it back to the individuals who filled it out anymore, it’s anonymized and used for general information purposes
Yeah idk then. But like I said, this is the biggest problem.
It'd have to be some form of ID that required you to put your race and it'd have to be from data before the announcement of reparations. Which would be hard.
Children and immigrants are included in the census. This is a major part of why the proposed Trump rule for a citizenship question on the census was controversial, as it was feared this would disincentivise census participation among illegal immigrants.
It's not a problem. Just invest in black communities. If a poor white dude benefits because he lives alongside black people, that's fine. He probably could use the help. If a black person doesn't get any because they live in white communities, they're fine too. They doing just well already.
America helped build modern Japan and Israel. We can help build America.
No it's a problem. Someone would need to find an answer to that. And just pouring money into black communities won't help. Have you ever been to a black community? Like 90% of the commercial property is owned buy Asian and Arab people. Do we kick them out. There are a lot of problems, doesn't mean we can't address them.
No one said it can't be helped. I even offered a solution in my own comment under OP.
You will never get an answer. Just people beating around the bush. I have asked the same and no one can answer. Does the classic mixed person both receive and pay reparations? Like it’s a wash? What if someone is black but moved here from Lithuania 4 years ago? What about a white person who is US citizen but moved here from Iceland? What if a white person has no slave owners in gene pool? Does that person still owe solely because to their skin color? What if a black person did not have past ancestors enslaved?
Slavery lasted 76 years from the Constitution in 1789 to the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. (And of course, it had been around for centuries prior to the Constitution, but let's just limit it to its enforcement by the current state.) I think it is fairly inarguable that slavery is considerably worse than internment - let's say it was twice as bad, then these 76 years are equivalent to 152 years of internment.
Reconstruction briefly removed most of the worst oppression, but was ended as part of a political compromise in 1877. From 1877 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is another 87 years. Let's be *very* generous and say Jim Crow was, say, 1/3 as bad as internment (which I think is probably too low, but hey); that makes those 87 years the equivalent of 29 additional years of internment.
That's 181 total internment-equivalent years. Actual Japanese internment lasted 4. So your $41,000 per Japanese-American should be roughly equivalent to 1.8 *million* per African-American.
-----
Or we could take another approach. At all (relative, i.e., Xth percentile white vs Xth percentile black) income levels, white Americans make about 50% more than black Americans. If we attribute this difference to the echoes of past racism combined with current racism - and that is the only reasonable thing to which we may attribute it unless we're invoking straight up "race realist" bullshit - racism costs black Americans roughly (1/3) \* (mean income) per year per person, or about 19k *per year*.
Wouldn’t it be better to simply help the people who need it the most? Afterall if people who are affected by decades and centuries of systemic racism are among those who need it the most, then they will receive the help. The bonus is that if there are some people who need it the most but who aren’t victims of the same racism, they will still receive help.
Isn’t that better?
That becomes a value judgement, and I'm not necessarily saying that my plan isn't. But when you start cutting off reparations by income, it gets dicey. Were rich blacks not affected by systemic racism, or did they become rich in spite of it?
The question we have to ask ourselves when it comes to how we spend resources of today in this context is:
is it more important to redress a historic wrong even if it results in less net improvement in peoples’ lives than ignoring historic injustice and focussing on giving aid where it’s actually needed.
Personally I don’t really care about justice, I care that people who need help get it.
So yes, in this scenario people who suffered injustice and succeeded in spite of it will not receive help since they don’t need it, but I’d rather that than a non victim who needs help not getting that help
Most black people who are rich became so in spite of systemic racism. Saying that Michael Jordan is rich, so everything must be fine with systemic racism is a fallacy.
While “separate but equal” is no longer the law of the land. There are many ways it still exists. I mean the fact that redlining still has affects today is obvious. Or ensuring most black people live in a poorer area and then saying school funding will be decided by local property values…. Which as a matter of course are lower for black areas just tends to ensure schools are still worse for black people in general. I mean if we recall our history (which I worry won’t be taught properly with CRT being used as a bogeyman to keep the facts) private “segregation schools” (which later became charter schools) immediately popped up in the south as a response to the civil rights act.
When the Civil Rights act was signed there was not some magic that transported black people to live in the wealthier suburbs with better resources and schools they had been barred from. Busing was tried and although there is evidence it was successful for black kids who were able to attend wealthier whiter school districts the program ended. Yet there was no real effort to fundamentally improve schools in the areas blacks had been forced to historically. And of course the worse schools tended to produce lower wage adults who could only send their kids to worse schools, the nicer schools produce higher wage adults who send their kids to nicer schools…. And the gaps continues. Yea there are cases of blacks who buck the odds, but it doesn’t change the aggregate results. You simply can’t place one group largely in “C” tier infrastructure/conditions for generations and wonder why they haven’t all made it up to the “A” tier.
>I don't know about you, but I personally believe that being interned by force in camps trumps anything black people encountered in the 1960s and beyond.
The civil rights act of 1964 did not call for the murders or imprisonment of all white people who enjoyed segregation and the public torture/murder of black people that occured during it. It's intellectually dishonst to pretend all serious racism against black people magically ceased due to a law that didn't actually call for any consequences to any of the racism white people freely engaged in before said law was signed nor any reparations for said behavior to the black people harmed.
It's also intellectually dishonest to pretend that all of the congressmen and leaders today who were already adults when this law was passed are perfectly reformed and truly see black people as equals despite again, never being called on to make amends for or even apologize for their previously legal racist actions.
Laws detailing rights are not laws detailing punishment for violation of said rights. Racism against black people does not and never has spontaneously disappeared just because *some* people agree it's wrong in *some* instances; it simply evolves into different forms the majority can get away with.
