Is Now the Right Time for Black Americans to Get Our Reparations?
In this presidential election season, alongside gun control and reproductive rights, reparations for Black Americans is another urgent challenge.
I've never been a big supporter of reparations, for several reasons:
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.
those ancestors may not have been given a choice whether or not to come here
That's like saying the Holocaust is just a issue of unpaid labor. Rape and abuse for generations is a more appropriate description.
Slavery is literally a crime against humanity. While we can't punish the perpetrators, reparations are actually a good way to apologize. Plus it was literally promised to freed slaves.
Native Americans get sovereign land and no taxes. The Government of Germany literally pays Holocaust victims. The US government can pay descendants of victims of US slavery.
Native Americans First
Why not both?
I think the time to get reparations is when the people who wronged you are still alive. Otherwise it's called stealing or begging.
Agreed, otherwise reparations are a multi-generational ponzi scheme.
Also it seta precent for making such atrocities acceptable. If reparations are paid by a future generation, then an even further future generation now has the mathematical tool to define how expensive it would be to re-enable slavery temporarily in the future.
For those that didn't click through, the key points of reparations (not just a payment):
- Satisfaction: Acknowledging and truthfully addressing the historical injustices inflicted upon Black people and receiving an accepted response.
- Compensation: Providing monetary restitution for economic losses stemming from these harms.
- Restitution: Restoring freedom, reuniting families and recognizing the humanity, identity and culture of Black people.
- Rehabilitation: Offering care and support for healing from the trauma caused by these injustices.
- Cessation and Non-repetition: Transforming systems and structures to prevent the recurrence of such harms.
Thanks very much for excerpting that!
Sooner is better than later.
Yes. Full stop.
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Fuck your reparations. Tell poor people in Apalachia how much harder your life has been than theirs.