Progressives, part 3...

Just putting this out there because Tommy Sotomayor does make a good point. And I will say this as somebody who had nothing to do with slavery - he makes a point:

So, who on this forum can answer these points that he makes or even take a wild guess?

posted by superman

I do too.  

 

If anyone can prove they are a descendent of slaves, we will take them to the African country of their choice and drop them off.  Leaving them where they would have been if not for the evil white man. 

That's a nuclear take.

You can be against reparations, plenty of reasonable opinions to have there, but saying that they should be thankful their descendants were enslaved because now they live in US as a result is gross

Reperations is a pandora's box.  Every group has been wronged at some point in history.  The degree of wrong may be different, but what is the minimum threshold deserving of reperations then?  I'm an Irishman born in America because my ancestors were forced to flee Ireland due to famine.  There could be an argument made that had the English not taken control of Ireland thus not greatly contributed to conditions that caused famine, I would not have had to live in the US - I would have been born in Ireland.  So am I owed some sort of reperation from the UK?  Do the Mongols owe reperations for Ghengis Kahn?  If the US government owes reperations to slave decendents, why too don't the government's of the UK, France, Spain and Portugal - along with all of the African countries whose territories were complicit?

The point is you can chase this forever if you want and never arrive at a reasonable solution.  People who live in the US today have great opportunity - more than most anywhere else in the world.  It doesn't matter what race or creed.  Instead of forever living in the past, let's live in today where no one was enslaved by anyone else, where no one alive was a slave owner, etc.

posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

The point is you can chase this forever if you want and never arrive at a reasonable solution.  People who live in the US today have great opportunity - more than most anywhere else in the world.  It doesn't matter what race or creed.  Instead of forever living in the past, let's live in today where no one was enslaved by anyone else, where no one alive was a slave owner, etc.

This, +1000

posted by QuakerOats

 

 

So whose fault was it, the dealers or the users; the sellers or the buyers?  And was the war on slavery won (by the majority of Americans for the benefit of the enslaved)?  And was the cost of freedom, approximately three quarters of a million lives lost, insufficient reparations? 

hard to argue this.  I lost a family member in the civil war.  Does that exclude me from paying?  Someone in my family paid my debt.

posted by superman

I do too.  

 

If anyone can prove they are a descendent of slaves, we will take them to the African country of their choice and drop them off.  Leaving them where they would have been if not for the evil white man. 

Holy sweet Moses!

posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

Reperations is a pandora's box.  Every group has been wronged at some point in history.  The degree of wrong may be different, but what is the minimum threshold deserving of reperations then?  I'm an Irishman born in America because my ancestors were forced to flee Ireland due to famine.  There could be an argument made that had the English not taken control of Ireland thus not greatly contributed to conditions that caused famine, I would not have had to live in the US - I would have been born in Ireland.  So am I owed some sort of reperation from the UK?  Do the Mongols owe reperations for Ghengis Kahn?  If the US government owes reperations to slave decendents, why too don't the government's of the UK, France, Spain and Portugal - along with all of the African countries whose territories were complicit?

 

The point is you can chase this forever if you want and never arrive at a reasonable solution.  People who live in the US today have great opportunity - more than most anywhere else in the world.  It doesn't matter what race or creed.  Instead of forever living in the past, let's live in today where no one was enslaved by anyone else, where no one alive was a slave owner, etc.

This seems like a pretty fair take.  The English dominated and/or suppressed the sovereignty of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, India, the US, and many African countries in centuries past.  To what degree are they owed reparations?

And what about other domineering empires in history?  The Romans?  Greeks?  Persians?  Neo-Babylonians?  Neo-Assyrians?  Should we go further back as well into Mesopotamia?

