There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

How are slavery reparations fair?

This relates to the BBC article [www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790] which states “the UK should pay $24tn (£18.8tn) for its slavery involvement in 14 countries”.

The UK abolished slavery in 1833. That’s 190 years ago. So nobody alive today has a slave, and nobody alive today was a slave.

Dividing £18tn by the number of UK taxpayers (31.6m) gives £569 each. Why do I, who have never owned a slave, have to give £569 to someone who similarly is not a slave?

When I’ve paid my £569 is that the end of the matter forever or will it just open the floodgates of other similar claims?

Isn’t this just a country that isn’t doing too well, looking at the UK doing reasonably well (cost of living crisis excluded of course), and saying “oh there’s this historical thing that affects nobody alive today but you still have to give us trillions of Sterling”?

Shouldn’t payment of reparations be limited to those who still benefit from the slave trade today, and paid to those who still suffer from it?

(Please don’t flame me. This is NSQ. I genuinely don’t know why this is something I should have to pay. I agree slavery is terrible and condemn it in all its forms, and we were right to abolish it.)

Blackmist ,

I wouldn’t worry.

We won’t even give back the stuff in the British Museum, and we’ve still got that, unlike some fantasy amount of money made up by an attention seeking judge.

JdW ,

They are definately not fair. But fair is not an economic or political quantifyable term. Slavery wasn’t fair either.

What is just or not changes with times and societies. If there is political capital to be made by making reparations then they make sense. If the public disagrees they can and will vote out those responsible. For better or for worse that’s our system.

But I personally do not feel there’s such a thing as Sins of the Fathers. I have nothing to do with the slavers of 300 years ago, the whole concept of owning a human being is repugnant to me. And I genuinly feel that should be enough.

DragonTypeWyvern , (edited )

I tend to agree about the Sins of the Fathers, but at the same time, if you don’t inherit their sins why do you inherit their stolen boons?

But, ultimately, the time to address these evils was a century ago.

Hell, at this point it’s impossible to separate “sinner” and victim in many cases. What do you do for the descendants of both slave and slave owner?

Instead, in the now, as a society we should indeed strive to lift up the impoverished. All of the impoverished.

nomadjoanne ,

They’re not.

Cethin ,

Here’s a way to think of it:

If I steal all of your money and invest it to grow over time then I’ll end up with even more money while you don’t benefit from the growth that should have been yours. Now we have children and pass on our wealth. You pass on less because it was stolen, and I pass on more because of what I stole. This multiplies over the generations and a disparity is maintained. My offspring will have better educations and better opportunities because of the wealth they had access to, and yours will have fewer opportunities because you don’t have the money to spend on them.

The goal of reparations is to attempt to correct some of this disparity. It tries to provide opportunities for people who don’t have it but would have if something in the past weren’t stolen.

For an example that’s easy to see: In the US, black people are less likely to know how to swim. This has nothing to do with them being black, but what opportunities they had access to. This is for many reasons. One part of it is that most places had community pools, but they had restrictions for people of color. When this was outlawed, they instead just closed the pools or added memberships that required payment.

People also built up wealth over time through property, but black people were prevented from getting loans to buy property except in redlined places. This prevented them from building up generational wealth like white people were allowed to do. (This is ignoring the whole slavery thing…) It causes ripples through time where their children have less opportunities, which then causes their children to have fewer, and so on.

tills13 ,

This is also why affirmative hiring and admission isn’t “racist against white people” as people see it as. It’s actually leveling the playing field.

HiggsBroson ,

Before implementing things like affirmative action or reparations, do any of us have any idea in mind for when reparations will be done making things “fair”? Or is the intent to have it go on forever? I’ve never heard this argument before and I’ve never heard of anyone having a set date for the end of affirmative action and the like, so it sounds like a slippery slope to future discrimination. This is probably what at least some of the “racist against white people” (and asian people) crowd are complaining about. I know I would be miffed if I lost an academic or career position to an objectively lower quality candidate due to something like government mandated diversity, regardless of how much I support civil rights. Obviously, ideally, everyone should have equal access to these opportunities and no one should be unable to get the education they want but that isn’t the kind of world we live in (at least in the USA).

Also, why can’t there be other ways to level the playing field in terms of environment, such as funding better schooling or housing for disparaged individuals, regardless of race? Despite black people having to fight an uphill battle in life, these things that uplift across the board without racial or ethnic discrimination would naturally end up helping them out more than others before leveling out as equality is achieved. The only problem, as always, is the bureaucracy involved.