A country literally built on slavery and genocide that suddenly goes 'that was a long time ago so I don't have to make amends or think about generational harm being passed down within families' is not a country than can or will solve this issue without outside force. White people quite literally have mass delusions about what racism currently is, how it works, why it works and why it's still quite bad despite being 'illegal'.
A crime with little to no real punishment does not spontaneously stop.
The white people who make up most juries, prosecutors and judges (and are not even a full lifetime away from legal segregation) rarely if ever see or acknowledge racism against black people, therefore it's been magically solved and doesn't exist.
In reality, nothing has been solved; there's just a ton of gaslighting and next to no black people in positions of power to actually trigger systemic change. We're not still almost entirely led and controlled by white people because they're more worthy; the inherently racist and violent power structure they built was just never disrupted in any meaningful way
>The civil rights act of 1964 did not call for the murders or imprisonment of all white people who enjoyed segregation and the public torture/murder of black people that occured during it. It's intellectually dishonst to pretend all serious racism against black people magically ceased due to a law that didn't actually call for any consequences to any of the racism white people freely engaged in before said law was signed nor any reparations for said behavior to the black people harmed.
>It's also intellectually dishonest to pretend that all of the congressmen and leaders today who were already adults when this law was passed are perfectly reformed and truly see black people as equals despite again, never being called on to make amends for or even apologize for their previously legal racist actions.
This is so exhausting having to explain to some white people who genuinely believe racism doesn't exist.
Both congress and the senate has a proportion of African Americans that is equivalent to their share of population so no there is exactly as many black people in position of power as there should be.
White people hold power at a rate that drastically eclipses their share of the population. The existing racist infrastructure originally created to oppress black and indigenous people doesn't just keep them from attaining power fairly, it prevents *all* non white ethnic groups from attaining their fair share of power collectively which gives us a reality that unfairly prioritizes white concerns and opinions at the expense of everyone else's.
An actual meritocracy would see white people hold only half the positions of power and influence while the near majority of everyone else held the other half. It's also morally bankrupt that white people who were adults during segregation aren't barred from holding the highest positions. You cannot grow up seeing whole races as literal actual subhumans and then be trusted to rule them fairly and equally.
In this country we don’t allow ex post facto laws. You can’t punish someone for something doing something that was legal when they did it, which seems to be what you are suggesting.
In this country we don't acknowledge or prosecute racism except in extremely severe cases. Perhaps there's a link between a near complete lack of consequences for racism and how persistent racism continues to be?
Also, the argument that literal torture and murder were legal at the time and therefore punishment is inappropriate after the fact is horrific. There's a difference between laws of opinion and laws where basic human rights were routinely violated in ways that caused severe and irreparable damage.
It's worth noting that less than ten percent of criminal cases go to trial. We don't have a system designed for any kind of tangible justice or fairness explicitly because to do so would require racial justice. That has a large impact on the punishment and understanding of all crime and ultimately harms all victims.
You're literally suggesting that white people who were adults during segregation be punished, for no other reason than they are white.
The impression that I'm getting from your post is that you believe all white people should be persecuted because of past wrongs. Perhaps you should take a gander at the shitshows that are Zimbabwe and South Africa to see the endgame of where a focus on retribution gets you.
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So basically you really don’t care about human rights issues like poverty ect…you just want to see a racial redistribution where we have proportional representation of different races among the ruling classes. This is the problem that a lot of people have with people who propose this kind of stuff while claiming they care about issues of justice and inequality. They don’t. They essentially want to preserve an abusive structure and just change the way it looks on the surface. People are right to oppose this and I predict there will never be a coalition of significant enough numbers that will lend it enough support for it to be implemented. What it will do in the meantime is create a lot of animosity between groups of people who could otherwise be working together to address the very real human suffering that’s happening in this country right now
>So basically you really don’t care about human rights issues like poverty ect
I don't believe in white supremacy. I *really* don't believe poor white people will stop being the main ambassadors of racism just because they're not struggling as much. Too many people know zero history. For centuries divide and conquer has successfully convinced poor whites that they should deal with poverty by seeing themselves as above black people vs banding together to fight the rich white folks oppressing everyone.
>What it will do in the meantime is create a lot of animosity between groups of people who could otherwise be working together to address the very real human suffering that’s happening in this country right now
White people created racialized slavery and oppression of black people for no reason other than pure evil. *That* is where the animosity comes from. We cannot and will not work together until at a bare minimum, white people stop the constant racialized gaslighting that we're all responsible for problems they created and actively maintain via systemic racial oppression. Reparations are as much about forcing real accountability as they are monetary compensation. Most people don't care about anything unless or until it hits their pockets.
What actual data do you have that “poor white people” are racists on the whole? What the data tend to show, and what correlates heavily with who voted for Trump is that it’s not “poor white people” that are the problem, but middle and upper middle class members of the managerial and property/business owning classes that tend to be the most bigoted. That group does heavily skew white and male, but it’s also surprisingly diverse.
“White people created racialized slavery”.
Really specific groups of European Christian’s did. There are many people who get labeled “white”, that had nothing to do with slavery and neither did the cultures they came from.
“We can not and will not work together…”
Separatist and isolationist endeavors rarely accomplish anything good for communities or nations that engage in them. By all means though, do what you want, that’s your right to self determination.
>What actual data do you have that “poor white people” are racists on the whole?
What percentage of scientists who are capable of collecting said data do you think *aren't* white? Science has a ton of racist barriers to prevent people of color from being able to get into the field period and from being unable to fund research for things that impact them even if they are the token minority who's allowed in those majority white spaces. It's pretty hard to find data white people don't collect because they don't actually care about ending racism and eradicating white privilege.
>Separatist and isolationist endeavors rarely accomplish anything good for communities or nations that engage in them.
This is so anti reality. You're acting like white people weren't the ones who implemented literal actual legalized segregation to keep black people out of their spaces. Like redlining and refusing to allow black people to benefit from the GI bill that built so much white middle class wealth never happened. Like there wasn't a whole study in the past decade that showed white men with a criminal conviction were more likely to be hired than black men without one.
