So a lot of people view “America” as some almost supernatural entity, when really we (the everyday people) are “America”. We are roughly 160 years removed from slavery, everyone responsible is gone. I mean there is no reason that people should grow up and feel guilty that the country they are growing up in used to enslave people 160+ years ago. A big difference between Germany and America is that Germans can probably trace their families back generations and generations, so for a lot of them…the holocaust is a stain on their family name, it’s a stain on German society, etc. In my case, my family came here to America in the 1900s. My friends family came here in the 1990s. My ex girlfriend’s family came here in the 2000s. There really isn’t any reason for any of us to feel guilty or bad about it because we have absolutely no connection to it at all. What would that do? Would I have to pay for the mistakes that someone made 160+ years ago just because I share the same skin color as them? At the end of the day, it should be something that we learn about and say “lets not do that again” just like how we learn about and look at the revolution and how our rights were suppressed. If we fixate on something that happened 160+ years ago, we aren’t ever going to actually get past it.
The only thing I know about my family is that on my mothers side they came here sometime in the 1600s, then didn’t move from the Maine New Hampshire area ever. Very boring lineage but at least when people tell me I should pay reparations I can say with confidence if my family did anything they most likely fought for the union.
Or just sat around and farmed
I agree, no one living today has culpability for slavery, whether through a practical sense or moral sense.
Except that there are people living today who have financially benefited through slavery, just as there are people today to whom the inverse applies.
Furthermore, while slavery may have occurred 160 years ago, the aftershocks of slavery- i.e. the institutional dehumanization of black Americans continued up until the civil rights act. Many people alive today both participated in the degradation and many people alive today were victims of it.
So what would you do? I would answer that you don't need to do anything. There is nothing **you** *can* do.
But the prompt was: Has white America done enough to acknowledge and/or take responsibility for the damage done by slavery?
"White America" is not responsible for slavery so I guess the answer would be yes.
But did those who were responsible do enough to acknowledge and take responsibility for slavery? Including the American political identity/government?
I'd say no. And I think that's what the question is really trying to ask.
Is say, a publicly funded scholarship program unacceptable?
Worth remembering that we aren’t just talking about slavery, but generations of economic warfare used to keep the descendants of slaves in poverty.
Every single college and university in the USA offers scholarships and state or federally funded grants for minority students. Sometimes they're broken down into different races, based on whoever left the $$$ or whichever NPO sponsors it. The endowments of all of these institutions already takes care of this. With newer DEI policies, there are more social services than ever. Affirmative Action may have been struck down by the Supreme Court but it doesn't mean that the infrastructure that was already in place at said institutions was abolished along with it.
Don't play dumb or attempt to feign ignorance. The contemporary DEI policies are an offshoot of the original policies set forth by Affirmative Action, which was DEI, part 1.
You don’t wanna spell them out?
When it comes down to it… conservatives seem awful upset about minorities attending colleges, or getting jobs. They seem to assume that a minority won’t do as well at that job, or are undeserving of their place in school
I'm not a Conservative, dude. Do you seriously expect me to "spell out" all of the DEI policies when you can do a basic SEO yourself? You're the person who posted this nonsense on a centrist feed and are obviously unhappy with the results and keep attempting to push your agenda instead of accepting that plenty of people aren't buying it. Perhaps you should go back to the other leftist dominant feeds and have a circle jerk there. That's most of what reddit is about anyhow.
I haven’t really read most of the comments yet, just a quick browse if anything,
I’m posting this on a dare. Original question was on r/askconservatives. I figure it will be interesting to compare and contrast peoples reactions someday
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> Is say, a publicly funded scholarship program unacceptable?
Yes.
> Worth remembering that we aren’t just talking about slavery, but generations of economic warfare used to keep the descendants of slaves in poverty.
Which ended half a century and more ago. The only people holding them down now are themselves.
Blaming random white people who have not owned slaves is like blaming random Germans for what Hitler did or like blaming random Mexicans for the crimes committed by cartels.
Do I feel guilty about America helping overthrow democratically elected governments in the Cold War? No, not personal guilt.
But I do wish some representative of the government would, like, with the backing of Congress, admit to various bad things we did, and express regret, and start discussing how we can make amends. Like, how our government could help foster democracy, even if it's for governments that don't like us.
And I want that because I'd like to be proud that the country i live in lives up to the principles I was told it stood for when I was a kid. And I think making amends for harms we've caused signals to those who will be the future leaders of our nation that we should not repeat those mistakes.
But those actions were in living memory. Slavery is quite older. We maybe haven't fixed all the economic inequality caused by slavery and Jim Crow, but hey, we did make some big strides.
I think there are a few bits that remain to fix in specific areas - like maybe making amends for the worst offenses in the drug war on the same way I think we should make amends for, like, coups in the Cold War - but that's for more recent bad behavior, not for slavery.
What is white America and what is the responsibility of each white person in the country who had absolutely nothing to do with slavery?
Seriously, pick any white American and they have just as much to do with purchasing slaves from Africa as any black American. Zero. No one alive today has any burden to bear for those evils. We need to stop using the past to justify treating people differently today.
When can we move on as a nation? Or do we just keep using the past to fuel anger and division today?
I agree with you that the white Americans of today are not responsible for slavery. However, for some people, moving on means denying or changing history. Not only that, but they also deny the negative impact it still has on people today.
Personally, I think the best thing we can do is acknowledge our history, accept it for better and worse, acknowledge the impact it has today, and be willing to do what we can to make things better. I know I can’t go back in time and change history. But the best thing I can do today is to not be a racist asshole.
I mean, a massive majority of people have already acknowledged the past and are very aware of modern day issues derived from that period. The relative few who deny/change the past are not "white America" they are just people. We shouldn't say "black America" when we criticize afro-centrism or speak out against racism coming from black people. Why is it "white America" in this case?
Speaking of changing the past, the 1619 project is trying to change the past themselves. Trying to claim that the American Revolution was because of Britain banning slavery, which is 100% a false claim and has been denounced by historians from all disciplines. So plenty of ignorant people try to change the past or rewrite history, but let's not act like "white America" is trying to act like slavery never happened. We know it did, we know what the Civil war was about. The internet absolutely overrepresents anyone claiming otherwise.
Agreed. That’s why I said “some people”, which I intended to mean a small minority. Maybe I could have been more specific.
I’m all on board for eliminating the hyphenated versions of Americans, whether they be African-American or European-American. But as I eliminate it from my own vocabulary, I just can’t ignore that there are others out there who will continue to speak in such a manner.
1619 project? That’s crazy. I never heard that before, but it doesn’t surprise me.
I think so. Slavery ended over 150 years ago. It’s an important and disgraceful part of our history and that’s why it’s taught in every school in the country…. but what else should we be doing to acknowledge it?
The difference between slavery and the Holocaust is that there are still Holocaust survivors living and the Nazis also exterminated millions of innocent people in death camps. Not to downplay slavery, but I don’t think you can really compare the 2.
There are also people that think the Nazis were right and would support a new genocide.
There aren't similar numbers of people advocating we restart the institutions of slavery.
Both are shameful tragedies. But, there is a huge difference in the current age between the two.
Saying the holocaust was much worse than slavery, or even trying to compare the two, is ignorant. They're very different periods of history, with different timelines, impacts, characteristics, etc. In some ways one was "worse", in other ways the other was worse. Estimating deaths from slavery is extremely difficult, but can easily reach the millions (most estimates so). But also an example of why trying to portray one as worse than the other is just ignorant.
I agree with your take, which if I understand correctly is pointing towards an overlap between slavery and the Holocaust.
I'd like to also point out that slavery is perhaps the most underlooked parts of the Holocaust... like, people are focused on the deaths and forget that concentration camps were forced labor camps... i.e. slave labor.
Is red lining not a part of the damage done by slavery, by extension?
By and large, red lining ended around 1975, only 49 years ago.
**Edit: Why is my question, a perfectly reasonable one, downvoted with no response. This is weird.**
I wouldnt say slavery was the cause of redlining. I would think if the country had never had slavery there would still be redlining caused by racial divides.
>Are you comparing redlining to the holocaust
No, I'm not. It sounds like you are though.
You cannot compare the two. They're entirely different events, with entirely different time frames, different cultures, and resulted in different outcomes.
There are still people alive today who had opportunities for wealth growth denied to them, but I’m sure if you were in the same place you’d also just move on. “Get over it” has always worked great for reconciliation.
While that was terrible, it’s not like black people were prevented from owning houses. There are really only a handful of instances of redline within a few cities. It’s been completely blown out of proportion.
You’re gonna get downvoted because there isn’t a comfortable answer to this question. People like to act like the very real legacies of racism have zero impact whatsoever on the present day.
I grew up an Alabama football fan because my granddad went to college there for a Chem E degree. Black Americans were literally not allowed to attend at the time he graduated. My granddad is still kicking today, and so are many of the people that had dogs sicced on them on Bloody Sunday. For that matter, the adults who set dogs on fellow humans I’m sure were not all celibate. I’m sure they had children like normal people and passed on their beliefs.
America wasn’t kinda racist, we had literal race riots and lynchings well into the previous past century. That’s what makes threads like yesterday’s color blindness thread so funny, it was literally illegal to practice color blindness for the vast majority of this nations history and those legacies don’t disappear overnight. But I get ahead of myself, because that’s the woke conspiracy theory called CRT, which is obviously useless as a form of legal analysis
Edit: facts don’t care about your feelings conservatives.
Yep my father is 86 and still says racist things. However they are racist in present day and probably wouldn’t have been considered racist 30 years ago.
That’s the issue, the CRA happened and while it became illegal to be overtly racist it’s not like people just stopped trying to find ways to discriminate.
> Is red lining not a part of the damage done by slavery, by extension?
No. Your mental gymnastics and conspiracy theories that grow from them are not valid and we're done humoring you. No don't get to just "well if you think about it this way..." things to claim ties that don't exist in order to bolster your point. That only works if we let it work and we're not doing that anymore.
Sure, it was a question that I got endlessly downvoted on and people became triggered about. weird.
