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> If you're just going to castigate and isolate people who have different view than you (but maybe have the same goal as you), what's the point? Certainly not
by dnomad 8y ago
> If you're just going to castigate and isolate people who have different view than you (but maybe have the same goal as you), what's the point?
Certainly not my intention. I apologize. I try to separate the ideas from the person. Alas, it's an emotional topic. It's interesting to note that the proposition, "racial crimes require racial justice" is not on its face so controversial. If the victims are all of one race then surely any legitimate response would be similarly focused, right? But as you point out such race-based thinking frightens and divides people. But, I maintain, these feelings of fear and division are not sufficient to deny the cause of justice. I belabor this point precisely because very often in modern democracies -- though it's true of all governments -- the majority will do not do the right thing. In the face of great injustice there will always be calls to accept the political reality. Such calls are calls to accept injustice. The great injustices of slavery and systemic racism were not eliminated by accepting political realities. It's doubtful that any great injustice can be eliminated in such a manner.
- weberc2 8y agoReparations is an odd concept for me. How do you compute them? Intuitively, you would look at the wealth of descendants of slavery and compare it to the wealth of the countries from which their ancestors came; however, I’m pretty sure that calculus would leave black Americans indebted, which seems ridiculous. Maybe for all it’s horrors and atrocities, slavery had a net positive effect on black Americans even if there are racial disparities among Americans? If that’s true, does that mean economic justice (which I understand to be the point of reparations) has been served already?
- aaron-lebo 8y agoNo worries. It is an emotional and complicated topic as you said. We should not accept inequality nor injustice. We've just gotta find the best way (or ways) of combating it, which we may disagree about. I linked an HBO doc about King in another comment. It's really interesting to see how strongly other civil rights leaders disagreed with his view on nonviolence, so there are probably many valid approaches. If that kind of action was possible 50 years ago, certainly there's a lot of possibilities today.