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by benj111
1211 days ago
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>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. |
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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?