https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/tanehisi-coates-reparations/427041/
Thanks @ajh. So from this second article, the theoretical debate is mostly between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kevin Drum of Mother Jones.
Focusing on living African Americans is not really the same as “reparations” for slavery. In fact, the former issue has been a major focus of American politics from the early 1960s through the current era.
@alh Thanks, I knew there was another article, just couldn’t remember and didn’t have the time to look.
@damon30 Yes, Conyers wants to study it, but I think reparations via the budget is where Coates is going with his articles. Of course, Congress will NEVER approve such a bill to make reparations to African Americans. First, the vast majority of Americans think everything is fine. Nothing to see here. Second, Congress can’t even pass a budget or CR w/o the government falling apart.
I respect Coates but I don’t agree with his take on the issue. I’d be happy to pay more taxes earmarked to meaningful programs to help inner city black neighborhoods. I’m not so sure about money going to people some of whom may be quite well-off to atone for sins committed by other people’s ancestors at the time when mine were a different persecuted minority in a different country.
But even this is not a problem. The problem is he’s perpetuating “us vs them” mentality in both black and white communities. This is very different from the case with other reparations, where specific people were hurt and then compensated - even when they were hurt because of their race, it’s still specific. Only payments Germany made to Israel come close, and they were actually framed as compensation for the expense of refugee resettlement.
Coates cites the Germany reparations as an example, but Germany also pays individuals, such as Holocaust survivors, “for losses in Jewish livelihood and property resulting from Nazi persecution.” (from wikipedia)
@sushiritto - I just did some back of the envelope calculations in my head. America has a massive yearly budget, $700 billion+, for social safety net programs for those living in poverty. The last numbers I saw for the Black poverty rate was that they made up 25% of those living in poverty, while only contributing 8% of Federal taxes.
So that would be in the ballpark of $150 billion per year that is going to Black people from non-black taxpayers and at that rate it would take seven years to hit your first trillion.
The issue is not only the wrongdoing, but, most of all, the fact that the university benefited financially from the work of slaves and from their sale. We’re not talking about punitive damages, since the point is not to punish anybody for the wrongdoings of their ancestors. However, people whose ancestors benefited financially from slavery, as well as institutions which benefited from slavery should be required to share some of those financial benefits with the people who were used for those benefits.
@tpike12 your missing the point. African Americans are where they are today, because they’ve been discriminated against here in the US, since the 1600’s, according the article. The difference in tax revenue doesn’t represent any sort of reparations or benefit to African Americans.
Property, personal and real, jobs, voting rights, disenfranchisement, redlining, lynching, school segregation, etc. They were considered 3/5ths of a person in the Constitution. There’s probably no amount of money that can repair the harm they’ve endured for 400 years.
@tpike12 - missing from your calculations are hundreds of years of unpaid labor, i.e. slavery, and physical damages from that time too.
I wonder if Georgetown would have closed down without that money from selling those people. Would the university exist today? Would it perhaps have been so diminished that it would have closed?
We know that Yale was founded on money that Elihu made in the slave trade. Many thousands of people paid for that and we don’t know their names.
*Post 47, oh boy, I just noticed I that used “your” and it should be “you’re.” Oops. ~X(
so is mwolf saying in post 46 that descendants of the Georgetown slave owners/sellers should pay reparations? How would modern day students fit in righting that wrong that aren’t descendants of the wrongdoers?
And if a descendant of wrongdoers owe a debt to descendants of those who were wronged, do descendants of those who were wronged owe a debt to those descended from those that fought to right the wrong?
I assume that Jesuit priests had no descendants.
Which raises another interesting issue. The Catholic church has paid out lots of $$$ to people who were hurt by priests who molested them. In theory, the church abetted in at least some of those crimes by knowingly moving those priests around, rather than removing them from the public.
But what about taxpayers? Jurisdictions pay money all the time for things that particular departments and people did wrong, such as wrongful conviction and incarceration. Even where there are indications that particular departments and people did these wrongs knowingly, the payouts are borne by the vast general funds paid into by taxpayers.
I guess that righting the wrongs with these payouts is generally more important than being 100% fastidious about where the payouts come from. Which still doesn’t make it right that current and future GU students should be paying into this reparation fund. The larger institution that benefited from selling people should pay, and this is the student governments way of shining a light on that, IMO.
@greenwitch “I assume that Jesuit priests had no descendants.”
I think there is a good chance that is an incorrect assumption.
And here’s an interesting tidbit, one of the early presidents of Georgetown U, Father Patrick Healy, was, as a child of a slave and a slaveowner, born a slave
@sushiritto - no worries, I’m not a grammar Nazi.
Reparations are a monetary payment to balance historical wrongs. On one side of the ledger, we have all of the horrible consequences of slavery and discrimination. It is no doubt a heavy load.
From my perspective, America has done quite a a bit to right these historical wrongs. Affirmative action and the efforts to try and equalize the opportunities available to all Americans have allowed many black Americans to rise into the middle and upper classes. Even poor Americans are well-off when compared to global standards.
Some examples of per capita income by African countries with Egypt being the highest:
Egypt $3,460
Ethiopia $660
Madagascar $440
United States $56,180
For those black Americans that remain at the poverty level, like I estimated earlier, we transfer $150 billion per year to them.
Demonizing America as racist and demanding more money isn’t going to solve the problems of the Black community, but it will certainly alienate some former allies.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Had to delete several political posts. Closing thread. Do not start another one on the subject.