https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...nion&pgtype=Homepage


Wow.

jf

Randon thoughts
Half and more of this nation will reject reparations in various manners, including violence.

I see more mentions of civil war.

How could reparations be made?

Australia has made some reparations. Any valid comparisons?

I wonder if the author of that piece knows that Russian trolls, in all their wisdom, wrote much the same stuff on Twitter and Facebook, in an effort to get Trump elected.

I could not disagree with one of his conclusions more strongly. Specifically, this one:

quote:

Reparations are a drastic policy and hard to execute, but the very act of talking about and designing them heals a wound and opens a new story.

Talking about reparations does not heal a wound. Absolutely not. It may tear the wound wide open so that the infection can be addressed, but it does not heal the wound.

And, in some cases, tearing the wound open doesn't lead to healing. Sometimes, it kills the patient.

And that is how I feel about reparations. I don't see how to get from here to there.

I always thought that affirmative action ... not the "everyone on an equal footing" affirmative action, but the racial preference form of affirmative action, the one where minorities are favored for certain contracts or positions ... was a way of addressing the issue of reparations.

Brooks raises the question of whether LeBron and Oprah need reparations, but there's another question that's even more difficult. What about others?

If we owe reparations to blacks, do we not owe reparations to Native Americans? Does the world not owe reparations to Jews (and was the creation of Israel a form of reparations, and, if so, was it sufficient?) What about gypsies? I'd be hopelessly lost if I tried to catalog every group that had been suffered catastrophic discrimination throughout history.

And who owes those reparations? Do groups that immigrated after slavery had ended ... Chinese, Jews, Vietnamese ... do those groups owe reparations?

This is a Gordian knot. There's no way of cutting it.

Coates' position seems to be, you have to look at slavery in isolation. (If I was being less generous, I'd say his position is incredibly egocentric. He cares about his own history but no one else's.) But I don't think you can. And I don't think we ever will.

quote:

If we owe reparations to blacks, do we not owe reparations to Native Americans?

It would be very hard to justify an answer to this in the negative.

I don't know the answer to the bigger question of reparations but I am astonished to find Brooks coming out in favor.

jf

In fairness, Brooks is in favor of nothing specific. He just wanted to write a piece that would get reactions or stir discussions. I don't think those discussions are any good for his side of the political spectrum though.

As thrilled as I would be to see something like this codified in a piece of legislation which could be voted for or against, I know it will never get to that point.