Mel Mudkiper posted:

Let me use a metaphor



This is a gradient between yellow and green. Can you objectively pinpoint the EXACT spot that yellow stops being yellow and becomes green? Can you say with absolutely certainty there is an exact agreed upon spot that yellow becomes green?

If you can't, does that mean yellow and green can't exist?

Any human moral idea is condemned to implode from deconstruction. Its the entire reason deconstruction exists. It's not logically possible to create a moral or intellectual framework that survives deconstructive scrutiny. However, it is nihilistic to claim that because no idea can survive being deconstructed, ideas do not have value.

All human ideas are built upon a pillar of mush, but we still need and use those ideas to function. Equality, Liberty, Justice, etc as ideas all fall apart if you push against them hard enough, but it doesn't mean they don't have value and we don't apply them to our lives.

To apply it to the reparations debate, yes, the further back in history you go and the more obscure you make the chain of interactions, the harder it becomes to ascertain a clear moral mandate. However, that does not mean that we should ignore situations in which the mandate IS clear. No, I do not think it is moral or practical to try to apply reparations to the Assyrians and Mongols. However, the fact that the line eventually becomes blurry does not mean the line is never clear.

If you want to argue the mandate has expired for colonial reparations, fine. People have done that, and I strongly disagree with them. But if you want to argue that creating some idea of moral mandate should never be done because you can imagine a situation in which the mandate might be obscured, I think you are trying to distract from the actual argument.

steinrokkan posted:

Then call it what it is - welfare / social programs.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Let me use a metaphor



This is a gradient between yellow and green. Can you objectively pinpoint the EXACT spot that yellow stops being yellow and becomes green? Can you say with absolutely certainty there is an exact agreed upon spot that yellow becomes green?

If you can't, does that mean yellow and green can't exist?

Any human moral idea is condemned to implode from deconstruction. Its the entire reason deconstruction exists. It's not logically possible to create a moral or intellectual framework that survives deconstructive scrutiny. However, it is nihilistic to claim that because no idea can survive being deconstructed, ideas do not have value.

All human ideas are built upon a pillar of mush, but we still need and use those ideas to function. Equality, Liberty, Justice, etc as ideas all fall apart if you push against them hard enough, but it doesn't mean they don't have value and we don't apply them to our lives.

To apply it to the reparations debate, yes, the further back in history you go and the more obscure you make the chain of interactions, the harder it becomes to ascertain a clear moral mandate. However, that does not mean that we should ignore situations in which the mandate IS clear. No, I do not think it is moral or practical to try to apply reparations to the Assyrians and Mongols. However, the fact that the line eventually becomes blurry does not mean the line is never clear.

If you want to argue the mandate has expired for colonial reparations, fine. People have done that, and I strongly disagree with them. But if you want to argue that creating some idea of moral mandate should never be done because you can imagine a situation in which the mandate might be obscured, I think you are trying to distract from the actual argument.

steinrokkan posted:

E: I should perhaps clarify - your idea of a gradient that has a line where the color skews predominantly to one color is naive when contrasted to the social reality where every line cutting through a gradient is in fact just another gradient of a different quality, in an infinite fractal progression.

blowfish posted:

The whole article is about how a lack of integration is a big problem.

Ytlaya posted:

Why does it matter? Because it offends the sensibilities of some people? "Reparations" does a pretty good job of describing the reason why we'd implement those particular welfare/social programs. Obviously helping people is good in and of itself, but if part of the reason a particular group needs help is due to the past crimes of the nation in question, there shouldn't be any problem with calling that help "reparations."

Giggle Goose posted:

I guess the question that I have for those of you so ardently defending this idea would be the following : Imagine a world wherein the US (or who ever) accumulated the political will and financial means to enact sweeping policy changes that would exactly mirror your ideal reparations agenda. Now imagine that the word "reparations" was never used but rather they were sold as something else, say The Economic and Social Human Equality Act with no mention of any guilty historical legacy. Would this sort of program be acceptable to you or is the acknowledgement of past wrongs just as important as the policies themselves?

Who What Now posted:

That's not sufficient proof of causation. Try again, sweetheart.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

My concern is, and history is on my side with this I feel, is that attempts to diffuse a specific moral obligation into a general "just do right for everybody" is less interested in actually creating a more just system than it is in distracting from uncomfortable ethical history. Most of the time when people say "don't dwell on the past, just do right for everyone now", they are not interested in actually doing right, just avoiding guilt. Frankly I don't trust someone when they say that.

Giggle Goose posted:

I guess the question that I have for those of you so ardently defending this idea would be the following : Imagine a world wherein the US (or who ever) accumulated the political will and financial means to enact sweeping policy changes that would exactly mirror your ideal reparations agenda. Now imagine that the word "reparations" was never used but rather they were sold as something else, say The Economic and Social Human Equality Act with no mention of any guilty historical legacy. Would this sort of program be acceptable to you or is the acknowledgement of past wrongs just as important as the policies themselves?