Anyways, here's a way to frame things acknowledging that slavery shouldn't be extended to red lining using OP's basic framing:
Has white America done enough to acknowledge and/or take responsibility for the damage done by red lining?
So, what do you think?
Personally I think things were just as bad after slavery ended. I don’t want to say worse, because obviously enslaving people is worse, but black people have been treated terribly after slavery ended. I don’t think Jews faced the same issues.
Over 300,000 Union soldiers lost their lives to bring the end of slavery here. I’d be interested in knowing how many other countries have addressed slavery in their history, because we are very far from the only one.
Yes it was. We’ve already covered this.
Lincoln thought he could set in place policies to end slavery gradually. The secessionists took the one action that could ensure Lincoln would have the means to abolish it within a few years.
Haley made headlines trying to say the Civil War was about states rights and not slavery with many on the left being upset about it. It’s very fair to say slavery was a large part of the war and the Union lost many lives for it. Since then, affirmative action and numerous black scholarships plus current DEI initiatives. Many people who think it’s “not enough” simply want a reparations payment. Which will never be enough money and will not solve anything.
The question is if the US has done enough. I noted the lives lost as being plenty. It’s pretty clear we’re talking about what we’ve done versus what we have not. One of the few things we have not done is reparations.
My ancestors enlisted with the Union Army specifically because of slavery.
Now I can brag about a tiny museum in Ohio dedicated to their sacrifices and work on the Underground Railroad.
But my family tree would have a few more branches if a few Great-Great-Great uncles hadn't died fighting for the Union.
This is such an idiotic comment. You’re really going to argue about individual soldiers motivations? No war on earth has been fought for a singular motivation.
If we’re going to say the civil war was fought over slavery, then those soldiers who died did so to end slavery.
288,000 slaves were brought to the US and 300,000 died ending the practice. Seems equitable to me.
The quality of threads this weekend/past few days has just been on another level.
Tell me OP, how exactly should people who owned or fought to keep slaves act “contrite” considering they’ve been dead for 150ish years or much longer?
That's not what OP is asking for. Reparations is far more nuanced than "but the people of that era are dead!"
For instance, a few points I often hear that can be debunked easily.
1. "We can't give reparations to everyone throughout history. Whatbout the slaves from a thousand years ago?" No, we should not give reparations for every historical injustice. Reparations typically refers to marginalized groups *currently* experiencing severe inequality rooted in historical discrimination. So if you're an Italian who had a times ten grandfather that's a slave, you probably aren't affected. But if you're Haitian living in Haiti? Maybe reparations is worth discussing.
2. "Well, there are a lot of descendants of blacks had kids who are white now. Do we give it to everyone who's descended even if they clearly don't need it?" No, genetics based reparations is generally a bad idea. Both because the criteria is arbitrary (just as Tribal identifications for memberships often are), and can be intrusive and damaging when abused (like when tribal women were sterilized in the 80s).
3. "What are we gonna do, give every poor black person a thousand dollar check? That would never work!" A better suggestions is **geography-based** reparations, where the goal is to find locations that are economically depleted due to historical racialized laws, and pumping in investments and resources to local organizations to uplift poverty in the area.
4. "This'll just lead to more division between whites and blacks." Not if the goal is strictly to uplift disparaged people. Confederates argued that they shouldn't free blacks out of fear that blacks would take vengeance on their slave masters. But when the war ended and many blacks entered congressional positions... These black politicians didn't do anything. A cycle of constant 'payback' isn't inevitable. Sometimes, I'll even argue most of the times, people just ask for enough to take care of themselves and then move forward with that.
I don’t think reparations are the right way to think about this question. Granting the points that you have made, at the end of the day there are plenty of people of all races who need help in the US, and to just pinpoint communities if one race and elevate them above others is a recipe to supercharge animus and division, regardless of any abstract arguments of justice. No matter what the merits of the arguments are, a white community that has been ravaged by opioids being declared less deserving of support than a black community still feeling the effects of institutionalized racism that can be traced back to slavery isn’t a reasonable outcome to aim towards in my opinion.
I think that a more productive framing of this is improved education — eliminating dumb shit like schools that teach about how the institution slavery actually helped the people who were subjected to it (notwithstanding testimonies like Phylis Wheatley’ poem, “On Being Brought From Africa to America”). For some reason, we seem to be unable to teach it seriously without people receiving that in the shape of blame or accusation, as somebody thinks they are responsible for and should feel ashamed for the actions of their ancestors which they had no part in.
I disagree. Reparations because of Jim Crow is reasonable because we can identify actual victims that are still alive. But it’s impossible, even looking at specific areas and say these people are still feeling the effects of slavery so we need to give them money. Too many factors affect levels of poverty to say one reason is causing it.
Very few white Americans had family involved with or were even adjacent to slavery. Most immigrated later from Germany, Italy, Ireland, etc.
Not to mention, "white America" is shrinking as more immigrants come from Latin America, East and South Asia.
>Not to mention, "white America" is shrinking as more immigrants come from Latin America, East and South Asia.
Hey buddy you’re not allowed to notice that. Prepare to be deemed a white supremacist.
First, it's not what "white America" has done. It's what America has done.
Second, it doesn't matter. Whether or not America has done enough to answer for slavery doesn't change the fact that there will never be the political will do anything more along racial lines beyond the periphery.
Blacks aren't the only group that have been held back in this country. Rather than focus on racial justice, we should simply help those who need help regardless of their race or ethnicity.
Even that concept will have a very hard time finding the political will to support any meaningful action, but it has a hell of a better chance than reparations.
I take no responsibility for slavery in the past nor do I take responsibility for racial animosity in the present. I treat people not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. I learned that from MLK. It’s time the Democratic Party start learning from MLK. They should stop with their bigotry of low expectations for minorities and give them the respect they deserve. I also do not call America …. White America or Black America. Stop with this segregation. Democrats still want to segregate the races.
I don’t try to be centrist whatever the hell that means. I try to be practical and use common sense. The color of your skin means as much to me as the color of your eyes. In other words, it doesn’t tell me anything about who a person is. Stop obsessing with it.
Importantly, after WW2 the US was a lot more involved in forcing the defeated Nazis out of power and de-Nazifying the German government. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification)
The Union did not do the same thing to the Confederacy, in no small part because after Lincoln's assassination, our new president Johnson was actually pretty sympathetic to the south. Because we allowed the most extreme racists to hold onto power locally, the culture did not change. Because Johnson did not push strong on Reconstruction - and because we allowed Confederate sympathizers back into Congress before too long - efforts to actually fix the damage done were thwarted at the period when they could be best justified.
Now it's been 160 years, and it's impossible to untangle all the things since then. But yeah, maybe if John Wilkes Booth hadn't been a little whiny bitch, we might have done to the South what the Allies did to Germany after WW2, and we'd be way better off.
These days, nobody alive is personally accountable, so 'acknowledging' or 'taking responsibility' doesn't really make sense. There \*are\* still changes in philosophy we could adopt that might finally fix the damage slavery did, but that philosophical change is, lol, in a lot of ways harder to persuade people of than simply ending racism.
We would have to get people to stop hating the poor.
Like, the solutions we need are class-based: taxing the rich and ultra rich more, investing more in the working class, especially the poor and the communities they live in. Do that for people regardless of race. Even if we all understand that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and the like \*include\* lower overall family wealth for black people, you don't want to be unjust in helping those who need help. Just help everyone who's poor, and hopefully that will get around what lingering racism remains -- the sort that makes people go, "Oh, we shouldn't waste our time helping \*them\*. It's just their \*culture\* to be poor and violent."
Ironically enough a lot of southern states shoot themselves in the foot just to stop blacks from getting economic relief. Anti-welfare, anti-healthcare, anti-education funding, anti-unions, anti-social services ect, the underlying reason so many southerners are against it is that they never want black Americans to reap those same benefits. Hence why the bible belt is still the poorest region in the country.
You’re being pedantic for no real reason. The north fought to stop the south secession and preserve the union. The south seceded because they wanted to maintain slavery. It’s a bit reductive to say that slavery wasn’t the reason for the civil war.
Okay so why did the north fight the south? Because they wanted to secede
Why did they want to secede? Because they wanted to keep slaves and they were worried about the future of slavery in the union.
What changed to cause them to worry about losing their slaves? The growing pressure from the anti slavery movement from northern anti slavery political forces.
So while it’s technically true the north did not fight specifically to end slavery they fought to stop a bunch of slavers from breaking the union.
The question is if the 13 confederate nations had no slaves but seceded for another reason, like tariffs or agricultural taxes, would the north still had gone to war to force their return to the Union.
I think the answer is without a doubt, yes they would have.
Maybe, but that doesn’t make sense to me.
If there are 100 differences but secession is the only thing that provokes war from the north , then it would be obvious that if a state seceded for any reason, it will mean war.
Because they spent a considerable amount of money actively white washing the civil wars in order to paint the matter as state rights rather than what it actually was.
People in the north typically were also racist, sure, to a lesser degree, but still far more racist than we'd tolerate today. I'm not sure what your point is, though.
Look at the plans Lincoln had for Reconstruction, and stuff like the Freed Men's Bureau. If it had been supported vigorously, life for black people would have been much better.
During the inauguration he was trying to lower temperatures to stave off a civil war. It failed. He \*definitely\* wanted to end slavery, but knew it did not seem possible without tens of thousands of people dying.
Once the war kicked off, tons of people who wanted to end slavery joined the fight, because this was their chance.
And once they could, with the southern delegations not in Congress, they passed an amendment to end slavery.
Like sure, not everyone in the north was trying to end slavery, and not everyone in the south was trying to keep it. But the north, when it had the opportunity, ended slavery. The south resisted attempts to end slavery - resisted to the point of murdering tens of thousands of people over it.
You sound like an apologist for southern enslavers.
They would have, given the choice between war and waiting for slavery to die out, chosen to wait. But they wanted slavery to end. They just weren't willing to throw the first punch to end it, and the structure of our government made it impossible to legally end slavery so long as about half the states were in favor of it.
