Racism Exists
And it’s been paying our site a visit. H.R. 40 is the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, and it has drawn some virulent opposition, with some commenters using racial epithets.
Judging people based on their race denies them their individual merits. It’s a form of collectivism, like communism, which denies the individual his or her due.
Now, opponents of the bill are not all racists (though the ugly comments tend to make it seem that way). The “reparations” idea is pretty silly, and grows sillier with each passing year.
With no surviving direct victims, there is no just way to decide who should get what or who should pay it. Congress last year passed a resolution apologizing for slavery, which is the only thing one can do now about that national disgrace.
The small minority of people spewing racist venom, rather than civilly opposing the bill, should be seen as just that: a tiny minority of angry people who are too simple to see past race and judge people on their individual merits – something they would demand for themselves, of course.
(A special note: Please, do not encourage this small group with comments that respond in kind to their ugliness. Let their foul words stand as the most powerful symbol of their dim views. Our hope is for them to get bored and go away, eventually to figure out that racism is for losers.)
The election of Barack Obama has stirred this group to fear, it seems. I suspect they will see in the next few years that President Obama doesn’t look at the world through a racist lens, so the things they fear from him won’t materialize, and they’ll have one less reason to cling to racism.
PhilMB
Please note that until the US Government gets rid of its own racist attitudes, it will never go away. Their excuse that they require it for demographic reasons is a smoke-screen to retain the classification systems inherent in our shameful past. Racism is alive and well, and its well-spring is Washington, DC.
James
You say that the idea of reparations is “silly.”
While I agree that there are inherent difficulties in trying to address the legacy of the past, you attack a straw man when you refer to determining which people should pay or receive reparations.
Modern proposals for reparations generally involve race-neutral ways of aiding those most affected today by the slavery and racism of the past, and would be funded by those who benefit from that history, namely the citizens of the U.S., according to the degree to which they benefit.
This may be problematic, but I think it’s far from silly.
Jim Harper
James, judging by your link, you’ve thought about this more than me, but I’m quite certain that – if that term has meaning – reparations would be complex and controversial. It’s not a straw man.
Chris
Race based affirmative action is vanishing. Thats fine, its the wrong approach.
But when it was mandated, the ugly secret was that most affirmative action didn’t go to poor urban African Americans, from hellish schools.
No, it went to smart, highly literate children of nonwhite immigrants (like Obama) or the affluent black middle class.
Martin Luther King was smart, he knew what was important in this battle better than anybody, and he was against affirmative action by race…. Its a deliberate avoidance of the real issues, poverty and vanishing opportunities…. A way to prolong the inequalities in society by buying off the segment who could possibly change the situation the most. And ignoring the others. Its wrong.
…If ONE formerly enslaved people get reparations, what about the others, like the many descendents of indentured servants?
They were ALSO sold off like cattle, They were often treated worse than slaves, (who were an investment) and many died…. Those seven years (much longer for children who were paying off parents debts, often they never saw them again) were hard, Lets NOT do this!
TaxPayerWithMortgage
so when nonBlacks use racially motivated language, it’s ooooooh so horrible, but we hear black people, oops, excuse me… “african americans” using this supposedly unspeakable work and referring to Anglos and “cracka this” and “crack that” and “whiteboy this” and “whitebitch that”… we don’t see little written apologies like this one for such offenses. Get Real. As long as people like Conyers stir up this racist crap, people are going to be outraged!
Jim Harper
Yes, TPWM, because of their very different treatment in American history, calling black/African-American people by certain names is much worse than calling white people by racially oriented names. That’s not too much for you to handle, I think.
Again, I disagree with the reparations bill that inspired all this discussion, but the bill is not an excuse to be goaded into a back-and-forth of race-based insults.
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