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> I feel like this country owes blacks (as a group) probably a few billion dollars in some sense. This might come as a surprise to you...but this country has e

> I feel like this country owes blacks (as a group) probably a few billion dollars in some sense. This might come as a surprise to you...but this country has exploited many people (immigrants, non-whites, etc.) over the course of history - if the country had to pay for all the wrongs, we'd be bankrupt.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
Or maybe women, people of color and others would be more comfortable and a small subset of ultra wealthy folks would merely be rich.
- ra1n85 9y ago
  >and a small subset of ultra wealthy folks would merely be rich. Do you genuinely believe this to be a possible outcome? The incentives for those with wealth, and very real political power, would be to rest any financial burden upon the tax payer. We have sent thousands overseas to die or be horribly maimed forever, and then burdened their children with the bill for the whole endeavor - what would be different here?
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Slavery was outlawed. That was likely unimaginable at one time. Women eventually gained the right to vote. That was a long, hard battle too. Average education level of women in the era of Lincoln was elementary school age. Slaves were forbidden from being allowed to learn to read. I have read that in terms of relative wealth, our first president was the richest president we have had. So it seems to me that we have made progress on that at the societal level already. It doesn't have to happen, say, in the span of a year or two for me to think it worth espousing. I am an old woman who raised two special needs kids. I am okay with taking a longer view than the next 5 minutes, so to speak.
- Buge 9y ago
  Gender seems different than race. With race the inequality is passed on through the generations. You inherit the discrimination against your ancestors. Gender inequality is not really passed on, because whether someone is rich or poor, male or female, they have a 50% chance of having a son or daughter.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    I am a woman and was one of the top 3 students of my graduating high school class. I never got the two career couple lifestyle I grew up believing would happen. A friend of the family once asked me why the hell I failed to be a self made millionaire by age 30. The ugly history of people of color outlined in one of the links in this discussion has some things in common with the outcomes women have. But I don't really feel like arguing it. This is an overwhelmingly male forum. I increasingly feel it is pointless to try to give a female point of view here. It will be downvoted, dismissed and attacked. If The resist, I will be accused of behaving badly while the insults to me are treated like reasonable statements that I am simply overreacting to. So, suffice it say, I don't agree with you. If you were correct, then women should have economic parity with men. They don't. The exact details may vary a bit, but the feminization of poverty is a phrase in our lexicon for a reason. When people talk like it isn't real, I never know quite what to think of that. I have a really hard time accepting that people sincerely don't see something so obvious for which there is overwhelming evidence. Yet I also realize it is obvious to me because I happen to be female. There are lots of details about the Black experience that I am inadequately aware of. So that gives me pause when it comes to trying to assess why men say such things. But I feel pretty worn down and hopeless of late.
    - erohead 9y ago
      I believe you. I'm sorry you feel like your opinion isn't valued on HN. I certainly do appreciate it.
    - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
      > If you were correct, then women should have economic parity with men. They don't. Every statistic I've seen seems to indicate that modulo life choices that seem correlated with gender (ie, on average women prefer different things to men, though individuals vary greatly), there is economic parity between men and women (in most developed nations, but I'm most familiar with the US). There are some very real issues with the direction that women are steered by society, but there are also some real issues that men face (eg, school, legal system, etc). However, there's also a non-trivial number of women (in places like the US) who blame sexism for the consequences of choices they've had to make in life between things that they want, and seem to treat it as an affront to their gender that they're not treated as catered princesses by the world -- getting to have every want. And then hide that behind talking about "economic parity". > The exact details may vary a bit, but the feminization of poverty is a phrase in our lexicon for a reason. Doesn't this mostly have to do with poor women being forced to carry the economic burden of many children in developing nations? It's also definitely not a common term to use -- which makes me think that you likely have a biased view from hanging out in a very polarized, niche crowd. > But I feel pretty worn down and hopeless of late. As a fellow human, are you sure you're not inventing a narrative that's worse than the truth, and then stressing yourself out battling phantoms? (This is something I do all the time, on issues small to large.) There are real issues in the world -- quite serious ones, at that. But modern charities and other social purpose organizations deploy weaponized psychology meant to send you into an emotional state in order to boost their funding (or membership, but really power), and the consequence of everyone doing this "for the right reasons" is a completely toxic society, polarized in righteous anger over every issue to the point its emotionally burnt out and fragmented. This habit has even been exploited by foreign states to attack the nation. (True for virtually every country, and definitely all of the European and "Western" ones.) This is quite possibly the best of times on any of those issues, so instead of worrying about how you're going to feed every woman in Africa with too many kids (hint: you won't), just try to focus on what's the next small step that you can take to fix one of the issue a little. Then do that. That's something you can actually do right now, won't exhaust you even if you have to do it for the rest of your life, and would completely fix the problem if everyone would just stop panicking and do that.
throwaway0255 9y ago
> ...but this country Every country. Every time this conversation happens, everyone acts like the US is the only country that was ever involved in the slave trade. Almost every nation, including majority-black nations, were guilty of this. Many of them are still engaging in it to this day (there are more slaves right now than there have ever been at any point in history, and relatively few of them are in the US). What's most exceptional about the US on this subject isn't that we have exploitation and slavery in our history, but that we fought a civil war (with more casualties than any other war in American history) in part to end slavery and that today we're further ahead of virtually every major nation on the planet in terms of race and gender equality.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  To be fair, the slave markets most in the news today only exist because USA killed Qaddafi after we made a deal to leave him alone once he gave up all his bad weapons. Yes, I know, he was a bad guy so the good guys (who the hell is that?) didn't have to be ethical toward him, by good old American cartoon-character standards. However, he wasn't selling thousands of migrants into slavery so that's something. Also, his continued existence after giving up his weapons had inspired others like DPRK to slow their nuclear roll. After we shoved a bayonet up his ass, they changed their minds...
  - Armisael16 9y ago
    That really isn’t what’s happening here at all, in several ways. The slave markets are the result of economic migrants from farther south attempting to get to Europe. Libya is one of the easier crossing points, so they go there. The EU realized this and is paying a lot of people a lot of money to make sure that the migrants can’t cross the Mediterranean. If Qaddafi were still alive we would at best see exactly the same problem in a different country. Even really basic research into what’s happening there reveals this stuff. People just seem to assume that things are shitty because the West invaded, and don’t bother looking any deeper. Here’s one (of a great many potential) source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/africa/slave-market-libya-european-migrants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/africa/slave-market...
dillondoyle 9y ago
Way more than a few billion. That's nothing. Bill gates could write that check and not sweat.
Kluny 9y ago
That's the point, isn't it? So many of the problems that currently exist are the result of those bills arriving.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Or maybe women, people of color and others would be more comfortable and a small subset of ultra wealthy folks would merely be rich.

