Originally Posted by Willravel

I never changed any tune. Black people are disproportionately poor, therefore a move to help all poor people would disproportionately help black people more. Black people are poor because of inequality in society the roots of which can be traced all the way back to slavery.

So, to put it into one sentence: I want social reform specifically dealing with impoverished and high crime areas, which happen to include a disproportionate amount of black people due to race-based societal problems dating back generations, the consequence of which will eventually be a more equal opportunity for success regardless of race, gender, or creed.

Originally Posted by Willravel

The African slave trade is one of the worst sins our country ever committed. It was a human rights violation of catastrophic scale. There's no statute of limitations on that kind of atrocity, regardless of how logistically difficult it might be to attempt reparations.

We could very easily provide way, way, way more scholarships for students that descended from slaves. We could very easily provide free job training for descendants of slaves. We could very easily not charge income taxes for descendants of slaves.

Originally Posted by Willravel

Without a doubt in my mind, absolutely. Germany committed what has to be one of the worst crimes in the history of our entire species. It's likely one of the worst things in the history of our planet. Germany is responsible for Germany's actions. I'm glad we had the Nuremberg trials, they were a step in the right direction, but ask a holocaust survivor if seeing a few officers convicted was restitution enough.

Probably. I'm not as familiar with this as I am with WWII or black slavery in America.

Jews aren't a race. I suppose if you could track down the descendants of the Semitics and Hurrians, there might be a case, but those people haven't existed in thousands of years

It wasn't just the Spanish.

You are a part of a republic, as a citizen you take responsibility for your government. Your government didn't make reparations when it promised. Do you really think there should be a statute of limitations on slavery? Can you really defend that position besides with "oh, but I don't own slaves"?

The bailout has nothing to do with reparations. Also, get off Obama. They have nothing to do with this, they're just red herrings. This is an ethical question.

Barack Obama isn't descended from slaves. So, again, he has nothing to do with this.

Because this country screwed over an entire race for centuries and it didn't stop with the abolition of slavery. It's still fucking going on now.

That assumes everything else is fair. Since it's not, you can't force it by pretending an unlevel playing field is level.

You don't understand what it's like to be black in America and neither do I. That episode of South Park is right. We'll never get what it's like at all. What I do know is that as white people we don't have the right to say it's over.

You don't see anyone but black people complain, therefore only black people complain?

Also, not to nitpick, but oriental is not the preferred nomenclature.

Originally Posted by Willravel

Sherman's Special Field Orders offered each freed family 40 acres and a mule, not the white southerners. I'm not aware of widespread white slavery in the pre-Civil war US, therefore, the orders really only talk about the slaves we all picture. It's these orders people cite when commonly discussing reparations. Still, this is less about committed obligation and more about justice. The social inequality reparations were supposed to help fix still exist, albeit in a different incarnation.

Originally Posted by Willravel

Pan, it's not the fault of black people that blacks are disproportionately poor. And it's not the fault of non-blacks saying that it's not their fault. It's the continuing existence of inequality dating back to the beginning of our nation.

No. No "buts". Some people have worked very hard to level the playing field. And we've made some astounding progress. We're simply not done yet. It's going to take a continuing, tenacious effort to finally push things to equality from inequality. Don't stop now, we're getting closer.

Like Manic said before, this isn't about something that ended. It's about something that continued on long after black people were freed. It's something still going on today.

That's fucking bullshit and you know it. This thread isn't about the tiny, tiny amount of people that are victimized by people abusing white guilt, it's about reparations. Stop being a drama queen. This thread isn't about you being victimized. You're white.

Slavery happened. It was a crime against humanity. For that crime, the government promised to make restitution. The government bitched out. Racism, which you can link directly to slavery, is still going on. It's not too late to make amends, which were promised.

You're not responsible. We're all collectively responsible as the population of the republic. We bear the responsibility for our government. Our government promised compensation. Stop thinking like a conservative and start thinking like a citizen.

