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Originally Posted by politicophile
I couldn't agree more. Affording preferential treatment to a particular group (at the expense of another, necessarily) justifies the sentiment that the dominent group "owes" something to the subordinate group. For example, people who favor reparations to be paid to descendents of slaves think that I, as a white person, have a responsibility to counteract the injustices committed by members of my race in past centuries. This kind of thinking leads to racism on both sides, as well as hostility.
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What debate or issue needs is greater focus on the continuing injustices rather than past ones. The whole issue gets derailed when people start thinking they are being held responsible for great-granddaddy's sins when in reality they are being asked to make a commitment to not continue the secondary effects of the original sin/crime. Slavery was a horrendous crime in itself, and the subsequent fallouts from it (segregation, denial of civil rights, denial of educational, social, employment opportunities, debasement of a large sector of the population, etc.) are what is crippling the country today.
The crimes against former slaves did not end with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863; they continued in the decades that followed. There were the Plessy v Ferguson case that legalized inequality and enforced segregation in transportation, the Poll Tax that only a Constitutional amendment could defeat, the Black Codes that dictated how citizens of color could live and restricted their ability to fully enjoy all the benefits that American citizenship conferred upon others, and so on. These laws could be seen in every aspect of American life: sports, entertainment, housing, the workplace, recreation, education, legal, every thing.
What some are saying is that these postbellum crimes and injustices, while not as prevalent as in the decades immediately following the Civil War, are still with us in some form today.
As far as reparations are concerned, are the objections on par with reparations for Americans of Japanese ancestry who lost their property, their liberty, and their dignity during World War II, or for Native Americans who were reimbursed for the loss of their lands?