ra1n85 9y ago
>and a small subset of ultra wealthy folks would merely be rich. Do you genuinely believe this to be a possible outcome? The incentives for those with wealth, and very real political power, would be to rest any financial burden upon the tax payer. We have sent thousands overseas to die or be horribly maimed forever, and then burdened their children with the bill for the whole endeavor - what would be different here?
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  Slavery was outlawed. That was likely unimaginable at one time. Women eventually gained the right to vote. That was a long, hard battle too. Average education level of women in the era of Lincoln was elementary school age. Slaves were forbidden from being allowed to learn to read. I have read that in terms of relative wealth, our first president was the richest president we have had. So it seems to me that we have made progress on that at the societal level already. It doesn't have to happen, say, in the span of a year or two for me to think it worth espousing. I am an old woman who raised two special needs kids. I am okay with taking a longer view than the next 5 minutes, so to speak.
Buge 9y ago
Gender seems different than race. With race the inequality is passed on through the generations. You inherit the discrimination against your ancestors. Gender inequality is not really passed on, because whether someone is rich or poor, male or female, they have a 50% chance of having a son or daughter.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  I am a woman and was one of the top 3 students of my graduating high school class. I never got the two career couple lifestyle I grew up believing would happen. A friend of the family once asked me why the hell I failed to be a self made millionaire by age 30. The ugly history of people of color outlined in one of the links in this discussion has some things in common with the outcomes women have. But I don't really feel like arguing it. This is an overwhelmingly male forum. I increasingly feel it is pointless to try to give a female point of view here. It will be downvoted, dismissed and attacked. If The resist, I will be accused of behaving badly while the insults to me are treated like reasonable statements that I am simply overreacting to. So, suffice it say, I don't agree with you. If you were correct, then women should have economic parity with men. They don't. The exact details may vary a bit, but the feminization of poverty is a phrase in our lexicon for a reason. When people talk like it isn't real, I never know quite what to think of that. I have a really hard time accepting that people sincerely don't see something so obvious for which there is overwhelming evidence. Yet I also realize it is obvious to me because I happen to be female. There are lots of details about the Black experience that I am inadequately aware of. So that gives me pause when it comes to trying to assess why men say such things. But I feel pretty worn down and hopeless of late.
  - erohead 9y ago
    I believe you. I'm sorry you feel like your opinion isn't valued on HN. I certainly do appreciate it.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    > If you were correct, then women should have economic parity with men. They don't. Every statistic I've seen seems to indicate that modulo life choices that seem correlated with gender (ie, on average women prefer different things to men, though individuals vary greatly), there is economic parity between men and women (in most developed nations, but I'm most familiar with the US). There are some very real issues with the direction that women are steered by society, but there are also some real issues that men face (eg, school, legal system, etc). However, there's also a non-trivial number of women (in places like the US) who blame sexism for the consequences of choices they've had to make in life between things that they want, and seem to treat it as an affront to their gender that they're not treated as catered princesses by the world -- getting to have every want. And then hide that behind talking about "economic parity". > The exact details may vary a bit, but the feminization of poverty is a phrase in our lexicon for a reason. Doesn't this mostly have to do with poor women being forced to carry the economic burden of many children in developing nations? It's also definitely not a common term to use -- which makes me think that you likely have a biased view from hanging out in a very polarized, niche crowd. > But I feel pretty worn down and hopeless of late. As a fellow human, are you sure you're not inventing a narrative that's worse than the truth, and then stressing yourself out battling phantoms? (This is something I do all the time, on issues small to large.) There are real issues in the world -- quite serious ones, at that. But modern charities and other social purpose organizations deploy weaponized psychology meant to send you into an emotional state in order to boost their funding (or membership, but really power), and the consequence of everyone doing this "for the right reasons" is a completely toxic society, polarized in righteous anger over every issue to the point its emotionally burnt out and fragmented. This habit has even been exploited by foreign states to attack the nation. (True for virtually every country, and definitely all of the European and "Western" ones.) This is quite possibly the best of times on any of those issues, so instead of worrying about how you're going to feed every woman in Africa with too many kids (hint: you won't), just try to focus on what's the next small step that you can take to fix one of the issue a little. Then do that. That's something you can actually do right now, won't exhaust you even if you have to do it for the rest of your life, and would completely fix the problem if everyone would just stop panicking and do that.

