Should reparations be provided for slavery?

Author: drlebronski

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drlebronski
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argue
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@drlebronski
Assuming that you are referring to/cherry picking  the Trans-Atlantic  "Slave Trade" of the 15th - 19th centuries.

Then No.

Because all the slaves will be dead.



Some people prefer to overlook the fact that Africans enslaved each other long before the Spanish and others took over the business and made it global.


When and where would the reparations ever end?


It's all just another poor black man nasty white man, give us some money thing.








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@drlebronski
No. There are many things we can do to cure some of the evil legacies of slavery, but nothing that would be both just and reasonably called reparations.
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@zedvictor4
Some people prefer to overlook the fact that Africans enslaved each other long before the Spanish and others took over the business and made it global.
Because it’s not relevant to the conversation.
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@zedvictor4
Some people prefer to overlook the fact that Africans enslaved each other long before the Spanish and others took over the business and made it global.
Because it’s not relevant to the conversation.
Dr.Franklin
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nope.
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@drlebronski
No one should pay a dime for what their father's father did to someone else's father's father. We can't control our ancestors. 
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@MisterChris
History has consequences.
Wont talk about it to in depth as i've done that so many times on this site and the other guy will stick to the same talking point
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@drlebronski
History does have consequences. Do you know what it tells us? Once you punish one man for another's crime, you've become an evil regime. 
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@MisterChris
No ones being punished at all its just reparations....
badger
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@MisterChris
Once you punish one man for another's crime, you've become an evil regime. 
You don't have to see it as punishment, there's fairness in it too. Free a slave into a society that's fresh out of slavery, well, his lot's improved, but by how much?

There's societal imbalance there, tipped in the white man's favour. 
badger
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I do think the most of American politics is still around the black people thing tbh. Greyparrot uses the word "racist" 15 times a day. In my country, we bulldoze bad neighbourhoods, let greater society normalise former inhabitants. It seems to work. That's maybe taking away an identity from a person though, don't think that'd work for you guys. Fuel to the fire, maybe, a little bit. 
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@badger
you realize not everyone blindly ascribes to CRT, correct? So let's, for the sake of argument, say you're correct and it isn't a "punishment." That has no bearing on how it is perceived by the people. Once you force one man at gunpoint to give up something for the "sake" of another he has no relation to, you drive tensions up rather than resolve them. The idea that, even if reparations are "Fair," that they would help resolve racial tensions or do literally anything to quell racism is ludicrously stupid.

That said, reparations are not fair and will never be fair. And they are objectively punishment for being white, regardless of how you word it.

Punishment: "the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense."

The explicit purpose of "reparations" is to right a wrong through a penalty, correct? It is a punishment by definition. 

There is no justice in punishing an entire race for the acts of people they had no control over. Your posited antidote is far worse than the sickness.
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@MisterChris
I'm not talking about forcing anyone to do anything. I don't much think reparations is a good idea or that it would help resolve racial tensions.

But black people in America are pretty much fresh out of slavery, and that's something that needs some sort of management. 
TheUnderdog
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@drlebronski
No ones being punished at all its just reparations....
Reperations cost the government money and that money is supplied by taxpayers.  I don't want to pay reperations for African Americans or anybody else.

I oppose reperations because you can't punish someone for something they legally did.  For example, if someone legally owns slaves, you can abolish slavery, but you can't force ex slave owners to pay money to people they legally harmed.

