Should American Blacks Receive Reparations

[TellyKNeasuss]

Originally Posted by Thermal

Same argument. Take it up with the primary culprits, not the ones who fought to remove the rightful claimants' ongoing victimization.

Eta: if you are robbed on the street, you don't ask the arresting officer to give you his money in retribution.

Is the citizenry responsible for the actions of the government? Slavery was legal. Certain discriminatory practices were encoded in law.

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

Is the citizenry responsible for the actions of the government? Slavery was legal. Certain discriminatory practices were encoded in law.

Tricky argument, in terms of representative govt which represents the actual people at that time, versus the incorporated and ongoing governmental body, carrying rights and responsibilities beyond their original members.

The hitch with the new American Government was whether it was obligated to continue with colonial law and practices. I'd say they need not have been, but that the social upheaval had to be kept to a minimum to simply survive, so all dragons couldn't be slain at once, or the States would not exist in short order.

[BobTheCoward]

Originally Posted by Thermal

Same argument. Take it up with the primary culprits, not the ones who fought to remove the rightful claimants' ongoing victimization.

Eta: if you are robbed on the street, you don't ask the arresting officer to give you his money in retribution.

Not the cop, but you do ask the government to do that.

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by BobTheCoward

Not the cop, but you do ask the government to do that.

I've been robbed. The govt doesn't pay me back. They might order the original robber to do so.

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

Should people who voluntarily move to a country with the knowledge that a different demographic dominates the economy and political system be entitled to compensation for any losses suffered due to the domination by that other demographic? Unlike descendants of slaves, Native Americans, and certain Hispanics, post-Civil War immigrants had a choice as to whether to participate in a society where they might be disadvantaged.

It's a valid question and I'm not sure the answer is a very clear one. I don't think there is any question that the governments here have acted pretty atrociously on the federal, state, and local levels. Should there be accountability for that? Maybe it is more a civil court issue than reparations, per se, but that feels like semantics.

I never thought of reparations to be only about the loss of wealth from slavery but also from systemic racism in the years since slavery that robbed people of equal access to wealth.

[TellyKNeasuss]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

I never thought of reparations to be only about the loss of wealth from slavery but also from systemic racism in the years since slavery that robbed people of equal access to wealth.

How far back should we go in determining how large the reparations should be? How much of a person's wealth is dependent on how much wealth their grandparents had? Their great grandparents? Their great great grandparents?

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

How far back should we go in determining how large the reparations should be? How much of a person's wealth is dependent on how much wealth their grandparents had? Their great grandparents? Their great great grandparents?

We don't. We deal with the measurable effects that are still occurring now so racists and racists apologists don't have to roll out the tired "Oh so do I get to sue the Vikings for sacking my grandfathers village in 958" arguments.

[rdwight]

I'm a yes still. And direct payment for the majority of any amount decided. Let the recipients decide how to allocate it for themselves. The contributions to the overall value of the country should be paid by the country, ie citizens. Guilt should have nothing to do with it.

[JoeMorgue]

Yeah but am a little, not a lot but a little, suspicious that is this doesn't come with guilt it's not going to be good enough.

Again black Americans are worse off now because of slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow is a quantifiable factor that we should fix.

But... *winces* I kind of feel like the push isn't going to be to frame it that way because Progressives need to wear their hair shirts for us all to see.

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

How far back should we go in determining how large the reparations should be? How much of a person's wealth is dependent on how much wealth their grandparents had? Their great grandparents? Their great great grandparents?

I don't see how it's a matter of generations. Even if you limit reparations to slavery, we're only talking about slavery in the US, not the entire history of slavery going back to when Spain first brought slaves to the Americas from Africa.

Likewise, I'm only asking about government imposed oppression since slavery was abolished in the US.

[TellyKNeasuss]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

Again black Americans are worse off now because of slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow is a quantifiable factor that we should fix.

If racism had been eliminated at the same time as slavery, would Blacks still be significantly lagging behind whites or is most of the current difference due to 20th century racism?

