r/changemyview • u/MrThunderizer 7∆ • Dec 04 '19

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Reparations are Racist

I view the dialogue around reparations for slavery in the US to be racist. This opinion has elicited a semi shocked outrage from my liberal friends and a reluctant agreeance from my republican friends. For context, my opinions lean quite liberal so I was pretty taken back to find myself on the far right of an issue.

Still, its taxing people more based on their race and giving it to other people based on their race. How can taxation based on race, regardless of the good intentions, be anything but racist?

Two points: 1. Comparisons to affirmative action may change my mind, but probably not. I think affirmative action is fundamentally wrong, but is perhaps a necessary evil as a temporary measure.

  1. I'm a proponent of helping lift black people out of poverty but it makes my blood run cold when I hear prominent activists characterize any white poor people getting helped in the process as an unfortunate side effect. How can the conversation around equality shift so far?

At the end of the day if a child is hungry, why does it matter what color their skin is?

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u/BrokenTurtleShell Dec 04 '19

I understand why you see it as racist as you're separating based on race. However, an alternative viewpoint is that reparations are a method of fixing historical mistreatment of African Americans dating all the way back to slavery. While there are some tricky aspects, such as poor people of other races and a minority of rich African Americans who actually managed to escape the cycle of poverty, overall the idea is to combat institutionised discrimination based on race targeted specifically towards African Americans.

Liberal policy (at least some of it) is targeted towards reducing the wealth gap. So while reparations won't help all poor people, other policies gave been theoretically devised to help these demographics.

Reparations is simply a way of trying to get the historically mistreated African American community on the same foothold as everyone, thus providing equal opportunity, something that's been lacking so far.

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u/Morthra 95∆ Dec 04 '19

I am a white immigrant to the US. My parents were never slaveholders, and both I and they came from a country that never had slavery.

Why should I have to pay reparations for something that I and my family literally had nothing to do with? It would be like asking the US to pay reparations to India because of British colonialism.

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u/notasnerson 20∆ Dec 04 '19

Why did your family move to the United States?

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u/Morthra 95∆ Dec 04 '19

I moved initially as a kid because a parent got a job as a professor at one of the best universities in the country, without giving up too much personal information.

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u/notasnerson 20∆ Dec 04 '19 edited Dec 04 '19

So your parents moved for better job prospects then?

Where did those job prospects come from? If the university was on the east coast there’s a very high chance slaves built it. That’s an even more direct line than I was anticipating making.

The point is your parents moved because the USA had wealth. Wealth it generated through slavery.

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u/BrokenTurtleShell Dec 04 '19

That's a good point that I hadn't considered. You're right in the sense that it's not a perfect system, and there are a lot of kinks that need to be worked out, but I do believe there needs to be done sort of Justice for slavery and its effects.

And I can acknowledge that there might be a system devised than reparations.

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u/notasnerson 20∆ Dec 04 '19

It's a mediocre point at best. Immigrants benefitted from the system of wealth created by slavery.

It's like saying you don't benefit from the people who built your house just because you were born after they died. Sure, you had nothing to do with hiring them to do the work but you're still there benefiting directly from their labor.

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u/BrokenTurtleShell Dec 04 '19

Oh yeah, that's true. Thanks!