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by badwulf
3291 days ago
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> Nevertheless, you can't deny that white people have advantage over blacks due to historical reasons. If everyone strongly believes that black people are still feeling the effect of slavery(despite not being alive when that was a thing), give them reparations and conclude that the playing field is level. > What we as a society are truing to do is to undo the harm, in a way - to make chances equal, because we feel it's the right thing to do. You don't undo harm by harming others, you don't fix racism by introducing racism against others. The main flaw I see in your thought process is you are trying to fix a perceived inequality of opportunity by introducing equality of outcome. If you really want to fix the lives are black people, fix the root cause, not the end result, it's too late at that point. I personally would start by fixing education. |
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That's a historically ignorant characterization. De jure discrimination existed long after slavery ended. Had Bill Gates been born a black kid in the south, he likely would've gone to a segregated school. De facto discrimination continues to present day. When Bill Gates got on stage to announce Windows 95, more than half of Americans didn't think that black people shouldn't marry white people. Do you think all those people admitted that view to pollsters, then went around in their schools, governments, and work places treating black people exactly the same as their white counterparts? Believing in Santa Claus would be less naive.
> give them reparations and conclude that the playing field is level.
People tend to think of that as a bizarre idea, but in reality that's the default way to remedy harms in the American legal system: awarding money damages. Here, the legal entities primarily responsible for the harm (the state and federal governments) are still around and can be held liable. Damages are often estimated by looking at the difference in income resulting from the harm. Here, that's likely north of $300 billion per year (assuming all of the black-white wage gap is explained by discrimination).
> You don't undo harm by harming others, you don't fix racism by introducing racism against others.
That's like saying you don't fix an infection by cutting out the infected tissue, which necessarily involves cutting out healthy tissue around it. Or that you don't fix cancer by collaterally poisoning a bunch of perfectly healthy non-cancerous cells. That's exactly how you fix disease!
The idea that the harms caused by federal and state governments' laws protecting slavery and segregation will go away simply because you get rid of those laws is like believing that a paperclip will unbend itself, or that an overturned boat will right itself. Fantastically naive.