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Reply to "It's (finally) time for reparations. It's time for the US to pay its debt. "
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote] How about other forms of reparations? Do you support the principle but not just handing out cash? [/quote] 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. [/quote] 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? [/quote] My mother's family was compensated. Due to the vagaries of history, my father's family was not. That's how it goes. I would not accept money for him. Military aid to Israel is not reparations. It's a military alliance. Formation of Israel was perhaps reparations, but that benefited actual refugees, and unfortunately created other refugees who are still suffering. What about Indians? We took 100 per cent of their land. Do we give it back? What about Chinese railroad builders? They weren't paid very well and faced years of discrimination. Do they get back compensation for what they should have been paid? What about women for the last 5,000 years? So many were slaves to their husbands. Do today's men owe women payment for our grandfathers beating our grandmothers? The point is, history is history. The winners and the losers all end up dead. Their joys and sufferings are over. We can't fix what happened to the dead, not even in theory. [b]We can however make the world better for those who suffer today. That's what we should be talking about.[/b] [/quote] Thoughts on how to bridge the wealth gap without reparations? [/quote] Focus on systemic racism issues that exist today. It's really that simple. It's disgusting to demand anything called "reparations" for something that happened 400 years ago. [/quote] 400 years ago? The Civil Rights Act was only passed 56 years ago. At that point, discrimination became illegal, but nothing was done to correct existing injustices and black people still do face discrimination today. Brown v. Board of Education was decided 66 years ago, but our schools remain segregated today. All moving us in the right direction, but the harm of 400 years of slavery and oppression was never corrected and nothing lost was restored. I agree we should work on systemic racism, but without also addressing the wealth gap we are limited in our ability to transform our country. We can't achieve racial equality until we achieve economic equality. [/quote] The harm of 400 years of slavery CANNOT be corrected. That's the point. I didn't say anything about the wealth gap and I won't until you understand that your small bank account is a CURRENT problem, not an historical one. YOU did not lose anything. Your ancestors did. Nothing can be "restored," to dead people. We can't resolve current problems by appealing to past injustices. [/quote] Did you even read the essay? Past and current injustices have current day manifestations. Small bank accounts are a current problem caused by current [u]and historical[/u] issues. The wealth gap today shows exactly what was "lost". [/quote] I don't need to read the essay, I've read a lot about this. I am conceptually opposed to the idea of "reparations," in any form. "Current manifestations" are the only thing needing correcting. Past injustices are past. Which is why Oprah is a billionaire and her great grandmother was a slave. What reparations does she actually deserve? On the other hand, if you are poor today for ANY reason, you deserve help. Is that so hard to understand?[/quote] Like I said in my OP, this essay really changed my mind. It’s a shame you’re unwilling to take the time to read it so we can discuss. Past injustices absolutely have current day manifestations. How equal are schools? Property values in black v. white neighborhoods? Why do we have such a huge wealth gap? [/quote] We are discussing it. It's a shame you think this author invented the idea. Did you read Ta-Nihisi Coates groundbreaking "The Case for Reparations?" Of course past injustices have current manifestations. I am simply rejecting the idea that past injustices can justify reparations. This is a philosophical and ethical argument. It is not an historical argument.[/quote] I did read that years ago but my perspective on equality has evolved since then. Now, I think that we as a country need to be much more proactive to fix this problem we created. It’s not going to fix itself. We need to build wealth to fix economic inequalities caused by the US. Reparations could be one way to accomplish that. [/quote] I am on board with fixing economic inequalities. I am not on board with the moral justification of "reparations," and find the idea repugnant. It's a non-starter. Find a justification rooted in the present. It's not that hard. [/quote] Why “repugnant”? Such a strong response. [/quote] Because there were many injustices that happned to all of our ancestors. Had they not happened, any one of us could be fabulously wealthy. Had other things happened, we might be in some other circumstance, or we might not be here at all. None of us deserve anything whether our ancestors were kings or slaves. The slavers and the enslaved are both dead. We can't give reparations to the slaves who really deserved them. And you can't demand money from people who didn't harm you for an injustice you didn't experience. That's the opposite of justice. That's why I call it repugnant. On the other hand, black people are experiencing harm RIGHT NOW. That we can do something about. Not because of false guilt about the past. But to make a better society NOW. You don't need to make a claim based on your ancestors' misery when you can make a claim for yourself based in the present. [/quote] Thank you for sharing your position. I guess we will disagree on what constitutes “current” harm. The centuries of injustice is a current trauma. Imagine if Jewish kids in Germany had to wear a sports jersey with the name Hitler? https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/us/robert-e-lee-high-school-tyler-texas-trnd/index.html [/quote] No, you are confused about what makes something harmful. Naming High School after Robert E. Lee is bad because people today support his bad legacy. That is why they made monuments to Lee long after the Civil War. There is a Henry Ford High School. He was a horrible antisemite and influenced Hitler. But Jews don't care about renaming the school because it wasn't named after him for that reason and America today repudiates that part of his legacy. We fight over symbols because of what they mean today. Think about putting a cross in a courthouse. This would offend many people as an encroachment of religion on the state. But courthouses do have a statue of Themis, the Greek goddess of justice. It's a religious symbol, but nobody believes in that religion, so the meaning has changed. [/quote]
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