{"id":308,"date":"2003-07-31T09:22:22","date_gmt":"2003-07-31T17:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/07\/31\/prometheus-6-on-reparations\/"},"modified":"2003-07-31T09:22:22","modified_gmt":"2003-07-31T17:22:22","slug":"prometheus-6-on-reparations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=308","title":{"rendered":"Prometheus 6 on Reparations"},"content":{"rendered":"

I unfortunately wasn’t paying attention when Prometheus 6 did a brilliant series of posts discussing reparations. But now he’s sort of collected them all (or collected the links to them all, anyhow), and it’s highly recommended reading. From P6’s introduction<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’ve also seen that most folks, Black and white, want the discussion to revolve around slavery if it has to exist at all. And I’ve seen that’s an error. Slavery wasn’t the only damaging event, unless you realize that Jim Crow was implemented to have the same impact as slavery without all the legal problems. Jim Crow essentially divided slavery into its component parts and named each part individually. Those parts that could be successfully challenged (which boiled down to defining humans as property) were disposed of in order that the overarching structure could be maintained. […]<\/p>\n

I’ve seen that a major argument against reparations is that we shouldn’t do it because we don’t know how to do it correctly. My response is we should do it, and therefore we must figure out how to do it correctly. Doing it correctly involves recognizing that cash payments should not be the goal. I’ve seen too many broke-ass lottery winners in the news to think cash is the cure. Doing it correctly means recognizing that since the damage was done environmentally, structurally, reparations must either change the mainstream structure or help create an African American environment and structure that strengthens our communities so that we can withstand the forces generated by the mainstream structures.<\/p><\/div>\n

My feeling is that most discussions of reparations – or of affirmative action – are marred by a lack of clarity about the alternatives. Opponents of these plans always talk as if the alternative reparations needs to be compared to is an alternative of justice and fairness. In reality, the alternative is a continuation of the status quo – a status quo in which the US has and continues to have a racial underclass. Compared to continuing with that reality, I think almost any<\/i> plan is more just and fair; in fact, my real thought about reparations and AA is that neither one of them go nearly far enough..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I unfortunately wasn’t paying attention when Prometheus 6 did a brilliant series of posts discussing reparations. But now he’s sort of collected them all (or collected the links to them all, anyhow), and it’s highly recommended reading. From P6’s introduction: … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-affirmative-action","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}