"True reparations only can come from a full-scale program of acknowledgment, redress and closure for a grievous injustice."
Write A. Kirsten Mullen and William A. Darity Jr. in "Evanston, Ill., approved ‘reparations.’ Except it isn’t reparations" (WaPo). The Evanston program only offers $25,000 grants for repairs or down payments on real estate.
The authors demonstrate their "proprietariness about the meaning of 'reparations'" by spelling out 4 necessary elements:
1. Careful delineation of eligibility — including, necessarily, a requirement of an ancestor who was enslaved in the U.S., and self-identification as black on an official document for at least 12 years before the program starts.
2. Erasure of the black/white wealth gap. The authors think $14 trillion is needed.
3. Direct payments to individuals. Not programs like Evanston's, which centers on home ownership.
4. Paid by the federal government. Only the federal government has the kind of money that is demanded, so state and local government should be excluded from using the word "reparations."
Here's a good comment over there: "By describing 'true' reparations as only something that is both politically and practically unachievable, the authors reveal that they are more interested in maintaining the 'systemic racism' grievance industry then helping the country move past its issues with race."
By the way, I don't think I'd ever seen the word "proprietariness" before. It doesn't mean "propriety." The word is not in the OED, but I can see that the "-ness" ending is making a noun out of the adjective "proprietary," which means property-owning or relating to property. It's an unusual word. A google search on it is dominated by references to "male sexual proprietariness" (a man's sense of owning his wife's sexual and reproductive functions). I couldn't find 1 use of the word in the NYT archive, but I did find 6 uses in The Washington Post archive, including a piece from last October about reparations in California:
William Darity Jr., a Duke University economics professor and reparations expert, told the website Cal Matters that no single state could launch an action large enough to be called “reparations.”
“I have a sense of proprietariness about the use of the term reparations, because I think people should not be given the impression that the kinds of steps that are taken at the state or local level actually constitute a comprehensive or true reparations plan,” Darity said in Cal Matters. “Whatever California does perhaps could be called atonement, or it could be called a correction for past actions.”
"Reparations" is a brand. There is a claim of ownership over the word itself, and politicians attempting to use the brand for their programs will be pushed back by those who have this sense of proprietariness.
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90 comments:
The only reason Evanston didn't do direct cash payments is that the state of IL and the IRS would treat it as income and want their slices.
This is the most toxic of politics.
Equity does not equal equality in socioeconomic status as measured by ~9 generation or greater societal wrongs, ignoring efforts and lives spent attempting to right those wrongs, and then extracting some calculated result from individuals who may or may not have gained from those wrongs.
What a bunch of utter nonsense. The essential -- but unasked -- question is this : Are people poor because they lack money, or do they lack money because they're POOR ... as in poor attitudes, poor effort, poor ability to choose wisely, poor ability to delay gratification, poor ability to foresee consequences, poor education due to lack of school choice, and so on.
"Reparations" will work ONLY if the former is true. You could hand a 10-dollar gold piece to an Irish or Italian immigrant stepping off the boat and that was the last you'd see of him. The "War on Poverty" poured tens of trillions of dollars into the hands of "poor" people, yet they stayed poor, and this occurred across racial boundaries, whatever the hell those are.
The only people likely to benefit from "Reparations" are the bureaucrats who administer it, along with a coterie of lawyers, consultants, and assorted hangers-on.
Slavery is a good system, not an evil one. It's enslaving your defeated enemy rather than killing him, a win/win.
It makes economic sense in a "hit the guy on the head and take his stuff" economic system. It's not an efficient economic system because all your capital goes into defense, but given that's the system, slavery pays. And the slave thinks so too.
It was made obsolete by the free market and contract law, invented by the West, because a slave contributes more to the economy working in his own interest than he does working as a slave. So slavery died out.
It was maintained for a while for bogus and doomed reasons ("naturally subservient race"), but the economic validation was missing to justify it.
There's no historical imagination. In fact that's a requirement today.
Think $25K will be the end of it?
Maybe reparations could be given to everybody with an IQ 86 or lower. That's race neutral.
