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You can give poor people money, but that has nothing to do with black people. Black people aren't asking for money because they're poor, they're asking for mone

• lotsofpulp 3y ago
  No one is going to be able to go back in time and change history. Getting into the weeds of defining who is and is not deserving of wealth redistribution is just going to waste society’s resources by pitting tribe versus tribe, and ironically mostly helps those at the top. “Poor” is easier to define and rectify, and at the end of the day, I think the goal should be to provide a floor to members of society and maximize opportunities to all.
  • skippyboxedhero 3y ago
    I would look at what happened in South Africa. An explicit part of Mandela's agenda was setting an end point for the discussions around what happened during apartheid. South Africa is also a good example of what happens if people decide to go back and reopen that box (and tbf, when it came to money the initial movement was quite short-lived, the current President of South Africa got very rich very quickly).
  • cloverich 3y ago
    You dont need to go back in time or define who is and isnt to blame. A few simple tax based measures (ex: free college for black people for 200 years) and genuine atonement (ex: replace civil war relics that downplay southern role in slavery and its associated atrocities) and wed be light years ahead of where we are today. Staple an endpoint on it then move on. The trick is doing SOMETHING meaningful and country wide is whats missing.
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Why restrict it to black people? Then you have to get into defining black and not black? Instead, just offer free college to everyone.
• dragonwriter 3y ago
  If we neutralize generational economic disadvantage, we also eliminate any merit to the claim to compensation for economic injury to past generations. I would rather no one bear the economic burden of the myriad of diverse injustices committed by our society in the past than that only specifically the descendants of those enslaved in the past be freed of the economic harm of that particular injustice, even if its effects could be fairly isolated, computed, and compensated.
• JamesBarney 3y ago
  Why do you think the country is richer because of slavery? I'd argue that slavery made a small % of influential plantation owners very rich at the expense of the suffering of a large number of people, and less importantly the economy. Places in the U.S. that didn't have slaves are richer today than places that did.
  • skippyboxedhero 3y ago
    Slave societies are generally poor. Africa's economy was largely slave-based until relatively recently (and still is the only place where you have active slave markets, the reason why slaves came from Africa was because it was the only place where there was a local slave industry, largely due to the trade into the Middle East), Brazil's slave trade was 10x larger than the US (the US never actually had a large first-generation slave population because mortality was so low and fertility so high), Caribbean the same, the Middle East the same, India the same. There is a lot of research on this subject but it is worth remembering that slaves were capital that had a price too. So it wasn't "free labour" in any sense. Most plantation owners didn't end up rich either, there were economies of scale and the price of cotton collapsed over the 19th century. Over the long-term though, slave labour has typically inhibited economic development.
    • smileysteve 3y ago
      In part because when labor is free you have less incentive to innovate; American slavery in the U.S. South was threatened more by the invention of the cotton gin and the global floor for cotton prices dropping. This was diversified away somewhat with Tobacco, but still a major factor in the economics of slavery. The sad part is that the US South was fearful of this economic reality - up to runaway slaves and illegal slave trade decimating the profit margins - which meant the powder keg for revolt was ready. But as we can see from the Southern "Tax" men stealing from the citizenry, the French less incentivised because of global cotton prices; the future in American slavery was futile.
      • philwelch 3y ago
• btilly 3y ago
  Except that the country wasn't built on that labor. It was built on agriculture and industrialization, mostly in non-slave states. And most of cotton generated by slaves went to Britain, whose textile mills also captured most of the profits off of that industry. Should the USA therefore demand reparations from Britain? But we could go the other route, and tax the descendants of the slave owners. Unfortunately, the largest and most easily identifiable group of descendants of slave owners are blacks themselves! (You can thank a common practice of raping slaves for a lot of that.) The best solution that we ever came up with for this mess was school busing. Since we got rid of it, the black-white income gap has been rising. But nobody wants to talk about it. Instead, let's focus on the token gesture of affirmative action, which never made a difference in the lives of most blacks. And which tainted the success of blacks whose success was not because of affirmative action.
  • greedo 3y ago
    There was a lot of slavery outside of the South, long before cotton became king.
    • monocasa 3y ago
      And even past that, the north greatly profited off of the South's use of slavery, to the point that NYC almost seceded with the south in solidarity (and protecting profits). https://www.historynet.com/the-day-new-york-tried-to-secede/ https://www.historynet.com/the-day-new-york-tried-to-secede/
• jstarfish 3y ago
  > they're asking for money because the country was built with their ancestors' uncompensated labor, it was entirely legal, If anything, this is an argument against reparations. Slavery has been around and accepted since before the Bible was written; we just keep finding ways to redefine it. An entire war was waged in which people died fighting to restore slaves' freedom. The debt has been paid. What reparations should be paid out for is the systemic effect of abusing the justice system to keep blacks in cages long after slavery ended. The war on drugs, the war on crime, the wrongful convictions from both, BLM...that much is extrajudicial and occurred in our lifetimes. They really get/got fucked by the system in a not-so-legal way, which merits correction.
  • MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    > If anything, this is an argument against reparations. Slavery has been around and accepted since before the Bible was written; we just keep finding ways to redefine it. An entire war was waged in which people died fighting to restore slaves' freedom. The debt has been paid. It does not matter how long slavery has been around. What matters is that the nation accrued gigantic collections of material wealth on the backs of American slaves. The American Civil War was NOT fought to restore the freedom of slaves. The Civil War was started because the South decided that they had "state's rights" to slavery. It was never fought to "end slavery." It was fought to put down a rebellion, the same way that Washington put down multiple rebellions during his tenure as POTUS. No debt has ever been paid. Those union soldiers were never fighting to end slavery. They were fighting to maintain the union. Those are fundamentally different objectives. Your perspective is not held by any scholarship on the matter past jingoistic elementary school textbooks.
    • jstarfish 3y ago
      There are even more cynical takes that could be explored (I, too, have been through the mental gymnastics of the liberal American college, an institution most welcoming of tolerance for race discussions), but the net result is that slaves were liberated and assimilated at the cost of significant loss of human life. That abolition of slavery aligned with other objectives does not negate my point that slaves benefited from the war, at the expense of people who didn't owe them anything. > The Civil War was started because the South decided that they had "state's rights" to slavery. It was never fought to "end slavery." It was fought to put down a rebellion, the same way that Washington put down multiple rebellions during his tenure as POTUS. You just made the argument that the South seceded over a single issue-- slavery. The North responded by declaring war on its own countrymen (it was the North that declared war, remember)-- and not because they wanted to keep slaves, but because the South was out of line. Were that the case, we could have avoided the bloodiest battle in American history by simply negotiating an outcome where the South was allowed to keep its slaves. We don't care about ending slavery, anyway, so who gives a fuck? Keep your goddamn slaves. Surrender your arms and apologize. At any point during the war, the Union could have ended it by making the same concession-- they didn't care about ending slavery, right? We'll just keep throwing our sons at the problem and have them shipped back in neat little boxes though. Once the rebellion was over, the Union could have packed up and went home and still let the South keep its slaves (because it was never about slavery!), or left the slaves to their fate as abandoned property, but instead they were emancipated and had their personhood recognized by the Union that you claim only got involved to big-dick the South. So the Civil War was entirely about preserving the ego of a bunch of Narcissists whose progressive social values and efforts in abolishing slavery in their own backyard somehow translated to a lack of interest in going to war with a clique of rebels that refused to adopt the same principles, until someone cucked Honest Abe. That much could not stand. We were totally cool with letting the South continue having slaves-- they just needed to be taught a lesson in respect. Come on. This isn't how politics or statecraft works. The situation is more nuanced than either of us is getting into (economic advantages to war, slavery, etc.) but this is more histrionic than history.
• Alupis 3y ago
  > Black people aren't asking for money because they're poor, they're asking for money because the country was built with their ancestors' uncompensated labor Then we'd have to address every single group that has been discriminated against in US history - including Japanese, Chinese, Irish, German, Mexican, and more. Turns out - every group has been discriminated against at some point in history. So the very idea of reparations for one particular discriminated group - out of all the rest - is racist in and of itself. Additionally, it solves nothing except give people a temporary shopping spree. You cannot right history's wrongs by throwing some money around. Let's, collectively, put on our grown-up pants and work together to ensure the future holds equal opportunity - not equal outcome - for all.
  • colmmacc 3y ago
    Neither the Japanese, Chinese, Irish, German, nor Mexicans were subject to chattel slavery; it's a unique heinous wrong in American history. Native Americans and First Nations peoples suffered genocide and civilizational erasure, another unique and heinous wrong in American history, and while there can be no adequate reparation, as Americans we are able to sustain several Government Bureaus and Departments, and accommodate Tribal Autonomy, Courts, Casinos, and more as some small measure of respect. Reparations can be non-monetary too.
    • Alupis 3y ago
      > another unique and heinous wrong in American history This is staggeringly incorrect. > we are able to sustain several Government Bureaus and Departments, and accommodate Tribal Autonomy, Courts, Casinos, and more as some small measure of respect In no small way are these "tokens" responsible for the unacceptable conditions many native Americans endure today. In so many ways, these tokens turned out to be the most cruel act against these people. > Reparations can be non-monetary too They are always monetary demands. There is no reparation available that restores any injustice, nor does not punish those who had absolutely nothing to do with any injustice perpetuated in history. Reparations are about buying votes, exactly in the same way dangling student debt relief buys votes. It's pretty simple... and in non-trivial ways is discriminatory in itself.