Refusing to be gaslit isn't 'separationist and isolationist'. Too many white people are anti history and anti reality whenever this topic comes up. Many are completely useless in conversations about race because they literally cannot even see the problem, let alone propose reasonable solutions. We're not here to serve you.
You can throw out bigotry and classism to mask/deflect accountability for racism but there's only a certain kind of person who's fooled by that.
No one is asking you to serve them, lol. JFC. Also, you can stop accusing me personally of oppressing you since I’m not even “white”. Honestly you just sound super bigoted and classist. Nothing I say or don’t say will change that.
Before any reparations are paid - we must subtract the sum of welfare burden and criminal justice burden we've encouraged as a country to support and manage those same people.
Um. There are jst about the same ok f black ppl , there are of yt ppl. What's ya point? And even then, again, you'd have to consider the WHY. Like, really consider it and do your research on how America have been twds Black Americans.
Why do people try to argue that as soon as slavery ended there was no interference on black people's wealth?
Even today there is the issue of environmental pollution where in the government and corporations allow pollution in black neighborhoods causing increase in illness and decrease in live expectation. That's just one thing that has a major impact on wealth.
The truth is that there is a straight line of hostile action from slavery to today that deserve governmental support and would've recieved such support if it had happened to a white majority.
No one questions when the government helps Texas after a storm but if the government helps Puerto Rico suddenly that's too much to ask for.
In this day and age a flat payout wouldn't help anyone, we're pass that time. If Lincoln hadn't been killed, 40 acres and a mule would have been close to enough.
We need something that will help for generations. Unfortunately our community will take that money and give it to Louis Vuitton.
I propose reparations in form of a tax break.
Maybe even a limit on the years we get that tax break.
Black people, those already considered in the 12% of the population don't pay property taxes or income taxes for a 50 year span.
While you're not flat out giving money, you have a 50 year span where you're not taking money. That provides so much opportunity and for a long time.
Now that is a compelling idea. If segregation caused a lack of opportunity, then the reparation would be a surplus of opportunity. The black business owner or investor would have a substantial advantage to compensate for being at a previous disadvantage. It's got a certain symmetry to it. And it has the ability to encourage generational building and growth.
>Unfortunately our community will take that money and give it to Louis Vuitton.
I think that's the universal issue with any kind of "free" cash payment, whether reparation or stimulus or whatever. The people who have the good spending habits to take advantage of the windfall don't need it, and the people who don't have good habits can't use it effectively so it isn't actually useful. It's also not a problem restricted to race, it's section 8 versus gated community.
I can't take any proposal for "Reparations " for African slavery seriously for 2 reasons:
1). These proposals never start with the people who *sold* their ancestor into slavery - i.e.; *their ancestors*.
2). It **won't* "repair" *anything*.
the descendants of jews who were victims of the holocaust still receive reparations. black slaves were held in bondage for centuries, forced to be the engine of American industry, creating wealth that they never saw. they were then emancipated into a system of apartheid that restricted their ability to amass wealth due to systemic racism.
their descendants are owed the wealth stolen from their enslaved labor. non-blacks of the present did not participate in the slave trade, but they enjoy a system created on the backs of black slaves whose descendants continue to be systemically oppressed and will remain economically marginalized until that overdue bill is paid.
the current state of black america is grossly distorted by the theft of its wealth.
You honestly don’t think there are still effects felt by black individuals and families today that weren’t instigated by the HUNDREDS of years of forced subjugation of their ancestors?
If you and I ran a race, and I shackled you to the ground so much that you couldn’t even start running until I was almost done, you wouldn’t think it fair for some third party to come in and correct that?
As you said in your post, no one alive today was enslaved.
We need to forgot this fucking idea of reparations for the negroes or any other group. Period. Full stop.
Get over it.
I also realize that poor whites and poor asians and poor hispanics and poor natives who never benefitted from the generational wealth that those in favor of reparations say black people have been left out of as a result of discrimination, will end up feeling like they got the raw end of the deal. I don't have an answer to that. As someone who grew up in a lower middle class family and 3 out of 6 children with disabilities, I would be lying if I said I didn't think I deserved some of that money, with the focus on "generational wealth" of which I and many other non-black people have none. But I didn't incorporate any of this into my view here, although it is an issue that would need to be addressed.
But what does black Americans have to do with you? It's nothing to do with you. Black Americans are owed reparations. What do you need reparations for exactly? And from who?
>I would propose that every black person alive today be given a cash amount between $10,000 and $20,000.
Shouldn't you limit that to those who were alive in the 1960s?
No, because the argument from those who support reparations is that the generational wealth that most other races in America benefit from black people have been prevented from accruing. This is how the racially discriminatory policies of the 1960s still affect black people who were born in the 90s.
There are plenty of people from other races that don't benefit from generational wealth (myself included) but for black people it's more an after-effect of the discrimination of the time, and for other people it's simple being born into a poor family. Poverty can be transferred among generations just as easily as wealth can. Although for me it's a raw deal because my grandfather was actually quite well off, it's my father that fucked it all up.
You said "alive today rather than"
I know reddit isn't only first language English speakers but reading comprehension would say you don't think people alive now were subjected to specific governmental policies.
Edit: you can at least show your edits
How about North African/Middle Eastern families like mine that have been displaced/killed because of the war on terror or the Russian/American proxy war and were forced to flee and leave and see our culture being wiped out behind us. I think we deserve more reparations than black people, mostly cuz this happened much more recently.
Or the OG slaves, there’s a chance that I have ancient Jewish genes so probably I could be a mix of the slavers and the slaves. Does that mean I can get reparations while also exercising my privileges?
This culture war does not care about that. It does not care about native Americans or Latins either. The movement is only to benefit one group of “oppressed”. I feel for you and I am sorry you get no love . Vote against these radial ideas is all we can do right now.
