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there hasnt been any slavery in New York in basically 200 years. no one affected by it is alive now. nor are their children, or even their children's children.
A lot of the old money that built New York, like the Vanderbilts, Goldman, and Lehman families became rich on the backs of slaves. The ancestors of the slave owners inherited that wealth and with it the debt to the ancestors of their slaves.
And it should be those families paying reparations.
Those families did things like build parks, libraries, museums, concert halls, and schools that New Yorkers all have benefitted from. If you live in New York (or The US in general), you have benefitted from the spoils of slavery.
As do the descendants of slaves who have those same amenities available.
That's not the argument you think it is. Also, my family came over poor on both sides. We weren't the ones doing the oppressing.
Black people were systematically prevented from benefiting from those amenities for generations (and sometimes still are).
My family are poor immigrants on both sides too. That doesn't matter. If you buy a house and later find out that the plumbing is bad, that is your responsibility even though you didn't create the problem. We inherited this country and with it the obligation to fix the broken parts.
I understand what you're saying but disagree with your ultimate conclusion.
The average modern-day American did not directly benefit from slavery and many didn't even come to the country until after slavery had been long since abolished. Some of those people were also treated as ethnic minorities though they may be seen as "white" now. Which is to say, they were terribly disadvantaged in the American economy because they were immigrants or descended from the "wrong" background.
Any reparations that are to be made should be made by the perpetrators or those who have directly benefited from said perpetrators' actions. To tax other impoverished lineages in order to provide reparations to another group which had it even worse is unjust.
I do firmly believe that the country needs to address its systemic issues, but I don't believe that taxing the majority to give cash to the aggrieved is the solution.
It is an undeniable fact that modern Americans benefitted from slavery and black Americans are still harmed by it.
In US counties today, a larger local slave population in the past was correlated with lower percentages of uninsured white people, higher white median incomes, lower white poverty rates, higher white homeownership rates, and lower percentages of white people on food stamps.
http://www.wipsociology.org/2019/10/10/the-past-is-the-past-how-slavery-still-benefits-white-americans/
Slavery was an early driver of economic growth. The US simply would not be in the high economic position it is now and the African countries who were raised for their population would not be so comparatively impoverished.
https://equitablegrowth.org/new-research-shows-slaverys-central-role-in-u-s-economic-growth-leading-up-to-the-civil-war/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2017/05/03/the-clear-connection-between-slavery-and-american-capitalism/?sh=4c1b5d6d7bd3
The perpetrator of slavery was ultimately the American government who made it legalized, encouraged, and enforced it. As the current stewards of our government, we are all responsible for the harm done in the past and the harm still being done to our fellow Americans.
I acknowledged that previously. Regardless, once again, I fully understand what you're saying but don't agree with your conclusion.
So basically you acknowledge black people are harmed by past slavery, but don't think anything should be done about it. Nice.
No. Not what I said at all.
You sound like this guy in the article:
But this doesn't necessarily mean cash reparations:
Millions of people are still affected. Black people are much poorer on average, which leads to a circle of misery involving everything from access to education, to crime rate, to perpetuation of racism, that keeps them down.
Just because the original victims and perpetrators are dead doesn't mean the crime is not creating new victims every day.
And it's not just slavery. It's centuries of racism inherent to social, legal, political, and economic systems that continue to have ramifications. The civil rights movement was only 65 years ago (wait, 65 years? Oh, how the time flies) and everyone knows that absolutely did not solve racist policy in the US.
You're wrong there. All the descendants of the white slave owners are people who profited from slavery through inheritances.
What percentage of Americans are descendants of slave owners? a lot of Americans didn’t even immigrate to the untitled states until after slavery was abolished.
it's a vanishingly small number. only around 6% of all Americans were slave owners. some were killed during the civil war, others in succeeding wars (notably WW1 and WW2) - the current number is unknown as that isnt really tracked, but it's unlikely to be more than 4% of the current population.
you cant really fault the decedents for what happened 200 years ago though - they werent there, their parents, and even grandparents werent born yet. for most families it's been 5 or 6 generations (or more). getting reparations would be something that should have been attempted 200 years ago. it's simply laughable to consider it now.
I can tell you that nearly 100% of black Americans were descendants of slaves and parents/grandparents that lived through Jim Crow and institutionalized racism (hard to say exactly what % since we completely destroyed any possibility of tracing most of their history or genealogy). The Tulsa Race Massacre was only two, maybe three generations ago.
You could look that up and let us know.
People apart from the Uber elite get inheritance? Unless they die suddenly, I assumed it all went to end of life care or scammers
https://www.hoover.org/research/long-shadows-slavery-and-jim-crow-uncovering-economic-impact-black-americans
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247
https://theconversation.com/how-the-legacy-of-slavery-affects-the-mental-health-of-black-americans-today-44642
https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/origins-modern-day-policing
You are almost certainly wrong about that, and they deserve to be compensated for the labor that was robbed of their ancestors.