"Practicalities" of Reparations

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

>1) Defining race.

Elibigity has to be on the basis of descent from a slave, not on the basis 
of race.


Virtually impossible to document in all but a very small portion of cases.

> > 2) Defining eligibility after defining race.
> 
> Not a big deal. Anyone who can show to some reasonable standard that she or 
> he had at least some % of slave ancestry, something like that. You wouldn't 
> have to require that people produce papers; race might be a presumptive 
> indicator.

Nice circular reasoning. You are back at the very question which you dodged 
on number 1. How do you establish race? Citing affirmative action is also not 
an answer, since this is based, in matters such as college admissions, on 
self-identification. Are we going to self-identify for reparations? We might 
as well have everybody pay themselves now, and get it over with.

> >3)
> >Defining the mechanism of reparation (America's plan reinforces
> >capitalist logic; you want to undermine it.
> 
> Send out a check to the eligible.
> 

You might try to take a stab at explaining why you dismiss Randall Robinson's 
proposal for a national trust fund.

> > 4) Deciding whom
> >to
> >exclude - if you include the descendants of slaves, why not Indians?
> >Why not the Latin Americans we've bled for eons?
> 
> Because reparations for slavery is not intended to right all wrongs.
> 

Well, the genocide of Native Americans is right up there with slavery in 
terms of the most gross injustices carried out by this nation, and no other 
race or ethnic group comes even close to the deprivation and poverty facing 
Native Americans today.

> >  5) Deciding how to
> >fund them - should working class whites be taxed, or just bourgeois
> >whites?
> 
> In the real world, obviously yes.
> 

Question: A or B? Answer: Yes. That makes a lot of sense.

> This is just a dodge for avoiding _political_ discussion, Doug.

Doug's questions? Or your answers?  

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who 
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and 
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --


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