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Reparations need tp be done right [1]
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Date: 2023-06-24
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I hated to write this story. Still, I am obligated to warn my fellow progressives when they are about to make a serious mistake.
The State of California is set to enact large cash payments to the descendants of slaves. Though it is encouraging that the Governor set up a commission to study ways to finally put things right, to establish genuine equality for all, I have to question whether the commission came to its conclusions after sufficient thought and thorough discussion. No doubt Americans of African descent have suffered terribly since involuntarily arriving on this continent. No doubt the survival of our democracy depends on society’s willingness to honestly address and amend these wrongs. Whites, Blacks, Browns and others have for too long occupied the same area, delineated as the United States of America, while in reality there have been at least two separated nations within the same drawn lines. We are already indivisible. We need to become one nation. Apparently, the commissioners avoided looking closely at the possibility that monetary reparations to individuals might do just the opposite. I could waste an entire blog listing the objections we can expect to hear should cash payouts actually be proposed and implemented—and those would be only the polite objections. In fact, if I wanted to guarantee turning the country, even deep blue California, over to rightwing, racist psychotics, I believe cash reparations would be the way to go.
The status-quo is unsustainable, but do we want to make it worse? The rightwing’s head-on, forcible ending of abortion rights has given spirit and momentum to the progressive side. Forcing living Americans to pay cash in payment for the sins of their fathers will bury enforced childbirth as a popular issue. The “haves” in our country do have an obligation to help the “have-nots.” Genuine equality among all Americans will benefit everyone, fiscally and socially. But projects to bring about actual equality must be carefully considered and openly discussed, and the majority will need to agree that they are necessary and effective. Reparations discussed by the commission have been downplayed—purposely, I believe, because everyone involved always knew they would not pass in public opinion. If legislation mandating cash payments is proposed, the discussions and objections will be loud. The entire project is based on wishful thinking, which to my experience, never works very well.
The concept of “reparations,” like “defunding the police,” was probably never considered in all aspects. The commission for reparations was formed after the needless killing by police of George Floyd. Following Floyd’s murder, most Americans stood in sympathy for Black victims of police killings, and began to favor finally establishing equality for all. But riots drowned out discussions of real reform. Now police are again killing Black people (and that by extension could mean anybody) at about the same rate, and with the same impunity, as before. The police get away with murder because the general public sees crime in society as more serious than crimes committed by random officers. America needs to end police brutality, but most Americans will put up with it rather than defund the police. Similarly, the nation must end racial and ethnic inequality; but handing cash to individuals will only make it worse.
How do we put a cash value on kidnapping people, then sailing them across the ocean to be sold to strangers who would work them to death without pay? The kidnapped human beings’ descendants would suffer the same fate, generation after generation. After the Civil War, Afro-Americans continued to be abused, almost as cruelly as before, although they were paid for their work, and they could (if they could afford it) move to the North where they would be treated a little bit better. What is adequate compensation for four centuries of mistreatment? What about Hispanics, who endured second-class citizenship in lands that were once theirs? What about Indigenous Americans, who had an entire continent taken away? What about discrimination against various cultures of Asian Americans? And if we want to be thorough, how do we address the abuse heaped on various European immigrants, by already settled Euro-Americans? Who truly owes what to whom?
Of course, money can be used to right wrongs. But who decides right from wrong? Since there is no writing in the sky to point out what is right, that decision is left to human beings, who often disagree quite violently on the concepts of right and wrong. When money changes hands, those who receive it are usually favorable, while those who hand it over dislike it, unless they can get something worthwhile in exchange. Few will accept being charged money because others deem it the right thing to do. We must remember that Confederates truly believed they were in the right when they seceded. When the Union forced them at gunpoint to free the slaves, allowing Afro-Americans to join the vast ranks of Euro-American wage slaves, they did what they had to, while the guns were pointed, and no more. Laws giving former slaves the same rights as Whites were ignored. A century later, the U.S. government forced changes in the Jim Crow laws that had made Blacks second-class citizens. Dixiecrats sullenly obeyed, but have been clawing back their racist privileges ever since. Progressives are locked in a close battle to protect these rights, and to restore the ones that have been taken. Cash payouts will tip the scales against chances for any justice to take hold.
Yet, justice must be done. A nation founded on the self-evident truth of human equality cannot continue to practice inequality, and long endure. We must enforce existing laws protecting equality, and enact new laws as needed to advance equality. We need to reform the police, partnering law enforcement with mental health and social work. We must restore voting rights, and enforce laws prohibiting discrimination in housing and hiring. We need to end the prison-industrial State, rearranging law enforcement goals toward rehabilitation instead of punishment. We need to reform education, so that all Americans can go into the world equipped to function comfortably in it. We must re-invent the economy to provide real opportunity, in this wealthy nation, for everyone. We have been making slow progress on these fronts, and things seem stalled right now. We need to reinvigorate our efforts, working together as true partners having the same goals. These, and others, are reparations that just might stick.
Dr. King and his followers did not march, get jailed, beaten up, and even killed, for money. They sacrificed to change the conscience of the country so that America would live up to its original intentions, to recognize our brotherhood. As corny as it sounds, brotherhood is the only emotion that can save this country. We can achieve brotherhood only when all of us become aware of how much in common we all have. The project is tortuously difficult, and judging by how far we have come, it will take a long time. But we must redouble our collective efforts to accomplish this goal. The alternative is to foolishly protect the status-quo of several nations inside of one, on a trajectory of destruction. Cash reparations will only hasten the destruction. I hate having to call out people on the same side I am on. Still, I must warn my fellow progressives against making a terrible, perhaps irrevocable, mistake.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/24/2177444/-Reparations-need-tp-be-done-right
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