This communist/socialist thing was just pulled out of your ass. I never said a damn word about favoring a Stalinist tyranny so whatever analogy you're going for here is way off base. I am not sure what you are talking about winning either but since you're finished with this topic I guess I never will. I also don't know why any discussions of reparations are any more utopian than discussions about any other transfers of wealth.
> Struggling for reparations is calculated to alienate
> precisely the people whose support we want -- not in
> the general way that it might piss off someone -- but
> in the fruitless finger pointing way that suggests
> that all white people are guilty. [jks]
A slightly different reason to oppose reparations than you stated in your first post and one I agree with to a degree. This is not the same as saying some people will be made to feel guilty. Wealthy individuals use the excuse that they should not be made to feel guilty over their excessive wealth to oppose any and all wealth redistribution schemes. If it's not a valid argument for them it isn't one for you. The bigger issue is not that the bulk of the people will feel alienated but that working class peoples fates are too closely intertwined to separate them as almost any form of pecuniary compensation based on race would tend to do. Unfortunately you can say that affirmitive action makes white people feel alienated too as it does for many. You don't oppose it on those grounds so why oppose reparations with the same weak argument? I don't worry about alienating whites. I am concerned with not alienating working class people however.
> It is different from other reforms that might promote
> racial justice, like civil rights laws or affirmative
> action. because it is supposed to square past
> injustices rather than fix things going forward,
> therefore, if attained, which it won't be, the effect
> would be to make whites think, OK, we are square now,
> as opposed to thinking about wherther the measures we
> have taken are adequate to address the problems.[jks]
The first part of this is valid. Reparations are generally outlined as seeking to fix an unfixable past injustice and a forward thinking approach to reparations is the best approach. Affirmitive action is a form of reparations but it does not go far enough. An actual quota in some job fields would be better. Reparations in the form of land grants to Indians is another way that deserves serious consideration. I would also debate the merit of financial compensation to some tribes for the mineral rights sold off at much below market value in the last 30 years or so. This one is admittedly a bit trickier but the individuals responsible are hardly all dead and buried. The second part of the objection is pointless. Some people say the current progressive income tax makes everything square now. The fact that some people will state that about some policy should not be a reason to object to it.
> Finally the compariuon to income tax is flawed in os
> many ways it is almost impossible to account for them
> all. The basic point is that progressive taxation si
> not reparations paid from the rich to the poor. It
> reflects the idea that pre-tax income is not an
> unqualified entitlement, that society has prior claims
> on people's income to attain necessary goals such as
> financing public goods the market cannot provide
> (roads, schools, defense, etc.), to help provide for
> those who cannot provide for themselves -- not ina
> fingere-pointing way, saying, this the fault of the
> rich, but rather because people shouldn't starve on
> the street, and to do so in accord with ability to pay
> because addition money is worth less to rich than to
> the poor.[jks]
I didn't compare income tax to reparations I said your objection to reparations wasn't a good one and applying it to the income tax was an easier way to demonstrate the lack of validity in that line of reasoning. However if you accept the fact that society has prior claims on people's income you can more easily state that Indians have a prior claim on any income gained from natural resource extractive profits. Do you? Where do prior claims begin and how much of a particular income stream do they account for? These are topics for debate.
John Thornton