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jesus. this is entirely against by better judgment that i'm writing anything here.
--reconstruction.
this is the period of american history that conservatives in particular like to erase. maybe it helps some contemporary conservatives to better repeat the same kind of arguments if they can tell themselves that there's no precedent for them--i dunno. you want to see what happened to the reparations that were proposed after the civil war--which were more aimed at helping the ex-slave population begin operating in socio-economic terms in ways that broke with the past, check out the history of the reconstruction period. it was the white southern petit bourgeois who tried to set THEMSELVES up as the Victim of reconstruction...while the history is detailed and squalid beyond imagining, its outcomes are self-evident. same whining from the right now. except these days history itself is just another Evil Factor which Persecutes them.
as for the reactionary "Reverse Racism" canard--i am way too sick of having to chop up the myriad stupidities behind this to bother with it again.
the idea that what's at stake in a reparations proposal is skin color alone, abstracted from the past, is so idiotic that it boggles the mind.
paper-thin thinking yields paper-thin results.
it is both amazing and depressing--mostly the latter--the extent to which people like in a historical vacuum.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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