Apollo ,

A program that white people are excluded from isn’t racist?

nomadjoanne ,

I don’t know. Plenty if other groups arrived much later in western countries, often with little or nothing to their names and feeling persecution, and have done much much better.

I’ll give you that the specter of discrimination still haunted western institutions until quite recently. But blacks were not the only group that faced discrimination.

FUBAR ,

I am not black or white. I can offer a perspective of an immigrant who isn’t white. Looking at how blacks were targeted for arrests and the disproportionate amount of arrests while being brought up in economically challenging environments, it is very hard to “move up”.

I immigrated to a western country with qualifications and with a good sum in my bank account and still it was challenging. I cannot imagine how generational oppression will do to a persons psyche and their worldview.

Cethin ,

I used black people as an example, not to say they’re the only group, because it’s obvious to see. Literally everyone has been exploited by the rich.

Jeanschyso ,

That’s not a reparations issue, it’s an unfuck the cities that were fucked by Robert Moses and his buddies as well as funding public schools better, making hospitals public instead of privately owned, and changing the punitive justice system to a proper rehabilitation justice system.

Otherwise you’ll just see short term happiness and provide arguments for “we’re equal now, we paid reparations! What else do you want?”

Cethin ,

I’d say both are required, and also reparations should never end. The rich should be taxed for their advantages and exploitation and money should be used to help raise poor people up. The problem can never be fixed. There will always be advantaged and disadvantaged people and exploiters and exploited people. Implying it should be a one time payment for a one time thing I think is missing what is trying to be solved.

jemorgan ,

This is hard for me to commit to an opinion on. I totally understand the argument that systemic injustices of the past have impacts today on the opportunities presented to descendants of affected individuals, therefore proactive steps are required to achieve equity. But solutions like requiring blanket reparations from one race to another seem to take for granted that everyone of the first race has been equally privileged by historical injustices, while everyone of the second race has been equally disadvantaged.

This obviously isn’t true. People of color are disproportionately likely to be disadvantaged, but there are people of color who lead highly privileged lives, and there are white people who are highly disadvantaged due to coming from low socioeconomic class, poor health, lack of access to education, etc.

The concept of reparations being paid on a basis of race necessarily involves the government forcing disadvantaged white, Asian, Latino, and other non-black people to become more institutionally disadvantaged, so that a group that contains highly privileged people of color can become more economically advantaged.

Something absolutely needs to be done, we need to be actively fighting for equity, but it’s hard for me to accept an argument that that should be done on the basis of race instead of addressing the causes of class-based inequality that will benefit disadvantaged black people along with disadvantaged people of other races.

For example, instead of seeking to improve the intergenerational income mobility of POCs in a system that restricts the income mobility of those without wealthy parents, we should fix the system and ensure a level playing field between someone who is born to high-school drop outs, and someone who was born to Ivy League graduates.

gothicdecadence ,

This is how I tend to view it too. We should be raising all poor people up and target wealth equality for everyone, regardless how they got there. I suppose reparations to POC would be a step in that direction but it by nature excludes people who might need help now. Idk, it’s a hard subject for me to form a solid opinion on too but I think social safety nets need to be prioritized for all.

orrk ,

sure, but now you are a godless commie who hates America.

Omniraptor ,

That’s what it always boils down to, which is why I am now actually a communist.

gothicdecadence ,

Meh, fuck the people who think that. They don’t contribute to a healthy, functioning society

Cethin ,

I don’t know who implied paying it would be based on race. It should be based on class. Rich people are rich because they had advantages and exploited people. They should be taxed and the money should be used to raise up people who weren’t as advantaged or exploitative.

yiliu ,

That’s not reparations for slavery, then. That’s just redistribution.

jemorgan ,

The entire concept of reparations for slavery is that non-black people will be forced to pay black people money, either as a one time lump-sum payment, or an open-ended pseudo-UBI. Some suggestions include mandated documentation of ancestral slabery, but the most popular ones don’t. The vehicle for this payment would be either increased taxes, or redirection of taxes.

If you’re not talking about race-based redistribution of wealth, you’re not talking about ‘reparations,’ which is what this thread is about.

Kaleunt17 ,

The problem I have with this viewpoint is this.

Where does it start and where does it end?

World history is full of atrocities, crimes, war etc.

Additionally, many of the things which we now consider atrocity or crime might not even have been one in the past.

Fabricating such artificial claims is the same as Putin is doing by using the history book for creating claims on Ucraine.