Government-sponsored miscegenation is a long-term solution.
"2. Erasure of the black/white wealth gap"
They really meant to write,
"2. Erasure of the black/white willingness-to-work hard gap"
Reparations is just more dependency on others. It does not denote freedom and independence. Maybe that’s the point.
Where is the step where we subtract all the monies previously paid?
And the one whereby all race-based transfers in the future are outlawed?
What about credit for those whose ancestors fought and died in the civil war?
Or those who came to the country after slavery was abolished?
You know, if we’re looking for “true” reparations...
How do you get to be an expert in reparations? Is it like being an expert in unicorns, or Martian colonization?
I’m guessing that there are no reparations experts who oppose reparations.
The fed doesn't have 'that kind of money'
We could give the burgeoning marijuana industry to black people, highly regulated of course.
It could be the 21st century Indian casino.
" because a slave contributes more to the economy working in his own interest than he does working as a slave. So slavery died out.”
Slavery is obsolete in capitalist countries, but communist countries find that it still works just fine.
The male female pay gap is a myth. Look into that one first.
We could give the burgeoning marijuana industry to black people, highly regulated of course.
It could be the 21st century version of the Indian casino.
William Darity Jr.
Another racially oppressed university professor with a sinecure.
They're pretty funny.
2. Erasure of the black/white wealth gap.
Asians make considerable more than white people, on average, so I want some of their money. No, I DESERVE some of their money! Maybe all of it!
Blacks living in mostly-white countries are wealthy by world standards, and are far better off then blacks living in mostly-black countries, where they're actually poor by world standards, and blacks in white countries are not *relatively* poor because of anything white people do TO them, they're relatively poor in spite of what white people do FOR them.
To lefties, reparations are similar to the minimum wage, whatever you raise it to, it's never enough.
Once you think about it through the Progressive lens, it's really quite simple.
If history is only what we decide it is, then perhaps the Black people were really in charge.
They forced white people to provide free travel to America, 3/5 representation without citizenship, free meals, room and board, and daily instructions on cutting-edge farming and household management techniques.
When white people tried to resist, their national government responded with a bunch of laws to limit their ability to keep them at bay.
Now who owes who reparations?
Given that in practice, “reparations” simply means, “ I’m black, gimmee money!” They should be commended for thinking about a real definition that not only includes/excludes specific actions, but also allows for a finish line. They are pushing for a reparations that can be fully implemented.
Proprietariness is a clunky word, but even though I’d never seen it before (that I can recall), I knew right away what it meant—which is a sign of a good coinage.
I would move out of IL so fast, I wouldn't pick up my dry cleaning.
Humperdink said "Think $25K will be the end of it?"
Hell no, just a downpayment. Once the spigot is opened, there will be a demand for more, because reasons.
Blacks are only too happy to accept lives of ignorance, violence and poverty in order to get the next freebie.
And their white 'allies' are only too happy to oblige - with other people's money.
Kevin said..What about credit for those whose ancestors fought and died in the civil war?
Or those who came to the country after slavery was abolished?
They include a requirement that you be descended from slaves. Reparations should be paid by those descended from slave owners. Those 2 requirements will mostly cancel each other out.
Where will these reparations end?
Will oppressed Blacks EVER be satisfied?
Don't we need some sort of FINAL SOLUTION?
Boy the price of reparations sure has gone up. The West Wing had the number at only $1.7 trillion.
They better hurry up and learn what comes after trillion.
Once you pay the Danegeld.......
The "War on Poverty" poured tens of trillions of dollars into the hands of "poor" people, yet they stayed poor, and this occurred across racial boundaries, whatever the hell those are.
That's because no matter how much you improve the lives and standard of living of people in the United States, someone is always going to be poor, just like someone is always going to be below average. It's definitional. You literally cannot win a war on poverty.
No problem. If it only costs $14 trillion, Slow Joe can just wrap it into the "infrastructure" bill.
2. Erasure of the black/white wealth gap. The authors think $14 trillion is needed.
The wealth gap is caused largely by racial differences in intelligence.
