27 ms·

Do reparations for slavery even make logical sense? Please cut me some slack here, by the nature of the world we live in, I have not uttered these thoughts to a

Do reparations for slavery even make logical sense? Please cut me some slack here, by the nature of the world we live in, I have not uttered these thoughts to another human being, and they might have obvious flaws. It's tough when you can't talk about ideas out of fear of the consequences. I think nobody argues that it's a vile, morally repugnant thing to enslave another human being. But that was a long time ago, and all those slaves and the people who enslaved them are all dead. The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved. How do you make an argument that those descendants are victims in need of reparations? No crime was committed against them directly, and they seem to have benefited from the crimes committed against their ancestors. I must stress that this is not in any way excusing or justifying the wrongs that occurred. But how would you make an argument for reparations, given how things turned out?

eli_gottlieb 3y ago
> Do reparations for slavery even make logical sense? Yes. The slaves did labor. That labor demands wages. The fact that the formerly enslaved also benefited from public goods to which all citizens had access does not pay down the debt owned to them for their labor.
- qwytw 3y ago
  I guess a better question is whether reparation paid out to 5th+ generation descendants of slaves make sense. How do you even implement that practically?
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    Figure out how much the labor was worth. Throw on punitive damages for having enslaved them against their will their entire lives. Now calculate for having invested that money at the time that slavery ended. That's a good STARTING point. Japanese-American citizens got locked up for a few years during WWII and the result was that Reagan signed a bill allowing for their descendants to receive $20K for each incarcerated person. Now consider how many LIFETIMES were wasted in slavery. Turns out that the same people who always complain about others having their hands out are just upset at any situation that doesn't personally enrich them.
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > their descendants Or themselves since plenty of the victims were alive. This was a single event that lasted ~4 years with comparatively very good records. Slavery lasted for several hundreds years, there are not records for most slaves and even cases where they can identified good luck tracking down all of their descendants. That's several magnitudes more complex, to an incomparable extent. > Figure out how much the labor was worth So do you need to find specific ancestors who were slaves and the payout would be based on how long did they work for? So... somebody who's great-great-great-great-grandfather died when he was 72 years old would receive twice as much than someone who's ancestor only lived to 36? Of course you'll be especially lucky if you can find any ancestors who were shipped to the America in the 1600s. I bet slaveholders kept perfect record, especially back in those days. Then you have to figure out how to split the payout between 50 to 1000 (un)verifiably descendants of the same individual or will be on first come first serve basis? All this just seems so bizarrely impractical that I can't believe anyone would seriously suggest it after spending more than 2-5 minutes thinking about how would it work.
      - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
        Your argument is that we should never do anything because attempting to do the right thing to people who have had their pasts and futures stolen is hard. Meanwhile we've got censuses going back hundreds of years. Do the math. It's not that difficult to come up with a minimum standard unless you're in the "do nothing" category.
        slashdev 3y ago
        I think it would be extremely impractical and impossible to apply fairly. Maybe that’s not an argument by itself for doing nothing.
        qwytw 3y ago
        I also have some more "ideological" objections. .e.g why don't we just focus on creating opportunities for all presently disadvantaged people regardless of who their ancestors 150-300 years ago were? > is hard Not hard, objectively infeasible to accomplish in a sufficiently equitable way. > we've got censuses going back hundreds of years. Do the math What math? And what would you do with those censuses? There are no individual records... Could you at the very try least try clearly define who would receive these "reparations"? Would any descendants of black slaves or enslaved Native Americans (or are we not thinking about the natives at all?) get the same share? Would it depend on the proportion of your ancestors who were enslaved? Would your current financial circumstances affect this? Would you have to do a DNA test measuring the proportion of your genome coming from Africa, Europe etc. and use that to calculate the payout?
