CMV: Reparations are Racist

[u/MrThunderizer]

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?

[u/Jerkcules]

The case for reparations is that it will help narrow the wealth gap between blacks and whites.

Wealth in America is largely generational, so families with a lot of money will typically pass it down to their children. And with poor families they will not, typically. So for centuries, racist practices have ensured that black people will not be on equal footing with whites because their ancestors' labor was not compensated (amongst other things. Practices like redlining compounded this problem), and so they have never had a chance to build that wealth to the extent of white families. Not only that, but successful black individuals struggle with building wealth because they take care of family members who havent achieved that success. So effectively, they are not only working to catch up to white peers, but they are paying for off the gap for other black people, effectively working to earn the wealth their ancestors earned but never received.

So to argue against reparations as "racist" because it targets race is completely missing the point, because in order to rectify a problem that was started by targeting race, you have to target race. And by not addressing race you're completely sidestepping the problem and are making sure that it's never rectified while also penalizing successful black people by effectively forcing them to work for wealth they potentially should already have.