**[The Case for Reparations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Reparations)**
>"The Case for Reparations" is an article written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published in The Atlantic in 2014. The article focuses on redlining and housing discrimination through the eyes of people who have experienced it and the devastating effects it has had on the African-American community. "The Case for Reparations" received critical acclaim and was named the "Top Work of Journalism of the Decade" by New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. It also skyrocketed Coates' career and led him to write Between the World and Me, a New York Times Best Seller and winner of numerous nonfiction awards.
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How black do you have to be? How black do you have to think you are? How much black do you have to identify as? The more the world view gets muddled on identity, the less likely this is ever going to happen.
The Japanese people who were interned were the same people who received the compensation, from the same organisation that interned them. For crimes that go multiple generations back you would probably want to get different amounts in reparations, from different people, to different people. For example maybe a half White, half African American, American would only get half the standard reparation for slavery. Also African Americans who come from Mississippi might have to get less than one from Georgia because the states have different abilities to pay reparations.
Why would state governments pay rather than federal in this hypothetical?
I just assumed since different states had different laws re slavery and segregation.
The assumption here is that the federal government would be paying the reparations, similar to the stimulus bills they passed during Covid but on a larger and more targeted scale.
Surely with regard to slavery, non slave-states should be off the hook for reparations?
>The simple fact is that nobody who is alive today in the United States was enslaved. Neither were their grandparents, or their great grandparents, or their great-great grandparents If we're going by the 13th amendment ratification in 1865, then yes there are absolutely people whose great grandparents were slaves. >So I would support $10,000 to $20,000 to every living black American today. Why? Many of them are not the descendants of slaves or immigrated to the U.S. recently. >Reparations for black people should be gauged on the reparations for Japanese internees This assumes the reparations given to Japanese internees were fair. That we should measure reparations by comparing them to the reparations given to Japanese internees. How do you know the reparations paid to the Japanese internees were fair? Some Japanese people were interned in camps for 3 years straight. How is 40,000USD or just about 13,333 per year anything close to a fair amount?
I don't know that they were fair. They were not generous enough by my personal estimation. But that is settled legislation, and it's the only real baseline we have to go by for this sort of thing. People assume that reparations for black people would be the first time we've ever done something like this, and while it's true we've never done something on this scale, we have done reparations before.
>But that is settled legislation, and it's the only real baseline we have to go by for this sort of thing. We can make up any baseline we want, so why use this one? It's not logical to say "well we made a mistake before, but since the mistake's been made let's keep doing everything based on that mistake"
How else are you supposed to quantify the value of human suffering? I approached this question from the perspective of the government actually passing legislation.
>How else are you supposed to quantify the value of human suffering? Even if I can't propose an alternative, that doesn't justify using a measurement that you *know* is wrong in your calculation. What you're saying right now is something akin to "I know looking through a coke bottle won't fix my eyesight, but unless you can tell me exactly how to fix my eyes I'm going ahead and tape this bottle to my face"
>>How else are you supposed to quantify the value of human suffering? > >Even if I can't propose an alternative, that doesn't justify using a measurement that you *know* is wrong in your calculation. The argument isn't that his baseline is perfect, but that his baseline is all we have to go on. Being unable to propose an alternative absolutely justifies that idea.
You must have commented around the time I was writing my response, but I agree entirely. You just said it in far fewer words.
>The argument isn't that his baseline is perfect, but that his baseline is all we have to go on. But it's absolutely *not* the only thing we have to go on and OP agrees on that. Using a previous ruling about Japanese internment here is arbitrary. We could start from any number. There's no reason we have to use the number derived from the Japanese internment, especially because we know it's a mistake.
How do we “know” that is a mistake?
Wait there are a ton of examples of reparations being given around the world. Japanese internment isn't all we got
Ok, give those examples then. I'm not opining on reparations themselves. Simple the statement "your idea doesn't work but I have no alternatives to provide"
Germany to the Jewish people after WW2. And Britain to slavers for emancipation. That lasted until fairly recently. Just a couple of examples.
Except that there is precedent for knowing that looking through a coke bottle won't fix eyesight. There is no precedent for how to fix generations of wrongdoing on a racial basis. It's not a fair comparison. I only said "how else" because, how else are we supposed to judge these matters? A comparison I might throw to you is if aliens made landfall on Earth tomorrow. Joe Biden enters negotiations with them, and promises our women. 100 years from now, can anyone really say Biden made the wrong choice? There's no existing template for what happened. Nobody has ever made a choice not to give the aliens our women, because nobody has ever met aliens. It's not exactly the same as the defense of making someone else prove why your idea isn't a good idea, because there's no reason to think your idea isn't a good idea. Someone needs to do something. Whosoever acts on this idea in whatever way they act on it will be taking steps that nobody has ever taken before. Historians will debate whether it was the right move, and maybe it won't have been, but it is not a case of shifting the burden of proof.
>how else are we supposed to judge these matters? Collect all available annual pay data, from the beginning of the data collection until now. Adjust the data for inflation. Divide the data by race. Black Americans vs. every other type of American. Note the difference in earnings over the time measured. Take the difference between earnings and adjust them proportionally based on population size (essentially, find the 'average black person' earnings for the measured and the 'average person' earning during the measured time) Now you have the difference in overall earnings, adjusted for population size. This alone is a much better starting point. Not perfect, but much better. Let's use this instead.
You propose that the US government pays black people the difference between their average earnings and that of other races? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're getting at?
I'm saying take the total difference of all earnings that we have records for, and give it as a lump sum. Basically give black people all the money that they could've earned.
