[benj111]

how long should this free pass last for?

slavery is still a talking point. Should black people get another century and a half after equality is achieved to hold it against white people? Do white people then get another century and a half to hold that against black people?

If the goal is equality, holding grudges and special treatment doesn't work.

Women got the vote, they didn't get 1.5 votes to make up for past injustices.

And I'm not suggesting we have perfect equality now. But if that's the goal, there's no room for revenge.

[PuppyTailWags]

I would argue this "free pass" should last for until we no longer have living memory of racial discrimination. There are people still alive who couldn't vote because they are black. The Vice President of the united states had to be given armed guards in order to go to school because she was black and Indian. We're acting like black people are holding against white people something that no one currently alive can attest to. In actuality, racial discrimination and racist harm has occurred to people who are alive right now, and I highly doubt that white people get just proclaim "it's over, we solved racism" and therefore no one should retain any hurt feelings for the racist acts against them.

You know, I used to have a girlfriend that would do shitty things to me and then proclaim I was the one that needed to get over it because it happened so long ago, despite her never apologizing or making up for her behavior.

[benj111]

>You know, I used to have a girlfriend that would do shitty things to me and then proclaim I was the one that needed to get over it because it happened so long ago, despite her never apologizing or making up for her behavior.

You seem to be suggesting that you hold all women responsible for what your girlfriend did.

Do you see how other women might object to apologising for what your ex did, based purely of what they have in their underwear?

[silverwasthere]

It was an example of an abuse not an example of an abusive class of people.

What a large group of people are doing now regarding racism is exactly what this one single woman is said to have done.

[benj111]

Am I part of this abusive class of people simply for being white?

How many of these 'single' women are there? How many before it becomes a class, and all women are culpable?

[silverwasthere]

You seem to be suggesting that an entire race in the US should just get over it because it happened so long ago, which is the same gaslighting this woman is said to have done. Since you are doing this to an entire race, denying the importance of their experience and pain, you are in a class of their abusers regardless of your race.

[dudul]

So we'll keep the free pass until there is no living memory of any wrong doing against black people. Then we will only have living memory of the "free pass" and we will need to adjust back right? I mean, all we will "livingly" remember is the free pass after all, time to correct for that.

At some point people who are truly after equality need to look for justice in the future, not revenge for the past.

As for your ex-girlfriend, I have no clue how one individual being held responsible for "shitty things" compares to an entire race of people being held responsible for what their ancestors from many generations ago did. I will never apologize or feel guilty for what people who happened to have the same skin color as me did 100 years ago.

[silverwasthere]

Mlk's kids are still alive dude. This is not ancient history.

[ModernMech]

> slavery is still a talking point. Should black people get another century and a half

The last people born into US slavery died in the 70s. The 1970s. This stuff isn't ancient history, and treating it as such is part of the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_survivors_of_Amer...

[benj111]

I'm not saying it ancient history. I'm saying there's no one alive today that experienced it.

If you want to change the 150 year cycle with a 50 year cycle go for it. The cycle still exists.

[ModernMech]

> I'm saying there's no one alive today that experienced it.

But that doesn't mean the effects aren't still experienced by their children and grand children, who are still living. In order to say it's ancient history, we have to actually grapple with that history. Another poster made a great point that the reason we don't closely associate Germany with Nazi Germany today is that they went thorough a lot of hard work to de-Nazify their country.

In America, we dismantled our apartheid state and called it a day. We went from slavery, straight into a segregated society, and then when the civil rights act was passed, racism was declared "over" by a segment of society who didn't want to fully deal with the issue. But the negative effects from 200+ years of stat-sanctioned oppression persist.

Imagine if Germany post WWII said "You know, the holocaust was too far, but Jews are still a problem, and they shouldn't be part of German society." We'd question how de-Nazified Germany actually was. Jews there would be correct to question whether the holocaust actually ended or if it just temporarily subsided. They would be right to be concerned when people started saying "It's OK to be Aryan", and they probably won't agree with that sentiment even if having blue eyes and blonde hair is literally just fine. Because we all know what people uttering such a phrase are really saying: "It's okay to be a Nazi".