  - Ygg2 3y ago
    It's a great distraction. It's like Eris' golden apple. Very appealing but impossible to fulfill. Gets people really against each other, and away from your profits.
themitigating 3y ago
The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved Do you mean each successive generation of blacks were wealthier than the previous? What about a comparison to the average white person? There were many laws that existed well after slavery that could prevent a black person from succeeding. That's my justification for affirmative action (not reparations). Should it last forever? No but it hasn't been that many generations since the civil rights act
- slashdev 3y ago
  > Do you mean each successive generation of blacks were wealthier than the previous? What about a comparison to the average white person? No I mean the average African-American is easily over 10x wealthier, and has far better opportunities than the average citizen of the countries that now inhabit the lands they originally came from. Were it not for slavery, again as abhorrent as it was, they'd be a lot worse off today. > here were many laws that existed well after slavery that could prevent a black person from succeeding. Yes, that's a fact.
  - nomat 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - slashdev 3y ago
      No. You can't argue with what I said, it's a fact. Facts just are. You can argue about what it means if you want, or how it makes you feel.
      - nomat 3y ago
        you keep saying that but your set of facts is clearly missing many pieces (you admit as much) so to keep repeating it doesn't make it any more true and is really revealing a lot.
        3y ago
jmerz 3y ago
So there's actually a lot of academic debate on the merits of reparations, and exactly what and how much reparations should be. A very oversimplified pro argument: if it wasn't for slavery, these families would have generational wealth and better social situations. African Americans in the US ARE disproportionately lower wealth/income and this has CLEAR historical origins. The oversimplified con argument: Okay, but if you come from a wealthy African American family, why should you have a leg up over a poor (or otherwise more disadvantaged) white student? What about an immigrant, who didn't benefit from slavery at all? Fundamentally there's a huge swath of different injustices across society, and we obviously can't fix all of them at once, so a big challenge in this sort of debate is how you slice the injustices and how you prioritize fixing them.
- slashdev 3y ago
  I don't think it's possible to do that, in general. Anyone can find an injustice if they look hard enough. I have some ancestors that fled religious persecution in France. Many died. The ones that fled gave up everything. Should I play the victim card and petition France to restore the land my ancestors were chased off of? History is pretty ugly, I'm sure everyone could find a justified grievance if they tried hard enough. I think the logical thing is to focus on equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. What things can we do to distribute opportunity more equally in society? Things like free post-secondary education, free health care would seem to be a better use of resources.
  - nomat 3y ago
    you know the reason that we don't have those things is precisely because politicians campaigned on the narrative that black people (welfare queens, etc) would unfairly take advantage of a system like that and they won. So it seems like you understand what needs to be done but what not what the blocking issues are.
    - tadfisher 3y ago
      To reinforce your point, those same politicians are fighting against student loan forgiveness. This is telling; to them, only suffering under the burden of non-dischargeable debt entitles you to the same opportunities as a wealthy family.
inconceivable 3y ago
nobody gives a shit about the logical arguments. it's social maneuvering for power and money. in other words, it's politics. the sooner you understand that people are looking out for their own monetary interests the less confused you will be about the whole thing.
jonathanlb 3y ago
