California panel approves reparations proposal of up to $1.2 million EACH for black residents...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12055465…
Do you guys think this is really gonna pass? This has to be a new high in insanity. The whole reparation thing is total bullshit, but how would this not bankrupt the state. I can't imagine common sense people, let alone white or hispanic people are gonna accept this, even in California.
I really need someone to explain to me how I'm racist for thinking these people are scumbags that should be openly mocked and ridiculed. These are people who were never slaves, whose parents were never slaves, whose grandparents were never slaves. They are arguing they deserve to take money from people who didn't own slaves, whose parents didn't own slaves, whose grandparents didn't own slaves, many of whose family in fact probably did not even live in the US when slavery existed. And it's all happening in a state that never had slavery. The only argument they have is maybe if they were descended from a small group of slaves brought into CA during the gold rush, but since there were no laws enforcing that they were technically freed people as soon as they entered the region and good luck proving it in the first place. Give these people an inch, they'll vote to take away your constitutionally protected rights and drain the state coffers to placate a bunch of idiots.
Flip side of the argument I suppose is that by giving these mouth breathers what they're asking for you are effectively stimulating your state's economy. God knows few if any of these people will invest/save this money intelligently, they're just going to be dumb spenders so you'll get the money back within a few years and simultaneously secure the black vote for the foreseeable future because who doesn't like free money. From that perspective (assuming the logic holds) this is actually a brilliant move.
And people wonder why folks are leaving the state in droves.
Well it depends on the person, of course, but these are people who lived through Jim Crow, whose parents and grandparents certainly lived through Jim Crow, whose entire lives are negatively affected by the impact of institutional bigotry in this country. These are people who were denied mortgages due to the color of their skin, who were handed disproportionately harsh prison sentences because of the color of their skin, who face a hundred and one issues in their day to day life that someone who isn't black couldn't possibly imagine.
So while I hear and agree with you that "there are people who were never slaves," that's just the shorthand for "black people are more likely to be stuck in a cycle of poverty because the same people who owned slaves (and many who didn't) made it so that black Americans would always be second class citizens." You are so focused on the supposed injustice of having to pay someone else that you aren't stopping to think about whether there might be some justification for it. You're only successful because previous generations put the time and the effort into setting up the conditions that allow you to thrive - and they did that, often, on the backs of people with dark skin.
These kinds of idiotic, do-nothing proposals would stop happening if there was any appetite among most Americans to stand up and actually take some responsibility for some of the bigoted shit we've done as a country. I mean, I've heard you say that teaching the history of black folks in America is somehow a bad thing (a.k.a. Critical Race Theory). For as long as people like you are unwilling to admit that the USA has treated it's minority populations really horribly, unwilling to even let that be a subject of education, then of course you'll see people angrily demanding a more unreasonable form of compensation.
Lol. This is the abrogation of Constitutional rights your worried about? Not all the voting restrictions, not the imposition of Christian theocracy, none of that? Your worried that you have to pay a couple dollars extra in taxes? Here's a thought - tax houses of worship and give the proceeds to pay reparations. You don't pay a dime, we get rid of an actual infringement on the Constitution, everyone wins.
Every year the federal government, as well as state and local governments, spend a ton of money on awful shit to placate a bunch of idiots. If you only care about that when it's something you disagree with, then we can all safely ignore your complaints as mere special pleading.
No one wonders why people are leaving California. High housing costs.
"we get rid of an actual infringement on the Constitution, everyone wins."
How are tax breaks for houses of worship infringement on the constitution?
Tbh I am 100% in favor of reparations. That said, I would want there to be a ‘reparations’ fund which gets funded by a one-time tax to everyone alive today who the state can prove is descended from slave owners and who nowadays has a net worth above 5M and/or annual income above 6 figures. Then those funds are available to the public. If you want your piece, you have to submit proof that you are descended from slaves and it needs to get verified by the state. This is my rough idea. There are many asterisks of course. How much would you take from the slave owners? How much would you give to every individual descendant of slaves? I would also tax people who provably descended from people who worked in the slave trade yet did not own slaves themselves. If a law like this passed tomorrow I would cheer, clap, and also chill, because I know that I do not fall in either category. But TBH if your family owned slaves you gotta pay up my man. What is the argument against that?
#Walloftextincoming
What completely arbitrary numbers you've chosen. This works perfect though because everyone who happened to have a slave owner somewhere in their family tree directly benefitted from generational wealth and managed to compound it up till today right? Do you have any idea how shitty you would have to be with money to have a verifiable unbroken chain of ownership in assets that has been compounded from the 1800s till today and only be worth a few million? Most "generational wealth" is wiped out within 1-2 generations so more than likely all you're doing is penalizing people who built their wealth from scratch coming out of one of the numerous economic collapses of the 20th and 21st century. What a magnanimous person you are.