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

If racism had been eliminated at the same time as slavery, would Blacks still be significantly lagging behind whites or is most of the current difference due to 20th century discriminatory practices?

That is two different questions.

If racism had been eliminated at the same time as slavery, would African Americans still be significantly lagging behind whites? Yes, almost assuredly. Former slaves generally had nothing.

Is most of the current difference due to 20th century discriminatory practices? That's a hard question to quantify and I am not an economist, but probably also yes. The delta would compound over time at varying rates. Given 150-ish years, that would not be insignificant.

[TellyKNeasuss]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

That is two different questions.

If racism had been eliminated at the same time as slavery, would African Americans still be significantly lagging behind whites? Yes, almost assuredly. Former slaves generally had nothing.

Is most of the current difference due to 20th century discriminatory practices? That's a hard question to quantify and I am not an economist, but probably also yes. The delta would compound over time at varying rates. Given 150-ish years, that would not be insignificant.

Then I can conclude that you believe that a person's wealth is strongly correlated with that of their ancestors 3 or more generations removed?

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

Then I can conclude that you believe that a person's wealth is strongly correlated with that of their ancestors 3 or more generations removed?

I don't know why you'd infer that. I was pretty clear about my in-expertise on the topic. I also said I didn't see how generations necessarily play into it.

Are you saying that you believe that a person's wealth is strongly correlated with that of their ancestors 3 or more generations removed?

[Mumbles]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

If racism had been eliminated at the same time as slavery, would Blacks still be significantly lagging behind whites or is most of the current difference due to 20th century racism?

You mean, if black Americans been granted full access to land grants, home and business loans, higher education, and government protection of wealth? Had their neighborhoods not been targeted for heavy pollution through highways and heavy industry that they were not given job access to, had they been fully accepted into unions fro the start, had they been given significant legislative voices, had they not had to waste immense time working on basic access to...everything for well over 150 years, including modern movements such as BLM?

We're well into the realm of contrafactuals that diverge wildly from reality at this point - a complete rewrite which could entirely erase, among other topics, the Great Migration, a massive shift in music planetwide, a wholesale rewrite of US politics including modern political positions and parties in the US including international alliances and priorities, and possibly a radical change in what the constitution itself says.

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by Mumbles

We're well into the realm of contrafactuals that diverge wildly from reality at this point - a complete rewrite which could entirely erase, among other topics, the Great Migration, a massive shift in music planetwide, a wholesale rewrite of US politics including modern political positions and parties in the US including international alliances and priorities, and possibly a radical change in what the constitution itself says.

I would totally read that novel.

[Cavemonster]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

Then I can conclude that you believe that a person's wealth is strongly correlated with that of their ancestors 3 or more generations removed?

Do you believe otherwise? That would be pretty odd.

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by Cavemonster

Do you believe otherwise? That would be pretty odd.

I am hesitant with terms like "strongly correlated", which actually means something and I don't know if it is or how much.

[acbytesla]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

I need some clarification. Are reparations meant specifically for slavery or any of the racist shenanigans the US has perpetrated on it's citizens over the last 250ish years? Lost wealth, it seems to me, includes things like red lining, segregation, Jim Crow, the war on drugs, etc.

I would think "all of the above".

People don't get that slavery didn't end in 1865. In many ways it was worse for former slaves after they were free. They were deprived of an education and either worked for subsistence wages or were incarcerated for being a vagrant. They were fined by judges and forced to work off those fines and what were the fines for? Judges basically turned them back in to slaves. More African Americans were lynched post slavery than during it.

African Americans were discriminated against in housing, lending and education until at least 1980. I even lived in a house that included a covenant against selling it to someone of color and that wasn't the Deep South, that was liberal Seattle. Not only did we fail to deliver 40 acres and a mule, we prevented an entire class of people from any opportunity to get ahead for 250 years.

[TellyKNeasuss]

Originally Posted by Cavemonster

Do you believe otherwise? That would be pretty odd.

