What policies should be implemented to address racism in the country?

[Coyote]

Throughout history reparations have been made to people who have been wronged, but not their descendants. If your father murders somebody should you be forced to make reparations for that? If he stole money from somebody and you have the money then you should pay it back, but what if you don't have it? Your dad spent it and lost it or whatever, are you responsible for paying that money back? We should pay for our mistakes but not the mistakes of someone else.

I agree that no one should be punished for the the actions of their parents or ancesters (one reason I oppose punishing the children of illegal immigrants). I also oppose any form of collective punishments. But we have to be able to hold our government accountable for wrongdoing right? If we don’t how can there ever be justice? And who pays? Well, it would be, indirectly, every American, black, white, etc. Not just white people.

Reparations for the interned Japanese Americans during WWII was paid to them, but not their descendants. And that was a decision by the US Gov't, who paid reparations to those people who were wronged.

Exactly. A decision by the US Government.

And multiple times in this thread, I’ve narrowed the argument down to reparations for those still alive who were born before 1965 in the US, not their descendents.

So given that, what is the problem with reparations?

No special taxes levied, so what? You know as well as I do that any reparations will be added to the debt, which means everybody pays for it whether they themselves had anything to do with the wrong-doing. And we are talking about past gov'ts and past generations, is it justice for someone to pay reparations for actions they had nothing to do with? Is it justice to pay reparations to people who themselves were not wronged?

Again, we are talking about people who are still alive and lived under Jim Crowe. Not anyone else. No one cared about adding to the debt with reparations to Japanese Americans (which were way over due).

So what’s the difference?

It's called the common good of our society, services that benefit everybody in general. You tell me, how an I benefitted from paying reparations? When we build roads and schools and hospitals that is helping everybody. You yourself went to school somewhere and drive on roads and maybe went to a hospital at some point, so you did get a benefit for those expenditures.

How did you benefit when reparations were paid to Japanese Americans?

Reparations are not about common good or benefiting anyone other than the recipients…if they did, they wouldn’t be reparations…

Those were all state and local laws, not federal. I'm okay with states that passed Jim Crow laws paying reparations to living African Americans who lived in that state at that time. Not sure if that could be verified, but I don't see that as a federal debt.

The Federal Government allowed it and the effects of went beyond states. They didn’t leave Civil Rights up to tbe states after all.

5. Why do you call it a handout? I never heard that said about our reparations to Japanese Americans. I never heard that said in regards to Germanies reparations to Jews.

For me, the definition of a handout is something given that has not been earned. When Germany paid reparations to the Jews, it was to Holocaust survivors or those who were forced into slave labor, but not their descendants. Same deal with the Japanese, you had to be a person who was interned. You could say they earned it, no argument there. But their descendants didn't. What federal law or executive action might be considered actionable for reparations to African Americans where there are still living people who deserve it?

Again, going back to defining reparations as only going to those who lived under Jim Crowe, is it any different?

 

[Coyote]

You owe money to whites. They didn't get paid for their slave losses. France made slaves pay for their freedom, the British paid slave owners for their losses, only in America did 750,000 men die to free your nasty ass. You owe whites.

They were compensated by the government.

Compensated emancipation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[IM2]

Do you tell that to the Japanese Americans? Jews? Native Americans?

The problem with dogmaphobes comment is that it's untrue. The problem with Mollys comment is that the same racism exists now.

 

[USAF 2023]

The holocaust is not what happened to black people and what the government has allowed here has gone on well past slavery.

People today especially those who came here after 1965 are not responsible for it. Holocaust reparations are not passed down through Generations

 

[IM2]

I agree that no one should be punished for the the actions of their parents or ancesters (one reason I oppose punishing the children of illegal immigrants). I also oppose any form of collective punishments. But we have to be able to hold our government accountable for wrongdoing right? If we don’t how can there ever be justice? And who pays? Well, it would be, indirectly, every American, black, white, etc. Not just white people.





Exactly. A decision by the US Government.

And multiple times in this thread, I’ve narrowed the argument down to reparations for those still alive who were born before 1965 in the US, not their descendents.

So given that, what is the problem with reparations?





Again, we are talking about people who are still alive and lived under Jim Crowe. Not anyone else. No one cared about adding to the debt with reparations to Japanese Americans (which were way over due).

So what’s the difference?


How did you benefit when reparations were paid to Japanese Americans?

Reparations are not about common good or benefiting anyone other than the recipients…if they did, they wouldn’t be reparations…





The Federal Government allowed it and the effects of went beyond states. They didn’t leave Civil Rights up to tbe states after all.





Again, going back to defining reparations as only going to those who lived under Jim Crowe, is it any different?

The problem with the arguments you see is that racism is ongoing. It did not end after slavery or Civil Rights. Therefore any claim of reparation put forth to the government must cover current damage.

 

[Coyote]

The problem with the arguments you see is that racism is ongoing. It did not end after slavery or Civil Rights. Therefore any claim of reparation put forth to the government must cover current damage.