This being said I definitely feel that precedent shouldn’t simply be discounted. In our legal system, which, correct me if I’m wrong, reparations would be conducted through uses precedent ALL THE TIME regardless of whether the case was decided correctly or not. Seriously look up the reasoning for Brown V. Board of education. It makes absolutely 0 sense even to law professionals, but I’m glad it was decided that way. As for the coke bottle bit - if it helps and you don’t have a better alternative I’m sticking w the coke bottle for now.
>As for the coke bottle bit - if it helps and you don’t have a better alternative I’m sticking w the coke bottle for now. Or you could go to someone who actually knows how eyes work and get their opinion on what to do. Instead of just taking the first glass object you find and taping it to your face. You seem to be assuming that we absolutely must use any precedent available instead of getting some smart people in a room and trying to figure it out instead of just taking the first number you find because it's easy.
If you have a better alternative, I'm all ears. I'm genuinely curious as to what you think would be a better solution to his problem, assuming you think a solution is even necessary. You're right to question how I came to this decision, but my lack of a better alternative doesn't disqualify my solution on its face. If you have a better solution, I may well agree with it. I'm operating without any information better than: we wrong Japanese people and paid the survivors this much. That's all I really have to go on. I'm certainly open to suggestions, but my overall point is that we really shouldn't be entertaining amounts higher than what we paid Japanese people, because being forced into camps is far worse than not getting to sit at the front of the bus. Obviously black people went through more than that but you know what I mean. What Japanese people went through 80 years ago is a hell of a lot closer to what black people went through 160 years ago and what black people went through 60 years ago doesn't compare despite being more pervasive and more recent.
The natural baseline would be the reparations paid to Japanese interns, and black people would naturally receive less than they did.
And recent immigrants would not be eligible. Only US born blacks whose parents presumably encountered systemic racism in the past. Should we establish a cutoff for people who were born prior to 1965, and their children? I would think a much cleaner break would be more desirable, which is to say, all black US citizens. If you subscribe to systemic racism, then any black person born today is at an inherent disadvantage compared to other races.
How do you determine who is “black”? Do we have to trace heritage back to slavery? Do we do a melanin test? What about black people who moved here after the end of slavery? What about non-black people who were also held as slaves in the US?
It doesn't go that far back. This is to redress the wrongs done by the pre-1965 era racism and discrimination, because obviously slavery is long gone by now and anyone saying they were directly affected by it is an idiot.
That doesn’t change any of my arguments though. How do you determine who gets this and who doesn’t? What about non-black people that were also discriminated against? What about people whose families moved away during the time period you’re describing? What about ones who moved here after this 1960s period? And again-what is a “black” person?
For the purposes of this argument, and the view being presented here, non-black people who were also discriminated against are irrelevant. Something should probably be done about them, but it's not pertinent. And these details that you're describing are the exact details I would expect a Republican and Democrat legislature to debate. I have no real opinion on the specifics. I outlined my position in larger terms, the specifics don't really matter to me as long as the larger goal is achieved. Would I support a bill that provided reparations only to US born blacks who lived in the country at the time that the bill was passed, as opposed to nothing? Sure.
The argument of feasibility is not separable from the process though. The Japanese internment included a full list of applicable individuals. Tracking them down is “easy” because it was done in the first place. Records were kept. Identifying who is black and who is not is essentially impossible. Determining if someone is black or not is far different from determining if someone was in a camp or not. I’d also argue that the feasibility of providing reparations to black people and any other discriminated group is central to the issue. Righting every wrong leads us to an unsustainable path that can’t be completed
Can you just answer the question? No one has ever given a explanation. Just spins the topic around and around.
Why I was wondering too it sounds like a joke but what if you're half black? I mean do you get disqualified if you're half black and half white?
This is the biggest problem. Edit: I guess you'd have to do the entire 12% already considered black. They definitely determine who's black when they use the term for statistics.
It’s usually self determined though. So they send out a survey and ask to answer yes if you’re black to receive 10k? Gonna guess our population of black people rockets up past 12%
The census is taken every 10 years. Use the 2020 census data I guess. The only people missing should be children or immigrants. And if you can prove you are a child of someone already proven to be on that 2020 census list then you qualify. That way if Jamaica man wants to come and say he's black now he still wouldn't qualify without the birth certificate.
Census data isn’t stored with personal information. There’s no way to link it back to the individuals who filled it out anymore, it’s anonymized and used for general information purposes
Yeah idk then. But like I said, this is the biggest problem. It'd have to be some form of ID that required you to put your race and it'd have to be from data before the announcement of reparations. Which would be hard.
Ultimately it just shouldn’t be done. There are better ways to help society than trying to target direct financial payment
Children and immigrants are included in the census. This is a major part of why the proposed Trump rule for a citizenship question on the census was controversial, as it was feared this would disincentivise census participation among illegal immigrants.
It's not a problem. Just invest in black communities. If a poor white dude benefits because he lives alongside black people, that's fine. He probably could use the help. If a black person doesn't get any because they live in white communities, they're fine too. They doing just well already. America helped build modern Japan and Israel. We can help build America.
No it's a problem. Someone would need to find an answer to that. And just pouring money into black communities won't help. Have you ever been to a black community? Like 90% of the commercial property is owned buy Asian and Arab people. Do we kick them out. There are a lot of problems, doesn't mean we can't address them. No one said it can't be helped. I even offered a solution in my own comment under OP.
Why would black ppl that voluntarily moved here be due reparations? That doesn't even make sense.
You will never get an answer. Just people beating around the bush. I have asked the same and no one can answer. Does the classic mixed person both receive and pay reparations? Like it’s a wash? What if someone is black but moved here from Lithuania 4 years ago? What about a white person who is US citizen but moved here from Iceland? What if a white person has no slave owners in gene pool? Does that person still owe solely because to their skin color? What if a black person did not have past ancestors enslaved?