Who What Now posted:

That's not sufficient proof of causation. Try again, sweetheart.

Infinite Karma posted:

What exactly could constitute proof?

"Unintegrated" immigrant populations are less able to take advantage of the opportunities and participate in the wider communities of their new homes, almost by definition. At least, I would define integration as "the ability to fully socially participate in the native culture" (as much as anyone can).

blowfish posted:

My concern is, that attempts to focus on a very specific group of disadvantaged people will lead to general neglect and that, more broadly, generally applicable solutions are preferable to case-by-case solutions if the latter are a subset of the former. Most of the time when people say "don't do right for everyone now, only do what incredibly vague allusions to leftover guilt compel you to do", they are not interested in actually doing right, just passing around guilt and making sure there is a strict limit to what they need to do. Frankly I don't trust someone when they say that.

computer parts posted:

To bring it back to the original topic, asking people to "just act French" requires a lot more change for a recent immigrant or the children thereof than for a white person born in France. This is especially true when you're trying to resist as much change to the culture as possible, for no reason other than "my ancestors were here first" (which is strange in light of the "Sins of the Father" arguments earlier).

blowfish posted:

It's not necessarily "my ancestors were here first", it's "there's 60 million frogs french who don't want to change currently living here, who are you, one person, to say they have to change while you don't".

blowfish posted:

It's not necessarily "my ancestors were here first", it's "there's 60 million frogs french who don't want to change currently living here, who are you, one person, to say they have to change".

computer parts posted:

Except it's like 10 million people of non-white origin, not just 1?

blowfish posted:

That's still less than 60 million if my ability to type numbers into calc.exe hasn't detoriated too much, and they didn't all arrive at the same time but entered France which is full of French bit by bit.

blowfish posted:

That's still less than 60 million if my ability to type numbers into calc.exe hasn't detoriated too much, and they didn't all arrive at the same time but entered France which is full of French bit by bit.

Who What Now posted:

^^^^^^^
No, I deny that your unfounded assertions are true. If you can't back it up then don't say it. This isn't a hard concept to understand.


Are they? Prove it.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

what are the French being asked to change by someone else wearing a hijab?

Secular Humanist posted:

(Just to be clear I think Muslim women should be able to wear anything they want, anywhere they want, but supporting a religious attire ban doesn't have to be rooted in cartoonishly evil racism)

Infinite Karma posted:

The refutation of this isn't based on the colonized and oppressed people not deserving their stuff back, it's that assigning blame to say who should pay it back, how much they should pay, and how to separate the legitimate growth that's occurred in the mean time, that's impossible. The home can't be given back, it's bulldozed. The murdered people can't be brought back to life, they're dead.

For a counterexample, let's say your great-grandfather was an immigrant, after slavery ended. He never stole any wealth, and was not born with priveleges related to that wealth, but he probably did eventually spend his fairly earned money on things that were created indirectly by stolen wealth. Is he less culpable than his neighbors who were around to reap the rewards of colonialism directly? Are you, his descendent, more, or less culpable than he was? How much more or less? Does it change your culpability if he was brown, and from a place that was colonized, instead of colonizer? Isn't it important to know exactly how much guilt to feel, before you try and make up for it? It seems like a very insincere apology if you don't even bother knowing what you personally did wrong.

Giggle Goose posted:

I think that statements like this underline one particular problem that I have with, not perhaps the idea of reparations per se, but rather the repeated insistence throughout this thread by certain individuals that the label "reparations" cannot be dropped.

Some time ago, a number of the pro-rep people presented a list of not entirely unreasonable general policies that they would like to see enacted as part of a wider reparations program. What struck me most about these ideas is that other than the label itself, these sorts of policies would largely be indistinguishable from many radical progressive platforms.

I guess the question that I have for those of you so ardently defending this idea would be the following : Imagine a world wherein the US (or who ever) accumulated the political will and financial means to enact sweeping policy changes that would exactly mirror your ideal reparations agenda. Now imagine that the word "reparations" was never used but rather they were sold as something else, say The Economic and Social Human Equality Act with no mention of any guilty historical legacy. Would this sort of program be acceptable to you or is the acknowledgement of past wrongs just as important as the policies themselves?

Main Paineframe posted:

First of all, if he came in after the end of slavery then he absolutely directly benefited from colonialism and a whole host of other civil rights abuses. Second of all, even if he didn't directly hold looted wealth from Latin America or the Philippines, he benefited from the economic prosperity brought about by those crimes. How many times did he eat cheap fruit from one of Central America's so-called banana republics, set up by the US as thinly-veiled extensions of United Fruit?


