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I've never put too much energy into reparations. But if slave reparations were ever going to happen then going after those businesses and schools that aided slavery and benefited from slave money would be the best way to go about it.
I've never put too much energy into reparations. But if slave reparations were ever going to happen then going after those businesses and schools that aided slavery and benefited from slave money would be the best way to go about it.
Would that make a difference though? People (tiny minority in society) get literally $10s of millions by winning lotteries and it doesn't make a difference.
Slavery happened, and we later became wise and did away with it. Other than continually working to rid ourselves of signs of slavery, there's no need to continue the conversation.
People trying to stir up trouble by going off on a tangent in other way have an agenda to push, either with one extreme side or the other.
However, in one sense slavery built the entire world. North American, South America, Africa, India, Europe, and Asia. All had a slavery economic component in history. The slave trade was a major part of European economies from the 15th to 17th century.
For the US - well slavery was part of the agrarian economy of the south. But who was eventually victorious? The agrarian society of the south failed the south, it was self-defeating and short-sighted as it sacrificed insdustrial development, transportation development, etc. There were no focused urban centers of commerce or development. It wasn't agriculture and the cotton trade, it was the industrial might of the north that was victorious.
The industry of a free people built the US, not slavery.
One of the things I felt that kinda complicated the issue of slave reparations is how is it being determined which countries should put forth reparations?
Almost every country in the western hemisphere imported Africans for slavery. So do all of these countries owe some sort of reparations for slavery? I'm talking about all of the island countries in the Caribbean and those in Latin America. Brazil imported the largest percentage of enslaved Africans. Will slave reparations happen in Brazil?
All of history is chockablock with crimes committed by more dominant groups against those they were able to exploit. If I had an ancestor who was tortured and killed by the Inquisition, do I now merit reparations from the Catholic Church? If we agreed upon reparation payments for the descendants of slaves, are we not also obligated to make reparations to the native tribes?
Should we make reparation payments to Mexico for extorting a third of its lands? And if so would the Mexicans turn around and pass that money on to Spain for seizing their nation away from that nation? And then should Spain pass the money onto the Comanches who in turn would be obligated to pass it onto the Lipan Apaches who were forced out of the lands by Comanche aggression? Then would we need to figure out who the Lipan Apache pushed aside....etc.
Reparations is an idea that some, but not all, of the descendants of people who were victimized, merit payments from the descendants of the exploiters. We cannot undo the past, and why should we discriminate about who merits reparations when in all probability, there aren't any of us who do not have ancestors who were mistreated in the past at some point?
I recall from some decades past, there was a movement by some tribes to reclaim the state of Maine which had been swindled away with questionable treaties. The then governor of the state responded "I'll agree to return the lands, if they will agree to accept a bill for improvements."
We still have slavery today and many corporations (sadly) benefit from it, either directly but mostly through their supply chain - making the CEOs very wealthy.
We still have slavery today and many corporations (sadly) benefit from it, either directly but mostly through their supply chain - making the CEOs very wealthy.
This is what I hate about capitalism: A shirt at Walmart might cost $10 but the 12-year-old kid in India that made it might be lucky to have been paid $1.50 for their labor.
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