03-20-2021, 05:23 PM
(03-15-2021, 03:43 PM)ABNARTY Wrote: It's pandering and buying support. Plain and simple.
PITA POV Rant follows. You have been warned.
In the spirit of cooperation, I have been waiting to hear a solid argument supporting reparations 150+ years after slavery ended. I am willing to hear it out.
There is the discussion how Japanese-Americans received reparations for interment during WWII. It's true, they did. It only took almost 50 years to materialize but they got around $20,000 each. Those who were still alive of course. How they came up with that amount is difficult to pin down. How do you quantify what is lost from a life while locked up? In the end it seems it was more a symbolic gesture.
But those who were held under slavery 150+ years ago received nothing.
If we are using the JA example, the time for reparations would have been around 1910. There were probably quite a few people alive who were slaves, probably as children or young adults. There were probably still some former slave owners or those who directly benefited from slavery, alive in 1910. Of course, we know no reparations happened.
Today, none of these circumstances exist. We are generations separated from the slavery era. But we return to the question of how do we quantify the impact of slavery on people 150 years removed from the events? How long do historical reverberations last? There were many AA in the US who were not slaves. How do we separate their descendants from those of the actually enslaved who may deserve some kind of gesture?
And who pays? To be just, we would need to find the descendants of slave owners or those who directly benefited from slavery for compensation. True, it was legal in many states at the time so maybe those states should pay. But "states" are "taxpayers". Most of those taxpayers had nothing to do with slavery. And we are back at the same point again.
Maybe it's the gesture and the acknowledgement that is important? Fine. Where, in any history book, do we find today anybody saying slavery wasn't bad? It wasn't a stain on America? No where. It is a consensus and we all agree. Can we say that part of the equation was successfully accomplished? But is that enough?
Maybe some day someone will be able to answer these questions for me. Then we can turn to how we tackle reparations for First Nations people in the US. If we have compensated JA's and AA's, surely FN's deserve something too? Oh, and the Chinese immigrants who were woefully mistreated in the building of the railroads. Shameful stuff. And the innocent Japanese civilians who were fire bombed and nuked into oblivion in WWII? I'm sure it could be argued those in an internment camp had a much higher survival rate at the hands of the American government and they got some money too. Totally not fair.
If we do this, then when will the Norwegian government compensate those affected in the Lindinsfarne tragedy? What about the innocent Romanians under Vlad Tepes?
I agree with you. Giving out reparations to those who have never experienced slavery, from those who have never partaken in its practice, is a great big ball of stupidity and if we claim we owe liability then there is very real liability everywhere, quite literally... covering the face of the entire earth, from the Africans who initially captured and profited in the sale of their native compatriots, all the way to the days of Rome and beyond.
If I'd ever owned a slave I might think differently, but my nation's owes exactly nothing to those of African ancestry - they have what many the world over would give anything for, full citizenship in the United States...
But, it'll never make it through congress, so it's a futile and meaningless endeavor.