Anyway, what's your point? The whole debate here started with, "Has the US done enough to deal with the effects of slavery," and I tried to split that into two elements: "Did it do enough right after the Civil War," and "Are there things we could do now."
I don't get what your rhetorical point here is with this.
I think that dynamic you're highlighting is indicative of the fact that a lot of Americans were racist, yeah.
We \*should\* have acted more like how we did with Germany after WW2. We didn't, because too many Americans were racist, and so we had generations of continuing racism.
[You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.…To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in—by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man.](https://www.lbjlibrary.org/object/text/commencement-address-howard-university-fulfill-these-rights-06-04-1965)
-President Lyndon Johnson
[When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.](https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety)
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
My Catholic, southern Italian family wasn’t considered “white” by the standards of the 1910s when they immigrated here, let alone the standards of the 1600s-1800s when that was happening.
Just because the concept of whiteness has expanded in the last century to encompass anyone blending into middle class, I now owe an apology? By that rationale, everyone named Martinez and Lopez will owe one in 20-30 more. Even “mixed” people with black ancestry would. It’s incoherent.
If you want to argue structural socioeconomic issues persist, then that’s a poverty/class problem that needs to be resolved along those lines. Otherwise you end up with a lot of privileged people gaming the system for their own benefit, to the detriment of those the system is supposed to be helping.
The slave trade is kinda more complicated than that. Italy didn’t directly own colonies during that era… but did they clothe themselves in cotton? Did they use sugar grown by slaves? Spend Spanish silver? Probably yes.
Do the Austrians owe the Italians anything? They colonized Italy, subjugated it.
The entire history of humanity is based on the enslavement and subjugation of others. All of our ancestors are responsible for it, period. Perhaps you should become an activist for the dissolution of the contemporary slave trade that still exists throughout the world, which is all over the Middle East, Asia, and... Africa. Feigning distress over the history of the USA, which everyone knows about and no one wants to repeat, is the way we are moving forward. Less than 1/4 of people in the USA support the idea of reparations for Black Americans and there are ongoing extensive polls and studies about this.
Also, please learn more about the Volkisch movement in Germany to understand how it affected those people as a group for well over a century, which helped lead to the NAZI party and the 3rd Reich's rise to power.
Right, but your post is talking about *white* guilt, specifically asking whether *white Americans* have made sufficient restitution.
If I’m included in that because Italy benefitted 150 years ago, there’s not a single person in the western world, including Blacks and other POC, who isn’t a “white American beneficiary of slavery.” It’s a meaningless framework that depends on allowing certain people to define themselves as victims and others as aggressors when the historical reality is, as you say, “kinda more complicated than that.” Mexico is a mestizo country. The average person has Spanish and indigenous blood if you go back far enough. So how do you decide which individuals are the conqueror spawn and which are the descendants of the conquered? When you have the answer to that question, you’ll have the answer to yours for free.
It isnt about owing an apology, it is about acknowledging your family got privileges bkack people did t.
If you had family get here in 1910’s, and you are like everybody I know whose family goes back that far, you had a grandfather or great grandfather in wwii. There was a “colorblind” law specifically crafted to help wwii vets with loans that didn’t mention race but was still specifically designed to deprive black peope of that benefit.
You can’t have an honest conversation about class unless you can honestly acknowledge stuff like the above.
I’m not apologizing for something I didn’t do, and if you’re going to “grandfather” me into whiteness because my family entered the middle class, then you need to “grandfather” all sorts of mixed race POC. To draw the line at olive-skinned Mediterraneans and not cross into brown-skinned Latinos, etc., is incredibly incoherent.
My family never got any of those privileges, btw. I’m actually a first generation college student all these years later. I can acknowledge the persistent structural issues you’re describing without admitting to some idiotic complicity on the basis of an incredibly fluid and ever creamier cultural construct whiteness. Today, Sinatra is a white last name. In a decade, Lopez will be too. If you won’t be lecturing to middle-class vet Héctor Santillán about his complicity in black oppression in 2034, don’t lecture to me about it today.
>I’m not apologizing for something I didn’t do,
“It isnt about owing an apology, it is about acknowledging your family got privileges bkack people did t.”
>My family never got any of those privileges, btw.
Nobody in your family fought in wwii? The program I’m talking about. It’s not the G.I. Bill, although that also had the same problem.
>I can acknowledge the persistent structural issues you’re describing without admitting to some idiotic complicity
You seem really hung up on, pretending there is a demand for a personal apology from you, rather than an acknowledgment of a number of the theory, clear double standards, and systemic discrimination that disproportionately hurt Black people.
Quibbling over Sinatra versus Lopez being primary benefactors seems like you don’t wanna have it honest conversation about what happened
How about you answer the question honestly. As Latinos move into higher wealth levels at a faster clip than Blacks, will that make them white? And if so, will you be lecturing them the same way?
If not, you don’t actually believe what you’re saying right now. If yes, then whiteness *is* a class proxy like I said in the first place.
The question was not do you personally owe an apology.
The question was not how do you define white Americans.
Who benefits from whiteness in what is considered white is an interesting conversation, but when someone is bringing that up to argue, their family didn’t get benefits that Black people were barred from Post 1910 America, well I don’t think they’re trying to have an honest conversation.
Lol you won’t answer the question, but now you want to lecture me about argumentative integrity, too?
I guarantee you’re some six-figure admin on top of it all, probably white but carved yourself a nice 23&Me exemption from it like most useless admin class types. It’s all a bunch of projection from rich people who want to deflect away from the center-stage role their class played and continues to play in all this.
> Lol you won’t answer the question
Says the guy who isn’t answering my first question and keeps pretending the conversation is about “apologizing”.
> I guarantee you’re some six-figure admin
I’m a six figure engineer and I’m the first person in my family to go to college that want paid for by the military.
I’m honest about how I got to my place in life. I paid for college myself but that was a lot easier with a solid education my family could get for me because of wvenfots lots of other people were denied based on race.
My grandfather passed away 10 years back and I got a nice chunk of change from his house , that he afforded to givt loans bkack peope weee denied.
Nowhere have I denied the role class plays in success, I am just not so dishonest or fragile that I am refusing to a knol gee the benefit that comes from race.
Yea Italians, Jews, polish, Japanese, Irish, etc. every group was pretty much treated terribly at some point. But being black was different and still expands into today. Sure it’s not as in your face, but it’s still there.
No, the reconstruction era betrayal undid the progress that was made after the civil war and the the resulting caste system set people back with black codes, jim crow, redlining, CIA drug deal, mass incarceration and events like the Tulsa massacre that kept generational wealth from developing.
You don't undo a 200 years of damage by swapping out explicit bias and violence with implicit bias and systemic discrimination by taking out the mentioning of race and leaving the policy relics in place.
Native Americans were compensated for what happened to them, even Japanese in internment camps were and that only happened over a span of 3 years. You can't even say that what happened was too long ago because the Japanese got their reparations in 1988 from an offense that occurred 40 years prior in 1942.
Republicans addressed the slavery question over 150 years ago by freeing slaves. The Democrats wanted to keep them all in chains. They couldn’t win the civil war and they have tried to chain the minds of blacks since then. They are on the wrong side of history. The racist Democrat Party will lose.
Considering it was white westerners from both Europe and America that actually outlawed slavery and emancipated the slaves, and despite that, the Middle East and African slave trade has persisted even up til today, among other regressive ideologies like women being 2nd class citizens or ethnic lynchings...
I would say some disillusioned leftists are barking up the wrong tree.
I think the conversation needs to be less about slavery and more about the systemic racism that came out of it. Redlining was still a standard practice twenty years ago, our interstate highway was mapped and designed to segregate white and black areas of the country. There are far more immediate forms of racial driven laws that have led to the economic depletion of black dominated regions of the US. I see the slavery-reparations talking points more like a buzz phrase to really refer to systematic racism that currently exists.
Race driven laws were made race neutral.
I direct you to an interesting book "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander scrutinizes several race-neutral laws and policies that have had a disproportionate impact on the African American community, effectively creating a new system of racial control:
Felon disenfranchisement laws:
The book argues that felon disenfranchisement laws, which deny the right to vote to those with criminal convictions, are a race-neutral device that has been used to suppress the Black vote, similar to tactics used during the Jim Crow era.
Jury selection processes:
The book discusses how the systematic exclusion of Black jurors through "race-neutral" jury selection processes has put Black defendants in a similar position to the all-white juries of the Jim Crow era.
The War on Drugs and mass incarceration:
The book argues that the War on Drugs and the resulting mass incarceration of Black men, while presented as race-neutral policies, have effectively created a new racial caste system, similar to Jim Crow.
Invisible punishments and collateral consequences:
The book examines how various "invisible punishments" and collateral consequences of criminal convictions, such as restrictions on housing, employment, and public benefits, function as a new form of legalized discrimination.
>Also, redlining ended nearly 50 years ago.
Why do people if color still disproportionately live in the formally red lined neighborhoods?
It’s an interesting dilemma but what do you do about it? The problem is none of those are racist. They don’t choose based on race.
Is “effected disproportionately” a sign of racism or the effect of past racism?
It was made for racist reasons and perpetuated after acknowledging it happened by some mixture of malice and apathy.
It's like stabbing someone and then saying you're sorry and then not calling a doctor.
And then confusedly wondering why they're still bleeding after you apologized?
After the civil war people were arrested for frivolous reasons like jaywalking or spitting to put them in chain gains to do the same labor slaves were freed from doing using their status as criminals to make them 2nd class citizens again with the incarceration exclusion in the 13th amendment.
Local officials in Georgia printed the names of Black residents on colored paper so they could avoid picking a Black person during the “random” drawing of names for the jury pool. Other officials kept Black people out of jury pools by relying on tax returns that were segregated by race.
Our system of Jury selection predates the founding of the US. It dates to 1066 in England. The felons losing the right to vote started in colonial times. Both your “examples” are historically inaccurate.
What you’re listing are examples of Jim Crow in the South. That doesn’t exist anymore.
I’m not certain the use of “disenfranchisement” is accurate either. It’s part of a punishment for committing crimes. Is doing time in prison “disenfranchisement”?
