jfv wrote: Mon May 05, 2025 10:41 am Reason for reparations should not only take into consideration slavery but also the USA's shitty racist policies against African Americans since then. In other words, pretty much every African American should be eligible.

Thank you.

Reparations are for systemic abuse of generations of people. Not for specific events or to produce/remedy specific outcomes - it is 100% supposed to be twofold - restorative to the oppressed and punitive to the oppressors. We can't even get past step 1 to deal with step 2, which would also be met with opposition.

Not crap.

IIRC Coates ended his essay by acknowledging how difficult and fraught this would be, and emphasized that the most important thing was just to have Congress have the damn conversation. Just be willing to acknowledge and discuss how much property and economic opportunity was stolen from people, on purpose, because they were black. But people are terrified of doing this for some whole variety of reasons.

For those asking "why race", it's because race was constructed and used as the dividing line to determine who could hold property, who could be assaulted or murdered without legal repercussions, who could be forced to labor, who could be separated from their families. It was, very clearly and purposefully, done by race. I can't speak to all histories of slavery and colonialism in other places, but this is unequivocally true in the United States. And we are still within a human lifetime of when state-sanctioned dispossession and murder on the basis of race was happening to American citizens.

Here's what I've never understood about white Americans not on the left (set aside the hate groups, their shit is obvious):

Systematic oppression is historically documented.
Current disparaties are measured: Health, wealth, upward mobility. We have the data.

So like, either you use that information to acknowledge people are getting fucked over..... or you just think an entire demographic is worse at life..... but you insist you're not racist....?

i think it's really important not to underestimate the effect of a century and a half of pro-capitalist propaganda. Even acknowledging the above, Americans will still harbor prejudices that they have been absolutely marinated in:
- Poverty is a moral failing. Poor people deserve it.
- Acknowledging race in hiring/college admissions/resource allocation for education is UNFAIR.
- We should never raise taxes on the rich because otherwise they won't "create jobs"
- All of the homeless are lazy and did something to deserve it.
- We're the Good Guys in the Global South and the Middle East.

There's been a half century of research that indicates that you can "throw money at the problem" and fucking FIX IT, but we can't do it and make a profit, so it won't ever happen. As you pointed out, we have the data. But we can't meaningfully implement any programs based on that data because XCOMMUSINIM!!!1!

losthighway wrote: Mon May 05, 2025 5:05 pm So like, either you use that information to acknowledge people are getting fucked over..... or you just think an entire demographic is worse at life..... but you insist you're not racist....?

emphasis to say: yes, this is literally the position I hear from my racist family members. Trying to ferret out what lies beneath: part of it comes from the basic tenets of conservatism (the current social hierarchy is natural, any attempt to change it is perversion). Part of it is the capitalist / Protestant-work-ethic propaganda Ringo mentioned. A more insidious part of it, AFAICT, is an implicit judgment that America has already dealt with its sins. (Mind-numbingly stupid example: Native people get their casinos.) Obviously that's false and racist, but it informs how they frame the conversation, and preemptively absolves them of any guilt.

NC. Worrying about someone benefiting from social policies who doesn't need or deserve it (Candace Owens) smells like right-wing thinking to me. Reparations may never be perfect but they need to happen anyway.

brephophagist wrote: Wed May 07, 2025 8:59 pm NC. Worrying about someone benefiting from social policies who doesn't need or deserve it (Candace Owens) smells like right-wing thinking to me. Reparations may never be perfect but they need to happen anyway.

Yep. When this prickly issue was raised earlier that shyster immediately came to mind, and, yeah, as much as I detest her she's deserving. I also always think back to when she was in high school and her family had to sue the Stamford Board of Education for not protecting her from students (including the Democratic mayor's son) for death threats, bullying, and racism. So, yeah, the shucking and jiving shyster who has done untold damage since her pivot to ultra-conservative values should get reparations. Gayle King should get reparations. Byron Donalds and all them assholes unfortunately.

Clarence Thomas, unfortunately. But that's not what this thread is about. Black people unequivocally deserve reparations.

rsmurphy wrote: Thu May 08, 2025 6:02 am

brephophagist wrote: Wed May 07, 2025 8:59 pm NC. Worrying about someone benefiting from social policies who doesn't need or deserve it (Candace Owens) smells like right-wing thinking to me. Reparations may never be perfect but they need to happen anyway.

Yep. When this prickly issue was raised earlier that shyster immediately came to mind, and, yeah, as much as I detest her she's deserving. I also always think back to when she was in high school and her family had to sue the Stamford Board of Education for not protecting her from students (including the Democratic mayor's son) for death threats, bullying, and racism. So, yeah, the shucking and jiving shyster who has done untold damage since her pivot to ultra-conservative values should get reparations. Gayle King should get reparations. Byron Donalds and all them assholes unfortunately.

The idea of waste, fraud and abuse is so resonant to so many in our country. That's the wave that DOGE surfed in on. The counter to it (that everyone on here seems to uniquely understand) is a common sense available to democratic socialist, and shockingly to libertarians alike. When you put too much energy into preventing a resource from going to the undeserving you make problem-solving as a society more humiliating, difficult, inefficient and sometimes actually more expensive. If everyone from whatever group just gets whatever social welfare measure, you may find a few people not in need pocket a resource, but it just rolls out more efficiently and doesn't get tangled in regulatory bullshit. We saw this with Covid when we just started giving everyone a lunch at school. Suddenly the idea that you had to be poor to get it didn't matter anymore, and everyone could eat their free lunch with dignity.

So yeah, we'll even give those a-holes reparations, just like we can give poor MAGA voters health care. We'll make the world better whether people like it or not.

Not crap, absolutely necessary, and I don't give a single shit about how it would be implemented; use the military and seize the assets of the rich, I don't care--that's what should have happened at the end of the civil war anyways.