Cethin ,

Honestly, it should never stop. There should be wealth, inheritance, and estate taxes that even out advantages and disadvantages over time. Poor people shouldn’t be paying for it because of their race, rich people should because of their advantages.

shastaxc , (edited )

This is just communism. Distribute wealth until everyone is equal. You don’t even need to bring race into the equation to achieve the same results as being proposed here.

hypna ,

This is not communism.

Honytawk ,

Communism wouldn’t even have a need for money, so distributing wealth wouldn’t exist.

NuPNuA ,

This has always been an issue I get stuck on. If we hold current people liable for the crimes of their ancestors, how far back do we go?

The trans-atlantic slave trade was abhorrent, but slavery didn’t begin or end with it.

Do Egyptians owe Jews reperations due to how they were treated? Should the Italians compensate half of Europe and North Africa for what the Romans did? Should Arab nations pay the UK and Ireland for the people kidnapped by the Barbary Pirates?

The Ottomans were still keeping slaves until the early 1900s, long after the western European powers had ended the practice, why aren’t we seeing calls for reperations from Turkey to Slavic nations?

orrk ,

we go as for back as needed to achieve a somewhat just society.

Let’s take your example of the Jews in Egypt (other than the fact that the source for Jewish slavery in Egypt is just religious texts without any archeological evidence ever found): is there some great opportunity divide between an Egyptian and an Israeli? no, so we obviously don’t need to worry about that.

or for the Ottoman-Slavic question: do Slavic peoples have less opportunity than those of modern day Turkey? no, so we don’t need to worry about that.

and yes, Italians (and many other parts of Europe) do send different types of aid to Africa for these reasons

Do Black people in the USA have massive opportunity differences in comparison to the WASP population? yes, they do, thus it is right to conduct these reparations. You may not be the only people to have committed slavery, but you sure still wear it proudly, and you are still a deeply systemically racist nation.

TLDR: it’s not about revenge, but righting wrongs.

NuPNuA ,

You seem to be operating under the assumption I’m American, I’m not.

orrk ,

none of these targets Americans, you can make the exact same arguments for England and their colonial holdings (the thing OP was referring to), to Russia and the rest of the Soviet, or Russia and the rest of Russia, etc…

Savvy95 ,

Even currently in some rich Middle East countries, there are technically slave workers - construction & household to name 2.

NuPNuA ,

Exactly, maybe we should worry more about ending it now than what happened two centuries ago.

Flibbertigibbet ,

We can do more than one thing at once.

funkless_eck ,

this is why the slippery slope fallacy is a fallacy

“if we punish people for murder, what about self defense?”

or

“if we arrest people for selling meth, it’ll end up making the state arrest people who drink coffee”

you can legislate for a specific instance and not have it spiral out of control into insanity.

Maybe some people would try to seek reparations for ridiculous stuff. It’s exactly the purview of the law, politics and diplomacy to navigate that.

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

This isn’t a slippery slope fallacy. Nobody’s saying “if we let the gays marry the next thing that will happen is people will want to marry animals!”

What people are saying is, okay if this is being done in the interest of fairness, who else needs considered, and is it practical to consider them? Are we ever actually going to be able to achieve something close to fair?

In the US a great example in this discussion is native Americans. Do they get more or less for having their entire society destroyed, land confiscated, being driven on death marches to far away land, repeated treaty violations, decimated by smallpox, and many of the other tournaments?

I have native American, German, and Scottish ancestors that never owned a slave. I don’t have “African”, Irish, or “Asian” ancestors.

Do I get a check, do I get excluded, or do I pay for the sins of someone else’s forefathers? And then because… despite all the struggles my ancestors endured themselves, I lived in a country that’s trying to reconcile past sins of slavery they had nothing to do with directly (and hopefully were opposed to)?

Fact of the matter is, native americans suffered horribly, they just don’t exist in any kind of numbers to make a stink about it, and many of them bred into the white population.

We’re never going to get to “even” and we seriously need to consider if more unfair government wealth distribution is the solution to previous unfair government wealth distribution.

Hell I’m a full on Democrat and I strongly believe this will only make race relations worse. Like by a factor of 100 if they did that here. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and there’s no way sufficient time money and resources will be spent to actually make anything resembling fair happen here or in the US; you can’t do that when you’re trying to score political points.

Governments should be trying to help people from where they are now, not trying to reverse history and retroactively remedy history spread across hundreds of years.

