Yesterday I posted some Interesting Reads, mostly related to race. As it turns out, I have more of the same today.
Engram followed up with Race-Conscious Government Policies for Blacks?
A race-conscious policy that I would not oppose in principle would target blacks. Why them? Because, in the case of blacks, our government systematically violated the moral imperative mentioned above for hundreds of years. Moreover, past attempts to improve the lot of blacks (e.g., welfare, affirmative action) have only made things worse. To now just declare that everyone will be treated equally violates the moral imperative that you make amends for the harm you have caused. Not you in particular. You didn’t do anything to harm blacks. But your government did, and your government repays debts even if those debts were incurred by previous generations. And previous generations created a debt to black America and then made things even worse when they tried to repay that debt. In my mind, two moral imperatives (treating everyone equally and repaying debt) collide in the case of black Americans.
What to do? That’s the hard part. The first step would be to ask liberals exactly what they would do, and then don’t do that. Their collective heart is in the right place, but their past efforts have exacerbated the problem (because one’s heart is not one’s thinking organ). Step 2 is to get a better understanding of the seriousness of the problem, and step 3 is to gain a better understanding of its root cause.
It’s a long, challenging article, well worth a read. At the same time, Diversity, Inc. posted responses to Reparations: What White People Need to Know. Some of the more interesting responses -
The country still has not paid for the land it has taken via “treaties” from Native Americans, and there is such huge denial on this issue. It does not surprise me that there is limited insight into the ugly things in our past. There is a pattern in this nation of forgetting what has been unethical and inhumane in the development of the U.S. We are constantly in denial of our own faults but willingly point out others’ faults. Yet, there is still hope that we may grow up someday and acknowledge what we have done to others and demonstrate positive change. —LaVonne Fox
What other nations have provided reparations to the descendants of slaves? I’m not saying that other nation’s bad behavior should excuse our own, but I do think it’s worth noting that people are demanding something WAY outside the norm for all recorded history, worldwide. Reparations for slavery are an extraordinary idea. It’s never been done before. Reparations have been paid for other things, far more limited things, and they were paid much closer in time to the events for which they were intended to compensate. That doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t be done, but it’s a fact that it’s never been done before and that’s why it’s not easy to figure out how it should be done, if we do it.
This next response was classic:
Reading your recent article about why reparations are necessary, it occurs to me that women definitely deserve reparations from men! I doubt that you will address this issue with the sincerity and fairness it deserves, but I will not let myself be guilty of not at least speaking up and speaking out!
Women were oppressed not just for hundreds of years, but for thousands. Women were very much enslaved; they had little to no rights and were literally owned by the men of their families. Women were not permitted to own land or to aggregate wealth. They were prevented from receiving education.
Women are still disadvantaged as a general group today. Women are still treated as second-class citizens from birth to death. Women are still denied education in favor of men. In my own family, as recent as when my mother was growing up, the money went to college education for boys first. There was no money left for girls by the time it was used up by the boys, nor was there any desire to give them that chance even when there was money left over.
Women need reparations in order to fund programs that elevate girls from marginalized second-class citizens to people of affluence and influence proportionate to their numbers in society.
—Jennifer Vanderputten
I think (hope) she was being facetious. But it’s quite true that we are fully stocked with grievance groups. And I’ll wrap it up with another Cobb post, which is very much food for thought:
For now I deal with black partisans from the center and left as obsessed with defying the odds and the system that has worked for every other type of American including the sixty percent of African Americans who have already achieved middle class standing. Along with this attitude is my presumption, again, that blackfolks are grownups and can manage their own affairs.
I would like to believe that African Americans can and will do as they please and need no politics more or less than anyone else. But my opposition to center and left black partisans as well as my geographical remove from the ‘hood leaves me in splendid isolation, and from that position I can make some stupid pronouncements, which my critics rightly smack me about. I think that perhaps I have gone overboard beyond what is appropriate for the purposes of this blog which are essentially expansive, not combative. The problem is that I can’t seem to do it both ways.
I can’t accept that black people lack the ability to navigate their way through America an find their way to middle class status without an interventionist, handicapping politics. Given the very traditions we claim to revere, of the strength of black family and all it took to survive slavery and Jim Crow; given our respect of men like Malcolm X and our claims about black power, one would think we’ve got plenty enough to go on to make it in the cushiest nation on earth. And yet all this (which I call The Sound of the Drum) seems to elude the Forty Percent, those who have the black skin but seem to lack the black backbone. And still all this blackification is annoying to me, because I firmly believe that there is no essence in blackness, that blackness is a cultural, political and intellectual construct born out of a historically specific period. I would like to fix that in place and include people in and kick others out based on their proper understanding of The Sound of the Drum. I do so because it is clear to me that all of the ills and boogabears black center and left partisans claim to be the bane of the Forty Percent are evidently not strong enough to beat us all down. So who owns black? The ones who win or the ones who lose? Who defines black politics, those whose work and values result in success or those whose failings dog us? Basically whom is black politics for?
There’s a saying that the blogosphere consists of thinkers and linkers. I’m doing a lot of linking lately, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking. It’s just too soon to write about it.
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