Take the context back to America, and we haven't dealt with slavery or our history of racial segregation. Just as we start to deal with it in our modern area, we see at the local, state, and federal level, the same ideology that was for US apartheid is now very much against a societal level reconciliation at the scale Germany underwent. And those are the people like Scott Adams, who want us to retreat back to our segregated past. They are the same as the Nazis want to put the Jews back in the ghettos without going full holocaust, and call that social progress. It's the same thing with these American white supremacists.

[benj111]

>Imagine if Germany post WWII said "You know, the holocaust was too far, but Jews are still a problem, and they shouldn't be part of German society." We'd question how de-Nazified Germany

That isn't whats being discussed though. If Jews wanted preferential treatment because of the Holocaust I'd object to that too.

If you want to point to concrete things that prevent black people reaching equality then we can discuss it, I might even agree with you. I'm not claiming we have perfect equality today, just that that should be the goal.

But again you're just mentioning slavery as if that is itself an argument. It isn't it's a statement of what happened in the past. I can't change the past, and neither did I have any role in that past, so I'm neither morally culpable nor able to do anything about it. What I can do something about is today. And today I support equality.

[ModernMech]

> If Jews wanted preferential treatment because of the Holocaust I'd object to that too.

This is as strawman brought in from Scott Adams' rant. By and large black people are not asking for preferential treatment, and no one here is discussing that.

> If you want to point to concrete things that prevent black people reaching equality then we can discuss it

Absolutely. For example, my grandfather had a great head start at life. He came to America and immediately got a job. He owned land not long thereafter, which was left to my father. That land will be left to me. The entire time he lived in America he had the right to vote, and he shaped the country by electing representatives to lobby for his interests at the local, state, and federal level. Those representatives enacted laws that benefitted my family.

By contrast, a black man born into slavery would not be allowed to fully integrate into American society even when freed. He wouldn't have owned much of anything to leave to his children, and his grandchildren, my peers. His entire family tree wouldn't have been allowed to vote, or hold office, or own property.

If you want to claim that slavery has no impact today, you have to also believe it is so far in the past that the negative effects have been sufficiently attenuated. But really, we're actually talking about 1-2 generations. People have living memory of actual American slaves. You also have to believe political representation and generational wealth are meaningless. Seeing how hard people fight for political representation and to keep generational wealth, I think this is a deeply flawed position.

How do we fix this using the framework of equality?

> it's a statement of what happened in the past.

To go a step further, are you aware slavery isn't actually abolished in America? The 13th Amendment has a carveout that slavery may be a punishment for criminal activity. Now take a look at the drug war, who they targeted with that, who is currently incarcerated and doing unpaid labor, and tell me slavery is a thing of the past in America. Do you think it's a problem that black people are represented in America's prison population at 3x the rate they are represented in society at large? Don't you think the problem is further compounded by the fact that America has the largest prison population in the world?

[benj111]

>This is as strawman brought in from Scott Adams' rant

I haven't read his rant. If anyone was strawmaning, you went to Hitler, I was just trying to modify the example to better fit.

>He owned land not long thereafter, which was left to my father. That land will be left to me

Good for you. Doesn't apply to me though, so it's obviously not a black v white issue. Further I would support a ~100% inheritance tax rate, solves the issue, means that every generation has a clean slate, making their own way in life. Plus id rather pay my taxes after I'm dead. How does that suit?

> had the right to vote, and he shaped the country by electing representatives to lobby for his interests

And those laws can be changed. Which do you suggest?

>To go a step further...

Yes that's an issue. But is it an issue of poverty? A problem of racist police and courts? What? I disagree that slavery actually exists. I don't think prisons should exist as money making concerns though.

The thread of black -> poor -> drugs -> prison I'm not convinced needs to include black in there. And a healthy amount of personal responsibility for the people involved is also required. It can't all just be blamed on others.

And none of this requires a discussion of slavery. Fix the problem as it is now.