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Maybe it can be done the same way people were paid because they couldn't work last year. Send 'em a gift card - or whatever kind of debit card that works.
A bigger question is, what's a reparation worth? Didn't Japanese Americans sent away during WWII get $10,000. That was just for a few years.
What about being enslaved for several centuries?
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They’ll have to pry “reparations” from my cold dead fingers. :villagers:
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Not possible in the lifetime of anyone reading this.
Look at where we are today.
The rise of open white supremacy.
ELECTED OFFICIALS advocating on its behalf.
A SITTING PRESIDENT consorting with and supporting them.
Law enforcement officers spreading hate speech.
Law enforcement officers murdering Blacks in the streets.
Even here, there’s talk of how reparations would be tied accurately back to slavery. That’s a conversation that betrays a staggering lack of a deep understanding of how profoundly a racism interwoven into the very fabric of this country’s culture has distorted and deformed Black life in this country to. this. very. day.
If anything approaching just reparations were somehow passed, this country would burn and it would be a bloodbath.
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Blankity Blank wrote:
Not possible in the lifetime of anyone reading this.
Look at where we are today.
The rise of open white supremacy.
ELECTED OFFICIALS advocating on its behalf.
A SITTING PRESIDENT consorting with and supporting them.
Law enforcement officers spreading hate speech.
Law enforcement officers murdering Blacks in the streets.
Even here, there’s talk of how reparations would be tied accurately back to slavery. That’s a conversation that betrays a staggering lack of a deep understanding of how profoundly a racism interwoven into the very fabric of this country’s culture has distorted and deformed Black life in this country to. this. very. day.
If anything approaching just reparations were somehow passed, this country would burn and it would be a bloodbath.
Yet somehow, I'll survive and still be able to get my chill on. I'll take a bit of time to mourn the dead but I'll just have to move on. Find me someone to repopulate the land with.
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Gave the Native Americans land? They rounded them up and stuck them on a reservation. Took their kids and forced them into schools where they had to give up their culture and/or die. The US Government signed treaties and went back on every one of them.
I don’t have all the answers to Native American and African American reparations. If the US wanted to do more than pay lip service, they need to have discussions with all parties and come to an agreement with $$$$$ attached to it.
In the Native Americans case, every acre of land in the US belonged to the different tribes. It was swindled or stolen from them and turned into a commodity that could be bought and sold and enrich the government and immigrants. The Native Americans were not included in that part of equation.
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It’s about damn time reparations were paid.
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The idea of simple cash reparations is troublesome to me because of the impossibility of administrating it fairly. I think a better solution would be to reserve assistance like scholarships, mortgage payments and medical costs to targeted groups. Some of this is already being done, but could be expanded. Perhaps an individual could be awarded a bank account to use for only those reasons - use it or lose it. Maybe these accounts could be available for a number of years because none of the problems we have today are going to be turned around in one generation.
We would also have to be prepared to accept that for whatever reasons, some people will fail to benefit and that’s OK.
As others have already noted, any type of reparation is bound to be resented by some of those who do not qualify. Somehow the issue of ensuring that the assistance is used for its intended purpose (leveling the playing field) will also have to be addressed.
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Sounds good to me...but how far back will they go?
E,g., my grandfather's grandfather was the product of one Native American parent, the other parent Black.
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Bill in NC wrote:
Sounds good to me...but how far back will they go?
E,g., my grandfather's grandfather was the product of one Native American parent, the other parent Black.
Far enough for this to be me:
