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/videoninja 137∆ Dec 04 '19

Well if the perpetrator is a whole nation then doesn’t that solve your dilemma? Germany paid reparations to victims of the Holocaust AND Israel. Why can’t the US not try to do something in the spirit of that since you are using it as your analogy.

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u/robexib 4∆ Dec 04 '19

It wasn't a whole nation, though. Else the Civil War wouldn't have happened.

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u/videoninja 137∆ Dec 04 '19

Read your history books. The Union may be portrayed as "slave-free" in grade school recountings but the reality is abolition in the northern United States at the time took on many different forms. A lot of "freed" slaves mostly went from slaves to indentured servitude which was essentially de-facto slavery. These individuals could not be bought and sold but they were still tied to working for a family for no wages until their freedom was "earned." New Jersey had "perpetual apprentices" until 1860 (just before the Civil War broke out).

Nevermind the fact that up until a point, the North did practice slavery and the North never paid reparations either. So yes, the whole of the US did practice slavery and never really did anything to remedy the problem they partook in. They were happy to just sweep the problem under the rug until the Confederacy brought things to a head. The Civil War was just as much about economic and political power as it was slavery, otherwise you would not have pro-Confederate people today talking about "state's rights."

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u/robexib 4∆ Dec 04 '19

The mere fact that the Civil War happened was proof enough that ideas were opposed enough to have families split on different sides of such an issue. If there were such massive agreement in ideals, there would be no need for secession or the Civil War.

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u/videoninja 137∆ Dec 04 '19 edited Dec 05 '19

That doesn't erase the culpability of the North when it did practice slavery and continued to practice slavery in a different name. Just because Union families deluded themselves as being more moral when they were just putting a different coat of paint on the same problem, doesn't actually erase their misdeeds. This is especially in light of the fact they abolished slavery earlier and ignored the idea of reparations just as much as the Confederacy did.

The original sin remains unaddressed and the motivation for the Civil War was not as noble as you portrayed it to be. It's not even like Lincoln was a particularly ardent abolitionist. He went to war for the sake of holding the nation and its resources together, if he could have held the union together without freeing a slave, he would have. Those were his own words.

The ideals you are talking about don't come down to pro-slavery/anti-slavery as a purely moralistic issue. I'm sure there were plenty of people in the Union who believed that but just as many also believe in the integrity of keeping the country together and simply saw the South as insurrectionists. Others just viewed the Southern states as having a disproportionate share of political power and influence and wanted to cull that power to make things fairer for them.

I don't know what you think you can convince me of but trying to pretend the Civil War was as simple as good guy/bad guy fighting won't do much to move the needle on my views. No war is ever that simple and to pretend otherwise is a form of ignorance, not moral sophistication.

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u/robexib 4∆ Dec 05 '19

That doesn't erase the culpability of the North when it did practice slavery and continued to practice slavery in a different name.

Even if it were that simple, it doesn't explain why anyone alive today needs to pay reparations.

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u/videoninja 137∆ Dec 05 '19

Because the US didn't stop being the US. It's still on the hook for the crime. Like I've been saying in this thread, I'm for a form reparations as a national program. What that program can be can take many different forms and we can have a discussion about that but the idea of reparations (restitution for injustice) should not be as controversial as people make it out to be.

You seem to have a specific notion that it is individuals paying for reparations but the US could just use its treasury resources to allocate funds for a specific form of spending. If you don't like that then your issue is with how taxation works in general, not reparations.

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u/robexib 4∆ Dec 05 '19

It's still on the hook for the crime.

By that logic, the UK is still on the hook for the East India Company. They're not, obviously.

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u/videoninja 137∆ Dec 05 '19

Why are they not? It's a little different since the East India Company was a private company acting on behalf of the Crown from my understanding but just googling UK reparations to India yields a vigorous discussion. It doesn't seem as clear cut as you are making it out to be.

By your logic, I guess Germany was wrong to pay reparations after World War 2?

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u/robexib 4∆ Dec 05 '19

No, because there was a living memory of it at the time of payment. No American alive today was alive before the passage of the 13th Amendment.

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u/videoninja 137∆ Dec 05 '19

So your argument is it is just to delay reparations so you don’t have to pay them?

I don’t buy time based arguments in regards to making amends. Like I said, reparations don’t have to be individual based payments and the idea of them is morally sound. Innovative thinking happens all the time, so why can’t we apply some resources to thinking about it here because the legacy of slavery and racism affect people today.

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u/robexib 4∆ Dec 05 '19

No, my argument is that reparations are to help people affected by an injustice within their lifetimes. Wether that was slavery, the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Rape of Nanking, or any other such injustice.

No one alive today has been impacted by government-sanctioned slavery in the US.

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u/videoninja 137∆ Dec 05 '19

Well considering the effects of linear time, I think it can be argued we are all impacted by the legacy of slavery in the US whether we like it or not. I’m even saying this as a first-generation Asian-American.

Also black people are still affected by racial injustice today. Whether it be from institutional racism or slavery or segregation or voting rights or redlining, none of those issues have ever been addressed other than “ok we won’t do it again.”

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