Originally Posted by Willravel

Rahl, it's time for some basic sociology. Human beings are what's called a "social species". We don't function well on our own, and we developed in groups. We learned to hunt in groups, we learned to cultivate crops in groups, we learned to train beasts of burden in groups, and civilization was born from groups. Going back to before we were even bipedal, our distant ancestors were social. Even today, we are highly social. We are interdependent, and without that interdependence our species would probably die out pretty quickly. I'm sure this all sounds pretty theoretical to you, but it's not in the least. I'll give you an example. I work with a nonprofit organization that helps poor and homeless people in San Jose. Without the service I help to provide, poverty would be a bigger problem in San Jose. Our police would have to spend more time dealing with theft and homelessness, which would take their attention from what they're doing now. San Jose might become a less safe place if it weren't for the work I do.

Now, let's expand this to the topic at hand. Think about this: could your life be improved if the market was suddenly getting more educated people that happen to be black? Could your life be improved if gang violence and drug use were to suddenly drop off? Could your life be improved if we paid less taxes because we weren't incarcerating so many black people? Could it? Be honest.

You don't know what communism or socialism are, but I'll leave that for another thread.

Originally Posted by Willravel

Equal opportunities are all I'm talking about here.

Yes, but you have to admit that there has been an inequality for some time, an inequality that the government is at least partially responsible for. Correcting that inequality of opportunity would be a boon, and it might make up for the many years of there being inequality.

I'm not saying we can totally prevent kids from joining gangs or selling drugs, but I am saying by creating a society where everyone has the same opportunities is a step in making those options obsolete. Why would you want to sell crack if you could be an architect? Why would you want to be a pimp if you could manage your own software company? These were the options available to me in school, everyone should have them. I'm not talking about handouts, just allowing everyone to start the race on the same line.

Some do, some can't. We can't judge the people that call the police only to find it takes the cops 45 minutes to get there.

Some Afghanis are respectful, peaceful people. Some are militant extremists. Poverty doesn't affect everyone in the same way. Still, I don't know if I'm comfortable comparing Afghanistan to impoverished areas in the US. It strikes me as apples and oranges.

I didn't have to assume anything, you used the terms incorrectly. I didn't intend to come off as condescending as I did. For that I apologize. It's just that I've had the conversation about socialism and communism so many times in the past few years, I guess it was a knee-jerk response.

Poverty isn't generally a result of laziness. That's a bit of a myth. It's about several things; what situation you're born into, what school you go to... shoot a lot of it is simply chance. I work really hard for my salary, but I don't necessarily work any harder than someone working two jobs to make ends meet. I've done the minimum wage thing, and I have a healthy respect for someone working a crappy job.

When I was putting myself through college, I often had to hold down several minimum wage jobs at once. It was one of the most difficult times in my life, way more difficult than things are now making 4-5 times what I did then.

I don't think a perfect world would include no rich or poor, just maybe not so many people in poverty regardless of how hard they work. The strongest person I ever knew was my grandfather. He was career military, but for the first 30 years of his life he was dirt poor in a big way. His strength and effort had nothing to do with his income.

I'm pretty sure you're familiar with arise/train-wreck Paris Hilton. She's the worst kind of what you might call "weak". She makes more money in a year than most people make in a lifetime. Why? Chance. It's chance we should seek to compensate for. Chance likely shares a large part of the responsibility for the large amount of black and latino prisoners. Had they been born white, they'd not likely be in prison, statistically. I'm not suggesting an end to personal responsibility, but can you really hold someone responsible for something that's a matter of pure chance?

Not always. Some have the option, some don't. It's important to recognize that some people are either poor or criminals because of factors outside of their control. We can't be absolutist about it.

We do, but it's not enough. Last year I donated quite a bit to scholarship funds. I donated to the NAACP a few years back, actually. It's not enough because a lot of hard working people are unwilling or unable to take responsibility for their society. You reap the rewards of my donations to scholarships via a more stable society, but you refuse to admit it.

Originally Posted by Willravel

Reparations mean different things to different people. Anyone saying we should start issuing checks either isn't being serious or probably doesn't understand the consequences of such an action. As far as I'm concerned, it's simply a matter of doing what we can to ensure that the cycles of racial problems are finally purged from our society, and the government can play a role in that purge by ensuring that there are responsible and proven social programs available.