<HTML>>1) Defining race. Elibigity has to be on the basis of descent from a slave, not on the basis of race. </BLOCKQUOTE> Virtually impossible to document in all but a very small portion of cases. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">> 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.</BLOCKQUOTE> 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. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">>3) >Defining the mechanism of reparation (America's plan reinforces >capitalist logic; you want to undermine it. Send out a check to the eligible. </BLOCKQUOTE> You might try to take a stab at explaining why you dismiss Randall Robinson's proposal for a national trust fund. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">> 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. </BLOCKQUOTE> 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. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">>  5) Deciding how to >fund them - should working class whites be taxed, or just bourgeois >whites? In the real world, obviously yes. </BLOCKQUOTE> 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 -- </HTML>