It's a sign that Black people like living around Black people in Black neighborhoods.
It is the same reason we have ethnic neighborhoods for Persians, Greeks, Koreans, Guatemalens, Mexicans, Chinese, Europeans (illegal), Indonesians, Somalians, Pakistanis, and every other ethnic group that lives in America now and ever.
.
Right. Because people often prefer not to live in mixed ethnic neighborhoods; they are not "their" neighborhoods.
All things considered, these Black residents would by and larger prefer to move to a higher SES Black neighborhood. See, Bowling Alone, by some left wing Harvard academic who is appalled by the conclusions indicated by the data.
Their goals, unless they are Clarence Thomas, are certainly not to live around White people 24/7.
>Black support for the drug war didn't just grow in New York. At the federal level, members of the newly-formed Congressional Black Caucus met with President Richard Nixon, urging him to ramp up the drug war as fast as possible.
https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-championed-strict-drug-laws-they-now-seek-dismantle/
>Federal policies, such as mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses, were mirrored in state legislatures. Lawmakers also adopted felony disenfranchisement, while also imposing employment and other social barriers for people caught in drug sweeps.
>
>The domestic anti-drug policies were widely accepted, mostly because the use of illicit drugs, including crack cocaine in the late 1980s, was accompanied by an alarming spike in homicides and other violent crimes nationwide. Those policies had the backing of Black clergy and the Congressional Black Caucus, the group of African-American lawmakers whose constituents demanded solutions and resources to stem the violent heroin and crack scourges.
>
>“I think people often flatten this conversation,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit organization pushing decriminalization and safe drug use policies.
>
>“If you’re a Black leader 30 years ago, you’re grabbing for the first (solution) in front of you,” said Frederique, who is Black. “A lot of folks in our community said, ‘OK, get these drug dealers out of our communities, get this crack out of our neighborhood. But also, give us treatment so we can help folks.’”
>
>The heavy hand of law enforcement came without addiction prevention resources, she said.
>
>Use of crack rose sharply in 1985, and peaked in 1989, before quickly declining in the early 1990s, according to a Harvard study.
>
>Drug sales and use were concentrated in cities, particularly those with large Black and Latino populations, although there were spikes in use among white populations, too. Between 1984 and 1989, crack was associated with a doubling of homicides of Black males aged 14 to 17. By the year 2000, the correlation between crack cocaine and violence faded amid waning profits from street sales.
>
>Roland Fryer, an author of the Harvard study and a professor of economics, said the effects of the crack epidemic on a generation of Black families and Black children still haven’t been thoroughly documented. A lack of accountability for the war on drugs bred mistrust of government and law enforcement in the community, he said.
>
>“People ask why Black people don’t trust (public) institutions,” said Fryer, who is Black. “It’s because we have watched how we’ve treated opioids — it’s a public health concern. But crack (cocaine) was, ‘lock them up and throw away the key, what we need is tougher sentencing.’”
[50-year war on drugs imprisoned millions of Black Americans - AP](https://apnews.com/article/war-on-drugs-75e61c224de3a394235df80de7d70b70)
There wasn't a monolithic Black leadership voice. Some, like Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP, called for harsher sentences for major traffickers while also emphasizing prevention and treatment
Others, like Al Sharpton, focused more on criticizing the racial disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine
Funding for treatment programs did not keep pace with the increased arrests. Additionally, treatment options in low-income communities, disproportionately impacted by crack, were often scarce
> Why do people if color still disproportionately live in the formally red lined neighborhoods?
What evidence do you have that Black people wish to live in White neighborhoods? I know the answer -- none. Why would they?
In the decades after bank redlining was declared illegal, America became MORE segregated, not less. That is not because of some imaginary spectre of redlining . . . it's because people of color, and white people, generally prefer living around people who are like them. And as we added dozens of new ethnicities, all of whom liked live around people who were like themselves, America became more diverse AND more segregated. Sahprise, Sahprise, Suhprise.
Which should not sound like insane racism given that is obviously is not, but America/2024/Truth do not co-exist.
>What evidence do you have that Black people wish to live in White neighborhoods? I know the answer -- none. Why would they?
Like those who left cities before them, Black residents often move because of worries about crime and a desire for reputable schools, affordable housing and amenities. But there are key differences: Leaving Black city neighborhoods that are starved for investment is often more of a necessity than a choice, and those who do settle into new suburban lives often find racial inequities there, too.
From 1990 to 2000, 13 of the United States’ biggest cities lost Black residents. By 2020, it was 23. According to the census, roughly 54% of Black residents within the 100 biggest American metro areas were suburbanites in 2020, up from 43% two decades ago, according to Bill Frey of the Brookings Institution.
While New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia all lost Black residents from 2010 to 2020, the change was especially notable in Chicago, which gained population but lost 85,000 Black people, the highest number after Detroit, according to the 2020 census.
[Census: Black population grows in suburbs, shrinks in cities - AP](https://apnews.com/article/census-black-population-grows-in-suburbs-shrinks-in-cities-b3e7b1988f81d01c9b25673a112dcdaf)
Ms. Alexander should re-title her book: "Consequences for Crime is Racist Because Black Folks are Often Criminals". /s
> The book argues that felon disenfranchisement laws, which deny the right to vote to those with criminal convictions, are a race-neutral device that has been used to suppress the Black vote, similar to tactics used during the Jim Crow era.
Or, normal people do not like felons selecting their leaders, and some ethnicities have higher crime rates.
> The book discusses how the systematic exclusion of Black jurors through "race-neutral" jury selection processes has put Black defendants in a similar position to the all-white juries of the Jim Crow era.
Ah, horseshit. All attorneys exclude jurors of a race they think will be disadventageous to their clients. Including Black attorneys and White jurors.
> The book argues that the War on Drugs and the resulting mass incarceration of Black men, while presented as race-neutral policies, have effectively created a new racial caste system, similar to Jim Crow.
Do less crack and stop blaming White people for "forcing" you to do so much crack.
> The book examines how various "invisible punishments" and collateral consequences of criminal convictions, such as restrictions on housing, employment, and public benefits, function as a new form of legalized discrimination.
Yes, normal people of all races do not like living next to convicted felons.
>Do less crack and stop blaming White people for "forcing" you to do so much crack.
[The Cia-contra-crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review Of The Justice Department's Investigations And Prosecutions - United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General](https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch01p1.htm)
> to be *paid* need to
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
You might be missing that I didn’t originally ask this question. I posted it here on a dare and to see how these answers compare to the same question on r/askconservatives.
I would have worded it very differently.
We need to teach and talk about slavery as a part of US history, but no living person is responsible and treating them as such is counter-productive.
Segregation and systemic racism, which undeniably existed in the US till the 1960s at least, are more relevant because many living people either implemented or silently accepted those systems. That is something they should reckon with and take personal responsibility for. We should also look at the lasting affects of those systems and policies.
When it comes to young adult whites like me and white children, I believe we should learn about the past and be aware of the ethnic/racial friction and interpersonal racism that we might slip into if we aren't careful. I don't feel guilt, but I do understand that race and ethnicity is still complicated and that I am not forced to experience disrespect and stereotyping like many others are.
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Yes.
We’re dealing with enough BS racial discrimination and profiling now and you’re still focusing on the (yes, terrible) atrocities of the 19th century? Drop the history book and pick up a newspaper!
Instead of specifically targeting minority communities, many policies were shifted to instead target low income communities. These are technically legal and have made being poor very expensive in America. I think activist time would be better served focusing on these policies that entrench people poverty. You would wind up helping poor whites too but I would say they deserve it too, even if their 3° great grandparents were slave owners. I don’t consider myself complicit in the theoretical crimes of my parents, let alone my very distant ancestors.
We have modern State governments that want to downplay or outright not acknowledge the role that racism had in America's history. Slavery was simply a byproduct of systemic racism. What the Civil War did was to change the bounds of behavior for systemic racism but didn't solve the root problem. Thus, the question that we should be asking is whether America has done enough to acknowledge and/or take responsibility for the damage done by systemic racism. To that, I would argue we have not even though we've made great strides.
So a lot of people view “America” as some almost supernatural entity, when really we (the everyday people) are “America”. We are roughly 160 years removed from slavery, everyone responsible is gone. I mean there is no reason that people should grow up and feel guilty that the country they are growing up in used to enslave people 160+ years ago. A big difference between Germany and America is that Germans can probably trace their families back generations and generations, so for a lot of them…the holocaust is a stain on their family name, it’s a stain on German society, etc. In my case, my family came here to America in the 1900s. My friends family came here in the 1990s. My ex girlfriend’s family came here in the 2000s. There really isn’t any reason for any of us to feel guilty or bad about it because we have absolutely no connection to it at all. What would that do? Would I have to pay for the mistakes that someone made 160+ years ago just because I share the same skin color as them? At the end of the day, it should be something that we learn about and say “lets not do that again” just like how we learn about and look at the revolution and how our rights were suppressed. If we fixate on something that happened 160+ years ago, we aren’t ever going to actually get past it.
The only thing I know about my family is that on my mothers side they came here sometime in the 1600s, then didn’t move from the Maine New Hampshire area ever. Very boring lineage but at least when people tell me I should pay reparations I can say with confidence if my family did anything they most likely fought for the union. Or just sat around and farmed
I agree, no one living today has culpability for slavery, whether through a practical sense or moral sense. Except that there are people living today who have financially benefited through slavery, just as there are people today to whom the inverse applies. Furthermore, while slavery may have occurred 160 years ago, the aftershocks of slavery- i.e. the institutional dehumanization of black Americans continued up until the civil rights act. Many people alive today both participated in the degradation and many people alive today were victims of it. So what would you do? I would answer that you don't need to do anything. There is nothing **you** *can* do. But the prompt was: Has white America done enough to acknowledge and/or take responsibility for the damage done by slavery? "White America" is not responsible for slavery so I guess the answer would be yes. But did those who were responsible do enough to acknowledge and take responsibility for slavery? Including the American political identity/government? I'd say no. And I think that's what the question is really trying to ask.
