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Comment by jmerz | Hacker News Reader

So there's actually a lot of academic debate on the merits of reparations, and exactly what and how much reparations should be.

A very oversimplified pro argument: if it wasn't for slavery, these families would have generational wealth and better social situations. African Americans in the US ARE disproportionately lower wealth/income and this has CLEAR historical origins.

The oversimplified con argument: Okay, but if you come from a wealthy African American family, why should you have a leg up over a poor (or otherwise more disadvantaged) white student? What about an immigrant, who didn't benefit from slavery at all?

Fundamentally there's a huge swath of different injustices across society, and we obviously can't fix all of them at once, so a big challenge in this sort of debate is how you slice the injustices and how you prioritize fixing them.

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I don't think it's possible to do that, in general. Anyone can find an injustice if they look hard enough.

I have some ancestors that fled religious persecution in France. Many died. The ones that fled gave up everything. Should I play the victim card and petition France to restore the land my ancestors were chased off of?

History is pretty ugly, I'm sure everyone could find a justified grievance if they tried hard enough.

I think the logical thing is to focus on equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. What things can we do to distribute opportunity more equally in society? Things like free post-secondary education, free health care would seem to be a better use of resources.

you know the reason that we don't have those things is precisely because politicians campaigned on the narrative that black people (welfare queens, etc) would unfairly take advantage of a system like that and they won.

So it seems like you understand what needs to be done but what not what the blocking issues are.

To reinforce your point, those same politicians are fighting against student loan forgiveness. This is telling; to them, only suffering under the burden of non-dischargeable debt entitles you to the same opportunities as a wealthy family.

I don’t like student loan forgiveness as a policy because it is unequally distributed and benefits those most who were least responsible.

I think one could come up with a more fair proposal than that.

> A very oversimplified pro argument: if it wasn't for slavery, these families would have generational wealth and better social situations. African Americans in the US ARE disproportionately lower wealth/income and this has CLEAR historical origins.

I'm confused by the pro argument. My known lineage was not enslaved, but my grandparents immigrated with 0$, and my family has no generational wealth and we don't receive reparations.

Isn't being freed from slavery the same as being freshly immigrated with 0$?

Furthermore, there are tons of Asian immigrants that come from a third world country with virtually nothing, but become top earners because of their cultural values of education and filial piety

> Isn't being freed from slavery the same as being freshly immigrated with 0$?

Well, if you're immigrating, it isn't <country you're moving to>'s fault you have no money.

If you've been enslaved, it's very much <country you were enslaved by>'s fault you have no money.

But it’s not their fault they were born to parents that had no money.

Your grandparents chose to immigrate.

> Isn't being freed from slavery the same as being freshly immigrated with 0$?

The US economy, and hence those immigrants, were better off, because of the gains made from slavery.

By that logic, African-Americans also benefit from that economy, and ironically the gains made from slavery.

Not as much as white people did, and still do.

PS your terminology shows your biases.

I’m being called biased by a user with the name snot rocket. What’s wrong with my terminology?

rocketS. Plural.

One could argue that despite being free, African Americans still had to work against racism, unfair laws, and a system rigged against them in many ways. Those are things a white immigrant wouldn't have had to deal with, but black immigrants would have. Is the black immigrant excluded or included in any potential reparations?

The overall precedence is that reparations are paid to the people who experienced the harm, and the reparations are paid by those culpable of the harm. The Japanese who experienced internment were paid reparations by the United States government that took their property. Holocaust victims that had their property stolen were paid reparations by the former Nazis.

By contrast Irish Americans could very justifiably claim that were it not for Anglo oppression, they would be far wealthier. But we wouldn't fine Anglos today to pay Irish Americans. Slavery hits a similar issue, limiting the reparations to the party that did harm is very vague when you're approaching two centuries later. Most proposals for "reparations" aren't anything remotely close to actual reparations. A recent immigrant is assigned as much liability as a descendant of plantation owners. This isn't a reparation, this is a tax assigned without regard to culpability.

This argument makes a lot of sense to me.

The harms from slavery didn't end after the civil war. We had to pass laws a century later in the 1960s to outlaw the racist policies implemented by federal and state govts after reconstruction. The social (and legal) structure of american society has always had black people at the bottom, and until that is fixed then black people as a group are still being actively damaged by the legacy of chattel slavery.

That's true. There are still people alive who were hurt by those laws.

And now you have to start picking which racist policies are worthy of compensation and which aren't. Asians faced the Chinese exclusion act, as well as redlining for example. Will the aforementioned anti-irish and anti-catholic discrimination also receive reparations? And again, how wilp you identify the liable party, or will we just tax everybody?

What injustice? Each of these people have the same rights: those enumerated in the bill of rights. That is justice. If there were economic rights in our system there would be case for calling the status quo injustice but there aren't.

(this isn't to say that things can't be changed, but it would require the adoption of new amendments).

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