How do we implement reparations?

[Doctor Cringelord]

This is one of those issues that seems clear cut but quickly becomes very complex when you think about how it might be implemented.

If you're African American but your ancestors came to the USA after slavery ended, do you still get reparations? Do we award reparations not just to descendants of slaves, but descendants of people who lived in regions with Jim Crow laws?

If you're of mixed racial ancestry, do we determine you get a different amount if, say, you are 1/4 African American and 3/4 European ancestry than someone who is 3/4 African American?

How do we determine who even qualifies? Do we implement mandatory DNA testing for all citizens, or would it only be for those people interested in seeking reparations?

Do we include other ethnic groups who have been mistreated, i.e. descendents of native americans, Italian americans, et al?

I'm not raising these questions in an attempt to discredit the argument for reparations, rather because I'm curious about the actual logistics of such a program. I generally support them for African americans and Native americans, just not sure how to get it done.

 

[Maou]

This is one of those issues that seems clear cut but quickly becomes very complex when you think about how it might be implemented.

If you're African American but your ancestors came to the USA after slavery ended, do you still get reparations? Do we award reparations not just to descendants of slaves, but descendants of people who lived in regions with Jim Crow laws?

If you're of mixed racial ancestry, do we determine you get a different amount if, say, you are 1/4 African American and 3/4 European ancestry than someone who is 3/4 African American?

How do we determine who even qualifies? Do we implement mandatory DNA testing for all citizens, or would it only be for those people interested in seeking reparations?

Do we include other ethnic groups who have been mistreated, i.e. descendents of native americans, Italian americans, et al?

I'm not raising these questions in an attempt to discredit the argument for reparations, rather because I'm curious about the actual logistics of such a program. I generally support them for African americans and Native americans, just not sure how to get it done.

Just make any British pay up. They've fucked up everyone at least once.

There are also African Americand who have never been slaves, or decendants of American slavery as well. How do you tell them apart?

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Just make any British pay up. They've fucked up everyone at least once.

There are also African Americand who have never been slaves, or decendants of American slavery as well. How do you tell them apart?

That is why I mentioned DNA testing. You can't do it just on census race data alone. But yeah, make the British, Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish pay haha. They got the whole slave trade started.

 

[Lark]

I just think its a mistaken idea.

Like some other sorts of redistribution of resources it is just going to fail and within a few generations there will once again be the pattern of distribution that it was sim of the redistribution to change.

Instead, if any redesign of distribution is to take place at all it should be dedicated to the provision of a universal basic income rather than reparations/redistribution.

Perhaps the provision of universal basic services too. Although, it is possible, at least in theory, that the provision of a UBI would enable/facilitate universal basic services available to all without further action. It would be a test of the hopes/expectations of market forces and consumerism as economic drivers and designers anyway.

If a universal basic income were available to marginalized, oppressed groups (whether that's historic or contemporaneous) and it where squandered or swindled away from its recipients it would not disappear in, or as, a sort of "one shot" deal like the redistribution in most conceptualizations of reparations would. I also personally do not believe that any attempts at ameliorating/rectifying injustice are destined to succeed that keep the grievance alive and do not have a universal/transcendent character. Perpetuation of injustice "for the sake of" the oppressed themselves is no better a thing than perpetuating it for the sake of the oppressors has been in the past (sometimes the present too).

 

[Lark]

That is why I mentioned DNA testing. You can't do it just on census race data alone. But yeah, make the British, Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish pay haha. They got the whole slave trade started.

The whole reparations idea is toxic, its one of the progressive/liberal ideas that's a trojan horse for right wing identity politics and dividing the human race into rivals or mutually antagonistic factions.

How bored do you have to be to do that? Its nothing other than a form of sabotage that's been employed since day one of history/pre-history, holds everyone back, even those that for a while do better from the arrangement than others or kid themselves that they do.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I shouldn't really have a vote in this but in my book all that was really too long ago to be solved like this. In my book it is better to just honestly try the fixing of current black/native communities, purely for the sake of fixing black/native communities.

