Should America Say Sorry

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 paid $20,000 to each SURVIVING victim and offered a formal apology.  You aren't the hurt party of slavery; your ancestors WHO WERE SLAVES were. 

I’m clicking the links but I’d much rather prefer to hear your point of view. Shrug

ETA: should we just assume that every AA person has been affected in the same manner by slavery and give equal amounts of money to everyone? How far down generationally should we go? Does Oprah get as much money as you or a person living in low income housing? Where is the money going o come from? Taxpayers? And if so why? My ancestors didn’t enslave your ancestors? If we are tracing injury through the line of descrndants shouldn’t recompense come from the descendants of slave owners as well?

Well. I’m interested in your point of view. Not articles. Believe it or not, I’ve read extensively on the effects of slavery on AA. This is nothing new for me. What is *your* take in them?

I did. What exactly do you mean by that?is your position that wealth eliminates racism? Why so? How come you can find racist views in people of all socioeconomic backgrounds? I’ve asked you many questions about your views on reparations. All you’ve done is linked articles. That doesn’t further any discussion to be honest. 

You may be prepared to discuss the articles, but you never do. You post links, you ask questions, you accuse with broad strokes, but you don’t discuss anything.

Not all of your links are fact based either, some are well written opinion pieces. ( not puttng those links down, they are thoughtful pieces. They are not wrong opinions but they are opinions without research listed or linked ) But that’s not my point.

I am going to agree with you though, about institutionalized racism and classism being DESIGNED to hold people back. So many opportunities in our country were/are based on already having some wealth. Or at least opportunities that are governmentally regulators in some way by licensing or other ‘applications’. Those opportunities are controlled by regulations, laws & policies and those policies were discriminatory from the start. Those policies have been sexist, racist as well as classist. I’ve stayed mostly out of this thread because Olans threads often go awry and I’m not sure why. But I’ve read this thread where over & over Olan has been told to stop whining & stop being a victim. But her point has been right all along. There are many of our laws that have been DESIGNED to exclude, to exclude on the basis of gender, race, class etc. So black women face a multiple edged sword having to overcome all of the exclusions combined. They have been generationally excluded. I don’t think any further ‘apologies’ with do anything at all. And I don’t even know how reparations would work. But at the very least we can open our eyes to how existing laws can be exclusionary and make concerted efforts to make new laws that are not. Just ask yourselves why the modest personal tax changes just passed have an automatic expiration date (5years? ) yet the corporate changes and changes that benefit the wealthy do not expire without action to repeal them specifically. Then tell me we don’t have policies designed to be exclusionary.

For example the way my state ( NJ ) allows liquor licenses isn’t openly racist but may as well be. Liquor licenses by state law, made in 1947, are based on the population. A certain number of licenses per capita. While licenses are approved by each municipality the state limits the number. With some exceptions of places that had the number of licenses grandfathered by the number issued previous to the law. Making licenses in older established areas hard to come by as ‘new’ licenses aren’t being issued because they exceeded the number allowed by the state from the get go. These licenses have been a commodity for a long time whose value far far exceeds its few hundred dollar state fee. It has only recently that anything has been done to rectify these issues.

The state did a similar thing with gambling in Atlantic City limiting gambling/casino licenses to those already wealthy enough to provide the other amenities required. Preventing small business owners from having so much as a slot machine in premises. Which favored only the mega wealthy, already wealthy investors. It’s the reason that Atlantic City has failed multiple times where as Las Vegas has flourished.

If you think the hurdles out in place for these regulated opportunities weren’t at all race based then your fooling yourself. But at the very least you have to admit it was class based specifically favoring the already wealthy & powerful excluding others.

These are admittedly my own opinions, formed by my anectdital observations, I do not have the research to back them up.

I’m on my phone so my previous post didn’t include this as I intended.

Omg. This is hilarious. 

Let me be blunt- if you think that linking opinion pieces instead of actually voicing your opinion like other people have tried to elicit from you is “ discussion” and then turning around and then blaming others for “ not understanding you, then I feel sorry for you. If my professors had asked me to articulate an opinion and I linked an article instead of articulating my thoughts, I’d get a F. Have at it. Be the angry all knowing black person.   Eyeroll.