I think that is a much harder case to make and to quantify.

 

[IM2]

People today especially those who came here after 1965 are not responsible for it. Holocaust reparations are not passed down through Generations

Again, white racism is ongoing. I have posted information that shows blacks have been cheated out of at least 16 trillion since the year 2000. If the holocaust was still going on, then you can make a comparison, but you guys don't seem to understand or want to understand the fact that white racism has never stopped and it continues to damage communities of color, in this case, the black community.

 

[USAF 2023]

And the survivors were victims. So stop playing silly semantic games.

I’m not the one playing semantics; you are. It’s clear to everyone except you that when I talk about Victims I’m referring to those who were directly affected by it as opposed to those who were in those Concentration Camps.

 

[IM2]

I think that is a much harder case to make and to quantify.

Not really. Citigroup did it. So have others.

reparations studies - Search

www.bing.com

 

[USAF 2023]

Do you tell that to the Japanese Americans? Jews? Native Americans?

Here we go with the Jews again. Reparations are ONLY given AUTOMATICALLY to survivors.

 

[IM2]

I’m not the one playing semantics; you are. It’s clear to everyone except you that when I talk about Victims I’m referring to those who were directly affected by it as opposed to those who were in those Concentration Camps.

Yes you are playing semantics because the people in concentration camps were victims.

 

[Coyote]

Here we go with the Jews again. Reparations are ONLY given AUTOMATICALLY to survivors.

Try for some consistency. I’m talking about those who survived Jim Crowe, not descendents. Now try again.

 

[Coyote]

I’m not the one playing semantics; you are. It’s clear to everyone except you that when I talk about Victims I’m referring to those who were directly affected by it as opposed to those who were in those Concentration Camps.

Am I misunderstanding you or are you actually saying those in concentration camps were not “directly effected by it”?

 

[IM2]

An Historical Timeline of Reparations Payments Made From 1783 through 2022 by the United States Government, States, Cities, Religious Institutions, Universities, Corporations, and Communities​

By Allen J. Davis, Ed.D.​

1970: Richard Nixon signed into law House Resolution 471 restoring Blue Lake and surrounding area to the Taos Pueblo (New Mexico). The land had been taken by presidential order in 1906. (A History of the Indians in the United States by Angie Debo (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984, p. 422); see also "Taos Pueblo celebrates 40th anniversary of Blue Lake's return" by Matthew van Buren, Santa Fe New Mexican, September 18, 2010.)

The payments from 1971-1988 are taken from the booklet Black Reparations Now! 40 Acres, $50 Dollars, and a Mule, + Interest by Dorothy Benton-Lewis; and borrowed from N’COBRA (National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America).

1971: Around $1 billion + 44 million acres of land: Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

1980: $81 million: Klamaths of Oregon. ("Spending Spree" by Dylan Darling, Herald and News (Klamath Falls, OR), June 21, 2005.)

1980: $105 million: Sioux of South Dakota for seizure of their land. (United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371 (1980).)

1985: $12.3 million: Seminoles of Florida. (see Racial Justice in America: A Reference Handbook by David B. Mustard, 2002, ABC-CLIO, p. 81.)

1985: $31 million: Chippewas of Wisconsin. (see Racial Justice in America: A Reference Handbook by David B. Mustard, 2002, ABC-CLIO, p. 81.)

1986: $32 million per 1836 Treaty: Ottawas of Michigan. (see Racial Justice in America: A Reference Handbook by David B. Mustard, 2002, ABC-CLIO, p. 81.)

LibGuides: Reparations in the United States: Home

An Historical Timeline of Reparations Payments Made From 1783 through 2022 by the United States Government, States, Cities, Religious Institutions, Universities, Corporations, and Communities

guides.library.umass.edu

Can we stop searching for excuses?

 

[task0778]

Those were all state and local laws, not federal. I'm okay with states that passed Jim Crow laws paying reparations to living African Americans who lived in that state at that time. Not sure if that could be verified, but I don't see that as a federal debt.

The Federal Government allowed it and the effects of went beyond states. They didn’t leave Civil Rights up to the states after all.


I think that justification for reparations is somewhat thin. I'm not sure the effects of those Jim Crow laws went beyond those states that enacted them to the point where now people in those states should pay for some other states did. And actually, the federal gov't tried to prevent what amounted to Jim Crow laws with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, plus the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

In the last of the great Reconstruction statutes, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the Republican majority in Congress tried to secure by law some semblance of racial equality that could be protected by the government and by courts. While no one expected that such legislation would change the prevailing racial attitudes held by both Northern and Southern whites, the law aimed to protect African Americans from deprivation of the minimal rights of citizenship.

