I’ve never been a big supporter of reparations, for several reasons:
It makes it appear that the systemic injustice of hundreds of years can be somehow made up for, tangibly, with a cash payment.
How would you determine who qualifies? To be fair about it, you would get into the same racial profiling that started which whole mess in the first place, having to force people to prove how oppressed their ancestors were in order to gain some benefit.
Some idiots would use any payments as an excuse to declare racism officially over. We paid our debt, after all.
To me, the answer to this is to continue to invest in black communities, making sure that young black people get to start out on an equal playing field with their peers from different backgrounds, and that older black people aren’t totally abandoned because they couldn’t get that same start. And for the government to recognize that it’s totally appropriate to extend this hand to Black folks in particular, in recognition of the fact that those ancestors may not have been given a choice whether or not to come here.
Reparations aren’t just a cash payment – the article lists five different aspects of reparations, and it’s very compatible with investing in Black communities. There’s debate iover who should be eligible but it’s not an unsolvable problem. And sure some people will use it as an excuse to declare racism’s over, but the same was true when Obama got elected … so that’s not a reason not to do it!
In terms of support in general, do you support the 1988 decision by the US to pay reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been sent to internment camps?
A $20k check 35+ years later doesn’t really seem like it could possibly make up for it. I suppose it’s better than nothing.
But it is was a lot easier to single out who to compensate, because there was a lot less time In between and many of those people were still alive. The payments didn’t go to all Japanese Americans, but only the ones who were documented as going to those camps or their heirs.
Paying formal restitutions for slavery now, 150+ years after the fact, seems meaningless. I’d much rather see that money go directly to historically black communities. Yes, you could do both, but if you just do one you’re not splitting the effort.
I’ve never been a big supporter of reparations, for several reasons:
It makes it appear that the systemic injustice of hundreds of years can be somehow made up for, tangibly, with a cash payment.
How would you determine who qualifies? To be fair about it, you would get into the same racial profiling that started which whole mess in the first place, having to force people to prove how oppressed their ancestors were in order to gain some benefit.
Some idiots would use any payments as an excuse to declare racism officially over. We paid our debt, after all.
To me, the answer to this is to continue to invest in black communities, making sure that young black people get to start out on an equal playing field with their peers from different backgrounds, and that older black people aren’t totally abandoned because they couldn’t get that same start. And for the government to recognize that it’s totally appropriate to extend this hand to Black folks in particular, in recognition of the fact that those ancestors may not have been given a choice whether or not to come here.
Reparations aren’t just a cash payment – the article lists five different aspects of reparations, and it’s very compatible with investing in Black communities. There’s debate iover who should be eligible but it’s not an unsolvable problem. And sure some people will use it as an excuse to declare racism’s over, but the same was true when Obama got elected … so that’s not a reason not to do it!
In terms of support in general, do you support the 1988 decision by the US to pay reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been sent to internment camps?
A $20k check 35+ years later doesn’t really seem like it could possibly make up for it. I suppose it’s better than nothing.
But it is was a lot easier to single out who to compensate, because there was a lot less time In between and many of those people were still alive. The payments didn’t go to all Japanese Americans, but only the ones who were documented as going to those camps or their heirs.
Paying formal restitutions for slavery now, 150+ years after the fact, seems meaningless. I’d much rather see that money go directly to historically black communities. Yes, you could do both, but if you just do one you’re not splitting the effort.