Thanks for introducing me to this Darity character. He appears to be Thomas Sowell’s evil twin. Really: smart as can be, great credentials, and has devoted his professional life to arguing how black people have gotten screwed by the white supremacist colonialist racist system. So, a grievance hustler par excellence.
rehajm said...
The male female pay gap is a myth. Look into that one first.
The gap is real, though it is anywhere from 70 to 105 percent depending on how it is calculated.
What is a myth is that it has anything at all with discrimination by employers.
Most of the gap is explained by discrimination by women.
They discriminate in the types of jobs they select and in their work patterns.
John Henry
Over a century and a half on, with the demographic and migratory activities associated with a free society, the very idea of reparations as redress for slavery, or even Jim Crow, is pure fantasy. But even that is realistic compared to the possibility that, once "reparations" are enacted and paid for, that we would just move on, racism solved.
Anyone seriously suggesting reparations should be asked directly: what's the consideration that supports this covenant? How is it enforced?
I'm really concerned there aren't enough stories about how precious black people are. The media should get on this.
One remedy for the Black-White wealth gap is to import millions of Brown people into the USA and to spend trillions on them.
rehajm said...Boy the price of reparations sure has gone up. The West Wing had the number at only $1.7 trillion.
In government, the numbers always get bigger. Today we talk about trillions the way we talked about billions 20 years ago, which was the way we talked about millions 40 years ago. It's not just growing, it's growing exponentially.
Careful delineation of eligibility — including, necessarily, a requirement of an ancestor who was enslaved in the U.S.
But what about systemic racism?
Today we talk about trillions the way we talked about billions 20 years ago, which was the way we talked about millions 40 years ago
When I was in high school in the 1980's, I remember how worried everyone was because the federal debt reached a trillion dollars under President Reagan.
Running the numbers, the entire US population is approximately 329 million and blacks are estimated to be 13.4% of that., so 44 million black recipients. Dividing 44 million into $14 trillion yields “only” $318,182 per black person Crack is gonna be disappointed.
The surest way to a permanent racial divide in this country is to demand millions of people who never owned slaves or had family involved with slaves pay trillions to people who never were enslaved but based on the color of their skin.
I’m good with the direct payment plan. However, instead of the federal government making the payments, require only slave holders to make the payments.
What a clusterfuck this will be.
If you think you've seen enough grifters to last a lifetime, I'm telling you, you ain't seen nothing yet.
My only question is: when the payout happens- and it will happen- can we then say this is it? Everyone is on their own now and no one to blame but yourselves if you don't move forward with your lives? Or does the blame keep growing, the hate get larger, and the disconnect even more pronounced?
And at what point do we say, OK, you've got enough. Onward and upward. I am no longer responsible for you. You are responsible for you. ??
"However, instead of the federal government making the payments, require only slave holders to make the payments."
I'm in favor of a series of voluntary grievance funds, which would include slavery reparations. The only problem is that the leftists demanding reparations wouldn't contribute, because if wanted to they could just give the money away today.
What is interesting to me is whether the people who talk the most about helping African-Americans are actually going to do nothing at all, or worse. As Charles Barkley has asked on TV, how does de-funding the police help African Americans in the inner city? How does it help to watch while agitators, possibly including some people who live there, burn down marginal neighbourhoods? If it's either an unrealistic reparations plan, or none, will they settle for none while acting as though every person who somehow makes it into the U.S. should get all the benefits that any African-American could possibly expect? Do African Americans keep getting pushed back to their usual place in line--well back from the front?
From the covid story one might expect rivers of money being spent on seniors' homes. Is that happening, or was it all horseshit while Biden builds a new level of welfare state based on women of child-bearing age and babies?
Now who’s going to close “Asian-White wealth gap” for the average American who makes less than the average American of Asian descent? Then the Persians and Indian-Americans also top out income tables.
