SultanOfSurreal wrote:we owe reparations to the descendants of all people who were enslaved, although i would say not for indentured servitude, which while a horrible institution, did not have the same sort of long-lasting effects that slavery did. the descendants of white slaves have also had their reparations in the form of the aforementioned systemic bias that exists in favor of all white people.
The question is, who is we? Do I owe money to people enslaved in a country because my ancestors moved here after slavery was abolished, because of my race? Do African American's whose families that were never enslaved owe money to other African Americans who were never enslaved? No native Americans owe money to African Americans that were enslaved on land that was stolen from them?
Do we owe a debt to people this country has wronged? Absolutely. Can it just be paid in cash? Of course not.
By the logic of this thread, everyone who has ever had an injustice against them is owed money. Im sure my ancestors were paid less than Non-Irish workers when they came to this country because of discriminatory pay practices at the time. Can I get a check? I admit, its petty compared to slavery, but if my ancestors were all getting 40% less pay just because of their origins, than the estimated value of that money with interest is rather large.
Do we owe families that had women workers working for less because of discriminatory pay practices?
Again, a petty complaint when compared to slavery. However, slaves were paid. They were paid in food. This food was paid only to keep them alive of course, but most were given food, however vile and unappetizing as it may have been.
Do we subtract this amount out of the calculations? What was the fair wage for labor at the time, compared with the cost of food they received, and shelter, that some received? No doubt its a lot, but some slaves were most certainly given more than others. Its not fair for the better-treated slave decendants to receive the same amount as the poorly treated ones.
Now, those calculations of course do not account for the cost of being enslaved, which was their abduction, and essential incarceration, and often wrongful death. Those are the crimes that ironically one can put an actual number too, because its an arbitrary number anyways. Unfortunately, some families were enslaved for generations, where as some for perhaps as short as one generation, theoretically. Surely the families of those enslaved for generation after generation deserve much more than those who were enslaved for one generation, and again, those who were not enslaved, would be as responsible as most, for paying that.
For an African American that did not have family abducted or enslaved, is as responsible as any person of any race that arrived to this country post-slavery.
We all have benefited from the contributions of slaves that generated rapid growth in the US. We all have benefited from all of the injustices from the contributions of other races that arrived and were paid, marginal sums to work and build the foundation for the US. Some, no doubt, have benefited more. Many still benefit from injustice, again, some more than others.
A society cannot, however, just put a dollar figure one every injustice in its history, and fix it. It can mostly only work towards correcting current injustices, and more importantly, in correcting such an injustice, there would be further injustice, which would arguably need to be resolved at a later date.
Its simply impossible.