It would be like banning abortion, and then giving reperations to unborn babies paid for by a female tax.  If abortion is to be banned, not even pro lifers advocate for making females who may or may not have had an abortion paying a tax to pay for other kids based on abortions that not only those kids did not endure but were legal when the abortions were performed.  You can punish people for illegal things; not legal things.  Lincoln knew this, so he didn't advocate reperating black people during the time of slavery since he knew that you can't punish people for things they did if those things were legal when the actions were done.
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I'd see it as just if white individuals did something to raise up black people. I think that's an idea worth promotion too. 
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@TheUnderdog
legally harmed.
There's something a little inhuman in this dude. 
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@badger
You can't punish people for things they legally did.  This would be like jailing people for marital rape if they did it when marital rape was legal in the US.  If this happened, many men would go to jail for something that was legal when they did it.  Moreover, giving people money they don't earn causes people to waste the money; we see this with lottery winners.
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@TheUnderdog
Ok but now you're on the side of both slavers and rapists. I agree that just giving people money isn't going to fix things though. 
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@badger
You gotta know your time and your place.  If everyone in your state supports slavery (which was the case in the south in the 1820s) and you were wealthy, you were going to own slaves.  This is a product of your time.  Now in 2021, if your in the south, it doesn't matter how wealthy you are, your not owning slaves.  But people should be judged by the standards of their time, not ours, so you can't be punished for something you did if that thing was legal when you did it.  Otherwise, George Washington was a bad dude because he owned 600 slaves.  Anyone with slaves now would be a bad dude and should get punished.  But owning slaves 300 years ago; that was the culture back then.
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@TheUnderdog
omg do have any idea what your talking about?
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@drlebronski
Yes I do.
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It depends what is meant by reparations. The reality is, you have certain ethnic groups in America that as a whole live with poorer socioeconomic conditions. I personally think that a government should be acting in the best interests of its citizens and constructing effective policy that target factors that perpetuate poorer socioeconomic outcomes.

This should apply to whatever ethnic background you come from, but obviously those who need more help (say because of historical slavery and/or discrimination) should probably get more help.
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@TheUnderdog
I'm not saying you're wrong. I grew up on a farm. We have 80 or 100 cattle at all times, I like them, I treat them well, I sing to them constantly tbh, Bohemian Rhapsody mostly, captive audience my mam says. But every fifteen months the cattle prods come out and a batch of them goes to slaughter. My dad takes a weird sort of class photo of death beforehand. I got a cranky vet comes too, he hates his job I'd say, I saw him box one of my cattle right into the mouth once, real hard, because it kicked while he was trying to castrate it. Well, I nearly hit him. I was paying the man to castrate my cattle, and took affront that he boxed one into the jaw. We're an odd creature, humans. 

Still, I think you should find a new argument.  
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Should reparations be provided for slavery?
Absolutely. Hard to argue against this. Every slave/human trafficking victim should be freed and compensated by confiscating assets from their captors/traffickers.
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@badger
There's something a little inhuman in this dude. 
You don't know the half of it lmao.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
You can't punish people for stuff they legally did even if it's immoral by today's standards.  Human traficing victims had illegal stuff done to them, so you reperate them not from tax dollars, but from the funds of the offender.  Reperations to blacks will come from taxpayer funds.
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@TheUnderdog
The way I see it is this: You guys got the African American, a second class citizen surely in a lot of ways, looking on at the rich white man, the wealth of which his ancestors were once enslaved to. There's resentment there, and if there's not politics there, I don't know where else.

Of course, it'll be on the other side too, in this hyper-individualistic world.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
He's definitely odd but I kinda like him lol. I think it's the presidential shtick, dude wants to grow. 
Double_R
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@TheUnderdog
You can't punish people for things they legally did.
One of the most common gripes black people have with white people is the way white people manage to make everything about them and their own victim hood. This is another perfect example.

Reparations isn’t punishment any more than an infrastructure project in Kentucky is punishment to anyone not living in Kentucky. You really need to drop this argument.

Reparations is about trying to right the wrongs of the past, not because those actions were wrong morally but because the legacy of slavery still impacts the black community today.

Question; do you think it’s just coincidence that the same race who enslaved and thereby built their wealth on top of the free labor of black people, today have a median net worth that is 20 times that of the median black household?

If you do then let’s perform the following experiment; let’s spend, say, the next 400 years enslaving every White person and building the nations wealth on their free labor. Then, suddenly, let them free into a society where wealth begets wealth while giving them nothing, not educate them, and see how well they bounce back. We’ll check in in about 150 years to see if they caught up. Oh, and did I mention that the bulk of those 150 years would be spent enforcing Jim Crow laws, redlining, and mass incarceration? Yeah, let me know how that goes.