Why would it be "odd"? My impression is that intergenerational wealth transfer is largely from parents to children with a little bit from grandparents to children (and that is mostly at the affluent end).

[Mumbles]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

Why would it be "odd"? My impression is that intergenerational wealth transfer is largely from parents to children with a little bit from grandparents to children (and that is mostly at the affluent end).

THis is *only* true for outright inheritance. Education opportunity, business/job networks, even childhood lead exposure and the like, are all more or less intentionally tied to race due to inheritance. Even low-income white Americans are less likely to live in isolated and impoverished communities than black/native Americans are, and this can have massive effects on opportunity.

[PhantomWolf]

Originally Posted by BobTheCoward

But it isn't the neighborhood's money.

This isn't an ethics question but a numbers question. The government denied certain parties income, the interest from it, and the next generation's inheritance.
Calculate the income, calculate the interest rate, make the deprived parties whole.

The parties, after being made whole, can decide to do with their property just as all other people who receive their inheritance can.

Trying to find other uses for the money makes it seem like you don't actually think it is their money.

There are a few major issues here. So first off, how do you calculate the income? Do you give them the base income, do you deduct what would have been taxes and living expenses? How do you account for how people would have handled the money in the intervening years. One person might make millions and pass it on to their descendants who lose it all, another might make a modest amount but by wise investment secure their descendants future for multiple generations. How do you account for that? How about how the money should be split between the remaining descendants of each person? If one line has more "kids" through it, do they get less each than a line that has fewer kids? This isn't like just handing over a painting.

I also do not think that a one-off payment is going to solve any issues. What needs to happen in the US is for there to be a systematic change from the ground up where Black lives are valued and uplifted. Until that happens, giving them huge amounts of money is likely to just make the situation worse. White folks are going to hate blacks for getting a massive "Handout" and blacks that haven't been taught how to handle money are going to lose it and be in a worse place than they started out it (c.f. lottery winners 70% of whom go broke and over 30% end up bankrupt.)

All the money in the world isn't going to fix the problems that blacks have as long as the system is broken.

[BobTheCoward]

Originally Posted by PhantomWolf

I also do not think that a one-off payment is going to solve any issues.

If I am owed money, I don't care if someone thinks it will or won't fix my issues.

[PhantomWolf]

Originally Posted by BobTheCoward

If I am owed money, I don't care if someone thinks it will or won't fix my issues.

Well there is also the question. Are they actually owed money?

If a company failed to pay your Great-grandfather under a law that said was didn't have to because it was going bankrupt, would you be entitled to go to the government today and demand that they pay you for the lost wages of your great-grandfather?

You're going to have actually make the argument that the money is actually owed and that the government should be the one to pay it before you can just beg the question that it is in fact owed.

[Vixen]

These guys were made to work for free for hundreds of years. They were whipped, shackled and made to live in animal pens (I saw one such when I visited Tennessee). They were taken from their countries, homes and families, never to see them ever again. THey had their names taken away, their identities completely stripped, and given names like pets, or silly Latin names. They were often separated from their mothers at an early age, never to see them again. They were raped. Harshly punished for the slightest thing. Hanged if they rebelled. They produced sugar having to use highly dangerous boiling water vats. They gave birth in fields and had to be back at work immediately. They worked from dawn until dusk. They had the ground to sleep on.

Give them their reparations.

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by BobTheCoward

If I am owed money, I don't care if someone thinks it will or won't fix my issues.

Sounds to me that people are not just owed money.

[RolandRat]

Originally Posted by Vixen

These guys were made to work for free for hundreds of years. They were whipped, shackled and made to live in animal pens (I saw one such when I visited Tennessee). They were taken from their countries, homes and families, never to see them ever again. THey had their names taken away, their identities completely stripped, and given names like pets, or silly Latin names. They were often separated from their mothers at an early age, never to see them again. They were raped. Harshly punished for the slightest thing. Hanged if they rebelled. They produced sugar having to use highly dangerous boiling water vats. They gave birth in fields and had to be back at work immediately. They worked from dawn until dusk. They had the ground to sleep on.

