Reparations are Appropriate
Thinking a lot about Affirmative Action today for obvious reasons. Here is my thinking:
I must start with my firm opinion that the laws of inheritance are the chief culprit in establishing an aristocracy. In my opinion, no person ever earns the right to ensure that the remainder of their bloodline never have to contribute to society again. Wealth begets wealth, but there is no other guaranteed qualities that transfer from parent to child — not intelligence, humility, honorability… nothing. If the child of a humanity-hero is similarly inclined to the parent, it stands to reason that they could make money with similar innovation, and they would have the drive to do so, not having started with any more money than anyone else.
In America, this sin is compounded by the fact that human rights violations are the basis of our wealth. Many wealthy families would not be where they are today if hundreds of years ago their ancestors didn’t exploit human lives for enormous profit. The descendants were free to inherit the money but not the crime. This is still true. If someone extorts money somehow, but is not caught in their lifetime, their children are free to inherit that money at no cost to themselves. Does this not encourage wealth-begetting criminality? Crimes make your children better off! You can risk personal incarceration for the betterment of your children, rest of the community (upon whom you rely) be damned.
Because of the nature of inheritance, I think reparations are appropriate. Black people are owed the back wages of their ancestors, adjusted for inflation, with interest. Plantation owners didn’t work hard for their wealth. Their slaves did. If a plantation owner paid real wages, they wouldn’t be as wealthy now. If a plantation owner didn’t have anyone to help them with their land, they could not plant, maintain, and pick the crops and maintain the house etc. all by themselves and… wouldn’t be as wealthy now. Their wealth directly derives from violated human rights. I’m not saying their descendants should be jailed, but they shouldn’t inherit ill-gotten advantage. Meanwhile, had slaves been paid and been able to improve their circumstances on their own merit, they would make up proportionally as much of the middle class as white people. We wouldn’t have to worry about affirmative action because they wouldn’t have been relegated to ghettos and projects from the start. They wouldn’t be starting with that disadvantage.
But I can’t overlook the fact that quality schools are sparse no matter the color of your skin. If you are poor, the odds that you will be under-served in education are high. This is due to a massive undervaluing of education, and specifically public education. And while people of all races can be poor and educationally under-served, people of color have one advantage (that I see, in this case), which is that they are never isolated by their skin color. You cannot live in an entirely black town in America. All black people have met white people. All PoC have met and lived with white people. But white people CAN isolate themselves. And because of biological fears of the unknown, isolation leaves you very vulnerable to being manipulated by scapegoating. It is far easier to de-humanize an entire group of people when you have never met someone from that group. The cure to this isolation-based fear is…. no longer being isolated. And most people leave their home town for the first time to go to college.
The truth is, I don’t know the nitty gritty of the impact of Affirmative Action policies. I just want to get everyone into higher learning. And I need them to be first prepared to take on higher learning, and that means quality lower learning. Once everyone is learned, once we can appeal to the reason in everyone, once everyone sees the shared humanity of everyone with their own eyes, we will all be better served, less afraid of our neighbors, and more equipped to help other nations achieve the same.
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