NotSoCoolWhip ,

Well considering the last slave (coerced labor) was freed in the 1940s, it’s still extremely recent. These are people’s grandparents and great-grandparents. The velocity of money is very real.

youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?si=3h8t3bfODPKhULp1

BeautifulMind ,
@BeautifulMind@lemmy.world avatar

There were families that made Bezos-class money at the height of slavery, and those families’ descendants are still rich today.

At the very least, these families shouldn’t be anonymously rich, they should be infamously rich, notoriously so. Even if a truth-and-reconciliation process is ‘too much’, let us at least have the truth out, and loud.

zephyreks ,

Your number is a bit off. It’s more around 569000 per person.

crapwittyname ,

Who downvoted this? It’s correct.

£18.8 trillion divided by 67.7 million people is £278,000 per person.

That’s just not possible as a sum. 18.8 trillion is more money than the entire nation has. I’m all for reparations btw. But I can’t see how that much is realistic?

Urbanfox ,

I thought 500 quid seemed a bit light to be mending generational wealth accumulation.

This seems much more in line with what I would expect.

Note, I’m a statistician, but don’t do maths outside of 9-5 /s

letsgo OP ,

Correct. I put too few 0’s in. I have no chance of paying anyone half a million. Those aren’t reparations, that’s a kind of reverse slavery. Also I divided by the number of taxpayers (31.6m), not the total population, because it’s going to be the taxpayer muggins who has to foot the bill.

TheMadnessKing ,

As far as I know, lot of these aids are wired through NGOs and many of them are more related to the Church who often end up using the money for its Crusade (Conversion & stuff).

zepheriths ,

I don’t think they are. Since the Late 1960’s the US has had a war on poverty. Almost trillion dollars has been poured into disadvantaged house holds. According to it’s standards, poverty has been reduced from 19.5% to 2.3%. The numbers via ethnicity are not giving with certainty, the fact is total poverty has been greatly reduced. I would argue that is significant reparations.

zephyreks ,

Isn’t most of this due to India and China?

China’s poverty rate fell from like 88% in 1981 to basically nothing today.

zepheriths ,

The poverty rate in the US fell because of China and India? Damn that was nice of them.

silentdon , (edited )

Imagine you’re running a very long relay race. Just after the race starts, members of the other team jump out of the bushes, beat up your runner and tie them up. This happens for several laps until someone decides that this is probably bad so they stop beating and restraining you. But the race doesn’t stop and the positions aren’t reset, but the other team is like 20 laps ahead and allowed to finish. Is that fair?

Reparations would theoretically allow your team to catch up but former slaves and their descendants have never been allowed that. What’s more, in the UK, former slave owners were paid for the inconvenience of no longer owning slaves (edit: up until 2015!!!) while the former slaves got to continue living as second-class citizens for a while.

Also, saying slavery ended hundreds of years ago and no one benefits from it today doesn’t work because all slave-owner countries still benefit from slave labour in the form of generational wealth, advanced infrastructure and old laws that specifically aim to disadvantage black people (whether they were abolished or still on the books the effects are still felt). Imagine your great-granddad was able to build up a fortune, how likely would it be that your family would still be rich? Imagine your great-granddad lost every cent, how likely would it be that your family would be still poor? Sure, it’s possible that situations drastically over time but that’s the exception and not the rule. There are reasons why things are the way they are.

I believe that reparations should not be any lump sum of money but in the form of education, investment opportunities, resources and infrastructure. That way all persons living in former slave countries can benefit and pass those benefits down to their descendants.

Edit: I believe that up to last year Barbados went after Richard Drax for reparations due to his family’s direct involvement in slavery in that country. I don’t know how successful that was, but I support it.

Slice ,

Your analogy and argument is very well organized so I wonder how you think universal basic income could mitigate the negative impacts of generational wealth/poverty? In my mind, it is part of a solution to many social issues but I’m still learning. I know there are arguments that capitalism will just buffer against any implementation but I’m still forming my opinions.

silentdon ,

Thanks, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time since it was a big discussion topic in my circle for a while.

I haven’t given the same level of thought to universal basic income, but I guess it would be a start. What people really need is a way to not only survive but to build wealth and pass that wealth on to their descendants. Like I said in my previous comment, education, investment opportunities, infrastructure upgrades, etc. will go a long way towards that goal. In my mind, a universal income could be a part of that but not the whole solution. And yes capitalism will find a way to ruin it but we can always hope.

Slice ,

Another part in my mind would be estate taxes. If generational wealth wasn’t as impactful on our lives then UBI could serve a bigger purpose. If the playing field were more level for everyone, then hate or fear couldn’t errode it as easily. It’s not something we can see in a lifetime, but I hope that I can see us aiming at a useful target while I am still around.

