StrangeSox

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 27, 2014 -> 04:59 PM) Let me ask you this: say the American people agree to pay something. Do you honestly think it will help? Say every black person gets $50k over the next 20 years. What will that solve? Anything? I noticed throughout his entire piece he doesn't mention anything about changes within the black community. That's going to be the answer, if there ever is one. I'm about to leave for the day and will be busy tonight, but I'll post some other recent articles by TNC addressing that very topic tomorrow.

QUOTE (bmags @ May 27, 2014 -> 04:54 PM) The slave trade featured more millions of deaths, a tearing apart of 450 years of families, abuse and rape of a group of people. edit: don't want to get into an oppression olympics. The only difference is the time that passed. In Haiti, about half of the slaves died within a few years of being brought to the island. French plantation owners calculated that it was cheaper to import new slaves than to improve working conditions and provide adequate food so that they would survive. Not relevant to a discussion of US reparations but never underestimate the evils of chattel slavery.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 27, 2014 -> 04:46 PM) I'll move the goal posts, as Balta will erroneously claim, but killing 6 million members of your group and making tens of millions more homeless is a little different than what happened to blacks here in the US. We can quickly and easily slide that into thanking you for your support for reparations to American Indians. I don't know how I'd weigh 10 or so years of targeted ethnic cleansing and plundering of the Jews by Germany against 250 years of chattel slavery, 100 more years of de jure white racial supremacy and then another 50 years or so of other racial policies targeted at a community. They are both horrendous.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 27, 2014 -> 04:44 PM) Now that is just slight of hand. If the government pays reparations, we all pay reparations. Ultimately that's the source of tax dollars, but I think it's an important distinction, especially when we're talking about the legacy of public/government policies. Otherwise we can carry that "I didn't personally benefit from X, why should I pay for it?" to the whole idea of taxation itself. You're not being individually asked to track down and compensate anyone. It's about using the same government and systems that were used to plunder a community for centuries to provide some restoration.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 27, 2014 -> 04:29 PM) Well just think of it this way...do you think slavery might have reduced the population qualified to be accepted to law school or to practice law? Just the mere setting back of this portion of the population lessens competition in many occupations. Perhaps Badger and I and Jenks were able to attend better schools or get better jobs because there was less competition than there might have been without the oppression that has taken place over the last few hundred years. And it's not just about slavery but about the century and a half after slavery of public policy that deliberately impoverished and oppressed black Americans. Focusing just on slavery allows someone to argue as if this is all about something that happened a long time ago and everybody who was effected is long dead.

