It's (finally) time for reparations. It's time for the US to pay its debt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I admit I hadn’t thought much about reparations in the past. The whole concept seemed too complicated and challenging.

BUT this essay by Nikole Hannah Jones has really changed my mind.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/24/magazine/reparations-slavery.html

She does an excellent job detailing the history of racial oppression and injustice and how the only way to truly transform our country and achieve racial justice is to address the root issue - WEALTH. And how white Americans have received government support over the last 150 years that has propelled them to generational wealth while Black Americans have had the opposite experience.

It’s really excellent and I hope everyone can take the time to read it. I know it's long but a very worthwhile read.

Some key points from her essay:

In other words, while black Americans were being systematically, generationally deprived of the ability to build wealth, while also being robbed of the little they had managed to gain, white Americans were not only free to earn money and accumulate wealth with exclusive access to the best jobs, best schools, best credit terms, but they were also getting substantial government help in doing so.

Not much has changed since MLK said this in 1967:
“it didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate lunch counters. It didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate hotels and motels. It didn’t cost the nation a penny to guarantee the right to vote. Now we are in a period where it will cost the nation billions of dollars to get rid of poverty, to get rid of slums, to make quality integrated education a reality. This is where we are now.

Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t have enough money to buy a hamburger?”


As we focus on police violence, we cannot ignore an even starker indication of our societal failures: Racial income disparities today look no different than they did the decade before King’s March on Washington.

No progress has been made over the past 70 years in reducing income and wealth inequalities between black and white households


To summarize, none of the actions we are told black people must take if they want to “lift themselves” out of poverty and gain financial stability — not marrying, not getting educated, not saving more, not owning a home — can mitigate 400 years of racialized plundering. Wealth begets wealth, and white Americans have had centuries of government assistance to accumulate wealth, while the government has for the vast history of this country worked against black Americans doing the same.

“The cause of the gap must be found in the structural characteristics of the American economy, heavily infused at every point with both an inheritance of racism and the ongoing authority of white supremacy,” the authors of the Duke study write. “There are no actions that black Americans can take unilaterally that will have much of an effect on reducing the wealth gap. For the gap to be closed, America must undergo a vast social transformation produced by the adoption of bold national policies.”


Reparations are not about punishing white Americans, and white Americans are not the ones who would pay for them. It does not matter if your ancestors engaged in slavery or if you just immigrated here two weeks ago. Reparations are a societal obligation in a nation where our Constitution sanctioned slavery, Congress passed laws protecting it and our federal government initiated, condoned and practiced legal racial segregation and discrimination against black Americans until half a century ago. And so it is the federal government that pays.


The real obstacle, the obstacle that we have never overcome, is garnering the political will — convincing enough Americans that the centuries-long forced economic disadvantage of black Americans should be remedied, that restitution is owed to people who have never had an equal chance to take advantage of the bounty they played such a significant part in creating.


Each year Congress allocates money — this year $5 million — to help support Holocaust survivors living in America.


Race-neutral policies simply will not address the depth of disadvantage faced by people this country once believed were chattel. Financial restitution cannot end racism, of course, but it can certainly mitigate racism’s most devastating effects. If we do nothing, black Americans may never recover from this pandemic, and they will certainly never know the equality the nation has promised.


If black lives are to truly matter in America, this nation must move beyond slogans and symbolism. Citizens don’t inherit just the glory of their nation, but its wrongs too. A truly great country does not ignore or excuse its sins. It confronts them and then works to make them right. If we are to be redeemed, if we are to live up to the magnificent ideals upon which we were founded, we must do what is just.

It is time for this country to pay its debt. It is time for reparations.

Thoughts? Do you think it's time for the US to pay its debt?

White people were also forced to work without pay in this country during its early years. You can teach a man to fish or give poor white people in the Appalachia money to make more meth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all for paying higher taxes to provide healthcare for all, better schools, and free college for lower-income kids.

I worked in development for 10 years and huge cash transfers aren't the way to go. Teach a man to fish and all that.

If low income students have the grades then I agree to free college tuition and I think all public schools should be on a par with private schools which would mean paying teachers as much as lawyers! I also agree with the "give vs teach a man to fish" philosophy.