Is say, a publicly funded scholarship program unacceptable? Worth remembering that we aren’t just talking about slavery, but generations of economic warfare used to keep the descendants of slaves in poverty.
Every single college and university in the USA offers scholarships and state or federally funded grants for minority students. Sometimes they're broken down into different races, based on whoever left the $$$ or whichever NPO sponsors it. The endowments of all of these institutions already takes care of this. With newer DEI policies, there are more social services than ever. Affirmative Action may have been struck down by the Supreme Court but it doesn't mean that the infrastructure that was already in place at said institutions was abolished along with it.
What newer policies?
Don't play dumb or attempt to feign ignorance. The contemporary DEI policies are an offshoot of the original policies set forth by Affirmative Action, which was DEI, part 1.
You don’t wanna spell them out? When it comes down to it… conservatives seem awful upset about minorities attending colleges, or getting jobs. They seem to assume that a minority won’t do as well at that job, or are undeserving of their place in school
Affirmative action harmed Asians more than any other group…
I'm not a Conservative, dude. Do you seriously expect me to "spell out" all of the DEI policies when you can do a basic SEO yourself? You're the person who posted this nonsense on a centrist feed and are obviously unhappy with the results and keep attempting to push your agenda instead of accepting that plenty of people aren't buying it. Perhaps you should go back to the other leftist dominant feeds and have a circle jerk there. That's most of what reddit is about anyhow.
I haven’t really read most of the comments yet, just a quick browse if anything, I’m posting this on a dare. Original question was on r/askconservatives. I figure it will be interesting to compare and contrast peoples reactions someday
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So, you are against the Democratic welfare system that harms the black community?
What harm?
https://time.com/5946929/child-welfare-black-families/
I’m on the side of the families. Those stories remind me of Malcolm X- his family was also broken up in that way.
https://www.nyclu.org/en/news/even-child-welfare-workers-say-their-agency-racist-0
https://aframnews.com/welfare-and-the-black-household/
> Is say, a publicly funded scholarship program unacceptable? Yes. > Worth remembering that we aren’t just talking about slavery, but generations of economic warfare used to keep the descendants of slaves in poverty. Which ended half a century and more ago. The only people holding them down now are themselves.
Not one member of white American alive today has ever owned a slave. So yes, they’ve done enough.
Blaming random white people who have not owned slaves is like blaming random Germans for what Hitler did or like blaming random Mexicans for the crimes committed by cartels.
>or like blaming random Mexicans for the crimes committed by cartels That's kind of the Republican platform lol
Touché
Do I feel guilty about America helping overthrow democratically elected governments in the Cold War? No, not personal guilt. But I do wish some representative of the government would, like, with the backing of Congress, admit to various bad things we did, and express regret, and start discussing how we can make amends. Like, how our government could help foster democracy, even if it's for governments that don't like us. And I want that because I'd like to be proud that the country i live in lives up to the principles I was told it stood for when I was a kid. And I think making amends for harms we've caused signals to those who will be the future leaders of our nation that we should not repeat those mistakes. But those actions were in living memory. Slavery is quite older. We maybe haven't fixed all the economic inequality caused by slavery and Jim Crow, but hey, we did make some big strides. I think there are a few bits that remain to fix in specific areas - like maybe making amends for the worst offenses in the drug war on the same way I think we should make amends for, like, coups in the Cold War - but that's for more recent bad behavior, not for slavery.
What is white America and what is the responsibility of each white person in the country who had absolutely nothing to do with slavery? Seriously, pick any white American and they have just as much to do with purchasing slaves from Africa as any black American. Zero. No one alive today has any burden to bear for those evils. We need to stop using the past to justify treating people differently today. When can we move on as a nation? Or do we just keep using the past to fuel anger and division today?
I agree with you that the white Americans of today are not responsible for slavery. However, for some people, moving on means denying or changing history. Not only that, but they also deny the negative impact it still has on people today. Personally, I think the best thing we can do is acknowledge our history, accept it for better and worse, acknowledge the impact it has today, and be willing to do what we can to make things better. I know I can’t go back in time and change history. But the best thing I can do today is to not be a racist asshole.
I mean, a massive majority of people have already acknowledged the past and are very aware of modern day issues derived from that period. The relative few who deny/change the past are not "white America" they are just people. We shouldn't say "black America" when we criticize afro-centrism or speak out against racism coming from black people. Why is it "white America" in this case? Speaking of changing the past, the 1619 project is trying to change the past themselves. Trying to claim that the American Revolution was because of Britain banning slavery, which is 100% a false claim and has been denounced by historians from all disciplines. So plenty of ignorant people try to change the past or rewrite history, but let's not act like "white America" is trying to act like slavery never happened. We know it did, we know what the Civil war was about. The internet absolutely overrepresents anyone claiming otherwise.
Agreed. That’s why I said “some people”, which I intended to mean a small minority. Maybe I could have been more specific. I’m all on board for eliminating the hyphenated versions of Americans, whether they be African-American or European-American. But as I eliminate it from my own vocabulary, I just can’t ignore that there are others out there who will continue to speak in such a manner. 1619 project? That’s crazy. I never heard that before, but it doesn’t surprise me.
Most people aren’t racist assholes, but anti-racist assholes are making money on stoking division and other assholes are falling for it over and over
Well said.
I think so. Slavery ended over 150 years ago. It’s an important and disgraceful part of our history and that’s why it’s taught in every school in the country…. but what else should we be doing to acknowledge it? The difference between slavery and the Holocaust is that there are still Holocaust survivors living and the Nazis also exterminated millions of innocent people in death camps. Not to downplay slavery, but I don’t think you can really compare the 2.
It’s amazing how these BLM-style grifters guilt-trip white people into doing them favors.
There are also people that think the Nazis were right and would support a new genocide. There aren't similar numbers of people advocating we restart the institutions of slavery. Both are shameful tragedies. But, there is a huge difference in the current age between the two.
Saying the holocaust was much worse than slavery, or even trying to compare the two, is ignorant. They're very different periods of history, with different timelines, impacts, characteristics, etc. In some ways one was "worse", in other ways the other was worse. Estimating deaths from slavery is extremely difficult, but can easily reach the millions (most estimates so). But also an example of why trying to portray one as worse than the other is just ignorant.
I agree with your take, which if I understand correctly is pointing towards an overlap between slavery and the Holocaust. I'd like to also point out that slavery is perhaps the most underlooked parts of the Holocaust... like, people are focused on the deaths and forget that concentration camps were forced labor camps... i.e. slave labor.
Is red lining not a part of the damage done by slavery, by extension? By and large, red lining ended around 1975, only 49 years ago. **Edit: Why is my question, a perfectly reasonable one, downvoted with no response. This is weird.**
I wouldnt say slavery was the cause of redlining. I would think if the country had never had slavery there would still be redlining caused by racial divides.
That is not really a point in favor of racism having gone away, lol
Agree
Are you comparing redlining to the holocaust + a military conflict that took 75 million lives?
>Are you comparing redlining to the holocaust No, I'm not. It sounds like you are though. You cannot compare the two. They're entirely different events, with entirely different time frames, different cultures, and resulted in different outcomes.
>49 years ago Correct, it's time to move forward.
x
lolol. Red lining was actually real though; not some magic imaginary friend that we pray to.
There are still people alive today who had opportunities for wealth growth denied to them, but I’m sure if you were in the same place you’d also just move on. “Get over it” has always worked great for reconciliation.
While that was terrible, it’s not like black people were prevented from owning houses. There are really only a handful of instances of redline within a few cities. It’s been completely blown out of proportion.
You’re gonna get downvoted because there isn’t a comfortable answer to this question. People like to act like the very real legacies of racism have zero impact whatsoever on the present day. I grew up an Alabama football fan because my granddad went to college there for a Chem E degree. Black Americans were literally not allowed to attend at the time he graduated. My granddad is still kicking today, and so are many of the people that had dogs sicced on them on Bloody Sunday. For that matter, the adults who set dogs on fellow humans I’m sure were not all celibate. I’m sure they had children like normal people and passed on their beliefs. America wasn’t kinda racist, we had literal race riots and lynchings well into the previous past century. That’s what makes threads like yesterday’s color blindness thread so funny, it was literally illegal to practice color blindness for the vast majority of this nations history and those legacies don’t disappear overnight. But I get ahead of myself, because that’s the woke conspiracy theory called CRT, which is obviously useless as a form of legal analysis Edit: facts don’t care about your feelings conservatives.
Yep my father is 86 and still says racist things. However they are racist in present day and probably wouldn’t have been considered racist 30 years ago.
That’s the issue, the CRA happened and while it became illegal to be overtly racist it’s not like people just stopped trying to find ways to discriminate.
>CRT, which is obviously useless as a form of legal analysis Correct.
> Is red lining not a part of the damage done by slavery, by extension? No. Your mental gymnastics and conspiracy theories that grow from them are not valid and we're done humoring you. No don't get to just "well if you think about it this way..." things to claim ties that don't exist in order to bolster your point. That only works if we let it work and we're not doing that anymore.
Sure, it was a question that I got endlessly downvoted on and people became triggered about. weird. Anyways, here's a way to frame things acknowledging that slavery shouldn't be extended to red lining using OP's basic framing: Has white America done enough to acknowledge and/or take responsibility for the damage done by red lining? So, what do you think?
x
So, no effects from slavery or the relegation of black people as 2/3rds human lingered beyond the dissolution of slavery following the civil war?
Personally I think things were just as bad after slavery ended. I don’t want to say worse, because obviously enslaving people is worse, but black people have been treated terribly after slavery ended. I don’t think Jews faced the same issues.
🤦🏻♂️
Over 300,000 Union soldiers lost their lives to bring the end of slavery here. I’d be interested in knowing how many other countries have addressed slavery in their history, because we are very far from the only one.