Nobody is proposing that individuals repay reparations. The focus is on what civil society can do via the same governments that have been used to exploit and oppress African Americans for centuries to pay off the debt of that exploitation. The idea that this sort of debt just goes away if its ignored long enough doesn't hold up. FWIW, Germany paid reparations to Israel for what it did to the Jews.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 27, 2014 -> 04:20 PM) You just basically said the same thing that others said 2 hours ago. Perhaps you have benefited from slavery. I am sure there are some pretty decent arguments that could be put together... As the sub-headline of the article points out, it's about much more than just slavery. The whole first section of his article, as well as the link I posted way back at the start of this thread about about racial discrimination in public housing (along with white terrorism against blacks) within the last few decades.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 27, 2014 -> 04:19 PM) I'll never quite understand people that use those payday check cashing places. They are literally stealing money from you. Go to a bank, open up a checking account, keep 50 bucks in there and you'll never pay anyone to cash a check again. But nope, they don't do it. They can't see the forest through the trees. Same with settlement loan companies. I've had clients use that "service," being charged 50% interest rates. It's sad. 1) Keeping $50 cash just sitting around isn't always an option when you've got more cash flow going out than coming in perpetually, which is how poverty works. You don't have the luxury to see the forest from the trees when you need to constantly worry about avoiding that tree directly in front of you. 2) $50 isn't going to really cover any emergency expenses. The check-cashing side has its own exploitation problems, but the payday loans are something different. Those are the short-term advances you get that could be $100-500 or so that are typically paid off with the next couple of paychecks but carry 200-400% APR. If you have little or no savings and you absolutely need to get your car fixed or you'll lose your job and be even worse off, you unfortunately don't have much of a choice in many areas.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 27, 2014 -> 04:13 PM) Your solution will essentially cut off any funding to the poor. They still aren't going to have savings. They still won't be given a credit card because the interest rates couldn't be high enough to justify the risks to lenders. You can argue it wrong all you want, but that will be the consequence of closing those places down. The basic issue is that so many people are in need of those types of services in the first place. The existence of payday lenders is a symptom of that larger problem. But even addressing the smaller issue of payday lenders, there are more than two options (leave them as-is or abolish them and leave the poor to even worse--loan sharks). There are some private institutions that are trying alternative models. Expansions of credit unions, which typically serve local communities more effectively than larger banks, are another option. And there's always the possibility of a public bank, as recently endorsed by Sen. Warren.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 27, 2014 -> 03:47 PM) I think most of those things are symptoms after the fact, versus causation. People repeating the cycles of poverty tend to utilize the institutions you are talking about. Those things don't cause poverty in and of themselves. Yeah, in a cycle A causes B causes A causes B etc. so you turn to these predatory places like payday lenders because you absolutely need $200 right now to fix your car so you can get to work and not be fired, but then you end up deeper in debt and have to go back again the next time some emergency comes out and you're short on cash. Being poor is expensive.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 27, 2014 -> 03:10 PM) This is one place I think Indiana has made a move into the right direction. They have actually done away with the traditional property tax school funding to a large extent. Now everyone sends that money to Indianapolis. The State has come up with a funding formula that looks at the components of the population of a school district, such as how many learning disabled kids, how many gifted kids, how many kids below poverty rate, and assigns a value to how much it takes to educate the typical kids for those groups, then it comes up with a number that shows it should cost $X to educate the typical kid in your school district. That number is much higher in areas of really high poverty such as Gary, versus your typical cookie cutter white bread suburb. If they wanted to rework education to address it, that one makes sense to me, because if you can catch people at a young enough age, those are the ones you can "save". Once you hit a certain point in life, you are basically giving them a lottery ticket. Odds are much higher if you don't have the right life skills to begin with, that lottery winning ticket will be blown, and they will be back to where they started. Abolishing local property tax funding schemes for public education would be a huge component. edit: I'd be interested in any reviews or analysis of the effects of Indiana's change so far

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 27, 2014 -> 02:55 PM) Isn't that exactly what public education is supposed to be for? The only way you are going to break the multi-generational cycle of poverty is to make people appreciate that an education is step one to a better life. Well, ending both the public and private policies of racial oppression, which again are documented up to the recent housing crisis in the article, is a pretty necessary part as well. Modern payday loans and rental centers are little better than the housing sales described at the start of the article.

Bump for a new article from TNC documenting this country's legacy of legal white supremacy and black impoverishment, both public and private policy. QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 27, 2014 -> 08:15 AM) The Case for Reparations Even if you don't agree with his conclusion (reparations), it's an interesting read of this country's racial history and often racist public policy, especially when it comes to housing.

be the change you want to see! edit: bumped this year-old thread I made for a similar but much shorter TNC article about the ghetto being public policy.

The Case for Reparations

fwiw I think they've skipped their "doodle" on memorial day in the past. No idea why, but I'm pretty sure they do a 4th of July one. The google pages are country specific, anyway (google.com is US, google.co.uk, google.ca etc.)

f***ing mra's

Where is the hawks offense this period

BLOW THIS TEAM UP

Ugh

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 24, 2014 -> 07:32 PM) Johnny toews!

That was a garbage power play

Johnny toews!

There's a difference between contractor employees who take jobs with a fixed length defined up front and regular employment anyway.