A critical provision of the Civil Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination in public places, what would later be called “public accommodations,” which rested on Section 5—the enforcement clause—of the Fourteenth Amendment. Five cases testing the application of this section rose in both the North and the South, and the Supreme Court combined them for a single hearing in March 1883. The government argued on behalf of the Civil Rights Act, declaring that the Thirteenth Amendment had not only abolished slavery but conferred all the rights of free citizens on the former slaves and that the Fourteenth Amendment had given Congress the power to protect those rights through appropriate legislation.

The Court disagreed, and, in the opinion for the 8–1 ruling, Justice Joseph P. Bradley denied both of the government’s contentions. In effect, the ruling robbed the amendments of much of their meaning. Bradley argued that, because not every example of discrimination against African Americans could be interpreted as a renewal of slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment could not be invoked as a ban on racial prejudice.

Although the Fourteenth Amendment had in fact been drafted specifically to ensure African Americans’ rights, Bradley denied that Congress had any affirmative powers under the amendment. Congress could legislate in a remedial manner to correct an unconstitutional law. It could intervene only if a state enacted a law that restricted the rights of African Americans. Bradley also held that if a state failed to take action but, by inaction, tolerated discrimination—such as exclusion from hotels, restaurants, and clubs—Congress could not legislate. By this decision the court in one stroke nullified all congressional power to protect African Americans under the Fourteenth Amendment and left their fate to the states. It also invited the Southern states not only to tolerate but to encourage private discrimination. The ruling would remain in force until the Court disavowed it in upholding the 1964 Civil Rights Act, nearly a century after the Civil War ended.

Civil Rights Cases | law cases [1883]

Civil Rights Cases, five legal cases that the U.S. Supreme Court consolidated (because of their similarity) into a single ruling on October 15, 1883, in which the court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional and thus spurred Jim Crow laws that codified the previously...

www.britannica.com

Are we to penalize today's federal taxpayers based on a Supreme Court ruling almost 150 years ago? Essentially, the Court left the issue of discrimination of African Americans up to the states, and IMHO that is where the real responsibility lies for their misdeeds. Asking resident taxpayers to pay for the decisions made in the Jim Crow states does not seem just. And it's not like we haven't seen some African Americans become very successful in their chosen endeavors during the last 150 years or so. Do we not have a number of successful African Americans that were born prior to 1965? They made it, so it was possible albeit more difficult. Do they deserve reparations?

Let's talk about the African Americans in the non-Jim Crow states, are we going to pay them reparations too? How were they disadvantaged as a result of those laws? You say the effects went beyond those states, how so? Can you validate that to the point where reparations are due?

 

[MizMolly]

Do you tell that to the Japanese Americans? Jews? Native Americans?

They don’t pertain to the discussion. When IM2 constantly says whites have had AA since the 1700s, it is irrelevant to whites today. I don’t see other races on these boards complaining about things that whites only had in the past.

 

[MizMolly]

The problem with dogmaphobes comment is that it's untrue. The problem with Mollys comment is that the same racism exists now.

Again, you misuse the word racism. Nothing I said was racist. You group all white together and reference time going back centuries, which is irrelevant today.

 

[MizMolly]

I don’t deny racism still exists. Everything is not attributed to racism though. Just because a black person is denied a job, a raise, a loan, college entrance, doesn’t make it racist. Whites are also denied these things. Women have been denied a lot of things men could get. I have personally witnessed black people blame race when fired from a job when whites were fired for the same reason at the same job.

 

[Lisa558]

I don’t deny racism still exists. Everything is not attributed to racism though. Just because a black person is denied a job, a raise, a loan, college entrance, doesn’t make it racist. Whites are also denied these things. Women have been denied a lot of things men could get. I have personally witnessed black people blame race when fired from a job when whites were fired for the same reason at the same job.

And that’s the problem with the “equity” goal, as in “equal outcomes.” It doesn’t take into account the behaviors that the group behind is committing that contributes to that position, and allows the poor behavior to continue since “equity” is guaranteed.

Take schoolkids. The ones who study hard get A’s and the ones who goof off with their friends barely get C’s. If the goal was “equity,” all we’d have to do is give everyone a B, and the kids goofing off wouldn’t bother to change their ways and study. Even worse, the good students who had been applying themselves and getting As won’t bother.

Same with blacks, who overall are working to middle class. But they still have double the poverty rate, and this can be attributed to the 74% out of wedlock rate. If we were to just hand out money until “equity” occurred, there is no reason for them to correct these poor life choices. Instead, they will continue to blame racism, convince themselves that they need handouts because whites are racist, and will not make wiser choices to help themselves.

 

[USAF 2023]

Am I misunderstanding you or are you actually saying those in concentration camps were not “directly effected by it”?

I can’t believe you don’t honestly understand! Ann Frank, her Mother and Sister died in those Camps and can’t receive reparations, can they? Of course they were Victims! However, OTTO FRANK who lived was also a Victim and would have been AUTOMATICALLY eligible!
Hypothetically, say they had another child who managed to leave the Country before they went into hiding. They would NOT be automatically eligible