The Ghetto is Public Policy

[Jenksismyhero]

Isn't that what we generally do as taxpayers for about a million other things?

 

Not as payment for mistakes made decades/centuries ago.

 

You want to institute a life tax?

[iamshack]

Not as payment for mistakes made decades/centuries ago.

 

You want to institute a life tax?

You don't think the government utilizes income tax to repair all kinds of stupid s*** it did decades/centuries ago??

[Balta1701]

Not as payment for mistakes made decades/centuries ago.

 

You want to institute a life tax?

The article takes things as a progression all the way up to the recent housing crash. If your objection is that some of them were too long ago then you should strongly support additional reparations to even things out from that event.

[southsider2k5]

What he actually proposes in the article is that the bill that John Conyers puts to the floor every single year (Bill H.R. 40: http://conyers.house.gov/index.cfm/reparations) be passed.

 

What the bill actually does is it would form a committee to study slavery and its after-effects on current Black Americans, and would propose "appropriate remedies".

 

Coates isn't a policy wonk and I don't think an article like his requires the actual solution laid out, his point was to make the case that the idea of reparations should not be considered outside the bounds of social discourse.

 

The thing I worry most about is where is the legal line here?

 

We pretty much stole the country from the Indians, murdered and diseased them into an endangers species. Then the people that were left we forcibly gathered up, and moved into segregated camps. Heck we even had many "legal" agreements with them to give them this land and that land, not to mention other bribes to leave whatever land we wanted at the time. What are the appropriate remedies for the practical extermination of a race, decades and generations later? One could argue that they have as strong of a claim to remedies as African's do in this country.

 

We put Japanese people into interment camps in WWII, what is appropriate there?

 

We segregated and discriminated against the Chinese for much of our history. Same with the Irish. What do they deserve?

 

Women have been a historical subspecies in this country for pretty much its entire history. Their claim status for reparations also has to rank up there.

 

If you lay down a legal presence here, you open a pandora's box I am not sure where it ends. Where do we draw the line for saying that one group's claims are more valid than anothers? That they deserve reparations over another?

[gatnom]

I don't know how anyone could read that article and come across with "he already thinks I'm guilty". That statement is hilarious to me.

 

These results are dispiriting, but the crime with which reparations activists charge the country implicates more than just a few towns or corporations. The crime indicts the American people themselves, at every level, and in nearly every configuration. A crime that implicates the entire American people deserves its hearing in the legislative body that represents them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[iamshack]

The thing I worry most about is where is the legal line here?

 

We pretty much stole the country from the Indians, murdered and diseased them into an endangers species. Then the people that were left we forcibly gathered up, and moved into segregated camps. Heck we even had many "legal" agreements with them to give them this land and that land, not to mention other bribes to leave whatever land we wanted at the time. What are the appropriate remedies for the practical extermination of a race, decades and generations later? One could argue that they have as strong of a claim to remedies as African's do in this country.

 

We put Japanese people into interment camps in WWII, what is appropriate there?

 

We segregated and discriminated against the Chinese for much of our history. Same with the Irish. What do they deserve?

 

Women have been a historical subspecies in this country for pretty much its entire history. Their claim status for reparations also has to rank up there.

 

If you lay down a legal presence here, you open a pandora's box I am not sure where it ends. Where do we draw the line for saying that one group's claims are more valid than anothers? That they deserve reparations over another?

I thought this was the best approach:

 

Today Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School professor, argues for something broader: a program of job training and public works that takes racial justice as its mission but includes the poor of all races.

[bmags]

The thing I worry most about is where is the legal line here?

 

We pretty much stole the country from the Indians, murdered and diseased them into an endangers species. Then the people that were left we forcibly gathered up, and moved into segregated camps. Heck we even had many "legal" agreements with them to give them this land and that land, not to mention other bribes to leave whatever land we wanted at the time. What are the appropriate remedies for the practical extermination of a race, decades and generations later? One could argue that they have as strong of a claim to remedies as African's do in this country.

 

We put Japanese people into interment camps in WWII, what is appropriate there?

 

We segregated and discriminated against the Chinese for much of our history. Same with the Irish. What do they deserve?

 

Women have been a historical subspecies in this country for pretty much its entire history. Their claim status for reparations also has to rank up there.

 

If you lay down a legal presence here, you open a pandora's box I am not sure where it ends. Where do we draw the line for saying that one group's claims are more valid than anothers? That they deserve reparations over another?

 

I understand this point. On the other hand, I find few of those as compelling as the black and American Indian experience in the country. For the former, the sustained length of open oppression from the United States Federal Government, state and local governments and local actors make it more so huge that being fearful that every group ever wronged may also fight for reparations.

 

 

[bmags]

edit: lost quote, this referred to Gatnom.

 

But he then builds that point to show the piracy of black wealth and achievement by local governments, by state governments, and by the federal governments. Each arms of the American people. The point is that this isn't an antebellum south problem, it's an American problem.

Edited May 27, 2014 by bmags

[Jenksismyhero]

You don't think the government utilizes income tax to repair all kinds of stupid s*** it did decades/centuries ago??

 

To a group of people that specifically went through the experience (e.g. Japanese interred during WW2), not people who are descendants of people centuries ago. Where's the cut off? if you're black is that enough? Do you have to have ties to slavery in your family history? What if you were a slave in the north and were treated pretty well and then granted your freedom? What if you're a descendant of Sally Hemmings? Do they count? What should they get?