It's true that enslaved people and their enslavers are no longer alive, but the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of which have historical roots in the institution of slavery. Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development. Furthermore, it risks minimizing the experience of ongoing racial discrimination faced by Black Americans. The idea of reparations isn't necessarily about compensating individuals for specific harm done to them, but about a society taking responsibility for historic wrongs and making a concerted effort to rectify those systemic inequalities. Reparations could take many forms, including investment in education, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunities for communities disproportionately affected by racial discrimination.
- JamesBarney 3y ago
  Why do you think Africa would have been significantly better off without the slave trade? I really don't see how the slave trade could lead to a 95% reduction in GDP over 200 years later.
- slashdev 3y ago
  > the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of which have historical roots in the institution of slavery. This is a fact. > Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development. Maybe, don't forget the slave trade enriched tribes inhabiting those regions. It was Africans enslaving other Africans and selling them (at least to my limited understanding on the subject, which may be wrong.) > Reparations could take many forms, including investment in education, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunities for communities disproportionately affected by racial discrimination. Why make it about race? Just make those things available to all disadvantaged individuals, period.
nomat 3y ago
I think the numbers tell a convincing story. The median net worth of Americans in 2019 was $121,760. In 2019, the median net worth of white Americans was $189,100. The median net worth of Black Americans was $24,100 I forget how to link on hn but it's from the motley fool.
- macintux 3y ago
  You can simply paste the link into your comment.
- slashdev 3y ago
  Yes, that is true (I don't know about the exact numbers, but there's no question there's a difference.) Asian Americans are even better off, but why should they have to pay for reparations? Their ancestors weren't involved in slavery in the US. Hispanic Americans are also pretty poor (more so than African-Americas if memory serves), but they weren't disadvantaged by slavery, should they have to chip in for reparations? Southerners were clearly disadvantaged by fighting and losing the civil war, does the North owe them anything? What about the survivors and next of kin of the soldiers that put it all on the line for their country in Iraq and Afghanistan only to find out the government lied to them and everyone else about why they were there? Everybody could find a grievance if they look hard enough. Which ones do we try to address?
  - l33t233372 3y ago
    I agree exactly. And what about people who’s families moved here in the last 140 years. They surely didn’t own slaves. And who even gets reparations? If someone’s great great great grandmother was a black slave but every other relative was white, does this person get reparations?
  - tadfisher 3y ago
    Honestly, who gives a shit? We are a society, not a bunch of White people and Asian people and Black people and Hispanic people. A functioning society would work to fix those numbers, because it's absolutely a problem that needs to be fixed, not a punishment for being a member of a "successful" ethnicity.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
Are they wealthier and better off than the people whose ancestors stole their labor? No? Then we need reparations.
agentgumshoe 3y ago
I think the key question is: do reparations actually change anything? You give one generation a 'payout' so the politicians can wipe their hands of the issue, then what, are we back to the same point with the next generation? What about those old enough where the handout won't do anything for them? How do reparations actually move the relationship forwards? Handing out money does not solve anything fundamentally. They need to focus on understanding and building a positive future for all, which means working towards ensuring legally and policy-wise there is no remaining racial bias or discrimination (equal opportunity for all - not outcome) and working away from holding the grudges of previous generations.
snotrockets 3y ago
> The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved This is such a loud dog whistle, even deaf dogs can hear it.