 

[Falcarius]

What if one has 75% English ancestry, 16.4% Irish Scottish and Welsh ancestry, 6.1 African (4.9% North African and 1.2% Nigerian) and 2.0% Native American (Mesoamerican and Andean); Falcarius is obviously asking for a friend?

 

[Tellenbach]

What if you were a slave in your previous life but a privileged white dude in this incarnation? Shouldn't you still get reparations if your therapist says you were a slave in a previous incarnation?

 

[The Cat]

I dont know if it can be externally implemented and mean anything. Everybody owes a debt to someone by this point anyway. I'd be happy if we all could just stop hating each other and treating people and the planet like rentals this day in age. Feeling bad about the past while not actually doing anything to fix the present feels...counterproductive. I realize of course youre asking hey how do we go about fixing the present for the future. It seems simple in theory. Stop devaluing people. In practice... somehow Caine always finds an excuse to kill his brother.

 

[highlander]

I am against any kind of reparations. Its 150 years ago.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I'm in favor of them, because I think it would heal a lot of the racial tensions we have in this country. I don't know the best way to actually implement it, though. I think we have enough people with confederate nostalgia still walking around that it's also going to be a really hard sell, politically. Much more so than something like free college or M4A, actually.

 

[Maou]

I'm in favor of them, because I think it would heal a lot of the racial tensions we have in this country. I don't know the best way to actually implement it, though. I think we have enough people with confederate nostalgia still walking around that it's also going to be a really hard sell, politically. Much more so than something like free college or M4A, actually.

Pretty sure that is because the Confederate was a whole lot more than just racism. There are tons of Confederate blacks for example. Then there is the misconception that Abraham Lincoln released the slaves because he wanted equality. This is false.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Pretty sure that is because the Confederate was a whole lot more than just racism. There are tons of Confederate blacks for example.

Yeah, late in the war when they were short on manpower. Anyway, the fact that there's so much of it floating around kind of tells me that maybe we still need reparations, although I realize it creates kind of a Catch-22 situation.

Then there is the misconception that Abraham Lincoln released the slaves because he wanted equality. This is false.

That is true about Lincoln, but it doesn't mean the Confederacy wasn't about slavery. Some of the southern states (like Virginia) were modeled after the ancient world, and this was how they reconciled the idea of liberty with slavery. Like in the ancient world, liberty was privilege, and thus, there would have been no point in having that privilege if everyone had it. So, I suppose, the idea that the Confederates were fighting for liberty was not mistaken, but it wasn't liberty the way most people think of it.

The Confederates were fighting for liberty and slavery; their idea of liberty was inextricably tied up with slavery. For them, liberty couldn't have existed without slavery existing alongside it.

 

[The Cat]

the past is a good distraction from the present. the answers are no less difficult to come up with, but everyone one can talk about is already dead. makes it antiseptic. Cleaner. And thus the names and faces change but the dance remains the same a grim tango where once was talk of peace, is once more ripped asunder by the war of the words.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

the past is a good distraction from the present. the answers are no less difficult to come up with, but everyone one can talk about is already dead. makes it antiseptic. Cleaner. And thus the names and faces change but the dance remains the same a grim tango where once was talk of peace, is once more ripped asunder by the war of the words.

I just think it could actually help society heal, if such a thing could be passed (I'm doubtful). You might argue that it's just dealing with the past and not the present, but the problem is that the past is where plenty of people, black and white, are fixated. People are already there in the past. I think this would be a good way to make it so that people could actually move forward.

 

[The Cat]

I just think it could actually help society heal, if such a thing could be passed (I'm doubtful). You might argue that it's just dealing with the past and not the present, but the problem is that the past is where plenty of people, black and white, are fixated. People are already there in the past. I think this would be a good way to make it so that people could actually move forward.

