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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTNC: The Radical Practicality of Reparations
Another great piece by Coates on reparations.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/the-radical-practicality-of-reparations/372114/
The Plan's proprietors showed little stomach for any kind of historical reckoning. President Richard Nixon's Assistant Secretary of Labor Arthur Fletcher, who helped create the Plan, targeted not just blacks, but "Orientals, American Indians and persons with Spanish surnames."
More importantly, The Philadelphia Plan was focused on ending present racist discrimination, not compensating for the past. In Philadelphia, a city that was 30 percent black, there were 12 minority unionized ironworkers and three black pipe-fitters. There was no black unionized work among the sheet metal trades, elevator constructors, or the stone-masons. From the perspective of reparations, one might calculate how much this discrimination had cost Philadelphia's black community and then attempt to compensate them. The Philadelphia Plan did not do this. Indeed Fletcher went so far as to declare himself neither interested in compensation nor "a fruitless debate about slavery and its debilitating legacy." The Philadelphia Plan was no more reparations than school busing was reparations.
The White House's appetite for these "reparations" proved short lived. In 1970, Nixon took The Philadelphia Plan national, expanding beyond the trades. In 1972, he ran against his own plan. Fletcher was forced out. The Democrats were tarred as the "quota party." "The zip went out of that integration effort," said then aide William Safire, "after the hard hats marched in support of Nixon on the war." So much for "reparations."
Lots more at the link. Really good piece.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)Trying to determine the amount of reparations, who should get reparations and who should pay for them would be a shit show of monumental proportions. We should not start down that road.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Such as compensating the black veterans who were denied access to the GI Bill, the black farmers who were denied at subsidies, and the black homeowners who were denied FHA loans. This stuff was closer the the present day than the Japanese internments in WWII.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)Other groups besides blacks also suffered those things - what about them? Cutting people checks just because they're black isn't going to cut it.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)He addresses that point for most of the second half of the post. See his bout about native Americans especially.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)There is no denying that many groups were treated unfairly in the past, but where is the fairness in making people who had nothing to do with the past wrongs pay for them? I don't believe we can or should try to look back into history and attempt to right every wrong that was ever committed on a particular group of people.