Posted: May 19, 2013 3:44 am
Past conditions and events heavily influence and/or cause later events. Slavery, brutal oppression of freed slaves, Jim Crow laws, discrimination, etc. are largely responsible for the disadvantages which Black people face. Several conclusions that people would like to draw do not necessarily follow:
1. Individual responses to historical experiences vary greatly. What was extremely destructive for one individual was not equally destructive for another.
2. There is no method acceptable to most people that would produce a figure of "deserved compensation".
3. There is no certainty that reparation payments would result in any significant "reparation". Pick a wronged group - any wronged group, no matter how far back the wrong occurred. Give each individual $1000, or some other figure of your liking. Have you now settled the score? I suspect that most recipients would disagree that $1000 settled anything.
4. All oppressed groups have to accomplish their own liberation, eventually. Blacks have been freed of slavery, freed of Jim Crow laws, freed of the crudest discrimination, have been the recipients of dozens of programs which have transferred large sums of money to blacks--as a group. Schools have been integrated, equal opportunity laws are enforced, and so on and so forth.
In the prosperous, generally quite liberal state in which I live, blacks form a distinct underclass. As a group and individually, their school performance is terrible. Their health outcomes are worse than any other groups, regardless of neighborhood, number of doctor visits, and so forth. Their involvement with the criminal justice system is much higher than any other minority group. Their unemployment rates are deplorable.
Only some of their situation can be traced to the majority culture institutions. A substantial amount of the responsibility for their performance likes with them -- just as it did and does with every other group who has been the subject of discrimination. If blacks--individually and as a community--want to gain admittance to the mainstream culture, they will have to do the following things:
The parents of black children will have to learn how to raise children who can succeed. The average poor black child hears far fewer words spoken during the early years of life, during language acquisition, than Asian and white children. The same children hear twice as many negative words directed at them as Asian and white children. Language is developed face to face, not television to face. Books, magazines, educational television, and a clear privileging of learning success needs to be put into place.
The black community will need to reject street culture. It may help one survive on the street, but once you have done that, what do you have? Nothing.
The white establishment has to help reconnect men and fathers with their families. Past welfare rules and arrest/criminal practices have pretty much stripped adult black men from the black community. The policies that achieve this have to be abandoned.
Appropriate employment has to be made available. Frankly a lot of blacks are not ready to enter the competitive technical work place. Unskilled labor, sure. Technology based jobs? Not so much. It isn't that they could never do these jobs, but that they can't do these jobs UNLESS they engage in the educational and work culture which has the cash to reward them.
Meaningful reparations are not a cash handout: they are a radical change in life circumstances which the recipient must actively participate in with enthusiasm. Will they line up around the block for the opportunity? Over time, I think they will -- once peers begin to see that studying, learning, dressing well, talking like an educated person, and behaving like an adult can pay off handsomely. IF they reject such a real opportunity, then they can go to hell.
1. Individual responses to historical experiences vary greatly. What was extremely destructive for one individual was not equally destructive for another.
2. There is no method acceptable to most people that would produce a figure of "deserved compensation".
3. There is no certainty that reparation payments would result in any significant "reparation". Pick a wronged group - any wronged group, no matter how far back the wrong occurred. Give each individual $1000, or some other figure of your liking. Have you now settled the score? I suspect that most recipients would disagree that $1000 settled anything.
4. All oppressed groups have to accomplish their own liberation, eventually. Blacks have been freed of slavery, freed of Jim Crow laws, freed of the crudest discrimination, have been the recipients of dozens of programs which have transferred large sums of money to blacks--as a group. Schools have been integrated, equal opportunity laws are enforced, and so on and so forth.
In the prosperous, generally quite liberal state in which I live, blacks form a distinct underclass. As a group and individually, their school performance is terrible. Their health outcomes are worse than any other groups, regardless of neighborhood, number of doctor visits, and so forth. Their involvement with the criminal justice system is much higher than any other minority group. Their unemployment rates are deplorable.
Only some of their situation can be traced to the majority culture institutions. A substantial amount of the responsibility for their performance likes with them -- just as it did and does with every other group who has been the subject of discrimination. If blacks--individually and as a community--want to gain admittance to the mainstream culture, they will have to do the following things:
The parents of black children will have to learn how to raise children who can succeed. The average poor black child hears far fewer words spoken during the early years of life, during language acquisition, than Asian and white children. The same children hear twice as many negative words directed at them as Asian and white children. Language is developed face to face, not television to face. Books, magazines, educational television, and a clear privileging of learning success needs to be put into place.
The black community will need to reject street culture. It may help one survive on the street, but once you have done that, what do you have? Nothing.
The white establishment has to help reconnect men and fathers with their families. Past welfare rules and arrest/criminal practices have pretty much stripped adult black men from the black community. The policies that achieve this have to be abandoned.
Appropriate employment has to be made available. Frankly a lot of blacks are not ready to enter the competitive technical work place. Unskilled labor, sure. Technology based jobs? Not so much. It isn't that they could never do these jobs, but that they can't do these jobs UNLESS they engage in the educational and work culture which has the cash to reward them.
Meaningful reparations are not a cash handout: they are a radical change in life circumstances which the recipient must actively participate in with enthusiasm. Will they line up around the block for the opportunity? Over time, I think they will -- once peers begin to see that studying, learning, dressing well, talking like an educated person, and behaving like an adult can pay off handsomely. IF they reject such a real opportunity, then they can go to hell.