Cethin ,

I think UBI could help with the problem. It won’t be solved without other things though. If we pay for UBI by increase estate and inheritance taxes, that could go a long way. Basically make it so generational wealth slowly decreases over time. Obviously it’ll never be zero, because education, social connections, and things are also generational wealth, but it’d be an improvement to the way things are.

Basically, it’s not fair that someone is rich because their parents were rich and someone is poor because their parents were poor. The rich person should be less rich and the poor person should be less poor (on average).

sockenklaus ,
@sockenklaus@sh.itjust.works avatar

Hell, this is the best and most comprehensive argument for the generational debt we as the global north and winners of colonialism owe the global south I’ve ever read.

I’ll definitely use this analogy whenever this issue comes up in my peer group.

hungryphrog ,

Also, saying slavery ended hundreds of years ago and no one benefits from it today doesn’t work because all slave-owner countries still benefit from slave labour in the form of generational wealth

In addition to that, slavery was never ‘abolished’. Just go take a quick look into the mining or cocoa industry.

Thatsalotofpotatoes ,

It’s not intended to be punitive. The idea is that slavery generated a massive amount of wealth for slave owning economies that left us richer and the descendants of slaves poorer. Think of it as being the child of a crime boss. You haven’t committed any crimes but the hosue you live in and the school that gave you the education to get ahead were paid for with dirty money. The idea is fair, but just not likely to ever happen. I think the point is more so to make people recognize the problem so that more is done to catch up the people on the wrong end of the generational wealth spectrum

MystikIncarnate ,

This.

OP is correct in the statement that any person alive has not been alive to either own slaves or be slaves. But that’s not the point of reparations.

The point is that you have and continue to benefit from the times when slaves were legally permitted. It might not seem like it, and maybe someone along the line blew a bunch of that money on booze and gambling… But someone you are related to, and by proxy you are benefiting from the proceeds of slavery.

By extension, all of those proceeds from the work that slaves performed was robbed from them by their masters. Making most of the slaves insanely poor while the former masters were able to keep the money those slaves earned for them. So they started from nothing. Sure, they were “free” to some variation of free (not sure all the racism made it feel like much of a change)… Fact is, they started at zero, at a time when most established families were sitting pretty.

After all this time… There’s interest.

I don’t know where they got these numbers and I haven’t looked into it all that closely, but it doesn’t seem too unreasonable given all of that.

Kaleunt17 ,

That kids or later generations are liable for past crimes or wrong doings (by todays standards!!!) is not fair and it is no justice.

In German it is called Sippenhaftung and was even used by the Nazis.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sippenhaft

Thatsalotofpotatoes ,

I think you missed my point. This is not about punishing white people, it’s about getting the victims caught up.

orrk ,

by your logic, if someone stole something, have it to his brother and then got caught, having the brother give back the stolen goods is something Nazis would have done.

But this isn’t Sippenhaftung, also known as gilt by association in English, this is a societal thing, you, even if your great great gandpappy didn’t himself own slaves, the society is still at fault and needs to right the wrongs done to a whole ethnic group

Kaleunt17 ,

by your logic, if someone stole something, have it to his brother and then got caught, having the brother give back the stolen goods is something Nazis would have done.

According to Sippenhaftung the Nazis would probably have shot the thieve, his brother, their parents, other family members and burned down their houses.

In case of societies you mean collective liability then?

The society in question (which exactly?) of today is not the same compared to the society of the past. How can it be at fault?

orrk ,

look, YOU are the person framing this as some form of individually targeted thing.

as for the idea that the society is different, how can it be at fault? because the foundations of the society we have now are built on these injustices, to go back to the earlier example, “look, you can’t take the stolen stuff back from the thief, he’s a different person 10 years later”

Kaleunt17 ,

It is moral blackmailing.

Brainsploosh ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    themoonisacheese ,
    @themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I mean that, and also the fact that countries that were plundered for slaves basically lost on a lot of progress due to that, and countries that got slaves were built off of that, basically for free. Sure, it’s not exactly fair to say that the plundered countries would have gotten to where slaver countries are today without that, but it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that Europe basically fucked Africa for a century, Africa is worse off for it, Europe is not, and they probably should be giving back not just for their conscience but as what it’s called: reparations.