If we can't even scrape together the political will to acknowledge the past wrongs, there's no way we could implement a program that even treats those groups equally, let alone one that gives them an advantage to compensate for the disadvantages they've suffered for so many decades. Look at the differences between "affirmative action" and "welfare" as implemented by society.

computer parts posted:

When you're talking about a group of people - especially ones that number in the millions - it's a little different than one random guy doing stuff.

I mean, would you say the same thing about the Jews? They need to act French?

Mel Mudkiper posted:

There are enough people arguing paternalistic white savior complexes seriously without you needing to play devil's advocate

blowfish posted:

Saudi Barbaria?

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I might be tempted to believe you if you didn't keep slipping up and saying racist stuff

Who What Now posted:

Are they? Prove it.

Infinite Karma posted:

"Unintegrated" immigrant populations are less able to take advantage of the opportunities and participate in the wider communities of their new homes, almost by definition. At least, I would define integration as "the ability to fully socially participate in the native culture" (as much as anyone can).

Mel Mudkiper posted:

My issue with the argument of "Why focus on reparations when we should focus on everyone?" as it has been used by others in this thread, is that its replacing a clear and direct moral mandate with an impossibly vague one. Its much clearer to say "we need to reinvest wealth gained through colonialism into former colonies" than to say "we should help all the poor people"

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Main Paineframe posted:

Was that conquest a massive human rights abuse involving the wholesale plunder or oppression of the Spanish? My early-medieval history is a bit fuzzy, but I don't remember that being the case. I certainly don't remember anything on par with, say, Spain's wholesale expulsion of Muslims a century or so after taking full control of the Iberian Peninsula. We're talking about reparations for human rights abuses, not disagreements between kings and land changing rulers, and the fact that you're comparing conquests to colonialism and genocide suggests that you just don't get it.

The problem with having cutoffs at all is that they incentivize countries to stonewall and "run out the clock". Take, for instance, the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Germany admitted to its crimes and is still paying Holocaust reparations to this day, while Turkey continues to deny that its crimes ever happened and hasn't paid a cent in reparations as a result. The direct survivors of that genocide are likely all dead as of a few years ago; does that mean that the genocide has reverted from being a crime against humanity to just a bygone unfortunate historical fact not worth holding anyone responsible for?


If you steal all of someone's money except for $20 and then bulldoze their home while their family is inside, can you then refuse any responsibility or punishment for their crimes because it would be immoral to pay back what you stole because a totally unrelated homeless orphan who only has $10 is clearly more deserving of charity than your victim is? What if you spent all that money and don't have it anymore - does that mean you don't have to pay it back anymore because you didn't end up with a net profit anymore? What if you gave it all to your kid - does that mean they don't have to return the stolen property when the crime is discovered, because they're not the one who personally stole it? Where exactly is the dividing line that grants total immunity to responsibility for robbery, plunder, destruction, and murder?


Even if the benefit isn't ongoing, the losses certainly are! For example, the Congo Free State had profitability issues, which is part of why Leopold cranked things up to such an extreme level...but I doubt the victims of his hand-collecting squads considered that to be a mitigating factor!

Main Paineframe posted:

First of all, if he came in after the end of slavery then he absolutely directly benefited from colonialism and a whole host of other civil rights abuses. Second of all, even if he didn't directly hold looted wealth from Latin America or the Philippines, he benefited from the economic prosperity brought about by those crimes. How many times did he eat cheap fruit from one of Central America's so-called banana republics, set up by the US as thinly-veiled extensions of United Fruit?

steinrokkan posted:

What moral imperative for practical action is easier to demonstrate to the greatest number of people:

1) The need to uplift as many people as possible out of poverty due to basic philosophical principles such as the idea of seeing politics as a tool for safeguarding the growth of individual human potential, and that a society where everybody is first and foremost concerned about the well being of others is the most prosperous society possible.
2) The need to uplift people out of poverty due to the fact my great-grandpa was maybe complicit in robbing their great-grandpa.

And if even 1 is impossible in practice, what does that say about 2?

snyprmag posted:

You don't need to go back three generations to find institutional robbery: racial bias in home lending continued into this century. Americans don't care about either because we've convinced ourselves it's the poor's own fault for their status.

blowfish posted:

snyprmag posted:

You don't need to go back three generations to find institutional robbery: racial bias in home lending continued into this century. Americans don't care about either because we've convinced ourselves it's the poor's own fault for their status.

drilldo squirt posted:

Also I'm pretty sure Mel is physically incapable of not responding to stupid people.

Who What Now posted:

Have you figured out that correlation isn't causation?

Infinite Karma posted:

Prove what, exactly? That women wearing burqas can't participate in their (Western) adopted cultures as equals? That's the whole goddamn cultural point of the burqa.

People who can earn a living that satisfies them and participate in their communities are integrated, regardless of their skin color or smelly foods or personal beliefs. People who are excluded from those things are not integrated.