The teachers at my dc’s school do not make as much as they would in MoCo and neither make as much as a BigLaw lawyer.

[Anonymous]

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day. (quote unknown author).

So no, teaching people to fish is not the answer, creating a culture such as in the Asian-American culture that the way to prosperity is not taking from others but educating yourself to gain skills that pay well.

And the last time I checked, professional sports players, Oprah, Obama, and many others are doing quite well for themselves, better than most white people.

[Anonymous]

Absurd - income inequality is what it is. It’s not the Government’s duty to equalize everyone, that’s called Marxism and it doesn’t work. The things that have contributed to this problem are cultural issues. The breakdown of the family unit, divorce, single parent families, not teaching children about God, not valuing education, not valuing jobs and careers, not valuing trades or blue collar skills. The Government has contributed with social welfare programs that do nothing but reward people for depending on the Government. Again, “teach a man to fish”!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absurd - income inequality is what it is. It’s not the Government’s duty to equalize everyone, that’s called Marxism and it doesn’t work. The things that have contributed to this problem are cultural issues. The breakdown of the family unit, divorce, single parent families, not teaching children about God, not valuing education, not valuing jobs and careers, not valuing trades or blue collar skills. The Government has contributed with social welfare programs that do nothing but reward people for depending on the Government. Again, “teach a man to fish”!

The problem is that no person, white black brown Red orange, likes to be told: your life choices are wrong. Being raised in a two parent home is the single most important factor in a child’s success. Yet some communities are at 72% for single parent homes. Guess how much they appreciate being told they are doing it wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I admit I hadn’t thought much about reparations in the past. The whole concept seemed too complicated and challenging.

BUT this essay by Nikole Hannah Jones has really changed my mind.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/24/magazine/reparations-slavery.html

She does an excellent job detailing the history of racial oppression and injustice and how the only way to truly transform our country and achieve racial justice is to address the root issue - WEALTH. And how white Americans have received government support over the last 150 years that has propelled them to generational wealth while Black Americans have had the opposite experience.

It’s really excellent and I hope everyone can take the time to read it. I know it's long but a very worthwhile read.

Some key points from her essay:

In other words, while black Americans were being systematically, generationally deprived of the ability to build wealth, while also being robbed of the little they had managed to gain, white Americans were not only free to earn money and accumulate wealth with exclusive access to the best jobs, best schools, best credit terms, but they were also getting substantial government help in doing so.

Not much has changed since MLK said this in 1967:
“it didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate lunch counters. It didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate hotels and motels. It didn’t cost the nation a penny to guarantee the right to vote. Now we are in a period where it will cost the nation billions of dollars to get rid of poverty, to get rid of slums, to make quality integrated education a reality. This is where we are now.

Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t have enough money to buy a hamburger?”


As we focus on police violence, we cannot ignore an even starker indication of our societal failures: Racial income disparities today look no different than they did the decade before King’s March on Washington.

No progress has been made over the past 70 years in reducing income and wealth inequalities between black and white households


To summarize, none of the actions we are told black people must take if they want to “lift themselves” out of poverty and gain financial stability — not marrying, not getting educated, not saving more, not owning a home — can mitigate 400 years of racialized plundering. Wealth begets wealth, and white Americans have had centuries of government assistance to accumulate wealth, while the government has for the vast history of this country worked against black Americans doing the same.

“The cause of the gap must be found in the structural characteristics of the American economy, heavily infused at every point with both an inheritance of racism and the ongoing authority of white supremacy,” the authors of the Duke study write. “There are no actions that black Americans can take unilaterally that will have much of an effect on reducing the wealth gap. For the gap to be closed, America must undergo a vast social transformation produced by the adoption of bold national policies.”


Reparations are not about punishing white Americans, and white Americans are not the ones who would pay for them. It does not matter if your ancestors engaged in slavery or if you just immigrated here two weeks ago. Reparations are a societal obligation in a nation where our Constitution sanctioned slavery, Congress passed laws protecting it and our federal government initiated, condoned and practiced legal racial segregation and discrimination against black Americans until half a century ago. And so it is the federal government that pays.