Give them their reparations.

"These guys" are dead. The argument is whether their descendants should be paid out.

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by RolandRat

"These guys" are dead. The argument is whether their descendants should be paid out.

Just because they are dead doesn’t mean they can’t be paid. Naturally, it would go to their descendants, but that doesn’t change the fundamental question.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that.

[BobTheCoward]

Originally Posted by PhantomWolf

Well there is also the question. Are they actually owed money?

If a company failed to pay your Great-grandfather under a law that said was didn't have to because it was going bankrupt, would you be entitled to go to the government today and demand that they pay you for the lost wages of your great-grandfather?

You're going to have actually make the argument that the money is actually owed and that the government should be the one to pay it before you can just beg the question that it is in fact owed.

So, I'm not making the argument that they should be because of everything you point out here. I am using the framing to discuss that this sense of being owed for actual things done rather than it being a question of fixing some broader problem.

But yes, if you approach reparations from that perspective there are a lot of questions to be answered.

[ahhell]

I've skimmed through the thread but my 2 cents.
There are two or three good arguments against:
1. It would amount to a get out of jail free card for the US generally. "Hey this thing/person/institution is racist" "You got your check, why are you complaining!"
2. The logistics are impossible. Who gets what and how much, who pays and how much? Black descendants of slaves who were red lined out of low interest loans and didn't get the GI Bill they earned. That's easy. Black or white or whatever recent immigrant, they have to pay too? Is it pro-rated based on how long you've been here?
3. It will breed more racial animosity.

The most powerful argument for, in my opinion is that the government caused redlining, didn't give out the various low interest loans equally, essentially excluding blacks. They didn't even give blacks the GI Bill they earned. This is far more recent and likely far more responsible for the disparities in wealth and income than the legacy of slavery.

Personally, I think doing wealth and income based solutions would be better. It alleviates some of the racial animus that would result from straight up reparations, wouldn't let the rest of society of wash there hands of persisting racism and would more likely help the folks that actually need it.

[Hlafordlaes]

Reparations paid as a result of a genuine change in heart, sponsored by Red States across the South and Midwest, and paid in the form of structural change in banking, government and business; the end of Jim Crow; designation of the Confederate battle flag as hate speech; removal from public view of all fetishist Confederate paraphenalia; and new history textbooks would do it.

Otherwise, those same demographics would use the ocassion to declare game over on facing the facts, on understanding the profoundly mistaken notions involved in racism, or on contrition of the kind leading to new shared social mores across the board. Instead, it'd be a return in earnest to the same old, now trusting it would once again take another couple of centuries for any meaningful payback, and in the meantime...

[JoeMorgue]

Look at it this way.

A state gets hit by a Hurricane. We just pay people money to help them. We don't go "BUT I DIDN'T CAUSE THE HURRICANE" (Well most of us who aren't Conservative trolls or sea-lioning fauxtistics do.)

I think the whole framing it as "Reperations" is just asking for trouble but the African American Community getting the assistance it needs to recover from the disaster it had to go through is a no-brainer.

[BobTheCoward]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

Look at it this way.

A state gets hit by a Hurricane. We just pay people money to help them. We don't go "BUT I DIDN'T CAUSE THE HURRICANE" (Well most of us who aren't Conservative trolls or sea-lioning fauxtistics do.)

I think the whole framing it as "Reperations" is just asking for trouble but the African American Community getting the assistance it needs to recover from the disaster it had to go through is a no-brainer.

It is two different tracks. There is the disaster element....and then there is the element that the government did specific harms that has a material impact on certain individuals. If we change the law so that the government permits being sued, descendants can bring cases in court against the government.

[JoeMorgue]

Again I don't care what any who is dead did to anyone who is also dead.

I care about actual harm still be suffering by living people.