    What I’m trying to get at is that after WWI, Europe (and especially France) decided now-germany did a lot of damage to them, and it wasn’t fair that they could get to bomb your country to hell and not pay to fix it. So Germany had to pay reparations (which was a factor for WWII but we’ll not get into that), as a way of helping those countries build back what they had bombed.

    Brainsploosh ,

    Of course, all the economic rationeles are valid.

    They are also not very compelling. If slaver Europe fucked over Africa for a century, should we compensate them only for stolen labor? How about stolen resources? Caused suffering? Lost progress? Lost standing? Lost lives?

    How about all the exploitation that has happened since, due to slaver Europe having the upper hand? African labor and resources are still valued lower than in richer countries as local working conditions are still poor and exploitative.

    Also, could paying reparations as a lump sum ever measure up to the slow development of infrastructure, knowledge, culture and national pride/trust/stability that comes with building your own wealth?

    We have plenty of experience with aid getting stolen by warlords, and grants commonly get lost to corruption, cronies and other misappropriation, even without the warlords.

    For the fiscal compensation to make sense, we’re talking orders of magnitude larger sums, and they would have to be given together with labor, knowledge, supportive relations, etc. over decades. And also with much fewer strings than our current economic system allows.

    I find that there is no satisfying way to fiscally compensate for a century of exploitation, suffering and oppression, and have found that the sums and arguments are more compelling as an absolution. It’s about the slavers wanting to clear their conscience more than making it right.

    It’s not the most noble reason for it, but it seems do do more for that than for the exploited people. Either change what we’re talking about, or face that your reasons are about you, not them.

    dhork ,

    I am against reparations because it trivializes the immense harm that was done, and makes it seem like it can be made up for with a cash payment, like when someone wrecks your car. I feel the harm was so immense that the guilt can’t properly be bought off in indulgence payments, and any attempt to try will fall short of the goal, while cutting off all further debate in the topic among overly transactional people. After the reparation payment, some people can say “See, racism is over! We paid it off and are debt-free!”

    And then we get a situation like exists in much of the US South right now, where the Supreme Court pronounced racism over and ended the Voting Rights act, then State GOP Majorities picked right back up doing a lot of things that the act prohibited.

    The debt won’t truly be paid until the descendants of those slaves are truly treated as equals to the descendants of the slave holders. A cash payment simply isn’t enough, we need to improve society. Investing that money into education, and ensuring that regressive policies don’t infest our local education system, is a start.

    HughJanus ,

    Shouldn’t payment of reparations be limited to those who still benefit from the slave trade today, and paid to those who still suffer from it?

    Truth is, white people still benefit from slavery to this day and black people still suffer from it.

    I don’t agree with reparations, and the issue is not black and white (hehe), it’s very complicated.

    But what it boils down to is “generational wealth”.

    Being a white person, your ancestors probably owned slaves, or at the very least benefited from an economy built on slave labor. So your grandpappy benefits from this. He uses his wealth to ensure that your pappy has a good upbringing. That he has a job that affords him, at the very least, the opportunity to be present for your pappy, as a pappy, and teach him good values, but also more likely to be able to afford to send your father off to a nice college. Now all of this transfers down from your pappy to you in the same way, affording you opportunities and advantages.

    Meanwhile, black people have the opposite of these things, and even though today, for the most part, in my opinion, we have equal opportunities for all people, some black people aren’t able to take advantage of those opportunities because they’re raised in poor crime-ridden black communities without good role models. Not sure if that makes total sense but you get the gist.

    Reparations are intended to give them a “leg up” to reach equal footing.

    But the reality is that just giving people money doesn’t solve the problem. Because those people will spend it poorly. And that’s not entirely their fault. They don’t know any better.

    The money needs to be invested in education (above all) and mental health, and creating positive role models.

    That’s the cliff notes version of a very complex issue that deserves more time than I have to give.

    bi_tux ,
    @bi_tux@lemmy.world avatar

    Because those people will spend it poorly. And that’s not entirely their fault. They don’t know any better.

    I wouldn’t say poorly, if your kids need a few new things for school, is that money really spent poorly? Most people know better, but they can’t spend it on anything else, than the things they need at the moment. You can’t save/invest money if you are starving.

    HughJanus , (edited )

    if your kids need a few new things for school, is that money really spent poorly?

    That’s obviously not the kind of spending I’m referring to.

    Poor people spend money on objectively poor choices like lottery tickets at significantly higher rates.

    People who actually win the lottery, the kind of people who are launched into the stratosphere, financially speaking, often end up poorer than they started within just a few years. This is a well-documented fact.