eli_gottlieb 3y ago

> Do reparations for slavery even make logical sense? Yes. The slaves did labor. That labor demands wages. The fact that the formerly enslaved also benefited from public goods to which all citizens had access does not pay down the debt owned to them for their labor.

qwytw 3y ago
I guess a better question is whether reparation paid out to 5th+ generation descendants of slaves make sense. How do you even implement that practically?
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Figure out how much the labor was worth. Throw on punitive damages for having enslaved them against their will their entire lives. Now calculate for having invested that money at the time that slavery ended. That's a good STARTING point. Japanese-American citizens got locked up for a few years during WWII and the result was that Reagan signed a bill allowing for their descendants to receive $20K for each incarcerated person. Now consider how many LIFETIMES were wasted in slavery. Turns out that the same people who always complain about others having their hands out are just upset at any situation that doesn't personally enrich them.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > their descendants Or themselves since plenty of the victims were alive. This was a single event that lasted ~4 years with comparatively very good records. Slavery lasted for several hundreds years, there are not records for most slaves and even cases where they can identified good luck tracking down all of their descendants. That's several magnitudes more complex, to an incomparable extent. > Figure out how much the labor was worth So do you need to find specific ancestors who were slaves and the payout would be based on how long did they work for? So... somebody who's great-great-great-great-grandfather died when he was 72 years old would receive twice as much than someone who's ancestor only lived to 36? Of course you'll be especially lucky if you can find any ancestors who were shipped to the America in the 1600s. I bet slaveholders kept perfect record, especially back in those days. Then you have to figure out how to split the payout between 50 to 1000 (un)verifiably descendants of the same individual or will be on first come first serve basis? All this just seems so bizarrely impractical that I can't believe anyone would seriously suggest it after spending more than 2-5 minutes thinking about how would it work.
    - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      Your argument is that we should never do anything because attempting to do the right thing to people who have had their pasts and futures stolen is hard. Meanwhile we've got censuses going back hundreds of years. Do the math. It's not that difficult to come up with a minimum standard unless you're in the "do nothing" category.
      - slashdev 3y ago
        I think it would be extremely impractical and impossible to apply fairly. Maybe that’s not an argument by itself for doing nothing.
      - qwytw 3y ago
        I also have some more "ideological" objections. .e.g why don't we just focus on creating opportunities for all presently disadvantaged people regardless of who their ancestors 150-300 years ago were? > is hard Not hard, objectively infeasible to accomplish in a sufficiently equitable way. > we've got censuses going back hundreds of years. Do the math What math? And what would you do with those censuses? There are no individual records... Could you at the very try least try clearly define who would receive these "reparations"? Would any descendants of black slaves or enslaved Native Americans (or are we not thinking about the natives at all?) get the same share? Would it depend on the proportion of your ancestors who were enslaved? Would your current financial circumstances affect this? Would you have to do a DNA test measuring the proportion of your genome coming from Africa, Europe etc. and use that to calculate the payout?
- Ygg2 3y ago
  It's a great distraction. It's like Eris' golden apple. Very appealing but impossible to fulfill. Gets people really against each other, and away from your profits.

themitigating 3y ago

The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved Do you mean each successive generation of blacks were wealthier than the previous? What about a comparison to the average white person? There were many laws that existed well after slavery that could prevent a black person from succeeding. That's my justification for affirmative action (not reparations). Should it last forever? No but it hasn't been that many generations since the civil rights act

slashdev 3y ago
> Do you mean each successive generation of blacks were wealthier than the previous? What about a comparison to the average white person? No I mean the average African-American is easily over 10x wealthier, and has far better opportunities than the average citizen of the countries that now inhabit the lands they originally came from. Were it not for slavery, again as abhorrent as it was, they'd be a lot worse off today. > here were many laws that existed well after slavery that could prevent a black person from succeeding. Yes, that's a fact.
- nomat 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - slashdev 3y ago
    No. You can't argue with what I said, it's a fact. Facts just are. You can argue about what it means if you want, or how it makes you feel.
    - nomat 3y ago
      you keep saying that but your set of facts is clearly missing many pieces (you admit as much) so to keep repeating it doesn't make it any more true and is really revealing a lot.
      - 3y ago

jmerz 3y ago

So there's actually a lot of academic debate on the merits of reparations, and exactly what and how much reparations should be. A very oversimplified pro argument: if it wasn't for slavery, these families would have generational wealth and better social situations. African Americans in the US ARE disproportionately lower wealth/income and this has CLEAR historical origins. The oversimplified con argument: Okay, but if you come from a wealthy African American family, why should you have a leg up over a poor (or otherwise more disadvantaged) white student? What about an immigrant, who didn't benefit from slavery at all? Fundamentally there's a huge swath of different injustices across society, and we obviously can't fix all of them at once, so a big challenge in this sort of debate is how you slice the injustices and how you prioritize fixing them.

slashdev 3y ago
I don't think it's possible to do that, in general. Anyone can find an injustice if they look hard enough. I have some ancestors that fled religious persecution in France. Many died. The ones that fled gave up everything. Should I play the victim card and petition France to restore the land my ancestors were chased off of? History is pretty ugly, I'm sure everyone could find a justified grievance if they tried hard enough. I think the logical thing is to focus on equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. What things can we do to distribute opportunity more equally in society? Things like free post-secondary education, free health care would seem to be a better use of resources.
- nomat 3y ago
  you know the reason that we don't have those things is precisely because politicians campaigned on the narrative that black people (welfare queens, etc) would unfairly take advantage of a system like that and they won. So it seems like you understand what needs to be done but what not what the blocking issues are.
  - tadfisher 3y ago
    To reinforce your point, those same politicians are fighting against student loan forgiveness. This is telling; to them, only suffering under the burden of non-dischargeable debt entitles you to the same opportunities as a wealthy family.