Temujin @ 7:48: At what point, do we say enough? You know the answer to that: never. “Too much ain’t enough.” “The appetite grows with feeding.” Why should the grievance hustlers not continue to double and redouble their demands? The system they are imposing is unstable; it has no internal check or limiting principle. It is just more and more and yet more. And to the extent its proponents know —and they do— how unjust their program becomes, they will suppress that knowledge under an ever-louder clamor for money, apologies, submission.
Frankly, the demand for monetary reparations is not nearly as dangerous and poisonous, IMHO, as the White Fragility bull. Because once you have fogged the mind and broken the will of your adversary, collecting the gold is a logistical detail.
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
The principle works for both external and internal enemies.
"The cause of justice demands proprietariness about the meaning of 'reparations..."
Althouse said...
...making a noun out of the adjective "proprietary," which means property-owning or relating to property. It's an unusual word. A google search on it is dominated by references to "male sexual proprietariness" (a man's sense of owning his wife's sexual and reproductive functions).
Perhaps "proprietariness" means exactly what it has always meant to Democrats?
In their eyes, reparations should mean they will 'own' black people.
Reparations will never end anything because the perpetual grievances are too profitable.
Reparations, like all other welfare handouts, will further poison relations among people of different races. Dependency never generates gratitude - it only furthers resentment. This scheme will generate mass resentment among both givers and takers. By design, I suppose.
"By describing 'true' reparations as only something that is both politically and practically unachievable, the authors reveal that they are more interested in maintaining the 'systemic racism' grievance industry then helping the country move past its issues with race."
True. Then again, actual reparations would still help to maintain the systemic racism grievance industry, since the year after the reparations have been paid out new "inequities" emerge and new payments will be demanded. Reparations don't repair anything. Which is part of the point.
Is there anywhere today is the US justice system where the penalty for a guilty person’s crime against another person is allowed to be pressed against that person’s innocent children because the perpetrator himself/herself has died?
If not, then how do we get to “Your great-great-great-great-great grandfather committed a crime against my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, but he’s dead, so you must be held responsibility for his crimes!”
“They include a requirement that you be descended from slaves. Reparations should be paid by those descended from slave owners. Those 2 requirements will mostly cancel each other out.”
I would personally add in on the second side anyone who ever had family members support Jim Crow or welfare dependency, the latter being probably even more pernicious than slavery for the sad state of Blacks today in America. In short, Democrats. In short, were you or your ancestors Democrats?
Sorry, this just pisses me off. For two hundred years, Democrats have been oppressing Blacks, and their policies, for those 200 years, from slavery through Jim Crow, to welfare dependency, to BLM, have all been Democrat policies. They steal this election, stealing the Presidency and probably at least three Senate seats, and then try to shove this sort on nonsense down our throats. I don’t mind if Democrats want to clean up their own mess. Just don’t do it with my money. My ancestors voted for Lincoln, then fought and died to end slavery.
And what’s the formula apportioning how much reparations one is to receive? If your black freed-slave ancestor from 1865 married a white person, and their progeny married whites from there on out, you are still an ancestor of a slave, but would there really have been any impact to your social status today, eight generations later?
Even more convoluted: what if you have ancestors that were both slaves and slave owners? Does one cancel the other out?
"The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and their children's teeth shall be set on edge."
These people live in an Old Testament world.
Racism has kept America from achieving it's full potential, so whites have also been harmed. So we should get reparations, too.
Whiskeybum,,
Exactly! My mixed-race son's black father had a great-great-great grandfather who was a slave owner (so funny the way genetics works--my son's grandmother (whom I knew before I met her son and married him) is so pale that I didn't know she is black until I met her dark-skinned son). So my son and all of his living relatives on his dad's side are both descended from slaves and the slave owner.
Given that his grandmother sat at the Woolworth's counter in NC and has moving stories of being black in the Jim Crow South, I don't think the slave-owner part benefitted her or her family much. But still.
Remember, this is the community that made Bernadine Dohrn, a murderer and terrorist a professor in the local law school.
I know Evanston very well. I can assure you that the point of their "reparations" plan is to make upper middle class Whites feel better.
That seems to be what the Left is all about these days. Well, that and control over us savages.