 

 

[iamshack]

To a group of people that specifically went through the experience (e.g. Japanese interred during WW2), not people who are descendants of people centuries ago. Where's the cut off? if you're black is that enough? Do you have to have ties to slavery in your family history? What if you were a slave in the north and were treated pretty well and then granted your freedom? What if you're a descendant of Sally Hemmings? Do they count? What should they get?

So your response would be to complicate matters so much so as to excuse nothing being done at all?

[Jenksismyhero]

The article takes things as a progression all the way up to the recent housing crash. If your objection is that some of them were too long ago then you should strongly support additional reparations to even things out from that event.

 

I don't follow why I should based on my position against reparations altogether.

[southsider2k5]

I thought this was the best approach:

 

Isn't that exactly what public education is supposed to be for?

 

The only way you are going to break the multi-generational cycle of poverty is to make people appreciate that an education is step one to a better life. That isn't just a black/slave/African thing either. With the life experiences I have seen the same cycle from many different races. It is sad because you see that influence even in Kindergartners when they aren't doing homework or attending school at 5 years old.

 

The key is to break the mindset, which is way easier said than done. No amount of reparations will change that, IMO.

[Jenksismyhero]

I thought this was the best approach:

 

So you mean affirmative action policies? Hey, we have that already, and it's not working.

[gatnom]

Isn't that exactly what public education is supposed to be for?

 

The only way you are going to break the multi-generational cycle of poverty is to make people appreciate that an education is step one to a better life. That isn't just a black/slave/African thing either. With the life experiences I have seen the same cycle from many different races. It is sad because you see that influence even in Kindergartners when they aren't doing homework or attending school at 5 years old.

 

The key is to break the mindset, which is way easier said than done. No amount of reparations will change that, IMO.

 

This is the key point to me. Throwing money at it doesn't solve any of the root problems.

 

 

[bmags]

To a group of people that specifically went through the experience (e.g. Japanese interred during WW2), not people who are descendants of people centuries ago. Where's the cut off? if you're black is that enough? Do you have to have ties to slavery in your family history? What if you were a slave in the north and were treated pretty well and then granted your freedom? What if you're a descendant of Sally Hemmings? Do they count? What should they get?

 

I really really think you should read the full article.

[Jenksismyhero]

I really really think you should read the full article.

 

i'm half way through. it's long.

[iamshack]

Isn't that exactly what public education is supposed to be for?

 

The only way you are going to break the multi-generational cycle of poverty is to make people appreciate that an education is step one to a better life. That isn't just a black/slave/African thing either. With the life experiences I have seen the same cycle from many different races. It is sad because you see that influence even in Kindergartners when they aren't doing homework or attending school at 5 years old.

 

The key is to break the mindset, which is way easier said than done. No amount of reparations will change that, IMO.

So what if reparations focused specifically on public schools in very poor areas?

[bmags]

This is the key point to me. Throwing money at it doesn't solve any of the root problems.

 

John Conyers’s HR 40 is the vehicle for that hearing. No one can know what would come out of such a debate. Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced.

[Balta1701]

We put Japanese people into interment camps in WWII, what is appropriate there?

Somebody needs to point this out.

Frank Yatsu never thought he would live to see his government apologize for imprisoning him during World War II. But a check carrying that message should arrive in a few days--just before he turns 107.

 

"That's pretty good, I think," Yatsu said. "The American government treated us in a Christian way, and it's pretty good."

 

The government soon will start sending $20,000 checks to each of the surviving Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps during the war. The last of the checks will be mailed in the federal government's fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, 1992.

[iamshack]

So you mean affirmative action policies? Hey, we have that already, and it's not working.

I generally agree with this and your next post stating that just trying to throw money at the problem doesn't fix things...but that isn't an excuse to withhold any further funding because the previous methods didn't work as planned.

[Jenksismyhero]

Somebody needs to point this out.

 

Those are direct victims of false imprisonment (at minimum) perpetrated by the state. Private individuals weren't committing those acts on their own.

[gatnom]

Fair enough, bmags. I don't see anything wrong with debating it as he suggests. I just don't think his position is ever one that will be so easily satisfied, though.

 

 

[Balta1701]

Those are direct victims of false imprisonment (at minimum) perpetrated by the state. Private individuals weren't committing those acts on their own.

The kick is up, and, what's this, the goalposts have marched themselves back 20 yards!

[Jenksismyhero]

The kick is up, and, what's this, the goalposts have marched themselves back 20 yards!

 

By pointing out the difference in the two situations that's moving the goal posts? Ok...

[southsider2k5]

So what if reparations focused specifically on public schools in very poor areas?

 

This is one place I think Indiana has made a move into the right direction. They have actually done away with the traditional property tax school funding to a large extent. Now everyone sends that money to Indianapolis. The State has come up with a funding formula that looks at the components of the population of a school district, such as how many learning disabled kids, how many gifted kids, how many kids below poverty rate, and assigns a value to how much it takes to educate the typical kids for those groups, then it comes up with a number that shows it should cost $X to educate the typical kid in your school district. That number is much higher in areas of really high poverty such as Gary, versus your typical cookie cutter white bread suburb.

 

If they wanted to rework education to address it, that one makes sense to me, because if you can catch people at a young enough age, those are the ones you can "save". Once you hit a certain point in life, you are basically giving them a lottery ticket. Odds are much higher if you don't have the right life skills to begin with, that lottery winning ticket will be blown, and they will be back to where they started.