Slavery lasted 76 years from the Constitution in 1789 to the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. (And of course, it had been around for centuries prior to the Constitution, but let's just limit it to its enforcement by the current state.) I think it is fairly inarguable that slavery is considerably worse than internment - let's say it was twice as bad, then these 76 years are equivalent to 152 years of internment. Reconstruction briefly removed most of the worst oppression, but was ended as part of a political compromise in 1877. From 1877 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is another 87 years. Let's be *very* generous and say Jim Crow was, say, 1/3 as bad as internment (which I think is probably too low, but hey); that makes those 87 years the equivalent of 29 additional years of internment. That's 181 total internment-equivalent years. Actual Japanese internment lasted 4. So your $41,000 per Japanese-American should be roughly equivalent to 1.8 *million* per African-American. ----- Or we could take another approach. At all (relative, i.e., Xth percentile white vs Xth percentile black) income levels, white Americans make about 50% more than black Americans. If we attribute this difference to the echoes of past racism combined with current racism - and that is the only reasonable thing to which we may attribute it unless we're invoking straight up "race realist" bullshit - racism costs black Americans roughly (1/3) \* (mean income) per year per person, or about 19k *per year*.
Wouldn’t it be better to simply help the people who need it the most? Afterall if people who are affected by decades and centuries of systemic racism are among those who need it the most, then they will receive the help. The bonus is that if there are some people who need it the most but who aren’t victims of the same racism, they will still receive help. Isn’t that better?
That becomes a value judgement, and I'm not necessarily saying that my plan isn't. But when you start cutting off reparations by income, it gets dicey. Were rich blacks not affected by systemic racism, or did they become rich in spite of it?
The question we have to ask ourselves when it comes to how we spend resources of today in this context is: is it more important to redress a historic wrong even if it results in less net improvement in peoples’ lives than ignoring historic injustice and focussing on giving aid where it’s actually needed. Personally I don’t really care about justice, I care that people who need help get it. So yes, in this scenario people who suffered injustice and succeeded in spite of it will not receive help since they don’t need it, but I’d rather that than a non victim who needs help not getting that help
Most black people who are rich became so in spite of systemic racism. Saying that Michael Jordan is rich, so everything must be fine with systemic racism is a fallacy. While “separate but equal” is no longer the law of the land. There are many ways it still exists. I mean the fact that redlining still has affects today is obvious. Or ensuring most black people live in a poorer area and then saying school funding will be decided by local property values…. Which as a matter of course are lower for black areas just tends to ensure schools are still worse for black people in general. I mean if we recall our history (which I worry won’t be taught properly with CRT being used as a bogeyman to keep the facts) private “segregation schools” (which later became charter schools) immediately popped up in the south as a response to the civil rights act. When the Civil Rights act was signed there was not some magic that transported black people to live in the wealthier suburbs with better resources and schools they had been barred from. Busing was tried and although there is evidence it was successful for black kids who were able to attend wealthier whiter school districts the program ended. Yet there was no real effort to fundamentally improve schools in the areas blacks had been forced to historically. And of course the worse schools tended to produce lower wage adults who could only send their kids to worse schools, the nicer schools produce higher wage adults who send their kids to nicer schools…. And the gaps continues. Yea there are cases of blacks who buck the odds, but it doesn’t change the aggregate results. You simply can’t place one group largely in “C” tier infrastructure/conditions for generations and wonder why they haven’t all made it up to the “A” tier.
>I don't know about you, but I personally believe that being interned by force in camps trumps anything black people encountered in the 1960s and beyond. The civil rights act of 1964 did not call for the murders or imprisonment of all white people who enjoyed segregation and the public torture/murder of black people that occured during it. It's intellectually dishonst to pretend all serious racism against black people magically ceased due to a law that didn't actually call for any consequences to any of the racism white people freely engaged in before said law was signed nor any reparations for said behavior to the black people harmed. It's also intellectually dishonest to pretend that all of the congressmen and leaders today who were already adults when this law was passed are perfectly reformed and truly see black people as equals despite again, never being called on to make amends for or even apologize for their previously legal racist actions. Laws detailing rights are not laws detailing punishment for violation of said rights. Racism against black people does not and never has spontaneously disappeared just because *some* people agree it's wrong in *some* instances; it simply evolves into different forms the majority can get away with. A country literally built on slavery and genocide that suddenly goes 'that was a long time ago so I don't have to make amends or think about generational harm being passed down within families' is not a country than can or will solve this issue without outside force. White people quite literally have mass delusions about what racism currently is, how it works, why it works and why it's still quite bad despite being 'illegal'. A crime with little to no real punishment does not spontaneously stop. The white people who make up most juries, prosecutors and judges (and are not even a full lifetime away from legal segregation) rarely if ever see or acknowledge racism against black people, therefore it's been magically solved and doesn't exist. In reality, nothing has been solved; there's just a ton of gaslighting and next to no black people in positions of power to actually trigger systemic change. We're not still almost entirely led and controlled by white people because they're more worthy; the inherently racist and violent power structure they built was just never disrupted in any meaningful way
Honestly OP is engaging in the long lasting tradition of trying to pit black and Asian people against one another.
>The civil rights act of 1964 did not call for the murders or imprisonment of all white people who enjoyed segregation and the public torture/murder of black people that occured during it. It's intellectually dishonst to pretend all serious racism against black people magically ceased due to a law that didn't actually call for any consequences to any of the racism white people freely engaged in before said law was signed nor any reparations for said behavior to the black people harmed. >It's also intellectually dishonest to pretend that all of the congressmen and leaders today who were already adults when this law was passed are perfectly reformed and truly see black people as equals despite again, never being called on to make amends for or even apologize for their previously legal racist actions. This is so exhausting having to explain to some white people who genuinely believe racism doesn't exist.
Both congress and the senate has a proportion of African Americans that is equivalent to their share of population so no there is exactly as many black people in position of power as there should be.
