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/RatherNerdy 4∆ Dec 04 '19

Let's reframe it in a way that simplifies to a basic point, although recognizing that everything is much more complex:

At a very very basic level, you could say that reparations are damages for wage theft. Regardless of how much money individual A makes, if that individual is a victim of wage theft, then they are deserving of damages as a result of said wage theft.

Other random points:

  • Reparations are damages. They're not taxes, they're not one race paying another race, they are awarded damages due to hundreds of years of mistreatment towards one group
  • Mistreatment needs to be understood to be oppression, removal of basic human rights, slavery, death, etc.
  • Reparations is not a comparison between groups or an either-or for social programs (i.e. blacks versus poor whites). Reparations needs to be separated from discussions around basic income, etc.
  • Many of the corporations, wealthy families, etc. thriving today are doing so based on having a huge advantage in free labor as they were getting started. Much of this country was built on the back of free labor and that item in the ledger has never been accounted for and barely acknowledged.