The real obstacle, the obstacle that we have never overcome, is garnering the political will — convincing enough Americans that the centuries-long forced economic disadvantage of black Americans should be remedied, that restitution is owed to people who have never had an equal chance to take advantage of the bounty they played such a significant part in creating.


Each year Congress allocates money — this year $5 million — to help support Holocaust survivors living in America.


Race-neutral policies simply will not address the depth of disadvantage faced by people this country once believed were chattel. Financial restitution cannot end racism, of course, but it can certainly mitigate racism’s most devastating effects. If we do nothing, black Americans may never recover from this pandemic, and they will certainly never know the equality the nation has promised.


If black lives are to truly matter in America, this nation must move beyond slogans and symbolism. Citizens don’t inherit just the glory of their nation, but its wrongs too. A truly great country does not ignore or excuse its sins. It confronts them and then works to make them right. If we are to be redeemed, if we are to live up to the magnificent ideals upon which we were founded, we must do what is just.

It is time for this country to pay its debt. It is time for reparations.

Thoughts? Do you think it's time for the US to pay its debt?

White people were also forced to work without pay in this country during its early years. You can teach a man to fish or give poor white people in the Appalachia money to make more meth.

You must be joking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absurd - income inequality is what it is. It’s not the Government’s duty to equalize everyone, that’s called Marxism and it doesn’t work. The things that have contributed to this problem are cultural issues. The breakdown of the family unit, divorce, single parent families, not teaching children about God, not valuing education, not valuing jobs and careers, not valuing trades or blue collar skills. The Government has contributed with social welfare programs that do nothing but reward people for depending on the Government. Again, “teach a man to fish”!

It was never about equalize like a quota. It was equalize like just give us the same opportunities to build wealth. God has nothing to do with this. Most black people value education. Remember, the jobs left the inner cities first. No one cared. Then they started to leave the suburbs and rural America and white people were up in arms.

Axios has an article released today that literally dispels every single myth you perpetuate. https://www.axios.com/

[Anonymous]

So how would it work? Cash payments? Who qualifies.

This is all nice in concept, but it's almost certainly unconstitutional for the government to give cash payments to only one racial group, or even establish social programs for only black people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So how would it work? Cash payments? Who qualifies.

This is all nice in concept, but it's almost certainly unconstitutional for the government to give cash payments to only one racial group, or even establish social programs for only black people.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 wasn't unconstitutional and that gave reparations to a specific ethnicity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So how would it work? Cash payments? Who qualifies.

This is all nice in concept, but it's almost certainly unconstitutional for the government to give cash payments to only one racial group, or even establish social programs for only black people.

No one answers this or who pays. Who pays? Who receives? What about immigrants? I’m Asian why should I have to pay for this garbage?

[Anonymous]

Reparations are NEVER going to happen. And Biden is going to win, bigly. F*ck Trump!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So how would it work? Cash payments? Who qualifies.

This is all nice in concept, but it's almost certainly unconstitutional for the government to give cash payments to only one racial group, or even establish social programs for only black people.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 wasn't unconstitutional and that gave reparations to a specific ethnicity.

No, it gave reparations to individuals who were interred because of their ethnicity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So how would it work? Cash payments? Who qualifies.

This is all nice in concept, but it's almost certainly unconstitutional for the government to give cash payments to only one racial group, or even establish social programs for only black people.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 wasn't unconstitutional and that gave reparations to a specific ethnicity.

No, it gave reparations to individuals who were interred because of their ethnicity.

[Anonymous]

If reparation happens, native Americans go to the front of the line. After they are paid, there none left over for anyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So how would it work? Cash payments? Who qualifies.

This is all nice in concept, but it's almost certainly unconstitutional for the government to give cash payments to only one racial group, or even establish social programs for only black people.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 wasn't unconstitutional and that gave reparations to a specific ethnicity.

No, it gave reparations to individuals who were interred because of their ethnicity.

Right. SCOTUS ruled that the USG can give reparations to a specific group for a discrete act by the government. So in this case you could maybe justify payments to descendents of slaves, but inasmuch as "systemic racism" isn't one discrete act by the government, reparations payments or targeted programs open to all Black Americans but no one else would almost certainly be unconstitutional, as it would discriminate based on race, and thereby violate the Civil Rights Act and probably the equal protection clause.