throwaway0255 9y ago

> ...but this country Every country. Every time this conversation happens, everyone acts like the US is the only country that was ever involved in the slave trade. Almost every nation, including majority-black nations, were guilty of this. Many of them are still engaging in it to this day (there are more slaves right now than there have ever been at any point in history, and relatively few of them are in the US). What's most exceptional about the US on this subject isn't that we have exploitation and slavery in our history, but that we fought a civil war (with more casualties than any other war in American history) in part to end slavery and that today we're further ahead of virtually every major nation on the planet in terms of race and gender equality.

jessaustin 9y ago
To be fair, the slave markets most in the news today only exist because USA killed Qaddafi after we made a deal to leave him alone once he gave up all his bad weapons. Yes, I know, he was a bad guy so the good guys (who the hell is that?) didn't have to be ethical toward him, by good old American cartoon-character standards. However, he wasn't selling thousands of migrants into slavery so that's something. Also, his continued existence after giving up his weapons had inspired others like DPRK to slow their nuclear roll. After we shoved a bayonet up his ass, they changed their minds...
- Armisael16 9y ago
  That really isn’t what’s happening here at all, in several ways. The slave markets are the result of economic migrants from farther south attempting to get to Europe. Libya is one of the easier crossing points, so they go there. The EU realized this and is paying a lot of people a lot of money to make sure that the migrants can’t cross the Mediterranean. If Qaddafi were still alive we would at best see exactly the same problem in a different country. Even really basic research into what’s happening there reveals this stuff. People just seem to assume that things are shitty because the West invaded, and don’t bother looking any deeper. Here’s one (of a great many potential) source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/africa/slave-market-libya-european-migrants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/africa/slave-market...

dillondoyle 9y ago

Way more than a few billion. That's nothing. Bill gates could write that check and not sweat.

Kluny 9y ago

That's the point, isn't it? So many of the problems that currently exist are the result of those bills arriving.