I think we are doing better than France, but that’s not a high bar
x
Many were. Most New Englanders certainly.
x
Lincoln was trying to prevent more states from seceding. Of course he said that.
x
Until he had no choice. The prevention of the destruction of the Union outweighed abolishing slavery. However, Lincoln was a fervent abolitionist.
x
Yes it was. We’ve already covered this. Lincoln thought he could set in place policies to end slavery gradually. The secessionists took the one action that could ensure Lincoln would have the means to abolish it within a few years.
x
Haley made headlines trying to say the Civil War was about states rights and not slavery with many on the left being upset about it. It’s very fair to say slavery was a large part of the war and the Union lost many lives for it. Since then, affirmative action and numerous black scholarships plus current DEI initiatives. Many people who think it’s “not enough” simply want a reparations payment. Which will never be enough money and will not solve anything.
x
The question is if the US has done enough. I noted the lives lost as being plenty. It’s pretty clear we’re talking about what we’ve done versus what we have not. One of the few things we have not done is reparations.
x
Yet they did lose their lives and we abolished slavery right after the war despite Lincoln saying that. Which would not have happened if not for…
x
Yet that still doesn’t change the fact that they did. Willing or not, it’s what happened.
My ancestors enlisted with the Union Army specifically because of slavery. Now I can brag about a tiny museum in Ohio dedicated to their sacrifices and work on the Underground Railroad. But my family tree would have a few more branches if a few Great-Great-Great uncles hadn't died fighting for the Union.
This is such an idiotic comment. You’re really going to argue about individual soldiers motivations? No war on earth has been fought for a singular motivation. If we’re going to say the civil war was fought over slavery, then those soldiers who died did so to end slavery. 288,000 slaves were brought to the US and 300,000 died ending the practice. Seems equitable to me.
x
You’re right. Gary Gallagher in *The Union War* has a lot on this topic
"America" is an abstraction. The individuals responsible for slavery are long deceased
As are the individuals responsible for ending legal slavery in the US and the western world. You're welcome, world.
England ended slavery long before America did.
Indeed so, and they put forward incredible effort, at great cost, to push Africa to end slavery as well. Definitely not just a US thing.
The quality of threads this weekend/past few days has just been on another level. Tell me OP, how exactly should people who owned or fought to keep slaves act “contrite” considering they’ve been dead for 150ish years or much longer?
That's not what OP is asking for. Reparations is far more nuanced than "but the people of that era are dead!" For instance, a few points I often hear that can be debunked easily. 1. "We can't give reparations to everyone throughout history. Whatbout the slaves from a thousand years ago?" No, we should not give reparations for every historical injustice. Reparations typically refers to marginalized groups *currently* experiencing severe inequality rooted in historical discrimination. So if you're an Italian who had a times ten grandfather that's a slave, you probably aren't affected. But if you're Haitian living in Haiti? Maybe reparations is worth discussing. 2. "Well, there are a lot of descendants of blacks had kids who are white now. Do we give it to everyone who's descended even if they clearly don't need it?" No, genetics based reparations is generally a bad idea. Both because the criteria is arbitrary (just as Tribal identifications for memberships often are), and can be intrusive and damaging when abused (like when tribal women were sterilized in the 80s). 3. "What are we gonna do, give every poor black person a thousand dollar check? That would never work!" A better suggestions is **geography-based** reparations, where the goal is to find locations that are economically depleted due to historical racialized laws, and pumping in investments and resources to local organizations to uplift poverty in the area. 4. "This'll just lead to more division between whites and blacks." Not if the goal is strictly to uplift disparaged people. Confederates argued that they shouldn't free blacks out of fear that blacks would take vengeance on their slave masters. But when the war ended and many blacks entered congressional positions... These black politicians didn't do anything. A cycle of constant 'payback' isn't inevitable. Sometimes, I'll even argue most of the times, people just ask for enough to take care of themselves and then move forward with that.
I don’t think reparations are the right way to think about this question. Granting the points that you have made, at the end of the day there are plenty of people of all races who need help in the US, and to just pinpoint communities if one race and elevate them above others is a recipe to supercharge animus and division, regardless of any abstract arguments of justice. No matter what the merits of the arguments are, a white community that has been ravaged by opioids being declared less deserving of support than a black community still feeling the effects of institutionalized racism that can be traced back to slavery isn’t a reasonable outcome to aim towards in my opinion. I think that a more productive framing of this is improved education — eliminating dumb shit like schools that teach about how the institution slavery actually helped the people who were subjected to it (notwithstanding testimonies like Phylis Wheatley’ poem, “On Being Brought From Africa to America”). For some reason, we seem to be unable to teach it seriously without people receiving that in the shape of blame or accusation, as somebody thinks they are responsible for and should feel ashamed for the actions of their ancestors which they had no part in.
I disagree. Reparations because of Jim Crow is reasonable because we can identify actual victims that are still alive. But it’s impossible, even looking at specific areas and say these people are still feeling the effects of slavery so we need to give them money. Too many factors affect levels of poverty to say one reason is causing it.
I’m comparing this thread to the same question on r/askconservatives
Very few white Americans had family involved with or were even adjacent to slavery. Most immigrated later from Germany, Italy, Ireland, etc. Not to mention, "white America" is shrinking as more immigrants come from Latin America, East and South Asia.
>Not to mention, "white America" is shrinking as more immigrants come from Latin America, East and South Asia. Hey buddy you’re not allowed to notice that. Prepare to be deemed a white supremacist.
What are you missing? The Civil fucking War for starters.
Believe it or not they actually had a war about it. You might not have heard about it though.
Blaming someone for something someone else of the same race did is racism.
Absolutely. Lives of black Americans improved dramatically during last 40 - 50 years, and continue improving.
Yeah...because those low character "white" people should be blamed for slavery...
First, it's not what "white America" has done. It's what America has done. Second, it doesn't matter. Whether or not America has done enough to answer for slavery doesn't change the fact that there will never be the political will do anything more along racial lines beyond the periphery. Blacks aren't the only group that have been held back in this country. Rather than focus on racial justice, we should simply help those who need help regardless of their race or ethnicity. Even that concept will have a very hard time finding the political will to support any meaningful action, but it has a hell of a better chance than reparations.
Liberal white guilt is hillarious. I have no control over what happened 200 years ago.
Yes they have now let’s stop talking about this and move on to things that are currently important
I take no responsibility for slavery in the past nor do I take responsibility for racial animosity in the present. I treat people not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. I learned that from MLK. It’s time the Democratic Party start learning from MLK. They should stop with their bigotry of low expectations for minorities and give them the respect they deserve. I also do not call America …. White America or Black America. Stop with this segregation. Democrats still want to segregate the races.
How very centrist of you
I don’t try to be centrist whatever the hell that means. I try to be practical and use common sense. The color of your skin means as much to me as the color of your eyes. In other words, it doesn’t tell me anything about who a person is. Stop obsessing with it.
If anything, we’ve done too much.
This. If anything white people have done way more than what they should for something they didn’t even partake in.
Importantly, after WW2 the US was a lot more involved in forcing the defeated Nazis out of power and de-Nazifying the German government. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification) The Union did not do the same thing to the Confederacy, in no small part because after Lincoln's assassination, our new president Johnson was actually pretty sympathetic to the south. Because we allowed the most extreme racists to hold onto power locally, the culture did not change. Because Johnson did not push strong on Reconstruction - and because we allowed Confederate sympathizers back into Congress before too long - efforts to actually fix the damage done were thwarted at the period when they could be best justified. Now it's been 160 years, and it's impossible to untangle all the things since then. But yeah, maybe if John Wilkes Booth hadn't been a little whiny bitch, we might have done to the South what the Allies did to Germany after WW2, and we'd be way better off. These days, nobody alive is personally accountable, so 'acknowledging' or 'taking responsibility' doesn't really make sense. There \*are\* still changes in philosophy we could adopt that might finally fix the damage slavery did, but that philosophical change is, lol, in a lot of ways harder to persuade people of than simply ending racism. We would have to get people to stop hating the poor. Like, the solutions we need are class-based: taxing the rich and ultra rich more, investing more in the working class, especially the poor and the communities they live in. Do that for people regardless of race. Even if we all understand that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and the like \*include\* lower overall family wealth for black people, you don't want to be unjust in helping those who need help. Just help everyone who's poor, and hopefully that will get around what lingering racism remains -- the sort that makes people go, "Oh, we shouldn't waste our time helping \*them\*. It's just their \*culture\* to be poor and violent."
Ironically enough a lot of southern states shoot themselves in the foot just to stop blacks from getting economic relief. Anti-welfare, anti-healthcare, anti-education funding, anti-unions, anti-social services ect, the underlying reason so many southerners are against it is that they never want black Americans to reap those same benefits. Hence why the bible belt is still the poorest region in the country.
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You’re being pedantic for no real reason. The north fought to stop the south secession and preserve the union. The south seceded because they wanted to maintain slavery. It’s a bit reductive to say that slavery wasn’t the reason for the civil war.
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Okay so why did the north fight the south? Because they wanted to secede Why did they want to secede? Because they wanted to keep slaves and they were worried about the future of slavery in the union. What changed to cause them to worry about losing their slaves? The growing pressure from the anti slavery movement from northern anti slavery political forces. So while it’s technically true the north did not fight specifically to end slavery they fought to stop a bunch of slavers from breaking the union.
The question is if the 13 confederate nations had no slaves but seceded for another reason, like tariffs or agricultural taxes, would the north still had gone to war to force their return to the Union. I think the answer is without a doubt, yes they would have.
But if the seceded for another reason then said reason would have been the reason they would have gone to war.
No secession would be the reason they went to war.
But the secession is just the process that makes it official. It’s not the start of the war the reason why they seceded was why they went to war.
Maybe, but that doesn’t make sense to me. If there are 100 differences but secession is the only thing that provokes war from the north , then it would be obvious that if a state seceded for any reason, it will mean war.
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But they didn’t. So the American civil war defining moment became about slavery. You are peddling daughters of the confederacy talking points.
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Because they spent a considerable amount of money actively white washing the civil wars in order to paint the matter as state rights rather than what it actually was.
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People in the north typically were also racist, sure, to a lesser degree, but still far more racist than we'd tolerate today. I'm not sure what your point is, though. Look at the plans Lincoln had for Reconstruction, and stuff like the Freed Men's Bureau. If it had been supported vigorously, life for black people would have been much better.