It does become something of a Pandora's Box if we do, but if we do support actual reparations, we should indeed ask where the lines are.  How oppressed is oppressed enough?  How recently does it have to have occurred to be relevant?  What criteria do we use to define what it means to be oppressed (something more than 'we know what it looks like')?  And on how big a scale?  Should we consider tribal oppression within the confines of Somalia or Burma/Myanmar, since those were all within the country and among people of the same color and national background?  If you fit the general description of the party obligated to pay the reparations, but your ancestry wasn't around for it, are you exempt?

posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

Reperations is a pandora's box.  Every group has been wronged at some point in history.  The degree of wrong may be different, but what is the minimum threshold deserving of reperations then?  I'm an Irishman born in America because my ancestors were forced to flee Ireland due to famine.  There could be an argument made that had the English not taken control of Ireland thus not greatly contributed to conditions that caused famine, I would not have had to live in the US - I would have been born in Ireland.  So am I owed some sort of reperation from the UK?  Do the Mongols owe reperations for Ghengis Kahn?  If the US government owes reperations to slave decendents, why too don't the government's of the UK, France, Spain and Portugal - along with all of the African countries whose territories were complicit?

 

The point is you can chase this forever if you want and never arrive at a reasonable solution.  People who live in the US today have great opportunity - more than most anywhere else in the world.  It doesn't matter what race or creed.  Instead of forever living in the past, let's live in today where no one was enslaved by anyone else, where no one alive was a slave owner, etc.

Thank you.

posted by superman

I do too.  

 

If anyone can prove they are a descendent of slaves, we will take them to the African country of their choice and drop them off.  Leaving them where they would have been if not for the evil white man. 

posted by superman

I do too.  

 

If anyone can prove they are a descendent of slaves, we will take them to the African country of their choice and drop them off.  Leaving them where they would have been if not for the evil white man. 

Congratulations on dropping to Spock and QOs level...

Wow, Thx.

posted by QuakerOats

Wow, Thx.

Obviously, you wouldn't hold that kind of sentiment, right?

ouch

posted by cbus4life

That's a nuclear take.

You can be against reparations, plenty of reasonable opinions to have there, but saying that they should be thankful their descendants were enslaved because now they live in US as a result is gross

Reparations is simply reverting to it's original state.  That's all I suggested. 

posted by superman

Reparations is simply reverting to it's original state.  That's all I suggested. 

Erm ... reparations are an effort to make whole.  They're not a returning of things to their original state.

Dude, if that was the point you were trying to make, that wasn't a defensible way to say it.  Yikes.

posted by O-Trap

Erm ... reparations are an effort to make whole.  They're not a returning of things to their original state.

Make what whole? No one alive was a slave. And most people’s families didn’t own slaves. There is no real defense of reparations 

posted by iclfan2

Make what whole? No one alive was a slave. And most people’s families didn’t own slaves. There is no real defense of reparations 

I'm not defending them.  I prefer people be treated as individuals, and I don't think it's the government's place to put the burden of someone's guilt on their sons' sons' sons' sons' sons' sons.

Having said that, if we assume that a person was owed pay for their labor, but they were not paid, it can theoretically be said that their estate ... and the estates of their subsequent lineages ... would have included the benefit of that pay, all other things playing out as they have.

I don't think it's fair to assume that all other things would have played out as they have, and again, at this point it would be punitive to force it on someone who had nothing to do with slavery.

I was just clarifying that reparations would be an attempt to make whole an unbalanced scale (backpay for slave labor), and not to try to put the toothpaste back into the tube.

You can b for or against reparations but comparing the he Irish experience to slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow is just stupid 

posted by geeblock

You can b for or against reparations but comparing the he Irish experience to slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow is just stupid 

I think ivy league schools discriminating against Asians - that is currently happening as a direct result of affirmative action - is more of an accurate comparison. Not to mention the internment camps they were held hostage within during the 1940's. 

posted by CenterBHSFan

I think ivy league schools discriminating against Asians - that is currently happening as a direct result of affirmative action - is more of an accurate comparison. Not to mention the internment camps they were held hostage within during the 1940's. 

 

Neither is worse than slavery. And the Japanese held in interment camps were compensated if I remember correctly. Are we really comparing getting raped and having your baby sold to having to go to your second choice of colleges? Also I see that minorities get the blame but white parents who pay large sums of money to get their kid in goes under your radar. Weird