"Paid by the federal government. Only the federal government has the kind of money that is demanded."
Does this guy understand where the money Fed Gov gives out actually comes from?
It’s tempting to call the authors of that Post article stupid, but I won’t, because in the current political climate, it’s entirely possible they will succeed in scaring the well-meaning liberals of Evanston into changing the name of their program lest they be cast into the void as “racists.” So I’ll call them manipulative instead.
Erasure of the black/white wealth gap. The authors think $14 trillion is needed.
<
Paid by the federal government. Only the federal government has the kind of money that is demanded
--
HAHaHaHa!!!!!
How about sizable payments to the relatives of WWII veterans? This of course would not be reparations, but rather payment for services rendered.
"I'm really concerned there aren't enough stories about how precious black people are.'
Walt tried with Song of the South but progressives banned it...
https://ktla.com/news/california/san-francisco-to-give-some-artists-1000-a-month-under-universal-basic-income-program/
Certain San Francisco artists may receive $1,000 a month under a new city program, the latest in a series of universal basic income initiatives cropping up in cities across California.
The guaranteed income pilot program will dish out the funds for six months to 130 eligible artists, according to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts website. To qualify, applicants must be San Francisco residents under certain income thresholds who faced economic loss during the pandemic.
The program is open to every artistic tradition, including music, dance, creative writing, visual art, performance art, installation, photography, theater, film, arts education and craftsmanship. The artist’s work must be “rooted in a historically marginalized community,” according to the website.
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https://ktla.com/news/california/san-francisco-to-give-some-artists-1000-a-month-under-universal-basic-income-program/
The San Francisco Bay Area city of Oakland, California, home to decades of civil rights activism as well as huge, tech-fuelled disparities in wealth, laid out its plans on Tuesday to give families of colour $500 a month with no strings attached, one of the largest universal basic income (UBI) pilots ever tried in the US.
Under the programme 600 low-income families who self-identify as Black, indigenous, or people of colour, will receive $500 a month for 18 months, regardless of their employment, immigration, or housing status.
Local officials said the goal of the programme, proposed last year, was to combat the racial wealth gap in Oakland, where median African-American income, at $50,000 a year, is less than half of median white income
“We believe that guaranteed income is the most transformative policy that can achieve this vision and whose time has come,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said on Tuesday.
The pilot programme does not use taxpayer funds, and is a partnership between Oakland, a coalition of ten cities trying UBI, the Family Independence Initiative, and the philanthropic group Blue Meridian Partners, which provided $6.7 million to support the programme.
The nearby county of Marin is set to launch a similar programme this week. San Francisco launched a programme in September giving pregnant Black and Pacific Islander women $1,000 a month during their pregnancies and six months after, and in December voted to launch a broader UBI pilot programme.
According to their criteria:
Only a subset of Blacks are eligible
The transfers to this minority must be big enough to rebalance the average wealth between two larger groups.
In other words, create a super rich subset of Black Americans.
Whoops.
Link for the 2nd article above:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/oakland-universal-basic-income-california-b1822017.html
Everyone likes a handout, but based on empirical evidence, most recipients prefer cash. Have you ever tried to get a panhandler into a restaurant? They might be ragged and hungry, but they prefer cash.
Why the 12 years?
"The authors demonstrate their "proprietariness about the meaning of 'reparations'" by spelling out 4 necessary elements: ..."
Their approach sounds kind of spendy. How about we just give both of them a nice, big bowl of steaming shit and a spoon?
Scott Adams has decided to identify as black and is considering applying for the artist $$.
Perhaps the cat poop has gotten to him...or he's confident of his security team.
According to 23andMe, I am one-five hundredth Kenyan (more Kenyan than Indian Lizzie is Native American). Hmmm...I haven’t identified as black for a dozen years, and I prefer to think that my Kenyan ancestor was a princess of noble birth and bearing, not a slave. I’d be SOL in Evanston. But my genes cry out for justice: WHERE’S MINE?
You can pretend that facts aren’t facts. But you can’t avoid the consequences of doing so.