[SuburbanTurkey]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

Look at it this way.

A state gets hit by a Hurricane. We just pay people money to help them. We don't go "BUT I DIDN'T CAUSE THE HURRICANE" (Well most of us who aren't Conservative trolls or sea-lioning fauxtistics do.)

I think the whole framing it as "Reperations" is just asking for trouble but the African American Community getting the assistance it needs to recover from the disaster it had to go through is a no-brainer.

I don't think insisting on avoiding the conversation on why this money is owed is a useful tactic.

People are going to wonder why some subsection of the population are deserving of a handout. Opponents of reparation will definitely label it as unwarranted looting of the public purse for unworthy recipients. There has to be an answer for "Why them?".

I don't know how you have a realistic conversation about reparations without justifying it, which inevitably means discussing how black Americans have been deliberately disadvantaged in this country and why the US has a duty to rectify it.

You mention your distaste for liberal virtue signaling on the matter of white guilt. I would suggest that there is a much stronger reactionary impulse in this country to deny that our nation has ever done anything wrong generally, and especially to this population.

Plainly stating the injury done to black Americans and detailing how that damage is present in modern society is something that makes a lot of people very uncomfortable, but I don't see how avoiding such conversations is a useful response.

[JoeMorgue]

We're getting into semantics a lot here but we can't just pretend like how this is being presented doesn't matter.

"You have to give me money because 100 years ago your ancestor (who is dead) did something bad to my ancestor (who is also dead)" is stupid. We can't word it that way just because guilty white people want to have a hair shirt they can be seen wearing.

You want to spend the next 50 years of this not happening so all the usual suspect can stall out forever at that "oH sO i GueSS I cAN suE da VIKings for PillAGING mY AnsCESTORS VillAGE 1,000 YAERS AGO?" stage?

"There's a group of Americans who are disenfranchised and disadvantage in a quantifiable way because of they were treated in the past. Let's help them." Is both better and more accurate.

Again unless being absolved of some sort of racial original sin is the point.

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

We're getting into semantics a lot here but we can't just pretend like how this is being presented doesn't matter.

What it's called almost doesn't matter. It'll be demonized no matter what you call it. Affirmative action, for example, was an attempt to unwind some of the systemic racism. It was, in effect, some of the non-monetary reparations talked about in this thread. It has, however, been associated with "reverse racism" for as long as I can recall, because it is very easy to view at a microscopic, individual level and ignore the greater context.

However it is presented, that presentation will be distorted by detractors using fallacies like the reductio ad absurdum you highlighted with the Vikings.

[JoeMorgue]

The fact that there will be complaints no matter what doesn't mean there are not legit complaints to be had though.

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

The fact that there will be complaints no matter what doesn't mean there are not legit complaints to be had though.

The trick is distinguishing the signal from the noise. Presentation might help with that, but not by much.

[Dr. Keith]

Originally Posted by TellyKNeasuss

Why would it be "odd"? My impression is that intergenerational wealth transfer is largely from parents to children with a little bit from grandparents to children (and that is mostly at the affluent end).

Originally Posted by Mumbles

THis is *only* true for outright inheritance. Education opportunity, business/job networks, even childhood lead exposure and the like, are all more or less intentionally tied to race due to inheritance. Even low-income white Americans are less likely to live in isolated and impoverished communities than black/native Americans are, and this can have massive effects on opportunity.

Yep. Poverty is passed down more often than not. And even more so in communities who have faced organized government oppression intended to prevent accumulation of generational wealth. Redlining, GI bill, Black Wall Street, public schools in the south. All of this was intended to keep the black man below the poorest white man well after the abolition of slavery. And it was largely successful.

Even today you will hear about the Black Tax that successful black people have to pay to some of their extended family or elders because they were the first to be successful and it sucks to see you mother living off $1300/month in social security while you are making it in the world.

I know some white folks have to take in their older relatives, too, but it is far less common because most of our elders could buy a house without having to deal with redlining, so they had something to sell when they got older.