Willravel

To call something reparations is to imply a positive affect on the black population because of problems going all the way back to slavery. My proposal fits that bill, therefore I'm in the clear.

Providing better schools for all poor children, including black children, would go a long way in making amends for generations of institutionalized racism. It would be a first step in compensating for whole lifetimes of unfair treatment.

I don't know why you can't grasp this, it's really simple: programs to help all poor people will especially help poor black people because black people are disproportionately poor. Because it would be such a positive force in black America, helping to give poor black families (among others) the tools necessary to move into the middle and even upper class, I am totally comfortable calling it reparations.

I've got it both ways. You're just going to have to come to terms with it because it's starting to become a threadjack.

---------- Post added at 09:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:31 AM ----------

Hold on, that's a lot of hyperbole and I'll need a second to get back to reality.

Plenty of countries have education systems that put ours to absolute shame, and yet they manage to do so spending less per student. They have much, much higher graduation rates and higher college acceptance rates. Shoot, even here in the US we have schools that are able to provide excellent educations to students for a reasonable price, and they're public.

And under this theoretical system not everyone is going to have a BA, MA, or PhD. This is about opportunity, not giving everything away for free. My main scholarship in college was entirely dependent on my academic performance. Had I slipped below a certain point, the money would have disappeared and I would have found myself looking for a reasonably priced state school instead of a private university. This is about opportunity.

What I suspect would happen is that we'd see a much higher high school graduation rate, higher average grades, slightly higher college admission, but more importantly college admission that more accurately reflects the average income of an American. You won't just have the ultra-rich going to Yale, you'll have a higher percentage of middle-class and lower-class kids going, too. Does this mean everyone will have a PhD? Well let me ask you this: do you think everyone is capable of getting a PhD? Think of the kids you went to school with. Could everyone in your graduating class have gone on to get a PhD if they were given scholarships? If you're anything like me, the answer is "probably not". Besides, not everyone wants to be in school until they're 30. It's just about having that option available for very bright kids that without the money would be forced to do work that didn't utilize their best abilities.
In my experience it's exponentially more difficult to earn a better income the more poor you are, therefore the people in our society that get the least have to work the hardest to get more.