San Fran's reparations propsal

[Dill]

(03-29-2023, 02:41 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: Really good point. I'd be lying if I said I liked history. My absolute most hated school subject. And I had total blinders on when it came to reparations and segregation.

My Dad worked in a factory in Cincinnati. His Dad worked in a factory in Cincinnati. Guess where I work? I went to integrated schools, I served in an integrated military, I work at an integrated business, and I live in an integrated neighborhood.

Why are we going back now and making raced based laws? And how far back are we going to pay for wrongs that may have cost a family wealth?

Yo Nati--I'm going to share a secret with you, but please don't tell anyone else on the board--all civil rights activists we see in the news today aren't necessarily well informed about U.S. history either. Current debates over reparations may be making that plain.

I support the concept and principle of reparations, but I don't think there is any going back to 1865 in hopes of identifying living, individual descendants to pay.  Payments to individuals, even if we knew whom they should be, might just be recycled back into white wealth, the way lottery winnings so often are. Or that approach could generate weird cases in which, say, 10 tax dollars from each worker at your factory went to compensating a multi-millionaire like Lebron James. 

Segregation positioned millions of blacks in poor jobs and housing, and outside of higher ed. For generations. The Civil Rights Act made such open discrimination illegal, yet it continued in the individual (and perhaps unconscious) choices of employers, realtors, educators and judges long after 1964. "Race-based laws" like affirmative action were created to address the opportunity gap bequeathed to us by history. AA can't address problems like housing and environmental discrimination, however. 

The proper object of reparations, should there be such, should be to end structural or "systemic" discrimination left in place by segregation, not making people "pay for wrongs."  That would mean plowing reparation money back into education and secure housing, addressing especially default housing segregation which continues in many places. And it would require at least a generation to see the effects.

I should add that from MLK to the current proponents of CRT, the call has been to address conditions which affect ALL economically disadvantaged people, including whites. King and Derrick Bell were always very clear about that. There has always been a connection between white and black poverty in the U.S., one aspect of which has been for the dominant classes to pit the former against the latter. That continues to work as well now as it did in 1865.