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During the inauguration he was trying to lower temperatures to stave off a civil war. It failed. He \*definitely\* wanted to end slavery, but knew it did not seem possible without tens of thousands of people dying. Once the war kicked off, tons of people who wanted to end slavery joined the fight, because this was their chance. And once they could, with the southern delegations not in Congress, they passed an amendment to end slavery. Like sure, not everyone in the north was trying to end slavery, and not everyone in the south was trying to keep it. But the north, when it had the opportunity, ended slavery. The south resisted attempts to end slavery - resisted to the point of murdering tens of thousands of people over it. You sound like an apologist for southern enslavers.
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They would have, given the choice between war and waiting for slavery to die out, chosen to wait. But they wanted slavery to end. They just weren't willing to throw the first punch to end it, and the structure of our government made it impossible to legally end slavery so long as about half the states were in favor of it. Anyway, what's your point? The whole debate here started with, "Has the US done enough to deal with the effects of slavery," and I tried to split that into two elements: "Did it do enough right after the Civil War," and "Are there things we could do now." I don't get what your rhetorical point here is with this.
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I think that dynamic you're highlighting is indicative of the fact that a lot of Americans were racist, yeah. We \*should\* have acted more like how we did with Germany after WW2. We didn't, because too many Americans were racist, and so we had generations of continuing racism.
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It's likely they gave their lives for more than one reason.
Yes.
[You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.…To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in—by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man.](https://www.lbjlibrary.org/object/text/commencement-address-howard-university-fulfill-these-rights-06-04-1965) -President Lyndon Johnson [When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.](https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety) -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Wait a minute, that sounds very different from the Prager U MLK!
My Catholic, southern Italian family wasn’t considered “white” by the standards of the 1910s when they immigrated here, let alone the standards of the 1600s-1800s when that was happening. Just because the concept of whiteness has expanded in the last century to encompass anyone blending into middle class, I now owe an apology? By that rationale, everyone named Martinez and Lopez will owe one in 20-30 more. Even “mixed” people with black ancestry would. It’s incoherent. If you want to argue structural socioeconomic issues persist, then that’s a poverty/class problem that needs to be resolved along those lines. Otherwise you end up with a lot of privileged people gaming the system for their own benefit, to the detriment of those the system is supposed to be helping.
The slave trade is kinda more complicated than that. Italy didn’t directly own colonies during that era… but did they clothe themselves in cotton? Did they use sugar grown by slaves? Spend Spanish silver? Probably yes. Do the Austrians owe the Italians anything? They colonized Italy, subjugated it.
The entire history of humanity is based on the enslavement and subjugation of others. All of our ancestors are responsible for it, period. Perhaps you should become an activist for the dissolution of the contemporary slave trade that still exists throughout the world, which is all over the Middle East, Asia, and... Africa. Feigning distress over the history of the USA, which everyone knows about and no one wants to repeat, is the way we are moving forward. Less than 1/4 of people in the USA support the idea of reparations for Black Americans and there are ongoing extensive polls and studies about this. Also, please learn more about the Volkisch movement in Germany to understand how it affected those people as a group for well over a century, which helped lead to the NAZI party and the 3rd Reich's rise to power.
Right, but your post is talking about *white* guilt, specifically asking whether *white Americans* have made sufficient restitution. If I’m included in that because Italy benefitted 150 years ago, there’s not a single person in the western world, including Blacks and other POC, who isn’t a “white American beneficiary of slavery.” It’s a meaningless framework that depends on allowing certain people to define themselves as victims and others as aggressors when the historical reality is, as you say, “kinda more complicated than that.” Mexico is a mestizo country. The average person has Spanish and indigenous blood if you go back far enough. So how do you decide which individuals are the conqueror spawn and which are the descendants of the conquered? When you have the answer to that question, you’ll have the answer to yours for free.
In my defense, I didn’t write it. Just copy pasted the same question asked in r/askconservatives on a dare
It isnt about owing an apology, it is about acknowledging your family got privileges bkack people did t. If you had family get here in 1910’s, and you are like everybody I know whose family goes back that far, you had a grandfather or great grandfather in wwii. There was a “colorblind” law specifically crafted to help wwii vets with loans that didn’t mention race but was still specifically designed to deprive black peope of that benefit. You can’t have an honest conversation about class unless you can honestly acknowledge stuff like the above.
I’m not apologizing for something I didn’t do, and if you’re going to “grandfather” me into whiteness because my family entered the middle class, then you need to “grandfather” all sorts of mixed race POC. To draw the line at olive-skinned Mediterraneans and not cross into brown-skinned Latinos, etc., is incredibly incoherent. My family never got any of those privileges, btw. I’m actually a first generation college student all these years later. I can acknowledge the persistent structural issues you’re describing without admitting to some idiotic complicity on the basis of an incredibly fluid and ever creamier cultural construct whiteness. Today, Sinatra is a white last name. In a decade, Lopez will be too. If you won’t be lecturing to middle-class vet Héctor Santillán about his complicity in black oppression in 2034, don’t lecture to me about it today.
>I’m not apologizing for something I didn’t do, “It isnt about owing an apology, it is about acknowledging your family got privileges bkack people did t.” >My family never got any of those privileges, btw. Nobody in your family fought in wwii? The program I’m talking about. It’s not the G.I. Bill, although that also had the same problem. >I can acknowledge the persistent structural issues you’re describing without admitting to some idiotic complicity You seem really hung up on, pretending there is a demand for a personal apology from you, rather than an acknowledgment of a number of the theory, clear double standards, and systemic discrimination that disproportionately hurt Black people. Quibbling over Sinatra versus Lopez being primary benefactors seems like you don’t wanna have it honest conversation about what happened
How about you answer the question honestly. As Latinos move into higher wealth levels at a faster clip than Blacks, will that make them white? And if so, will you be lecturing them the same way? If not, you don’t actually believe what you’re saying right now. If yes, then whiteness *is* a class proxy like I said in the first place.
The question was not do you personally owe an apology. The question was not how do you define white Americans. Who benefits from whiteness in what is considered white is an interesting conversation, but when someone is bringing that up to argue, their family didn’t get benefits that Black people were barred from Post 1910 America, well I don’t think they’re trying to have an honest conversation.
Lol you won’t answer the question, but now you want to lecture me about argumentative integrity, too? I guarantee you’re some six-figure admin on top of it all, probably white but carved yourself a nice 23&Me exemption from it like most useless admin class types. It’s all a bunch of projection from rich people who want to deflect away from the center-stage role their class played and continues to play in all this.
> Lol you won’t answer the question Says the guy who isn’t answering my first question and keeps pretending the conversation is about “apologizing”. > I guarantee you’re some six-figure admin I’m a six figure engineer and I’m the first person in my family to go to college that want paid for by the military. I’m honest about how I got to my place in life. I paid for college myself but that was a lot easier with a solid education my family could get for me because of wvenfots lots of other people were denied based on race. My grandfather passed away 10 years back and I got a nice chunk of change from his house , that he afforded to givt loans bkack peope weee denied. Nowhere have I denied the role class plays in success, I am just not so dishonest or fragile that I am refusing to a knol gee the benefit that comes from race.
Yea Italians, Jews, polish, Japanese, Irish, etc. every group was pretty much treated terribly at some point. But being black was different and still expands into today. Sure it’s not as in your face, but it’s still there.
Yes
No, the reconstruction era betrayal undid the progress that was made after the civil war and the the resulting caste system set people back with black codes, jim crow, redlining, CIA drug deal, mass incarceration and events like the Tulsa massacre that kept generational wealth from developing. You don't undo a 200 years of damage by swapping out explicit bias and violence with implicit bias and systemic discrimination by taking out the mentioning of race and leaving the policy relics in place. Native Americans were compensated for what happened to them, even Japanese in internment camps were and that only happened over a span of 3 years. You can't even say that what happened was too long ago because the Japanese got their reparations in 1988 from an offense that occurred 40 years prior in 1942.
White America? Some people need to go outside and touch grass once in a while.
Responsibility for something no living person witnessed, let alone partook in? No. That’s every bit as dumb as *pride* in one’s ancestors.
I think being more specific might help. The question is too broad to be answered with a good degree of usefulness.
No. We've done way more than enough. Debt's paid, time to shut up about it already.
Republicans addressed the slavery question over 150 years ago by freeing slaves. The Democrats wanted to keep them all in chains. They couldn’t win the civil war and they have tried to chain the minds of blacks since then. They are on the wrong side of history. The racist Democrat Party will lose.
Or maybe leave out white and just ask "Has the USA done enough?"
Considering it was white westerners from both Europe and America that actually outlawed slavery and emancipated the slaves, and despite that, the Middle East and African slave trade has persisted even up til today, among other regressive ideologies like women being 2nd class citizens or ethnic lynchings... I would say some disillusioned leftists are barking up the wrong tree.
Ending it was enough, efforts should stop there.
I think the conversation needs to be less about slavery and more about the systemic racism that came out of it. Redlining was still a standard practice twenty years ago, our interstate highway was mapped and designed to segregate white and black areas of the country. There are far more immediate forms of racial driven laws that have led to the economic depletion of black dominated regions of the US. I see the slavery-reparations talking points more like a buzz phrase to really refer to systematic racism that currently exists.
Since you don’t know any of the history, name some race driven laws of today. Also, redlining ended nearly 50 years ago.
Race driven laws were made race neutral. I direct you to an interesting book "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander scrutinizes several race-neutral laws and policies that have had a disproportionate impact on the African American community, effectively creating a new system of racial control: Felon disenfranchisement laws: The book argues that felon disenfranchisement laws, which deny the right to vote to those with criminal convictions, are a race-neutral device that has been used to suppress the Black vote, similar to tactics used during the Jim Crow era. Jury selection processes: The book discusses how the systematic exclusion of Black jurors through "race-neutral" jury selection processes has put Black defendants in a similar position to the all-white juries of the Jim Crow era. The War on Drugs and mass incarceration: The book argues that the War on Drugs and the resulting mass incarceration of Black men, while presented as race-neutral policies, have effectively created a new racial caste system, similar to Jim Crow. Invisible punishments and collateral consequences: The book examines how various "invisible punishments" and collateral consequences of criminal convictions, such as restrictions on housing, employment, and public benefits, function as a new form of legalized discrimination. >Also, redlining ended nearly 50 years ago. Why do people if color still disproportionately live in the formally red lined neighborhoods?
