i don't see why it should be called an "injustice". my reply to the guy who'd lived in Africa, I guess he's French and black, I wrote (paraphrase) that it wasn't a unique human evil. rather, it was one of the earliest, most successful large-scale, global enterprises to base itself on the logic of capitalist organizational rationality: the acquisition of the cheapest resources and labor in order to make a profit and accumulate wealth (as opposed to earning an income).
>>Response: "This is factually questionable. It is a tired Marxist position. <...> It is a bit of commonplace knowledge that slavery in the continental colonies of England -- not Jamaica or Barbadoes -- was not even a close approximation to an optimum solution. Slavery in the US did not become "profitable" until the cotton era. To belive what snit asserts is to attribute to the early slave importers a degree of preternatural prescience."<<
now, this reply is ridiculous. my point was to make quite clear that slavery wasn't about some "bad" people doing "bad" things. rather, it was about people instituting the very principles of capitalist rationality. the question of whether it was actually profitable (optimal solution) is irrelevant since who could have predicted that--and once the system got off the ground it becomes self-perpetuating, particularly when part of justifying the whole system depends on expanding one's justification by racializing slaves as suited to the condition and incapable of freedom and so forth.
>and, second, are there present
>effects of the past injustice? if there are, then that would be more
>important than the amount of 'time' that has passed. In fact, not so much
>time has passed at all! I'm under 40 yrs. old and still there were people
>who lived under slavery still alive during my lifetime! We know that
>disadvantages, and not just advantages, are transfered across generations.
yes, i pointed this out but no response. but not because what i'd said made sense, i'm sure.
>In the U.S., we know that the effects of past discrimination are still
>felt by one's descendents after more than 100 years. One of the most
>striking areas where we can see this is asset accumulation (wealth). There
>is no question that present African American wealth was effected by
>slavery/jim crow. It is amazing what opportunities arise in our society
>from even a relatively small amount of wealth. Over half of all businesses
>in the U.S. are started with less than $5000. Average annual tuition at a
>community college is less than $1200. Average down payment on a house for
>a low-middle income family is less than $3000. These are just examples of
>the ways in which a relatively small amount of savings can affect economic
>independence, job prospects, etc.
here, truly overt racist stereotypes come into play, however.
>First, slave-owners were not the only ones to benefit.
this one people don't buy easily. i truly think that people _don't_ see how our national infrastructure benefited. it's simply isn't readily apparent to anyone. we don't have a language to think about how we are interdependent. do we have common cultural narratives about how the food service worker's labor is labor you depend on?
no. we have a narrative about 1. what crappy work it is. 2. what pathetic creatures/losers they are to have that sort of job.
btw, this is why yoshie is wrong about people today v people during marx's era. it was a time of turmoil, people still remembered something else. there wasn't the myth of upward mobility fully entrenched among the populace yet.
>Also, if reps are paid out of taxes, then present day
>African Americans would also be paying their share of the bill.
you forget that a lot of people think that blacks don't pull their own weight. we give opponents that argument from the get go. if they are, in fact, earning the kinds of terrible incomes that entitle them to EITC, then a considerable portion of blacks don't pay taxes.
>This idea that 'African Americans are better off than they would have been
>if they stayed in Africa' in the e-mail sent by Kelly
well what is interesting about such a rationale is that they have conceded to the argument. the opponent as conceded that a group benefited from the free labor provided by others and that they don't benefit directly, but indirectly and centuries later.
more technically, the problem was that the numbers were likely wrong, yes? i don't think the avg black individual makes 35k -- it's more like 21k or something right? and, you need to compare like to like.
1. is it a good idea to compare a nation to a continent? 2. is it a good idea not to adjust for the cost of living differential?
but more importantly, what is captured in the notion that blacks owe the nation something is something i think we ought to push further.
we're constantly speaking of how we should have "free" health care and education and so forth. really? that's nice. but it's not free. *we* pay for it. there is something bankrupt about putting it that way, to i don't think the avg critic quite grasps it.
do you see what i'm getting at? we need a way of seeing how a socialist system would require that we'd all contribute to the common welfare. there would be no expropriators to expropriate from. we'd all have to pay, and even if there was a disparity in incomes, _all_ people would contribute their share to the building and maintenance of roads, public utilities, schools, health care, etc.
setting it up as getting something for nothing from some mysteriously operating "system" screws us over in the end, i think. and when people charge us with hating the rich, i can see, now, after thinking about this debate, why they do.
>is one that was in a letter I received from someone in the KC area
>who saw me on teevee. This was followed by asking me why shouldn't all
>workers receive reps for past exploitation. I guess they thought I would
>be against that.
:)
a
kelley