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]By suggesting that there is a debt to be paid, you've revealed your true position.[/quote]

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

Did you read the essay? 
[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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

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

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

The literal sense: 
[i]“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.“[/i]

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.

[/quote]
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.[/quote]

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