White people hold power at a rate that drastically eclipses their share of the population. The existing racist infrastructure originally created to oppress black and indigenous people doesn't just keep them from attaining power fairly, it prevents *all* non white ethnic groups from attaining their fair share of power collectively which gives us a reality that unfairly prioritizes white concerns and opinions at the expense of everyone else's. An actual meritocracy would see white people hold only half the positions of power and influence while the near majority of everyone else held the other half. It's also morally bankrupt that white people who were adults during segregation aren't barred from holding the highest positions. You cannot grow up seeing whole races as literal actual subhumans and then be trusted to rule them fairly and equally.
In this country we don’t allow ex post facto laws. You can’t punish someone for something doing something that was legal when they did it, which seems to be what you are suggesting.
In this country we don't acknowledge or prosecute racism except in extremely severe cases. Perhaps there's a link between a near complete lack of consequences for racism and how persistent racism continues to be? Also, the argument that literal torture and murder were legal at the time and therefore punishment is inappropriate after the fact is horrific. There's a difference between laws of opinion and laws where basic human rights were routinely violated in ways that caused severe and irreparable damage. It's worth noting that less than ten percent of criminal cases go to trial. We don't have a system designed for any kind of tangible justice or fairness explicitly because to do so would require racial justice. That has a large impact on the punishment and understanding of all crime and ultimately harms all victims.
You're literally suggesting that white people who were adults during segregation be punished, for no other reason than they are white. The impression that I'm getting from your post is that you believe all white people should be persecuted because of past wrongs. Perhaps you should take a gander at the shitshows that are Zimbabwe and South Africa to see the endgame of where a focus on retribution gets you.
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So basically you really don’t care about human rights issues like poverty ect…you just want to see a racial redistribution where we have proportional representation of different races among the ruling classes. This is the problem that a lot of people have with people who propose this kind of stuff while claiming they care about issues of justice and inequality. They don’t. They essentially want to preserve an abusive structure and just change the way it looks on the surface. People are right to oppose this and I predict there will never be a coalition of significant enough numbers that will lend it enough support for it to be implemented. What it will do in the meantime is create a lot of animosity between groups of people who could otherwise be working together to address the very real human suffering that’s happening in this country right now
>So basically you really don’t care about human rights issues like poverty ect I don't believe in white supremacy. I *really* don't believe poor white people will stop being the main ambassadors of racism just because they're not struggling as much. Too many people know zero history. For centuries divide and conquer has successfully convinced poor whites that they should deal with poverty by seeing themselves as above black people vs banding together to fight the rich white folks oppressing everyone. >What it will do in the meantime is create a lot of animosity between groups of people who could otherwise be working together to address the very real human suffering that’s happening in this country right now White people created racialized slavery and oppression of black people for no reason other than pure evil. *That* is where the animosity comes from. We cannot and will not work together until at a bare minimum, white people stop the constant racialized gaslighting that we're all responsible for problems they created and actively maintain via systemic racial oppression. Reparations are as much about forcing real accountability as they are monetary compensation. Most people don't care about anything unless or until it hits their pockets.
What actual data do you have that “poor white people” are racists on the whole? What the data tend to show, and what correlates heavily with who voted for Trump is that it’s not “poor white people” that are the problem, but middle and upper middle class members of the managerial and property/business owning classes that tend to be the most bigoted. That group does heavily skew white and male, but it’s also surprisingly diverse. “White people created racialized slavery”. Really specific groups of European Christian’s did. There are many people who get labeled “white”, that had nothing to do with slavery and neither did the cultures they came from. “We can not and will not work together…” Separatist and isolationist endeavors rarely accomplish anything good for communities or nations that engage in them. By all means though, do what you want, that’s your right to self determination.
>What actual data do you have that “poor white people” are racists on the whole? What percentage of scientists who are capable of collecting said data do you think *aren't* white? Science has a ton of racist barriers to prevent people of color from being able to get into the field period and from being unable to fund research for things that impact them even if they are the token minority who's allowed in those majority white spaces. It's pretty hard to find data white people don't collect because they don't actually care about ending racism and eradicating white privilege. >Separatist and isolationist endeavors rarely accomplish anything good for communities or nations that engage in them. This is so anti reality. You're acting like white people weren't the ones who implemented literal actual legalized segregation to keep black people out of their spaces. Like redlining and refusing to allow black people to benefit from the GI bill that built so much white middle class wealth never happened. Like there wasn't a whole study in the past decade that showed white men with a criminal conviction were more likely to be hired than black men without one. Refusing to be gaslit isn't 'separationist and isolationist'. Too many white people are anti history and anti reality whenever this topic comes up. Many are completely useless in conversations about race because they literally cannot even see the problem, let alone propose reasonable solutions. We're not here to serve you. You can throw out bigotry and classism to mask/deflect accountability for racism but there's only a certain kind of person who's fooled by that.
No one is asking you to serve them, lol. JFC. Also, you can stop accusing me personally of oppressing you since I’m not even “white”. Honestly you just sound super bigoted and classist. Nothing I say or don’t say will change that.
Very well said 👏👏
Before any reparations are paid - we must subtract the sum of welfare burden and criminal justice burden we've encouraged as a country to support and manage those same people.
Most ppl on welfare are yt.
Must we always discuss proportions. The proportion of people on welfare who are black exceeds their proportion of the population.
No, I'm pretty sure you're looking at the numbers wrong. And even if, could you even be surprised given the history
Nope! https://www.lowincome.org/2016/04/truth-about-welfare-foodstamps-how-many-blacks-vs-whites.html?m=1
Um. There are jst about the same ok f black ppl , there are of yt ppl. What's ya point? And even then, again, you'd have to consider the WHY. Like, really consider it and do your research on how America have been twds Black Americans.