inconceivable 3y ago

nobody gives a shit about the logical arguments. it's social maneuvering for power and money. in other words, it's politics. the sooner you understand that people are looking out for their own monetary interests the less confused you will be about the whole thing.

jonathanlb 3y ago

It's true that enslaved people and their enslavers are no longer alive, but the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of which have historical roots in the institution of slavery. Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development. Furthermore, it risks minimizing the experience of ongoing racial discrimination faced by Black Americans. The idea of reparations isn't necessarily about compensating individuals for specific harm done to them, but about a society taking responsibility for historic wrongs and making a concerted effort to rectify those systemic inequalities. Reparations could take many forms, including investment in education, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunities for communities disproportionately affected by racial discrimination.

JamesBarney 3y ago
Why do you think Africa would have been significantly better off without the slave trade? I really don't see how the slave trade could lead to a 95% reduction in GDP over 200 years later.
slashdev 3y ago
> the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of which have historical roots in the institution of slavery. This is a fact. > Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development. Maybe, don't forget the slave trade enriched tribes inhabiting those regions. It was Africans enslaving other Africans and selling them (at least to my limited understanding on the subject, which may be wrong.) > Reparations could take many forms, including investment in education, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunities for communities disproportionately affected by racial discrimination. Why make it about race? Just make those things available to all disadvantaged individuals, period.

nomat 3y ago

I think the numbers tell a convincing story. The median net worth of Americans in 2019 was $121,760. In 2019, the median net worth of white Americans was $189,100. The median net worth of Black Americans was $24,100 I forget how to link on hn but it's from the motley fool.

macintux 3y ago
You can simply paste the link into your comment.
slashdev 3y ago
Yes, that is true (I don't know about the exact numbers, but there's no question there's a difference.) Asian Americans are even better off, but why should they have to pay for reparations? Their ancestors weren't involved in slavery in the US. Hispanic Americans are also pretty poor (more so than African-Americas if memory serves), but they weren't disadvantaged by slavery, should they have to chip in for reparations? Southerners were clearly disadvantaged by fighting and losing the civil war, does the North owe them anything? What about the survivors and next of kin of the soldiers that put it all on the line for their country in Iraq and Afghanistan only to find out the government lied to them and everyone else about why they were there? Everybody could find a grievance if they look hard enough. Which ones do we try to address?
- l33t233372 3y ago
  I agree exactly. And what about people who’s families moved here in the last 140 years. They surely didn’t own slaves. And who even gets reparations? If someone’s great great great grandmother was a black slave but every other relative was white, does this person get reparations?
- tadfisher 3y ago
  Honestly, who gives a shit? We are a society, not a bunch of White people and Asian people and Black people and Hispanic people. A functioning society would work to fix those numbers, because it's absolutely a problem that needs to be fixed, not a punishment for being a member of a "successful" ethnicity.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago

Are they wealthier and better off than the people whose ancestors stole their labor? No? Then we need reparations.

agentgumshoe 3y ago

I think the key question is: do reparations actually change anything? You give one generation a 'payout' so the politicians can wipe their hands of the issue, then what, are we back to the same point with the next generation? What about those old enough where the handout won't do anything for them? How do reparations actually move the relationship forwards? Handing out money does not solve anything fundamentally. They need to focus on understanding and building a positive future for all, which means working towards ensuring legally and policy-wise there is no remaining racial bias or discrimination (equal opportunity for all - not outcome) and working away from holding the grudges of previous generations.

snotrockets 3y ago

> The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved This is such a loud dog whistle, even deaf dogs can hear it.