I agree if it was done with the spirit of helping society heal it could. But I dont know if you can externamlly impliment something that seems to need to come from a internal sense of repentance and sense of the responsibility toward fostering community. Such things are in short supply, and given the madness they keep finding to keep people terrified and isolated from each other, its even getting harder for people to lead by example with Armageddon screaming like the sun all day in everyones ear...It's maddening.

 

[Maou]

Yeah, late in the war when they were short on manpower. Anyway, the fact that there's so much of it floating around kind of tells me that maybe we still need reparations, although I realize it creates kind of a Catch-22 situation.



That is true about Lincoln, but it doesn't mean the Confederacy wasn't about slavery. Some of the southern states (like Virginia) were modeled after the ancient world, and this was how they reconciled the idea of liberty with slavery. Like in the ancient world, liberty was privilege, and thus, there would have been no point in having that privilege if everyone had it. So, I suppose, the idea that the Confederates were fighting for liberty was not mistaken, but it wasn't liberty the way most people think of it.

The Confederates were fighting for liberty and slavery; their idea of liberty was inextricably tied up with slavery. For them, liberty couldn't have existed without slavery existing alongside it.

The civil war was not fought on slavery lol. It was a minor side show in part of what was actually going on at the time. It wasn't just the Confederacy that used slaves. Most rich people did. It is vastly similar to how we treat the concept of illegal immigrants today. Where people say that allowing slave labour wages is appropriate, because they got nothing better back home. Instead of paying them minimum wages, with benefits like everyone else.

And you seen how divisive people have been on illegal immigrants.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Pretty sure that is because the Confederate was a whole lot more than just racism. There are tons of Confederate blacks for example. Then there is the misconception that Abraham Lincoln released the slaves because he wanted equality. This is false.

The civil war was not fought on slavery lol. It was a minor side show in part of what was actually going on at the time. It wasn't just the Confederacy that used slaves. Most rich people did. It is vastly similar to how we treat the concept of illegal immigrants today. Where people say that allowing slave labour wages is appropriate, because they got nothing better back home. Instead of paying them minimum wages, with benefits like everyone else.

And you seen how divisive people have been on illegal immigrants.

Although it’s true the vast majority of poor southern whites in 1861 were not really interested in seceding and fighting a rich slave owner’s war (Davis had to implement conscription), the governments of most southern states were pretty clear that they were seceding primarily to protect the institution of slavery. It’s literally written in their articles/declarations of secession. Read Texas’ declaration of secession and those cards are clearly on the table.

People need to stop perpetuating this myth that the war was some noble fight over state’s’ sovereignty and rights. It was always about slavery, primarily.

So it’s weird that so many po white people today are nostalgic for something that a good deal of their po white ancestors probably weren’t even in favor of, or in the least believe slavery was just a minor, tertiary reason for secession and war. Especially those in places like western Virginia (remember, it was once a unified state and in a twist the western part had to secede from VA to rejoin the union. Most west of the piedmont region weren’t wealthy slave owners so the economic impact of slavery ending would not have been felt as a direct threat to their way of life).

This is a lasting effect of the Lost Cause Narrative which was widely spread from the period of reconstruction through the early 20th century, that masses of whites, including some with no roots in the south, were led to believe some disneyfied, sanitized gone with the wind view of that episode in US history

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

The whole reparations idea is toxic, its one of the progressive/liberal ideas that's a trojan horse for right wing identity politics and dividing the human race into rivals or mutually antagonistic factions.

How bored do you have to be to do that? Its nothing other than a form of sabotage that's been employed since day one of history/pre-history, holds everyone back, even those that for a while do better from the arrangement than others or kid themselves that they do.

It’s not a secret right wing Trojan horse or whatever. Most right wingers strongly oppose reparations, though as always I welcome your insights.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Personally I think a broader approach is the answer to healing those deep wounds.

I also think as interracial relationships are on the rise, we will get to a point eventually where a majority of people will be “mixed” and we won’t need reparations