Can't hurt to talk about it. LOTS of resistance to it. Without getting bogged down in the standard "WHY should ANYONE get it?/WHO gets it?" quagmires, let's instead talk about structuring it in a way that's minimally objectionable and thus most likely to be accepted by the largest number of people. For instance, indigenous tribes have increased wealth via gaming franchises. Would something like this work for reparations? Again, the purpose of this topic is NOT to discuss why/who, but rather how the structuring could work. Please address this issue only rather than hobbling the discussion with tangential concerns. Thank you. AD
Given that NONE of those ancestors are around any longer that begs the question as to WHY do they NEED any reparations at all? It would make much sense to provide reparations to the DESCENDANTS of black slaves instead. And based on the assumption that was a MISTAKE on the part of the OP here is my suggestion. It should NOT be necessary to have to PROVE that anyone had an ancestor that was a slave. Instead we KNOW that there has been an ONGOING limitation of their OPPORTUNITIES to improve their quality of life which has resulted in what is now known as generational poverty. Since the MAJORITY of those people stuck in generational poverty lack the means to overcome it because of the CIRCUMSTANCES of their poverty my suggestion is to alter the entire lifestyle with a completely different approach to the problem. A new trust fund needs to be put in place with the purpose of educating and funding EMPLOYEE OWNED businesses. The trust will provide training on how to start and run a business and start up capital with the proviso that those businesses must return ALL profits to the employees. In addition those businesses can only hire people who have been through the training and who live full time in the impoverished area. These businesses can initially be focused upon renovating their impoverished area and providing jobs in those areas. The businesses cannot covert to any other type of corporation and cannot use any of their funds to start shareholder corporations. Instead they will be encouraged to compete with shareholder corporations on better service and value for money in their LOCAL area, The goal here is to alter the entire poverty stricken area into one that is self sustaining. Employee-owners can use their share of the profits as down payments on mortgages in the area and that will result in a stronger tax base which can be used to improve the schools and facilities. This is repeated for all impoverished areas and ultimately replaces the concept of reparations with the modern equivalent of 40 acres and a mule. Yes, there will be some people who will benefit who were never the descendants of slaves however I doubt that any of the beneficiaries are going to begrudge those others given that they shared the same poverty conditions.
In previous threads on this topic, I've voiced my support of the general idea of reparations. The US was actually on track to do that with the Freedman's Bureau, until Lincoln was assassinated. Of course, trying to divy that sort of thing up 150 years later is fairly difficult. There seems to be several steps required: 1. Determining an equitable amount. Should it be $50,000, or $50 million? 2. How to determine eligibility? This is where I think the program gets bogged down and why I don't believe there will actually ever be reparations. First you have to identify the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS). To do that, you'll need pretty darn good genealogy records. As usual, the people who can afford that will the rich and upper class ADOS. People who are poor with uncertain parentage will again, be out of luck. 3. Also another possible deal breaker: Divide the amount by generations? Let's say you come to an amount, and determine eligibility, in a family, do the reparations, go to the grand parents, their, children or great grand children? In other words, the oldest surviving generation or the youngest? If your grandfather gets his reparations, does that mean your blood debt is paid? That's why I think reparations are more useful as a political issue that can be promised over and over rather than a real program that will actually pay out one day.
Some good points, but remember that this is about the HOW of structuring the wealth building in a minimally objectionable way, and not eligibility for what some see as handouts & so forth - we have other threads for that. For instance, howzabout handing over the legal opiod trade and/or legalized pot? A problem for black Christians no doubt, so maybe t-shirt franchises and fried chicken* as well? *C'mon now - who doesn't love fried chicken, black or white?
This is the difference between giving someone a fish vs teaching them how to fish. Yes, there will be objections to lump sum payments just as there are objections to providing payments to hardworking Americans currently out of work. Your OP was looking for alternative solutions that would achieve the goal with the minimum of objections. There have been programs directed at the impoverished that have had varying degrees of success and there will always be naysayers about them but this is not about them. This is about the fact that a great many of the descendants of slaves are impoverished today and that is what drives the ongoing question of reparations. Putting together something that changes the entire paradigm from handouts to jobs that empower people to help one another out of poverty in a cooperative manner is probably going to encounter the usual whining about socialism, communism, unamerican, etc, etc but who cares? Do it as a pilot project and then evaluate what works and what doesn't and adapt it to focus on what is working. Stress the need to learn and embrace the concept of OWNERSHIP of the business. This is the core reason why capitalism is successful and the core reason why the impoverished are locked out of it, they do not have the capital to invest. So what this reparations trust does is to provide the ownership in exchange for sweat equity while embracing the positive aspects of capitalism. By locking out investors the profits remain in the pockets of the workers and WITHIN the community itself. In essence the recover becomes self funding because the ability to exploit is excluded from the equation. This is not a new unproven concept. It works successfully and one employee owned business is now a multi-national that competes successfully on a global scale.
TBH it is more a matter of not allowing those that oppose reparations a forum to vent. Instead you are asking them to come up with constructive alternatives. That means actually having to think of something that might work and be acceptable to everyone concerned. Naysayers are not well known for coming up with viable alternatives.
Give them federal land to homestead. FS, F&W, BLM, etc has vast tracks of land currently not being used for anything but hunting/camping. There would have to be some restrictions, like re-sale (so it doesnt just end up being sold cheap and developed into more white, upper class resort towns), minimum improvement reqs, proof of habitation and residency... failure to meet reqs would simply put it back in availability for homestead or return the land to federal ownership. Probably some basic farming and construction classes would be necessary for participants as well. Much of the land is not arable (except for hemp!), but hunting lodges, wilderness retreats, or just retirement ranches are all options I'm sure some black folks would prefer to their BlueDem urban ghettos. We need to spread out the population anyway to avoid future viral outbreaks, many blacks want to leave the city, and the govt owns too much of the land. It could be a win-win-win if done properly. The other option is to just decree that all whites who don't volunteer 10 hours a week to work for a black slave-descendant are racist. The blacks won't likely get much out of it, but at least we'll find out which of the white college educated progressive social justice warriors are committed to the cause, and which ones are just disingenuous communist revolutionaries on a masquerade
Pour the money into struggling communities, better schools, education, help individuals start their own business, outreach progects, community policing e.t.c. I'm against giving people big fat checks . I think the wises solution would be to try to build up the poorest areas regardless of who lives there.
Sounds good to me. The only that stands in the way is criminal politicians of both major parties and a whole lot of people who don't want the problem solved.
Can we recognize that native americans are getting paid annually for things done to their ancestors? Now to address the subject, there probably should be both individual payments and then the creation of specific funds to address group disparities I'll add more on this later. Time to sleep.
I think some of us in this country need to get a full and true understanding of how things made it so we are here today.
