Reply to Governor Moore vetoes bill to study reparations

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Slavery was an unquestionable evil.  Unfortunately, far too much time and life events have transpired to ever be able to serve justice to either those victims who deserved restitution or to the perpetrators who weren’t held accountable for their crimes.  Between waves of immigration bringing multitudes into our country generations after slavery was a memory, intermarriage blurring the distinction between races, and the loss of memory over time as to what roles our ancestors who were here may have had at the time, there is no way to untangle the messiness of life and accurately portion debt or recompense owed.

At this time, reparations can only serve to create resentment to fuel racism further.  Let’s help people, regardless of race, based on need.  There are lots of ways that individuals, by accident of birth rather than any actions of their own, have been disadvantaged.  No one gets to choose their families.

Meanwhile, this seems a particularly absurd and hypocritical time to be talking about reparations.  Our government, representing us, is currently “deporting” immigrants without any semblance of due process, let alone a trial and conviction, to a lifetime sentence in foreign prisons known for their brutality.  The fact that the harsh conditions and brutality are taking place outside our borders does not absolve us of responsibility.  OUR NATION IS CURRENTLY ENGAGED IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING.  INSTEAD OF ARGUING ABOUT THE REPARATIONS WE OWE EACH OTHER BASED ON DEBTS FROM/TO OUR ANCESTORS, WE SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON HALTING THE CURRENT INJUSTICE AND THE REPARATIONS WE MAY ALL EVENTUALLY OWE TO THOSE WE CURRENTLY ALLOW TO BE WRONGED.

I think the greatest debt owed to the past is to not repeat the evil that once took place, but to act responsibly in the present and to teach future generations by both word and example, so that it can never be allowed to recur.  [/quote]

Your post is offensive because you treat slavery and its aftermath as a distant, untraceable mess rather than a continuing, well-documented injustice with living descendants. You also imply the harms are unrecorded and unknowable, even though enslaved people appear in censuses, bills of sale, probate files, and plantation journals, and later injustices, such as red-lining and GI Bill exclusions, were thoroughly documented. When you say things like “people moved here and races mixed, so it is hard to know who is responsible,” you ignore how wealth taken from enslaved labor was passed down through land titles, business assets, and public investments that still advantage white institutions and heirs today. You focus more on how complicated it would be than on doing what is right, suggesting reparations should be abandoned because the whole matter is inconvenient and “messy,” which tells a community that endured forced labor, legal segregation, and ongoing harm that their injury does not matter enough to fix.[/quote]

Slaves come in other colors and races beside black. The focus on descendants of black slaves is the crux of the issue.  Because of that focus it takes away from the justice that is implied by reparations. [/quote]

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