this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Reparations: what’s your suggested plan for this?
I'm not a legislator. In general, I think they would look like substantial investments into black communities, rather than direct cash payments.
That sounds pretty reasonable.
Look over black families that trace back to at least one person who would have been eligible for New Deal and Post War housing benefits but did not receive them due to the colour of their skin or for living in a redlined neighborhood or other factors of the like, calculate an average benefit to each generation following from Americans who did get those benefits, and pay out accordingly to modern black and mixed race households.
It is debatable if there's even money that could be paid back for slavery since those wages arguably may have already exhausted their extragenerational benefit, but redlining and housing benefits denial is a crime we can observe clearly in the present day, and who's generational benefits are well argued to be still in hand for the families that did get them.
Tax break
Tax break for… people who can prove their family history traces back to a slave?
That’s where it will be caught up in the court system. You can’t just say “I’m black gimme money!” They’re going to want documentation that probably doesn’t exist or was destroyed
Also The ‘Chinese Railroad Worker’ descendants may raise a hand.
Yes? Also what fucking evidence are you expecting nobody kept their great great grandparents papers of sale. I know for a fact my ancestors were slaves, can't prove shit though
Don’t cuss at me. That is exactly my point: that documentation is gone or never existed in the first place. It’s not like record keeping for slaves was very good.
No one is handing out free money without documentation. So that route won’t work.
It's a tax break not free money. There are plenty of ways off the top of my head immigration records would record immigrated from Africa but not those that came in the slave trade. Plus I can show my family has been here for generations on top of that likely certain markers in DNA would show being African American vs being from Africa.
Before I continue, I’m not against people being paid off for the crimes against their people.
That said, DNA doesn’t mean a person was actually related to a slave. Not everyone from Africa gets to have a tax break in the USA.
Additionally, not every black person from Africa who was here during slavery was actually a slave.
Proving a relationship to a slave beyond a reasonable doubt is next to impossible for most people to do, and proving a hardship now because of that slavery isn’t possible for anyone.
However, there are lots of other things reparations could apply to other than slavery. It’s not like you’d have to try very hard to find an instance where black people were treated poorly by the government.
Does all this come down to a tax break for individuals today? That’s the difficult argument to make. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be made, I’m just saying it’s a hard sell to become an action.
An easier sell would be large cash donations (perhaps ongoing, or over several decades) to various government run programs that are focused on providing services to minorities, and at risk groups of people.
I don’t really see the political landscape being receptive to that at the moment. There’s a lot of shit going on and next year is gonna be a political nightmare. The last thing any politician is going to do is pitch reparations, a generally unpopular topic—regardless of its merit.
I'm not reading all that.
And that’s why you’ll never get what you want.
I don't care one way or the other. A tax break would be nice but, doesm5 really make a difference to me at this point.