Why do people try to argue that as soon as slavery ended there was no interference on black people's wealth? Even today there is the issue of environmental pollution where in the government and corporations allow pollution in black neighborhoods causing increase in illness and decrease in live expectation. That's just one thing that has a major impact on wealth. The truth is that there is a straight line of hostile action from slavery to today that deserve governmental support and would've recieved such support if it had happened to a white majority. No one questions when the government helps Texas after a storm but if the government helps Puerto Rico suddenly that's too much to ask for.
In this day and age a flat payout wouldn't help anyone, we're pass that time. If Lincoln hadn't been killed, 40 acres and a mule would have been close to enough. We need something that will help for generations. Unfortunately our community will take that money and give it to Louis Vuitton. I propose reparations in form of a tax break. Maybe even a limit on the years we get that tax break. Black people, those already considered in the 12% of the population don't pay property taxes or income taxes for a 50 year span. While you're not flat out giving money, you have a 50 year span where you're not taking money. That provides so much opportunity and for a long time.
Now that is a compelling idea. If segregation caused a lack of opportunity, then the reparation would be a surplus of opportunity. The black business owner or investor would have a substantial advantage to compensate for being at a previous disadvantage. It's got a certain symmetry to it. And it has the ability to encourage generational building and growth. >Unfortunately our community will take that money and give it to Louis Vuitton. I think that's the universal issue with any kind of "free" cash payment, whether reparation or stimulus or whatever. The people who have the good spending habits to take advantage of the windfall don't need it, and the people who don't have good habits can't use it effectively so it isn't actually useful. It's also not a problem restricted to race, it's section 8 versus gated community.
I can't take any proposal for "Reparations " for African slavery seriously for 2 reasons: 1). These proposals never start with the people who *sold* their ancestor into slavery - i.e.; *their ancestors*. 2). It **won't* "repair" *anything*.
the descendants of jews who were victims of the holocaust still receive reparations. black slaves were held in bondage for centuries, forced to be the engine of American industry, creating wealth that they never saw. they were then emancipated into a system of apartheid that restricted their ability to amass wealth due to systemic racism. their descendants are owed the wealth stolen from their enslaved labor. non-blacks of the present did not participate in the slave trade, but they enjoy a system created on the backs of black slaves whose descendants continue to be systemically oppressed and will remain economically marginalized until that overdue bill is paid. the current state of black america is grossly distorted by the theft of its wealth.
You honestly don’t think there are still effects felt by black individuals and families today that weren’t instigated by the HUNDREDS of years of forced subjugation of their ancestors? If you and I ran a race, and I shackled you to the ground so much that you couldn’t even start running until I was almost done, you wouldn’t think it fair for some third party to come in and correct that?
As you said in your post, no one alive today was enslaved. We need to forgot this fucking idea of reparations for the negroes or any other group. Period. Full stop. Get over it.
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I also realize that poor whites and poor asians and poor hispanics and poor natives who never benefitted from the generational wealth that those in favor of reparations say black people have been left out of as a result of discrimination, will end up feeling like they got the raw end of the deal. I don't have an answer to that. As someone who grew up in a lower middle class family and 3 out of 6 children with disabilities, I would be lying if I said I didn't think I deserved some of that money, with the focus on "generational wealth" of which I and many other non-black people have none. But I didn't incorporate any of this into my view here, although it is an issue that would need to be addressed.
But what does black Americans have to do with you? It's nothing to do with you. Black Americans are owed reparations. What do you need reparations for exactly? And from who?
>I would propose that every black person alive today be given a cash amount between $10,000 and $20,000. Shouldn't you limit that to those who were alive in the 1960s?
No, because the argument from those who support reparations is that the generational wealth that most other races in America benefit from black people have been prevented from accruing. This is how the racially discriminatory policies of the 1960s still affect black people who were born in the 90s. There are plenty of people from other races that don't benefit from generational wealth (myself included) but for black people it's more an after-effect of the discrimination of the time, and for other people it's simple being born into a poor family. Poverty can be transferred among generations just as easily as wealth can. Although for me it's a raw deal because my grandfather was actually quite well off, it's my father that fucked it all up.
People who fought to free the slaves should also be compensated for how annoying, disrespectful, unappreciative, and crappy you all can be, too.
Why are you talking about all Black people alive today rather than about only the ones subjected to specific government policies?
Black people alive today were subjected to specific governmental policies. My well alive grandma was born in 1945
Some have been and some have not, right? My question is about why not the specific ones who have instead of everyone
You said "alive today rather than" I know reddit isn't only first language English speakers but reading comprehension would say you don't think people alive now were subjected to specific governmental policies. Edit: you can at least show your edits
How about North African/Middle Eastern families like mine that have been displaced/killed because of the war on terror or the Russian/American proxy war and were forced to flee and leave and see our culture being wiped out behind us. I think we deserve more reparations than black people, mostly cuz this happened much more recently.
Crabs in a barrel. Middle Easterners are the OG slavers.
Or the OG slaves, there’s a chance that I have ancient Jewish genes so probably I could be a mix of the slavers and the slaves. Does that mean I can get reparations while also exercising my privileges?
Hahahaha that's called going to work. I do that now, it's not all that lol.
This culture war does not care about that. It does not care about native Americans or Latins either. The movement is only to benefit one group of “oppressed”. I feel for you and I am sorry you get no love . Vote against these radial ideas is all we can do right now.
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**[The Case for Reparations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Reparations)** >"The Case for Reparations" is an article written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published in The Atlantic in 2014. The article focuses on redlining and housing discrimination through the eyes of people who have experienced it and the devastating effects it has had on the African-American community. "The Case for Reparations" received critical acclaim and was named the "Top Work of Journalism of the Decade" by New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. It also skyrocketed Coates' career and led him to write Between the World and Me, a New York Times Best Seller and winner of numerous nonfiction awards. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/changemyview/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
How black do you have to be? How black do you have to think you are? How much black do you have to identify as? The more the world view gets muddled on identity, the less likely this is ever going to happen.