"My only question is: when the payout happens- and it will happen- can we then say this is it? Everyone is on their own now and no one to blame but yourselves if you don't move forward with your lives?"
Of course not. Pay once, and there will be more sequels than Rocky. If someone born 150 years after slavery was ended is eligible for a payment, what about someone born 200 years later? 300 years later? Drawing a line and calling it good? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Reparation payments, if approved, should be roughly organized in order of responsibility: Portugal, Portugal, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, France, Britain, Denmark-Norway, Angola, Congo, Togo, Ghana, Benin, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gambia, U.S.
"Paid by the federal government. Only the federal government has the kind of money that is demanded."
Translation: there ain’t no more money to suck outta the Illinois Treasury - we already have killed that golden goose with non-sustainable pensions, etc. We need a target with bigger pockets.
Reparations in lives and treasure sacrificed to end slavery. Reparations in lives and treasure sacrificed to stand up to diversity. Reparation for all "the People" and "our Posterity" who stood against slaver and diversity.
Racism has kept America from achieving it's full potential,
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgments), not limited to racism, that denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. "people of color"), color quotas, and affirmative discrimination.
What Darity is saying when he claims a sense of proprietariness towards the word "reparations" is that he owns that word and it is subject to his control. It is his property to do with as he pleases.
He does, however, treat it relatively well if it behaves and may in the future teach it to read the Bible after the harvest is in, if time allows.
If your jeans are crying out for justice you should lose some weight.
What rhhardin said struck me as a very profound statement about slavery and seeing it in a different light. It also reminded me of how profound the holiday of Passover is for the Jewish people. In case you are not familiar, every year Jews remind ourselves that we were slaves in Egypt, a foreign country, and now we are free, thanks to God. I don't see that level of awareness or gratitude in the current BLM movement or anywhere on the Left.
What bothers me the most about the Left is the substitution of "social justice" for spiritual awareness. That doesn't mean we deny or forget about suffering. As I said, Jews are obligated to remember their long period of slavery and suffering. But the obligation also includes a celebration of their redemption and freedom and gratitude.
Will US Blacks ever recover from their enslavement here? IDK. IMO even if there are reparations the only people who will benefit and be healed will be the people who are willing to celebrate and appreciate the freedom and opportunities here in the US. Those are the people who are healed now without the reparations. The people who are fighting over the "proprietariness" of the reparation brand will never be restored by any amount of money. There will always be something else to complain and fight about demanding equity. They will never give up the need to make others feel guilty about the fundamental unfairness of life. Meanwhile you have the official policy of the Democratic Party a perpetual state of grievance and victimhood, while the party leaders and well connected reap the financial benefits of government handouts and massive contracts. And the slums remain slums.
Is there any plan by the "official reparation brand" for an official declaration of forgiveness to follow the reparations? I haven't hear anything about that and I doubt it.
“They include a requirement that you be descended from slaves."
Given world history, I'd bet many of us are descended from slaves.
I have no problem with the descendants of former slaves seeking reparations; as long as they're trying to get them from the African tribes who captured their ancestors, enslaved them and sold them to Europeans.
The transfers to this minority must be big enough to rebalance the average wealth between two larger groups.
In other words, create a super rich subset of Black Americans.
You mean like NBA, NFL and MLB players? Let's not forget about the movie and music industry.
It's also a good time to be a Black actor form what I see on TV commercials.
Is there any plan by the "official reparation brand" for an official declaration of forgiveness to follow the reparations? I haven't hear anything about that and I doubt it.
South Africa, first populated by the Boers except for a few bushmen, had a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" and now the blacks are planning to kill the whites and take their stuff. Knowing the Boers, some of whom are my friends, I don't think they can do it but they are trying the Zimbabwe Solution. That worked out well.
We need a compromise. How about free abortions forever?
Are the lives and treasure sacrificed to end slavery considered?
Are the lives and treasure sacrificed to stand up to diversity [dogma] (e.g. racism) considered?
Are they deductible expenses or depreciated capital assets over time?
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