You're taking 0 from slave owners because there haven't been any for 100+ years in the US.
Is there cap on this out of curiosity? Like if an NBA player making millions a year has a slave in his family tree somewhere does he get to partake in this? And referencing back to the arbitrary numbers you chose, why should poor decedents of slave owners get a pass? Is this about righting a historical wrong (in which case all decedents should be held culpable to be morally consistent) or are you ready to admit this is just a money grab by people too lazy to work and instead demanding a hand out from people who have actually done something?
Ah yes, guilt by participation in one of the most widespread forms of commerce in human history. Of course you would cheer for it, because it's super easy to vote for something that gives you a position of moral grandstanding when you know (or at least think, because how far can you really trace your family lineage?) it doesn't effect you. No problems with having other people get their assets seized from them whatsoever. What virtuous person you are.
Easiest argument ever.
And before the inevitable mouth-breathing leftist replies accusing me of being some white guy afraid of having to pay for what my ancestors did, my immediate family traces to late 19th century German and Asian immigrants so I don't even have a dog in this fight. I also happen to have a black grandmother (not blood-related) that can in fact trace her family lineage back to slave plantations, and she is even more disgusted by this new generation demanding reparations than I am. She married her husband (an African immigrant) 50+ years ago and had 2 children. And wouldn't you know it, they worked their asses off to send them both to school and now they are both successful and married (no divorces on that side of the family and they are by far the most successful by whatever measures this forum cares to fixate on). It's almost as though having an intact family is a perquisite to the generational success everyone these days seems to think they're entitled to.
This is only valid insofar as it applies to slavery. We had a century of Jim Crow, enforced at the point of a gun, which violated black Americans' Constitutional rights. I bring this up because I know your opinions on Affirmative Action and similar policies rely on the same justifications as your position on reparations, and I think you'd do better to consider the reparations issue to be addressing a series of historical iniquities instead of a very specific single instance.
And for what it's worth, if you can prove that harm was knowingly caused then I'm not sure it matters whether the action in question is or was illegal or not. Cigarette companies were held liable for their products causing cancer, despite there being no law at the time requiring them to disclose this fact to the public. Similarly, if you can show that Dixiecrat governments deliberately crafted policies meant to keep minority populations as poor, second class citizens (which has also been done) then I don't see why you wouldn't have a similar case, at least from a logical or ethical perspective.
In your haste to go after "woke-ism" you are committing the same sin that every person does who tries to escape culpability for an evil they didn't perpetrate: focusing only on yourself. Sure, you personally didn't enslave anyone, you personally didn't pass laws that restricted the right to vote, you personally didn't make redlining a major policy point for lending institutions - but the society in which you live, did (except the last one). You're so intent on proving that you aren't guilty that you are ignoring the fact that there are millions of people who live in adverse circumstances because of the deliberate actions of the society in which you live. If you want the benefits of that society, I think it's incumbent on all of us to bear some of that responsibility. In your haste to play the victim, you've forgotten that there actual victims here, and no, you aren't one of them.
Sure, and I think the idea of reparations is practically unworkable. The flip side to that is you have people like yourself who won't acknowledge even the remotest possibility that you (and I mean that generically in this case) might owe some of your current circumstance to a policy that your grandfather voted for which raised him up on the back of someone else. Look at some of the opinions about CRT on this site and this country in general. As long as huge swathes of the population are going to go ballistic merely at the thought of teaching the fact that black people were, in fact, an oppressed minority, you're going to have their counterparts who will demand compensation for it. If we as a country had thirty years ago adopted the idea that maybe an integral lesson of American history is that this country was founded on the idea that certain humans were less human than others, we'd have (a) a more equitable and well informed society, and (b) fewer calls to right those wrongs in more active ways. I don't know that I'm explaining myself well, but the basic idea is that if you want your opposite numbers to stop behaving like lunatics and demanding unreasonable things, you should yourself meet halfway.
I mean, this requires an independent discussion, but I'll point out that banks were colluding to deny mortgages to black people as late as the 70s. They're still doing it, in fact.
Generically speaking, what makes more sense. That millions upon millions of black Americans were so bad at managing their money that their wealth as a demographic now lags white Americans so substantially? Or that there are institutional factors that were and still are at play to keep those people poor? Frankly, the latter option is far more likely when viewed under any lens. It's just less comfortable to admit that maybe the reason white people are better off, as a whole, than black people is because our government and social institutions have made it so.
Great. You've made this argument before. To which I've responded, the American justice system hands out harsher sentences (when controlling for crime and circumstance) to black people than to white people by a meaningful amount. You've never addressed that. After all, jailing someone is definitely one way to break up a family. And here we have the literal justice system acting in a manner that, consciously or not, is keeping black people in broken homes and therefore poverty.
