This.
OP is correct in the statement that any person alive has not been alive to either own slaves or be slaves. But that’s not the point of reparations.
The point is that you have and continue to benefit from the times when slaves were legally permitted. It might not seem like it, and maybe someone along the line blew a bunch of that money on booze and gambling… But someone you are related to, and by proxy you are benefiting from the proceeds of slavery.
By extension, all of those proceeds from the work that slaves performed was robbed from them by their masters. Making most of the slaves insanely poor while the former masters were able to keep the money those slaves earned for them. So they started from nothing. Sure, they were “free” to some variation of free (not sure all the racism made it feel like much of a change)… Fact is, they started at zero, at a time when most established families were sitting pretty.
After all this time… There’s interest.
I don’t know where they got these numbers and I haven’t looked into it all that closely, but it doesn’t seem too unreasonable given all of that.
Kaleunt17@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That kids or later generations are liable for past crimes or wrong doings (by todays standards!!!) is not fair and it is no justice.
In German it is called Sippenhaftung and was even used by the Nazis.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sippenhaft
orrk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
by your logic, if someone stole something, have it to his brother and then got caught, having the brother give back the stolen goods is something Nazis would have done.
But this isn’t Sippenhaftung, also known as gilt by association in English, this is a societal thing, you, even if your great great gandpappy didn’t himself own slaves, the society is still at fault and needs to right the wrongs done to a whole ethnic group
Kaleunt17@lemmy.world 1 year ago
According to Sippenhaftung the Nazis would probably have shot the thieve, his brother, their parents, other family members and burned down their houses.
In case of societies you mean collective liability then?
The society in question (which exactly?) of today is not the same compared to the society of the past. How can it be at fault?
orrk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
look, YOU are the person framing this as some form of individually targeted thing.
as for the idea that the society is different, how can it be at fault? because the foundations of the society we have now are built on these injustices, to go back to the earlier example, “look, you can’t take the stolen stuff back from the thief, he’s a different person 10 years later”
Thatsalotofpotatoes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think you missed my point. This is not about punishing white people, it’s about getting the victims caught up.