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?
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.
> 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.
> Why make it about race? Just make those things available to all disadvantaged individuals, period.
Because…
> 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.
Parent made the case very plain.
Try a thought experiment: your ancestors were enslaved in America. After emancipation, every generation of your ancestors was subject to both systemic and individual discrimination and violence.
The question is, what would you want done? Do the answers “well that’s all in the past” or “how about these other people though” satisfy? It’s worth thinking about. Personally I do not know what my own answer would be, other than that I would almost certainly be angry and distrustful.
I do know what my answer would be. I don't make excuses or play the victim card or blame my current condition on external circumstances. I accept what has passed, what my current situation is, and try to play the hand I was dealt the best way I can. That's my personality, I don't think that'd change.
I can certainly understand why one would be bitter about "every generation of your ancestors was subject to both systemic and individual discrimination and violence". They have a right to be upset. A lot of people have a right to be upset about a lot of things. I don't think you can jump from that to reparations though.
> 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.
Slavery in Africa was widespread before the Atlantic slave as well as after the Atlantic slave trade. There's some apologism (interestingly enough, quite similar to Southern U.S. slavery apologism) claiming that it wasn't that bad, but if you look at the actual accounts it could be extremely brutal. Like with the U.S. there was certainly a degree of different experiences, but like in the U.S., that doesn't justify the practice.
In the end it was actually European powers that ended most slavery in Africa, often with a great deal of local opposition ("The End of Slavery in Africa" is a decent starting place if you want to see how it happened in each individual area).
Ethiopia is an interesting example - it wasn't colonized[1], and so slavery there persisted long after it ended in most of the continent. The League of Nations kept pressuring the country to end the practice, but it kept dragging it's feet. It only ended when Italy invaded in the run-up to WWII (it's also interesting as a non-colonized control country when it comes to colonization).
[1] It was conquered by fascist powers for some years, the same as most of Europe.
> 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
That’s the hight of results-oriented reasoning. The historical norm is that different societies did not progress at the same rate. Europeans got ahead of Africa and Asia in the 1500s-1900s. That’s why they were positioned to engage in things like colonialism to begin with.
But go back a bit further—Britons were about a thousand years late to the Bronze Age. Nobody held them back. It’s just that key milestones of civilizational development aren’t distributed evenly. Because of course they aren’t.
> the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development
It was my understanding that most of the slaves traded were already slaves, so it wasn’t just plundering the continent to kidnap people.
I’m not particularly well studied about this. Am I wrong? What were the effects that hindered the continent’s development? Was it the incentive to capture slaves to trade led to more wars of capture/conquest?
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I'm confused by the pro argument. My known lineage was not enslaved, but my grandparents immigrated with 0$, and my family has no generational wealth and we don't receive reparations.
Isn't being freed from slavery the same as being freshly immigrated with 0$?
Furthermore, there are tons of Asian immigrants that come from a third world country with virtually nothing, but become top earners because of their cultural values of education and filial piety
One could argue that despite being free, African Americans still had to work against racism, unfair laws, and a system rigged against them in many ways. Those are things a white immigrant wouldn't have had to deal with, but black immigrants would have. Is the black immigrant excluded or included in any potential reparations?
The overall precedence is that reparations are paid to the people who experienced the harm, and the reparations are paid by those culpable of the harm. The Japanese who experienced internment were paid reparations by the United States government that took their property. Holocaust victims that had their property stolen were paid reparations by the former Nazis.
By contrast Irish Americans could very justifiably claim that were it not for Anglo oppression, they would be far wealthier. But we wouldn't fine Anglos today to pay Irish Americans. Slavery hits a similar issue, limiting the reparations to the party that did harm is very vague when you're approaching two centuries later. Most proposals for "reparations" aren't anything remotely close to actual reparations. A recent immigrant is assigned as much liability as a descendant of plantation owners. This isn't a reparation, this is a tax assigned without regard to culpability.
The harms from slavery didn't end after the civil war. We had to pass laws a century later in the 1960s to outlaw the racist policies implemented by federal and state govts after reconstruction. The social (and legal) structure of american society has always had black people at the bottom, and until that is fixed then black people as a group are still being actively damaged by the legacy of chattel slavery.
And now you have to start picking which racist policies are worthy of compensation and which aren't. Asians faced the Chinese exclusion act, as well as redlining for example. Will the aforementioned anti-irish and anti-catholic discrimination also receive reparations? And again, how wilp you identify the liable party, or will we just tax everybody?
What injustice? Each of these people have the same rights: those enumerated in the bill of rights. That is justice. If there were economic rights in our system there would be case for calling the status quo injustice but there aren't.
(this isn't to say that things can't be changed, but it would require the adoption of new amendments).
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?
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.
I agree, work on creating a more equal society, with better opportunities for all, instead of playing the game of who's the bigger victim. Because we can all play the victim card, including me and you, and it's just not productive or beneficial to anyone.
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?
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.
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
> 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.
It is also easy to forget that the suppliers of slaves were African nations that practiced slavery themselves. They found the Europeans to be great customers for their slaves. So descendants of the Ashanti and others benefited from the selling of slaves. If we really want to look at reparations, we probably need some way to determine what percentage each person benefited from slavery and what percentage they suffered from it. Also there were slaves from Asia and other places that are probably just as deserving of payments if that happens. But all of this flies in face of the narrative that slavery was something whites did to blacks.
A better approach would be to try to provide opportunities that people can take advantage of. The US actually does a great job of this which is why we don't see mass exodus of people trying to go back to the African nations.
Easily forgotten? It's brought up in just about every discussion on the subject, including this one, already, by the person you were replying to agree with.
Well if you want to take money from the general population and give to people whose ancestors were harmed by slavery, you need some way to differentiate between ancestors who were harmed by and ancestors who benefited from slavery.
If that isn't part of the discussion, then people are just proposing a welfare system to give money to people based on the color of their skin.
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.
Because those countries were devastated by Europeans
Those countries were created by Europeans, they didn’t exist before that. The tribes that were there before were not much of a civilization. They weren’t behind the rest of the world because of colonialism, they were colonized because they were behind the rest of the world.
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.
It’s not really a personal attack to point out that your “just asking questions” routine happens to dovetail nicely with certain political talking points. Why so defensive?
Why don't you name the pieces of facts that are missing then so the parent can respond to it?
You keep making personal attacks and asking if the parent is employed by the state of Florida. What does their employment situation have to do with anything?
Ahh, I honestly don't pay attention to usernames. I replied to someone who is defending your attacker and making the same low effort quips so I assume they have no problem with the bizarre employment question or they would have flagged the comment or called it out for what it is.
To point you in the right direction: "to keep repeating it doesn't make it any more true and is really revealing a lot" of undesirable things about you as a person. The latter words added by me and implied. That's a personal attack.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?