    Gxost ,

    Thats an overgeneralization. Some white peoples were enslaved while not all black peoples were slaves. The question is more complex than presented.

    silentdon ,

    I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and let you know that white people were indentured servants. While the conditions were just as bad as the slaves, indentured servitude was for a finite amount of time, while slavery was for life. This allowed the white people a chance to rebuild wealth and their children did not have to experience their parents’ conditions. Slaves never had that chance.

    Gxost ,

    It depends on country. There were countries where indentured servitude was for entire life, except for cases when a landlord freed a serf or a serf bought own freedom. Landlords could buy, sell and judge serfs. Example: Russian Empire, where serfs had no rights.

    silentdon ,

    I thought we were talking about the Transatlantic slave trade in the Americas?

    Gxost ,

    Somehow it turned into blacks vs whites, which is not ok for me.

    supert ,

    There were multi-generation serfs and indentured labour in the British isles. There were also slaves taken from the isles, though a very long time before then.

    Stoneykins , (edited )

    It is so weird to me you can somewhat accurately describe the issues that still exist today related to slavery and then just “but I don’t think we should give em the money because they probably wouldn’t spend it responsibly”. What a wild assumption. Why don’t we let the descendents of slaves have the money and figure out what to do with it instead of taking the attitude of “we know how to spend it better than they do so we should keep it and just fix things ourselves”? Do you really think that they wouldn’t have the desire to invest it in things like education and lifting up their communities?

    Kerfuffle ,

    Hopefully what they meant is giving relatively disadvantaged people some cash doesn’t really help. In other words, nothing to do with race specifically.

    Stoneykins ,

    I don’t really agree with that either. Organized collective spending would be better but giving people some cash does generally help. For every one person that would use it irresponsibly there are 100 people that would just pay bills and buy essentials, and that is helpful.

    Kerfuffle ,

    I don’t really agree with that either.

    That’s just a normal disagreement, though. Right?

    giving people some cash does generally help.

    Maybe. I wouldn’t personally argue it doesn’t help at all, but I also don’t feel like it’s that likely to be the most effective use of resources. I don’t have any issue with that approach in principle, just to be clear. I’m 100% in favor of whatever approach does the most good.

    Stoneykins ,

    Idk what you mean by normal disagreement, but I have no intention of being hostile about this if that is what you mean?

    This is kinda my overall point: worrying too much about the money being used “correctly” or “efficiently” above all else is a misdirection to keep the debate stagnated, and keep the issue of actually making reparations indefinitely in the future. The conversation of how the money can/will/should be spent isn’t a conversation that the countries that got rich off of slavery should be having, it is a discussion that the descendants of slaves should be having. Trying to make the decisions for them is just more of the same fucked up “we should be in charge of them for their own good” mentality.

    Kerfuffle ,

    Idk what you mean by normal disagreement, but I have no intention of being hostile about this if that is what you mean?

    Ah, that’s not what I meant. Sorry for not being clear. I was referring to where you originally said:

    It is so weird to me you can somewhat accurately describe the issues that still exist today related to slavery and then just “but I don’t think we should give em the money because they probably wouldn’t spend it responsibly”.

    If the parent post was talking about “those people” as in a specific race, then the problem would be that person was being racist. So calling out a post for racist statements or overtones is different from just a normal disagreement about the best way to accomplish something. See what I mean?

    quick edit:

    worrying too much about the money being used “correctly” or “efficiently” above all else is a misdirection to keep the debate stagnated

    “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” — I agree. I think we should try to identify the best way to use resources to help most effectively, but certainly not to the extent we’re just paralyzed and don’t do anything.

    Stoneykins ,

    Hmm… An argument could possibly be made that that was some sort of racism, but it probably would be subconscious, unintentional, “supporting the system” kindof racism. In my experience, trying to call that out as racism directly just gets people all worked up arguing about what defines racism, and it is better to just try and make direct arguments about the topic at hand than open that can of worms every time.

    Obviously this isn’t a very consistent rule, just a general thing I’ve noticed. Many times calling something out as racism is necessary for the conversation to be productive.

    Kerfuffle ,

    To put it a slightly different way, if the original person said “those people (black people, for example) can’t be trusted to use the money responsibly, we need to manage it for them” then criticizing that would basically be criticizing the person for being racist. I’m not saying you were rude or even very direct. I’m just saying that kind of criticism or counterargument is a different type than “I think method A is more effective than method B”. The latter is just about practical stuff and doesn’t touch on moral issues like racism.

