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Lightning Knight posted:I'm going to assume you meant a rough dollar value in terms of realistic modern reparations and give you an actual serious answer, and I would guess we could spend something on the order of 50 to 200 billion dollars on a broad program of black education, homeownership, job programs, decriminalization, and other myriad programs, and probably make a sizeable dent in black poverty without breaking the bank. That's relatively speaking a lot of money, but it's not some absurdly huge amount the US Government couldn't afford. For a frame of reference, that would be the equivalent of five to twenty aircraft carriers. We don't need more aircraft carriers. We need black people to have a future they can believe in. I think the reparations question is an interesting one. I am coming to this thread as someone who is neither black nor American, so I will obviously miss a lot of the nuance and emotion that go along with the topic: how it feels to have the knowledge that your ancestors may have been slaves and that you may deal every day with the descendants of slave owners, the specifics of racism in America, and so on. Of course my country of birth (the UK) also benefited and continues to benefit from exploiting black people so maybe there is some common ground. Disclaimer aside, it seems to me that to look for a dollar value for reparations is to miss the point. I'm taking it as read that reparations are a necessary and a good idea, but the purpose is surely to give black people in America (and other groups that have suffered similar oppression, Native Americans spring to mind) the same opportunities and advantages that white people enjoy, and to try to level the playing field after many generations of economic and social discrimination. Simplistically, you could give every black person in the USA $100,000 (or whatever the appropriate number is decided to be), but that does nothing to address the wider issues that exist in that society, and the other disadvantages that black people face will mean that in a couple of generations, with a few lucky exceptions, things will likely be back to where they were before. Same with giving out houses or similar - and houses have the added problem that they're probably not going to be in good areas for work, schools etc., and even less so once all the white people leave. I don't say that some direct financial reparation is necessarily useless, but what is needed is what would be needed in any case: robust policy to combat systemic discrimination, maybe in part through strong affirmative action in education and work, and wider social change to reduce poverty and inequality in general. The interesting Atlantic article that was linked earlier suggests to me that racism has always had a partial but strong economic component - black people were explicitly forced into the role of an underclass of cheap labour to be exploited for profit. At the same time, poor and uneducated white people tend to be more racist (without suggesting that rich, well educated people can't be every bit as racist), so a general goal of improving education and reducing poverty would likely go some way towards reducing racism while improving the lot of the disproportionately poor black population. I know that sounds a bit like rewarding racist white people for their racism, but I think the benefits outweigh concerns like that. When people are not on the poverty line they don't worry so much about finding an outgroup to blame for their troubles and it is more difficult to divide and turn the working class on itself to act against its best interests. At that point, financial compensation can actually have a useful long term effect, because you're not going to lose it all immediately to racist education, work and housing policy. Another possibility would be to strongly increase inheritance tax and clamp down on means of evading it, with exemptions for black people. That would also help level the playing field by ensuring that those who benefited from slavery are less able to hold on to their advantage while those who suffered from it have an opportunity to catch up. It's less direct but maybe plays more into the American Dream of the self made individual pulling themselves up by sheer force of will or whatever. I guess what I'm saying overall is that socialism is the answer to the economic problem. The other problems are more difficult and are only partially addressed by what I've suggested. As to how you would actually effect any of these policies in a country which hates poor people probably even more than it hates PoC, I have no idea.
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Nov 8, 2016 04:34
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negromancer posted:Eh, yes and no. Ah ok, I sort of intentionally have not followed the US elections so I don't know much about Bernie's ideas or their popularity among minorities. I take the point though that for instance better pay and employment protection don't help if you can't get a job. Anyway the WoC thread has been interesting to follow, I hope this one is successful too. e: BigRed0427 posted:No offense to you, but I REALLY have grown to hate this line of thinking. "No war but class war" Is basically All Lives Matter for Marxist. We had a very recent re-reg int he LGBT thread argue that the LGBT Rights movement and the left in general wasted a bunch of time and resources on the Gay Marriage fight to the point where we are probably not getting Universal Health Care, When that would have benefited the LGBT community more during the AIDS Epidemic. Any kind of socialist reforms are meaningless if we cannot combat inherent bigotry people have that could limit access and care these programs provide. I was specifically trying to avoid that class war line because I realise that it is not the only issue here and Marxism has its own problems in its approach to minorities, both historically and currently. My point was that "inherent" bigotry, and specifically slavery, is in part an economic phenomenon, and to make reparations effective you need to consider a wider context than just throwing a bunch of money at the problem. I don't want to derail the thread in that direction so I'll leave it here. big scary monsters fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Nov 8, 2016 |
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Nov 8, 2016 04:54
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