[JoeAltmaier]

You can use violent language to sensationalize it, sure. But its always seen as a stretch to me, to use ancient history to explain the current generation. Native Americans are jobless and alcoholic? Must have been those Indian wars 200 years ago. African-American folks uneducated and over-incarcerated? Blame slavery.

Everybody is born into their own life, and make of it what they can. Some change their position dramatically, some sit where they started. How do we explain that? "My parents were poor and uneducated because..." is just an excuse for one's own failures.

I understand that culture can strongly influence outcomes. But do we really believe that ancient wrongs have so warped a demographic's culture to the point they are doomed? And need 'reparations' to make it all right again?

I favor the process in the parent post - help those in need, sure, who demonstrate a willingness to use that help (send the poor to college etc). Blindly. That's important because people game any system, and others use quotas and officially-sanctioned profiling as further proof of whatever bigotry they already harbor.

[codygman]

> But its always seen as a stretch to me, to use ancient history to explain the current generation.

Calling it ancient history is disingenuous. History does repeat itself, and as any historian will tell you "If you don't know history, you are a doomed to repeat it".

> African-American folks uneducated and over-incarcerated? Blame slavery.

You are reducing it into something much less believable than:

"Blame the current people in power (white) for African-American folks having a harder time because there are still racist effects, cultural ideologies, subconscious denigration, uncaught biases, and traditions passed down from their great-grandparents who were slave owners."

[JoeAltmaier]

Ok blame whomever you like. The issue of 'reparations' remains cloudy, and I for one don't see the argument.

[codygman]

> Ok blame whomever you like.

I love how you frame things as if I'm just pointing fingers and may just as well blame inanimate objects.

> The issue of 'reparations' remains cloudy, and I for one don't see the argument.

I'm unclear on my position here, but I do see the argument for reparations.

[JoeAltmaier]

Sorry, I meant blame-throwing is an interesting exercise, for a sense of history if nothing else. But 'reparations' means payment for having wronged someone, usually a group. Using historical precedents of harm seems very indirect to me, to justify handing a check to someone born a century after that harm. Clearer?

[roguecoder]

That "ancient history" includes discriminatory subprime mortgage practices and redlining that are currently going on. Ferguson is not ancient history, and neither are the disparities in policing or the school-to-prison pipeline.

Ancient history merely tells us how we came to be at current history. We can not possibly begin to fix these ongoing injustices without admitting that "ancient" history had an actual impact that must be repaired.

Right now, black men with the same college degrees make far less than their white counterparts. A resume with a white-sounding name gets far more responses than one with a black-sounding name. No amount of "helping people in need" is going to address those problems.

[mkr-hn]

> to use ancient history to explain the current generation

Skip to the end if you don't have time to read the whole article. It's not ancient history.