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

[Anonymous]

I agree.
And, this comment is flat out false: "No progress has been made over the past 70 years in reducing income and wealth inequalities between black and white households"

+1
And, pretty sure more progress was being made before the Great Society.

[Anonymous]

My white G+Grandfather died freeing the slaves fighting for the North.

My debt has been paid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do the reparations ever end? Because dumping money on someone's head doesn't make them fiscally responsible. The last plan I heard called for ten years of payments. I can guarantee that would be extended again and again for various "reasons."

Second, how about details. Who is entitled? How "Black" do you need to be. Someone who recently immigrated hasn't spent decades in the system. Why would they be entitled to the same benefits as the generationally poor? Even social security doesn't work that way.

What reparations have ever been paid?

The author included her opinion on who should be eligible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
And, this comment is flat out false: "No progress has been made over the past 70 years in reducing income and wealth inequalities between black and white households"

The author is asserting that the wealth inequalities between the average black family & average white family in 2020 are the same as they were in 1950? I find that very difficult to believe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about Asian people? Do I owe? What if my cousin, who is half black, half white? Does he get 50% off? What about white people who have ancestors who paid with their lives in the Union Army to end slavery? That seems like a large payment.

Did you even read the article?

She discusses who should pay and who should benefit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My white G+Grandfather died freeing the slaves fighting for the North.

My debt has been paid.

My family is on one of the state monuments at Gettysburg. Me too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe in reparations, but just don't think it's possible. I just want equity in economic and housing policies. Real equity. Affirmative Action benefited white women the most, but got a bad rap. I think we need to rethink Affirmative Action.

What policies will actually bring economic equity though?

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

How can we achieve this without wealth leveling?

This is either wrong and/or uses some financial voodoo where Bill Gates' billions are attributed to white people generally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about Asian people? Do I owe? What if my cousin, who is half black, half white? Does he get 50% off? What about white people who have ancestors who paid with their lives in the Union Army to end slavery? That seems like a large payment.

Did you even read the article?

She discusses who should pay and who should benefit.

She says "Congress" should pay. So she doesn't really discuss who should pay. She doesn't say how much or for how long.

[Anonymous]

I think that the founder of BET, Robert Johnson, said that $14 trillion was the number to be given to the descendants of slaves. Very interesting since he certainly managed to do okay without reparations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By suggesting that there is a debt to be paid, you've revealed your true position.

You don’t think there is a debt to be paid?

Did you read the essay?

NP. No, I don't think there is a debt to be paid. I think a conversation about affirmative action and preferential hiring is much more relevant and meaningful. And full of controversy, so won't be dull.

Did you read it? I’m curious if you think the same after reading the essay.

Yes. I don't agree with the essay, it hasn't changed my mind.

You think there is no “debt” in terms of....

The literal sense:
“the prosperity of this country which is inextricably linked with the forced labor of the ancestors of 40 million black Americans”

“At the time of the Civil War, the value of the enslaved human beings held as property added up to more than all of this nations’ railroads and factories combined. And yet, enslaved people saw not a dime of this wealth. They owned nothing and were owed nothing from all that had been built from their toil.“

Or the retribution sense for creating policies that blocked black people from building wealth - even excluding them from government handouts like the Homestead Act, etc.

Modern prosperity is mostly the result of industrialization that mostly occurred after the Civil War. Slavery and the politics surrounding it actually delayed industrialization, particularly in the South. By this absurd accounting, poor white Southerners deserve compensation for their ancestors' stupidity which made them poorer.

And "retribution" for the Homestead Act? For land taken from the Indians? Do we really want to go there? Maybe we should all just go back to wherever our families came from and call it even.

[Anonymous]

Face it, OP. Nobody wants to read your article. Seems to be filled with lots of inaccurate or outright false information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

How about other forms of reparations?

Do you support the principle but not just handing out cash?

NP here. The principle is abhorrent. My parents and grandparents recieved Holocaust reparations from the German government. That was for their suffering. I would not accept reparations for me. I did not suffer anything close to what they went through.

On the other hand, I do believe society has an obligation to assist people who are poor today. Present conditions that keep them in poverty should be fixed. They are entitled to a decent life and opportunities. Cash is okay, but jobs at living wages is better.

Otherwise, we will be saying Oprah deserves "reparations," but a poor white who grew up in poverty deserves nothing.

What if your parents had never been paid? What if Israel wasn't formed? What if extensive systemic antisemitism was still happening today?

Did you know that the US government still pays (this year $5 million) to support Holocaust survivors living in America? And $3.8B in military aid to Israel in 2019.

Even, some slave owners were compensated:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/opinion/when-slaveowners-got-reparations.html


How much has the US ever paid to survivors of slavery and other forms of black oppression?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Face it, OP. Nobody wants to read your article. Seems to be filled with lots of inaccurate or outright false information.

Isn't this by the creator of the 1619 Project? Enough said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The debt is unpayable and those who incurred that debt are dead. Most whites haven't accrued wealth either. It's undeniable that racism has significantly impeded the ability to accrue wealth, but there are a lot of other reasons besides racism that result in people not accruing wealth as well.

The column articulates injustices very well but despite describing the "technical details" as the easy part buries the actual action at the very end and then glosses over it. "Who should pay how much to whom?" is the critical question.

"Congress" should pay an undetermined sum for an undetermined period of time "to any person who has documentation that he or she identified as a black person for at least 10 years before the beginning of any reparations process and can trace at least one ancestor back to American slavery."

"Congress," of course, does not have any money it doesn't get from taxpayers. A tax on, say, poor whites to increase the wealth of, say, middle class blacks, doesn't seem like a great solution.

An estate tax for 50 years on estates over $50 million payable to African Americans who can trace an ancestor back to American Slavery and with income of less than $30,000 per year would deserve serious consideration.

Maybe other approaches would as well. But the litany of accurate grievances without a concrete statement about who pays what to whom just sounds like a request for a blank check that won't be regarded as sufficient whatever it might be.

So your only concerns are the "technical details"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any reparations money will likely disappear in a just a few years.

Looking to lottery winners as an example, the money disappears quickly and doesn't result in generational advantages. If one was to implement reparations, cash payments are a shirt term solution at best.

Do you agree with reparations, but just not as cash distributions?