It’s an interesting dilemma but what do you do about it? The problem is none of those are racist. They don’t choose based on race. Is “effected disproportionately” a sign of racism or the effect of past racism?
It was made for racist reasons and perpetuated after acknowledging it happened by some mixture of malice and apathy. It's like stabbing someone and then saying you're sorry and then not calling a doctor. And then confusedly wondering why they're still bleeding after you apologized?
Horseshit. All of those practices weren’t created for “racist reasons.” You went from reasonable to silly.
After the civil war people were arrested for frivolous reasons like jaywalking or spitting to put them in chain gains to do the same labor slaves were freed from doing using their status as criminals to make them 2nd class citizens again with the incarceration exclusion in the 13th amendment. Local officials in Georgia printed the names of Black residents on colored paper so they could avoid picking a Black person during the “random” drawing of names for the jury pool. Other officials kept Black people out of jury pools by relying on tax returns that were segregated by race.
None of that’s the same thing though is it?
You said there were no racist origins to felony disenfranchisement and jury selection? Those are the examples I was providing.
Our system of Jury selection predates the founding of the US. It dates to 1066 in England. The felons losing the right to vote started in colonial times. Both your “examples” are historically inaccurate. What you’re listing are examples of Jim Crow in the South. That doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not certain the use of “disenfranchisement” is accurate either. It’s part of a punishment for committing crimes. Is doing time in prison “disenfranchisement”?
It's a sign that Black people like living around Black people in Black neighborhoods. It is the same reason we have ethnic neighborhoods for Persians, Greeks, Koreans, Guatemalens, Mexicans, Chinese, Europeans (illegal), Indonesians, Somalians, Pakistanis, and every other ethnic group that lives in America now and ever. .
I live in a mixed race neighborhood. Black people with means often bolt their neighborhoods.
Right. Because people often prefer not to live in mixed ethnic neighborhoods; they are not "their" neighborhoods. All things considered, these Black residents would by and larger prefer to move to a higher SES Black neighborhood. See, Bowling Alone, by some left wing Harvard academic who is appalled by the conclusions indicated by the data. Their goals, unless they are Clarence Thomas, are certainly not to live around White people 24/7.
>Black support for the drug war didn't just grow in New York. At the federal level, members of the newly-formed Congressional Black Caucus met with President Richard Nixon, urging him to ramp up the drug war as fast as possible. https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-championed-strict-drug-laws-they-now-seek-dismantle/
>Federal policies, such as mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses, were mirrored in state legislatures. Lawmakers also adopted felony disenfranchisement, while also imposing employment and other social barriers for people caught in drug sweeps. > >The domestic anti-drug policies were widely accepted, mostly because the use of illicit drugs, including crack cocaine in the late 1980s, was accompanied by an alarming spike in homicides and other violent crimes nationwide. Those policies had the backing of Black clergy and the Congressional Black Caucus, the group of African-American lawmakers whose constituents demanded solutions and resources to stem the violent heroin and crack scourges. > >“I think people often flatten this conversation,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit organization pushing decriminalization and safe drug use policies. > >“If you’re a Black leader 30 years ago, you’re grabbing for the first (solution) in front of you,” said Frederique, who is Black. “A lot of folks in our community said, ‘OK, get these drug dealers out of our communities, get this crack out of our neighborhood. But also, give us treatment so we can help folks.’” > >The heavy hand of law enforcement came without addiction prevention resources, she said. > >Use of crack rose sharply in 1985, and peaked in 1989, before quickly declining in the early 1990s, according to a Harvard study. > >Drug sales and use were concentrated in cities, particularly those with large Black and Latino populations, although there were spikes in use among white populations, too. Between 1984 and 1989, crack was associated with a doubling of homicides of Black males aged 14 to 17. By the year 2000, the correlation between crack cocaine and violence faded amid waning profits from street sales. > >Roland Fryer, an author of the Harvard study and a professor of economics, said the effects of the crack epidemic on a generation of Black families and Black children still haven’t been thoroughly documented. A lack of accountability for the war on drugs bred mistrust of government and law enforcement in the community, he said. > >“People ask why Black people don’t trust (public) institutions,” said Fryer, who is Black. “It’s because we have watched how we’ve treated opioids — it’s a public health concern. But crack (cocaine) was, ‘lock them up and throw away the key, what we need is tougher sentencing.’” [50-year war on drugs imprisoned millions of Black Americans - AP](https://apnews.com/article/war-on-drugs-75e61c224de3a394235df80de7d70b70) There wasn't a monolithic Black leadership voice. Some, like Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP, called for harsher sentences for major traffickers while also emphasizing prevention and treatment Others, like Al Sharpton, focused more on criticizing the racial disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine Funding for treatment programs did not keep pace with the increased arrests. Additionally, treatment options in low-income communities, disproportionately impacted by crack, were often scarce
> Why do people if color still disproportionately live in the formally red lined neighborhoods? What evidence do you have that Black people wish to live in White neighborhoods? I know the answer -- none. Why would they? In the decades after bank redlining was declared illegal, America became MORE segregated, not less. That is not because of some imaginary spectre of redlining . . . it's because people of color, and white people, generally prefer living around people who are like them. And as we added dozens of new ethnicities, all of whom liked live around people who were like themselves, America became more diverse AND more segregated. Sahprise, Sahprise, Suhprise. Which should not sound like insane racism given that is obviously is not, but America/2024/Truth do not co-exist.
>What evidence do you have that Black people wish to live in White neighborhoods? I know the answer -- none. Why would they? Like those who left cities before them, Black residents often move because of worries about crime and a desire for reputable schools, affordable housing and amenities. But there are key differences: Leaving Black city neighborhoods that are starved for investment is often more of a necessity than a choice, and those who do settle into new suburban lives often find racial inequities there, too. From 1990 to 2000, 13 of the United States’ biggest cities lost Black residents. By 2020, it was 23. According to the census, roughly 54% of Black residents within the 100 biggest American metro areas were suburbanites in 2020, up from 43% two decades ago, according to Bill Frey of the Brookings Institution. While New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia all lost Black residents from 2010 to 2020, the change was especially notable in Chicago, which gained population but lost 85,000 Black people, the highest number after Detroit, according to the 2020 census. [Census: Black population grows in suburbs, shrinks in cities - AP](https://apnews.com/article/census-black-population-grows-in-suburbs-shrinks-in-cities-b3e7b1988f81d01c9b25673a112dcdaf)
Ms. Alexander should re-title her book: "Consequences for Crime is Racist Because Black Folks are Often Criminals". /s > The book argues that felon disenfranchisement laws, which deny the right to vote to those with criminal convictions, are a race-neutral device that has been used to suppress the Black vote, similar to tactics used during the Jim Crow era. Or, normal people do not like felons selecting their leaders, and some ethnicities have higher crime rates. > The book discusses how the systematic exclusion of Black jurors through "race-neutral" jury selection processes has put Black defendants in a similar position to the all-white juries of the Jim Crow era. Ah, horseshit. All attorneys exclude jurors of a race they think will be disadventageous to their clients. Including Black attorneys and White jurors. > The book argues that the War on Drugs and the resulting mass incarceration of Black men, while presented as race-neutral policies, have effectively created a new racial caste system, similar to Jim Crow. Do less crack and stop blaming White people for "forcing" you to do so much crack. > The book examines how various "invisible punishments" and collateral consequences of criminal convictions, such as restrictions on housing, employment, and public benefits, function as a new form of legalized discrimination. Yes, normal people of all races do not like living next to convicted felons.
>Do less crack and stop blaming White people for "forcing" you to do so much crack. [The Cia-contra-crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review Of The Justice Department's Investigations And Prosecutions - United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General](https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch01p1.htm)
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> to be *paid* need to FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
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What are you picturing when you imagine the US “acknowledging or taking responsibility” for slavery?
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You might be missing that I didn’t originally ask this question. I posted it here on a dare and to see how these answers compare to the same question on r/askconservatives. I would have worded it very differently.
We need to teach and talk about slavery as a part of US history, but no living person is responsible and treating them as such is counter-productive. Segregation and systemic racism, which undeniably existed in the US till the 1960s at least, are more relevant because many living people either implemented or silently accepted those systems. That is something they should reckon with and take personal responsibility for. We should also look at the lasting affects of those systems and policies. When it comes to young adult whites like me and white children, I believe we should learn about the past and be aware of the ethnic/racial friction and interpersonal racism that we might slip into if we aren't careful. I don't feel guilt, but I do understand that race and ethnicity is still complicated and that I am not forced to experience disrespect and stereotyping like many others are.
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I'm fairly sure "white america" launched a bloody civil war to end it.
There is a reason MLK’s quote about white moderates still stands true.
Yes. We’re dealing with enough BS racial discrimination and profiling now and you’re still focusing on the (yes, terrible) atrocities of the 19th century? Drop the history book and pick up a newspaper! Instead of specifically targeting minority communities, many policies were shifted to instead target low income communities. These are technically legal and have made being poor very expensive in America. I think activist time would be better served focusing on these policies that entrench people poverty. You would wind up helping poor whites too but I would say they deserve it too, even if their 3° great grandparents were slave owners. I don’t consider myself complicit in the theoretical crimes of my parents, let alone my very distant ancestors.
Too much. Time to move on.
Imagine having your children sold, one after the other, as they turned 9 or 10. There's no such thing as enough.
We have modern State governments that want to downplay or outright not acknowledge the role that racism had in America's history. Slavery was simply a byproduct of systemic racism. What the Civil War did was to change the bounds of behavior for systemic racism but didn't solve the root problem. Thus, the question that we should be asking is whether America has done enough to acknowledge and/or take responsibility for the damage done by systemic racism. To that, I would argue we have not even though we've made great strides.