I thought I supported reparations until I saw how it was used in the 2020 primary to break up the call for universal programs. In the end, I reevaluated and now believe that Adolph Reed was exactly right in his debate with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. https://whyy.org/episodes/the-reparations-debate/
I think a commission to study the long lasting impacts of slavery as well as the possible remedies, whether that be monetary or otherwise won’t hurt anything.
It was a commission that punished “To Secure These Rights” in 1947 under Truman which told us how to fix the civil rights at the time, although much of what the commission requested didn’t happen until 1965.
But a commission to simply study it should give us the data and suggestions we need to make an informed decision.
I’m all for policy knowhow but I don’t think that is what is really meant when people advocate reparations. The intensity of that promise post-70s marries up too smoothly with the ethnic and racial brokerage the Democratic Party has encouraged. That kind of brokerage politics consistently delivers for the middle and upper classes of those “communities” and not for the disempowered working people within them. The Sanders approach was resisted because he showed how much less ambitious that brokerage politics was than the appeal of a more universal agenda. So I have been flipped.
I thought I supported reparations until I saw how it was used in the 2020 primary to break up the call for universal programs. In the end, I reevaluated and now believe that Adolph Reed was exactly right in his debate with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. https://whyy.org/episodes/the-reparations-debate/
I think a commission to study the long lasting impacts of slavery as well as the possible remedies, whether that be monetary or otherwise won’t hurt anything.
It was a commission that punished “To Secure These Rights” in 1947 under Truman which told us how to fix the civil rights at the time, although much of what the commission requested didn’t happen until 1965.
But a commission to simply study it should give us the data and suggestions we need to make an informed decision.
I’m all for policy knowhow but I don’t think that is what is really meant when people advocate reparations. The intensity of that promise post-70s marries up too smoothly with the ethnic and racial brokerage the Democratic Party has encouraged. That kind of brokerage politics consistently delivers for the middle and upper classes of those “communities” and not for the disempowered working people within them. The Sanders approach was resisted because he showed how much less ambitious that brokerage politics was than the appeal of a more universal agenda. So I have been flipped.