    Anyway, the way I interpreted your first post was arguing against that first type of problem. It’s very possible I misinterpreted both of you but hopefully why I said what I did makes more sense now.

    Stoneykins , (edited )

    Hah ok, now I get it.

    I avoid arguing in a way that could be neatly divided into your two categories, on purpose. I try to find practical ways to talk about moral issues. Emphasis on try.

    whyrat ,

    There’s a decent body of research indicating cash transfers actually are as effective as in-kind charity (often found to be even more efficient). With more recently neuance being added hinting at when one or the other is better at achieving long-term benefits. This is the basis behind charities like Give Directly. If you’re interested in some background:

    Randomized trial of cash compared to food welfare in Mexico: www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.6.2.195

    OECD counties comparing cash transfers to expanded childcare and education: read.oecd-ilibrary.org/…/money-or-kindergarten-di…

    India based comparison, noting the effectiveness and perception of the in-kind charity impacts long term results (e.g. social stigma of receiving food charity): www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0306919214000499

    Any assumption that direct cash payments will be misspent as a reason to prefer in-kind welfare isn’t justified IMO. Benefits are fungible. Any money saved on food / childcare / whatever will be respent either efficiently (or not) in similar proportions to the direct money welfare… But administrative costs and externalities with in-kind transfers tend to make them less efficient on average.

    HughJanus ,

    Do you really think that they wouldn’t have the desire to invest it in things like education and lifting up their communities?

    I’m sure of it. They already spend what money they have poorly.

    One of the giant disservices in America is not teaching any sort of personal finance in public schools. Nothing about budgeting or taxes or investments or anything of the sort.

    WaxedWookie ,

    Putting aside the fact that slavery is still legal in the US thanks to the 13th amendment, and the fact that US orgs are outsourcing it to developing countries, the long-term effects and inequity of slavery continue to this day and should be addressed.

    That said, I’m of the opinion we shouldn’t give cash payouts - while it’ll provide benefit to the community, it’ll be spent in such a way that the benefits will flow out of the community almost immediately. It also gets into mucky territory judging how affected people were, and will be the basis for the stoking of massive racial animosity.

    Instead, I think we should use the funds to invest massively in infrastructure and programs that will provide long-term benefits to the community. Transport, education, social services and the like that will all help maximise people’s quality of life, opportunities, social mobility, and enfranchisement. If some low-income families that weren’t affected by slavery benefit too, all the better.

    mvirts ,

    Reparation payments sound nice sometimes, but I truly think it’s just a distraction designed to promote infighting among the economically enslaved. Tax the rich, provide for all in need, and we will have made more of a repair than payment ever could.

    WaxedWookie ,

    You get a reparations payout,

    You spend the reparations payout , The money flows straight out of the community into the pockets of the likes of the Waltons.

    Or

    You tax the likes of the Waltons,

    You invest in infrastructure and social programs

    The money stays in the community and provides long-term benefit, and greater social mobility to lift people out of the after-effects of slavery.

    mvirts ,

    Yes. I wish I could vote this up more than once

    SwedishFool ,

    So, can the Slavic countries claim payments of reparations from the formerly known ottoman empire? Perhaps Jewish people from Asia? Surely the Christians from the Arabs, and the Arabs from the Christians? Not to mention Vietnam from China, or entire Europe from the decendants of the Roman empire.

    Or are all of those instances somehow different?

    History is full of misery and trying to pay to make amends for somebody else’s actions, today, feels ridiculous. Just as OP, I don’t get it.

    toastus ,

    Obviously all of those instances are different.
    What a stupid question.

    And not just somehow.
    They are measurably different by time, context and by how systemic the suppression of whole populations was organized.

    I am not even a big fan of reparation payments myself but your strawman bashing is embarrassing.

    And the simple point is.
    If you are a white American or European (like I am myself btw) you, yes you personally, profit from privileges that this group accumulated over many generations by suppressing and exploiting other groups.

    Europe was super horrible early and in the US there are still people alive today that couldn’t visit restaurants and had to sit in the back of the bus.

    But hey if we wait another 100 years without any reparations our grandkids can claim that those thing are too long ago also.

    dorron ,

    You’re in a community called ‘no stupid questions’ and your response to a question is ‘what a stupid question’? Good work

    TheGrandNagus ,

    I can’t wait for my cheques from Scandinavian countries for the Viking invasions, Italy for the Roman occupation, France for the Normandy conquerers, etc!

    Also your caveman ancestor punched my caveman ancestor so I’m expecting a payment from you too

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •