The vast majority of black Americans live well below middle class. That’s not a good sign for the existence of a stable black middle class. A minuscule anomaly does not a middle class make.
Liberals, progressives and conservatives of note sign open letter to end cancel culture. (Noam Chomsky/J.K. Rowling/Gloria Steinem/David Brooks etc.)
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The fact that you got all pissy about white guilt in response to someone mentioning that there are people for whom the jury is still out on slavery.
Everyone that lives in the US so by that logic everyone is footing the bill even black people themselves and numerous big boy corperations and interest to make sure those bail outs are secured. So the the money is there now how its distributed deserve a whole discussion of its own an a piss ant of a discussion that is.
Like Revnak said the existence of a black middle class does not mean we ignore numerous years of social factors used to make any attempt to make it to a middle just not exist. Also the idea of a middle class is broken to me. A middle implies comfort something people in the middle are still not even close to feeling.
Last time i listened to them *Checks notes* they think white guilt is stupid and want to focus on the current racist economic divide rather to accuse everyone of guilt.
Give or a take a shitty HR book or two.
Kinda why they named it reparations rather than repentance.
Isn't this papwr blaming white apathy for today's problems?
When someone says nonpartisan, it never means nonpartisan.
I personally got a breach of contract for criticizing the government. Pretending Capitalism and Freedom of Speech can coexist is a delusion
You know when some people are criticized, it doesnt mean all people from that demographic is criticized. Right?
For example, Buyetyen was showing a dislike for the people who like the Conferency. That's not blaming all white people.
When Trump says Mexicans are murderers and Rapist (with a few that are nice) IS pretty much blaming all Mexicans
Hope this helps you tell the difference
Your argument was, "We must develop a black middle class". My response was, "It already exists." You in turn responded with talking about the median of where blacks are distributed which is not a rebuttable to middle class blacks existing. My response does not say how large it is, it does not say everything is fine how it is right now, it does not say you should shut up and not talk about this. Literally, all I said was that it does exist in response to your comment which seemed to imply that it did not.
Gergar was bringing up how the current ideology of the left has a very bad end if it is continued to its logical conclusion which is to constantly try to eat whoever is viewed as the biggest oppressor. Zeke in turn dismissed it by making a comment about how people still haven't made a value judgement of the those that wore "slave made cotton". My response was about how people DO make that kind of judgement now with things, such as, reparations which in order to make work would require all Americans to be taxed, among whom none were involved in the slave trade that happened over 100 years ago and many of whom are not even related to the people that were part of the slave trade which includes many other ethnicities outside of white people.
This concept is foisting guilt on people who have nothing to do with what happened to the ancestors of blacks simply because the USA is, as a majority, ethnically white and everyone of today that is white is guilty and should give up their money for other people. Further, how would reparations be any different than all the other government projects that have been tried in the past? Just changing the exact reason for the tax won't make the methods, if they are the same methods that have been used for years, work any better.
See my above response except ignore my frustration because you are not the one I am frustrated with.
Yes.
I disagree with the idea you are expressing. Every class will have comfort and discomfort to greater and lesser degrees. The point isn't to make everyone rich and without any discomfort because that is impossible, but to make it so we do not have people at the bottom of the barrel that have truly awful lives.
Well last time I checked, people were still saying white people have "unconscious racism" so I'm going to have to disagree with your interpretation of things. And calling the current economic divide a racist one says that they think the primary reason the current economic divide exists is because of racism.
Also.
They named it reparations because it involves the transference of money rather than words. Both definitions still involve the acceptance of guilt for something.
Yeah! I wish more people followed that because no one seems to accept that concept when it's applied to black people.
Buyetyen was replying to me saying this, "????? You don't think "white guilt" falls under that? Are you kidding me? Wtf do you think the people calling for "black reparations" are asking for?" They replied with, "There are also people who still fly the Confederate battle flag and want Confederate participation trophies to remain in place." in response to what I said implies that people flying the Confederate flag today indicates that there is a reason for white guilt. Why else would they reply with that statement when it otherwise has no relevance to what I said?
Fine. Word games. There should be more middle class black Americans and this is an effort to make that true. That the black middle class is proportionately tiny means the realm of opportunity for black Americans is dwarfed by that of other races. Happy now?
Develop can mean both to bring about and to foster, it's needless pedantry that avoids the more uncomfortable reality that black wealth has been often eviscerated like in Tulsa or turned into a scam by the Farrakhanist opportunists through superexploitation. The current black middle class is the organic exception of the luckiest who survived the deprivation despite the very systematic, Reaganite-Wilsonian odds.
Yes, and I agree. How do you think we should go about doing it? While we all may be armchair scientists, what does everyone think would be a way to accomplish this goal? What is it about the middle class black Americans that do exist that allowed them to reach their position?
Or maybe the point is that white people can't agree on shit, there's still a lot of people who want to bring back a broken system and it is negatively effecting our ability to create good policy. That doesn't make white people in general guilty. It just gives us the dubious honor of being the heirs to a system that was originally built on horrific human rights violations, the echoes of which we're still trying to ameliorate to this day. Bringing up the vast history of the slave trade does nothing to address the brute facts of its history and legacy peculiar to the USA.
This isn't about guilt, it's about solidarity and making a real effort to fix the mistakes of our ancestors. Which is part and parcel with what a new generation is supposed to do. The past is a long line of half-measures, stopgaps and small fixes that have added up to significant advances in some areas and not nearly enough in too many others. Eventually, a society has to agree that it's time to stop incremental changes and go for real reform.
As a white guy, I'd be okay with reparations because it means my tax money will go toward helping more people escape poverty. I also think a UBI tied to inflation and cost of living would really help in the long-term. A lot of things would help, but those are some good places to start.
More than none, and tax free reparations aren’t a fucking lottery, particularly if it takes the form of the proverbial “forty acres and a mule.”
But what do you think will resolve this egregious issue? Not money? Do they gotta just grab the ole bootstraps (please don’t reply with the history of the metaphor)? Is the problem their culture, how they celebrate crime and fathers abandon their children? Is it their poor educations?
I have heard every damn one of these garbage explanations for why the suffering of my fellow man is their own fault while intentional systems of oppression brutalize them generation after generation. Their culture is “criminal” because our government brought crack to their streets to fund its crimes then declared war on them to satisfy white suburbanites. Their fathers “abandon” them because we imprison them at disproportionate rates for the same crimes. Their educations are worse because we never really integrated our schools and still fear bussing black kids to good schools enough to destroy any chance of resolving this problem. There are no bootstraps to pull on we will not sever for the sake of a few more dollars in our lords’ and ladies’ pockets. So yes, they need money. The problem is they don’t have money and the power that comes with it to protect themselves and their communities, and none of the excuses of jackboots or pinkertons mean shit to me anymore. If that reality makes you feel so guilty you need to resort to fables, that’s your own problem.
Let's also not forget that black people in the US literally started with less than nothing (you now, cuz slavery) and were expected to run the same multi-generational marathon as everyone else, AND the one time they actually did get a foothold (Ie, "black wall street") it was outright destroyed over a situation that to this day no one is sure what happened, and I don't even know it it made it to court.
Quite a bit of projection you're doing of what I think.
So your actual idea isn't-
-but land? So assuming you're not just making a joke, you mean that your idea is to give black people land to do something with then?
Nah.
Proverbial. So I meant property or something of the sort. The details would obviously be more complicated and are for economists to sort out, but in the end it all boils down to money so I figured I’d leave it simple until you decided to try and disagree on a technicality.
So not even down with a UBI, huh? Guess we're out of things to talk about. Also, really cynical to call reparations a lottery and kind of misrepresents the idea on a conceptual level.
I'm not sure you know what "proverbial" means. It's a bit like metaphor.
It's certainly a more interesting idea than just a lump sum of money. The question becomes, where, though? And is this a case of taxes being gathered to purchase land from citizens or does the government give up some federal land? A further question is how many people will actually want to move out of their neighborhoods for this land. While there are many I've no doubt would be more than willing to be able to move to better neighborhoods and even a few that would be up for being plunked on the edge of a forest to make a log cabin and live off the land compared to where they currently live, there's also many that wouldn't want to see their community be broken up. There's also the matter of them having a job in their new place of living and job opportunities will vary wildly depending on where the land in question is.
If the government is buying land from people then I also imagine push back because the people that have their land bought from them still need to live somewhere and they too may not want to be lifted out of their neighborhoods. Using federal land I think would technically be less messy but then we have the problem of locations and some of those locations are going to be national parks so environmentalists will also have a problem with that.
Overall though, as I said, a much more interesting idea than just saying "Money".
If we could find a way to rob and brutalize them for generations I’m sure we can find a way to do a bit of justice.