jemorgan

@jemorgan@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How are slavery reparations fair?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The entire concept of reparations for slavery is that non-black people will be forced to pay black people money, either as a one time lump-sum payment, or an open-ended pseudo-UBI. Some suggestions include mandated documentation of ancestral slabery, but the most popular ones don’t. The vehicle for this payment would be either increased taxes, or redirection of taxes.

  If you’re not talking about race-based redistribution of wealth, you’re not talking about ‘reparations,’ which is what this thread is about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How are slavery reparations fair?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This is hard for me to commit to an opinion on. I totally understand the argument that systemic injustices of the past have impacts today on the opportunities presented to descendants of affected individuals, therefore proactive steps are required to achieve equity. But solutions like requiring blanket reparations from one race to another seem to take for granted that everyone of the first race has been equally privileged by historical injustices, while everyone of the second race has been equally disadvantaged.

  This obviously isn’t true. People of color are disproportionately likely to be disadvantaged, but there are people of color who lead highly privileged lives, and there are white people who are highly disadvantaged due to coming from low socioeconomic class, poor health, lack of access to education, etc.

  The concept of reparations being paid on a basis of race necessarily involves the government forcing disadvantaged white, Asian, Latino, and other non-black people to become more institutionally disadvantaged, so that a group that contains highly privileged people of color can become more economically advantaged.

  Something absolutely needs to be done, we need to be actively fighting for equity, but it’s hard for me to accept an argument that that should be done on the basis of race instead of addressing the causes of class-based inequality that will benefit disadvantaged black people along with disadvantaged people of other races.

  For example, instead of seeking to improve the intergenerational income mobility of POCs in a system that restricts the income mobility of those without wealthy parents, we should fix the system and ensure a level playing field between someone who is born to high-school drop outs, and someone who was born to Ivy League graduates.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨higher wages for the servers... by the customers. Fnbs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Except that when a business raises prices, the menu shows the increased price. You can decide whether you want to pay before you eat.

  This is no different than walking into Walmart, filling up your shopping cart with $100 worth of groceries, and then seeing that they charged you $18 ‘to pay the checkers and baggers’ as you walk out the door.