Have you read any of the sources for this discussion?
The United States owes its existence to slavery. We were founded and built upon the backs of slaves. On the eve of the Civil War, the single largest commodity by total dollar worth in America was slaves.
From the very first post in this thread:
We grant that Mr. McConnell was not alive for Appomattox. But he was alive for the electrocution of George Stinney. He was alive for the blinding of Isaac Woodard. He was alive to witness kleptocracy in his native Alabama and a regime premised on electoral theft. Majority Leader McConnell cited civil-rights legislation yesterday, as well he should, because he was alive to witness the harassment, jailing, and betrayal of those responsible for that legislation by a government sworn to protect them. He was alive for the redlining of Chicago and the looting of black homeowners of some $4 billion. Victims of that plunder are very much alive today. I am sure they’d love a word with the majority leader.
My suggestion is that we commission a group of experts to study what the effects of slavery, segregation and institutional racism have been on black folks. It would be useful for the government to catalog its wrongs, to acknowledge that black families owe their fate, in part at least, to the deliberate, systematic, encoded in law depredations of the state against them in particular. That the Charles Murrays of the world and the racist troglodytes who follow their arguments to their logical conclusion can go eat a mountain of shit.
Then we talk about it. If America has committed a grevious wrong against black folks for centuries we can, of course, just shrug and say, “Well, that’s life.” But we should harbor no illusions about our moral standing as a result. We should be aware that to say that is to choose injustice as a people. That there is no “idea of America.” That its promise is, always has been, and always will be not just a lie, but a deliberate scam.
If we admit that America has done bad things, and want to improve it, that’s something that we can all participate in together as Americans. That’s cool. We can institute things to erode institutional racism.
But when you take it to the level of saying “America must apologize to Black people”, it suggests that black people aren’t Americans. That America is just white people, and they should apologize to this other group.
But that’s not how it is. It doesn’t make any sense for America to apologize to Black people, because those black people are America just as much as any white person is.
Are you arguing just for the sake of it? It is utterly commonplace for an institution that wronged its members to apologize to them. You can’t be making this argument in good faith.
Please read The Case for Reparations. It turns out Ta-Nehisi Coates has already addressed all of the concerns you’ve brought in depth far more eloquently and comprehensively than I can.
And that’s why such a program would be reparations. It would disproportionately go to black households, and it would be fair.
Also I guarantee you’d get a mega backlash from every other group in America if racial reparations happened. Not just whites, but Hispanics and Asians. The Dems would be slaughtered if this happened.
You’re writing this in response to someone who just took the trouble to offer you an example of contemporary racist villains currently systematically victimizing African Americans. I mean, it’s right there in the comment you’re responding to.
So are the slavery reparations payments based on the number of slaves, or the number of current African Americans? Would payments be made per slave with traceable descendants, on a per stirpes basis?
I’m also trying to figure out how this would work for Native Americans. I imagine the genealogy records are worse there? Would we actually give them land back? Maybe Manhattan?
Have things like this been tried outside of the U.S.? Like has Great Britain ever apologized to the Irish or other Celts, or given them reparations?
I, incidentally, have no problem with a nation apologizing for treating its own people like shit. It would be weird, for example, for Germany to say it could not apologize to the German Jews or Communists it murdered because they were Germans, and so they somehow cannot apologize to themselves.
Yes. There’s a whole argument up there, in the linked Coates piece, and refusing to read it while making arguments it addresses is…weird.
I mean, if the argument for reparations explicitly says it isn’t just about slavery, but actually about 300 years of systematic oppression based on racism, then this question:
Is totally off point. They aren’t slavery reparations, so it isn’t about the number of slaves. It’s a waste of time.
Just so we’re clear, that’s not a manual. It’s an opinion piece.
I love Coates’ writing. I dearly do. I don’t agree with everything he’s written but he’s got a wonderful sense of prose and he’s very persuasive, but his word isn’t law. His opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s when it comes to hypothetical reparations.
No problem. It just seems like you’ve been treating the Coates piece as an indisputable document here. I like it a lot, but Coates was writing for The Atlantic’s readers, who would obviously be more positive on reparations than a general audience.
I think the uphill battle on reparations is so significant that just telling people to read Coates’ piece ain’t gonna cut it.
True, but one thing the Coates piece does irrefutably is lay the foundations on how this isn’t only, or even mostly, about slavery anymore. It’s about the strangling of opportunity and deliberate racial exploitation that occurred. That is the sin that needs correcting.
As for fixing that, it is a far more complex issue than cutting a check. I don’t think anyone, Coates included, surmises that writing a check is the best, or only, answer. And debating how to correct that is healthy and helpful. There are many possible avenues, and some like investing in impoverished and minority communities could have greater long term benefits along with being more politically practical.
But people get hung on the idea of reparations as writing a check, and use that to continually derail the conversation.