That is the fundamental issue with anyone who argues that there is some other factor in play which explains the massive wealth and attainment gap between white people and black people in the United States. At the end of the day, that other reason can be traced back to a policy or attitude on the part of a powerful institution which has conspired to keep black families mired in poverty. If the literal justice system is demonstrably broken in this regard, how can you possibly dismiss an allegation against any other part of government/society? Again, this is the basis of CRT, by the way - if we don't teach the fact that all this shit happens, we can never as a society properly come to terms with it and understand why we should be making amends
You make very eloquent arguments. However the issue is that the law is not a form of absolute morality. The law should serve its people. And the reality is that nowadays african americans are a large ethnic group in the united states. That ethnic group appears (I say appears because I am not one of them so I cannot speak for them, I can only relay) to have a massive issue with the enslavement of their ancestors and they also appear to want some kind of financial compensation. Is that 'correct'? That is a pointless argument. They are millions of people and if the law does not accommodate a group that big then their only alternative is violent revolution (all revolutions happened because the current law was not aligned with what the people wanted). As such out of the principle of 'the law should serve its people' I agree with them and hope they get the compensation they wish. If you do not agree then instead of fighting it, you should convince them otherwise. If tomorrow none of them wanted compensation anymore then the issue would die out. Politics is not objective, it is about people and their interests. I am now reminded of how Julius Caesar justified his genocide of the Gauls in ~50 BC as a counterattack to the invasion in 390 BC. The roman people cheered. Was that 'correct'? No Gaul killed by JC was alive when Rome was sacked. As you say, they probably lost the stolen wealth through the generations. But still the genocide happened. Was it good? Not for the Gauls, certainly. But Caesar was given the highest honor for this labors: a triumph. Was that 'correct'? Who knows. What I know is that a majority of romans wanted it to happen and as such the law, wielded by Caesar's legions, made it happen. Not even because people voted for it, but because Caesar knew that implicitly they all wanted it and so he gave it to them. A million dead and a million in slavery. For a crime that happened 300 years ago. Was that 'correct'? Historical consciousness is a real driver of history and politics. You can try to hide from it with your eloquent arguments but it still lingers. The people have a voice of their own. Such is the reality of politics. Accept it or ignore it, it will still be there.
Not an argument against but a refinement - limiting reparations to slaveholder progeny only leaves out the civilizational aspect. MOST white people benefited even if indirectly and MOST black people were held back, even long after slavery ended. Even today, lingering racism is holding black people back.
When folks argue against this they're either ignorant or racist, the above statements are backed by mountains of studies that anyone with any initiative can google.
It is not only about slavery. Many black people had their homes taken from them to make room for white families. In Palms Springs, CA an entire homes of black residents were burned down to make room for hotels and resorts. That is generational wealth stolen from blacks that their white peers were able to capitalize on. This is to make things more equitable. But to answer your question, no this will not pass. This is just a recommendation from the panel
There are lots of huge sections of cities, and entire cities, in the U.S. that used to be almost entirely white. But when a significant number of black people moved in and crime spiked in the 1960s, the cities became so unsafe that the white people had to leave en masse, leaving behind the neighborhoods they had built and essentially rebuilding them in the suburbs. That was a traumatic and expensive process, but it isn't acknowledged much today (except as "white flight", i.e. blaming the victims).
That is bold-faced lie. Desert Sun Sep 2016
They were renting the land from the Native American tribe that owned it. They never truly owned those homes or the land they were on, so there was no "generational wealth" being destroyed because it wasn't theirs to pass on in the first place. Does is suck? Yes. Is it unfair? Life's unfair. But you can't lay claim to something that was never yours to begin with. Have fun reconciling with your despicable wokeness blaming white people for what a native tribe decided to do with their land.
We are not speaking of the same event:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-30/black-and-latino-re…
Non ipsa libero officiis tempore quo tempora. Architecto nulla tempora aut labore. Expedita consequatur esse id ea vitae fuga quas et. Praesentium doloremque quam sit odit nam fugit. Delectus tempore saepe officia ratione et ipsa.
Ut porro aliquid consequatur illum rem. Explicabo mollitia deserunt dolorem voluptatibus ipsa distinctio. Sed nobis occaecati ea quidem officia dolorem.
Quaerat sed dolore dolores tenetur et. Rerum dolorum facilis sit voluptatibus. Ipsam ex repellat quis vero. Qui quia nesciunt qui modi.
Dignissimos doloribus enim illo sunt et rerum est. Magni aliquid maiores autem quibusdam maiores eligendi. Accusamus neque vel tenetur ut magnam.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...