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Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Case for Reparations

And the most obvious pay-for (to me) would be eliminating or phasing out the mortgage interest deduction. It cost the Treasury $69 billion in FY13, its benefits are regressive, and it's bad policy anyways.

Not that, like, you actually care about anything here, you're some hateful idiot.
 
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Ah, the old "I know where this is going, I declare the solution impossible, and since I declare the solution impossible, all further discussion should now cease" non-argument argument. That one's so common there really needs to be a little Latin phrase for it.
 
Yes, feel good about yourself white guilt. You think if you show enough empathy toward black people that somehow atones for your responsibility for the sins of the white past, so you feel good about yourself in your guilt because, in that guilt, you are different from your forebears and, by golly, trying to make amends. Then, in your moment of rapture, you broadcast to the world that you are going to call your congressman about a bill to study reparations.

Have you made that call yet?

For a guy who tries so hard in every thread to come across as the smartest guy in the room, you really are pretty obtuse.

As for your pay-for, did you know that some black people own homes too? In fact, one of the points of the article was that black people have been systematically denied the ability to own a home. Wouldn't getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction reduce black people's rate of home ownership? And, in any event, obtaining the money is only half the issue. What are you going to do with it?
 
soooo many problems with the solution. let's focus on the only possible solution Junebug can think of and how baaaaad it is. that way we don't have to talk about the problem.
 
Deacon923 said:
soooo many problems with the solution. let's focus on the only possible solution Junebug can think of and how baaaaad it is. that way we don't have to talk about the problem.
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Dude, I'm responding to Tuff guy's post.

So what's your solution?
 
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tjcmd said:
How do you want reparations to be structured?
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I don't know what the best solution is. Bouie's idea of a policy response seems wise. Whatever would come out of the HR 40 process would be an improvement on my spitballing.

But the mortgage interest deduction is bad policy, it's racially disproportionate, and it has regressive benefits. I've long been for eliminating it (so it's a hobby horse of mine) but think if we were to do cash grants it'd be a great pay-for.
 
Two critiques of the article:

1. Contract For Deed housing sale structures have targeted all poor/uneducated people over the decades, not just black people. I've seen plenty of poor white people lose their homes because of them also. Obviously the author is looking just in a specific black neighborhood in Chicgao so he is seeing a high prevelance and imputing racist motives to the process itself (which there undoubtedly were in that specific neighborhood if his representations are accurate), but that particular sale structure is not just a racial issue.

2. Even taking his concepts of redlining as true, it is difficult to use neighborhood segregation as a primary justification for reparations. We are owed something because we were forced to live with other black people? That doesn't make much logical sense from a racial standpoint. I'm not saying that reparations aren't due for other reasons (the sharecropping examples, plus obviously slavery itself), but I don't like the way he trumped up the housing discrimination as his seemingly primary justification. Plenty of ethnic groups were geographically segregated in major cities, but ultimately assimilated into the rest of society. If his point was that, following the initial neighborhood segregation, blacks were unable to subsequently assimilate, then I think he should have focused more on specifically comparing their situation to that of Jews, Irish, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Hispanic, etc. in similar major cities.

Nonetheless, I think the historical aspects of the article were informative, and some reparations may be justifiable; I just don't think the author did a great job of making a case for them. But personally I have no idea how to calculate them or determine what form they should take.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Two critiques of the article:

1. Contract For Deed housing sale structures have targeted all poor/uneducated people over the decades, not just black people. I've seen plenty of poor white people lose their homes because of them also. Obviously the author is looking just in a specific black neighborhood in Chicgao so he is seeing a high prevelance and imputing racist motives to the process itself (which there undoubtedly were in that specific neighborhood if his representations are accurate), but that particular sale structure is not just a racial issue.

2. Even taking his concepts of redlining as true, it is difficult to use neighborhood segregation as a primary justification for reparations. We are owed something because we were forced to live with other black people? That doesn't make much logical sense from a racial standpoint. I'm not saying that reparations aren't due for other reasons (the sharecropping examples, plus obviously slavery itself), but I don't like the way he trumped up the housing discrimination as his seemingly primary justification. Plenty of ethnic groups were geographically segregated in major cities, but ultimately assimilated into the rest of society. If his point was that, following the initial neighborhood segregation, blacks were unable to subsequently assimilate, then I think he should have focused more on specifically comparing their situation to that of Jews, Irish, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Hispanic, etc. in similar major cities.

Nonetheless, I think the historical aspects of the article were informative, and some reparations may be justifiable; I just don't think the author did a great job of making a case for them. But personally I have no idea how to calculate them or determine what form they should take.
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I think there are some important distinctions between the experience of black people and the experience of the other immigrant groups you mentioned. First, the period of anti-Irish and anti-Italian (and other) discrimination was real but much shorter, much less violent, and much less intense than anti-black discrimination. Second, it ended much earlier in any real way, certainly before WWII. Third, the anti-black discrimination post-WWII took the form of actual intentional discrimination by the federal government, which did not occur at all in the case of other groups, and certainly did not occur as late as the 60s as redlining did. What all this means is that those groups emerged from the shadow of discrimination well before WWII and were able to participate fully in the great middle-class buildup of housing and business wealth that began after WWII. Black people were excluded from that opportunity and still suffer because of it today.

Also, redlining wasn't evil because it made black people live with other black people. It was evil because it very effectively prevented any investment in those neighborhoods by anyone, white or black, except the block-busting white land speculators. A black person who did all the right things, got an education, etc. etc. still could not get access to FHA loans and other forms of credit that white people could leverage to build their wealth. And again, all this was happening during the biggest middle-class wealth creation boom in the history of the world. It's a huge missed opportunity for the black community to build wealth, and that opportunity likely will never come around again.
 
Deacon923 said:
I think there are some important distinctions between the experience of black people and the experience of the other immigrant groups you mentioned. First, the period of anti-Irish and anti-Italian (and other) discrimination was real but much shorter, much less violent, and much less intense than anti-black discrimination. Second, it ended much earlier in any real way, certainly before WWII. Third, the anti-black discrimination post-WWII took the form of actual intentional discrimination by the federal government, which did not occur at all in the case of other groups, and certainly did not occur as late as the 60s as redlining did. What all this means is that those groups emerged from the shadow of discrimination well before WWII and were able to participate fully in the great middle-class buildup of housing and business wealth that began after WWII. Black people were excluded from that opportunity and still suffer because of it today.

Also, redlining wasn't evil because it made black people live with other black people. It was evil because it very effectively prevented any investment in those neighborhoods by anyone, white or black, except the block-busting white land speculators. A black person who did all the right things, got an education, etc. etc. still could not get access to FHA loans and other forms of credit that white people could leverage to build their wealth. And again, all this was happening during the biggest middle-class wealth creation boom in the history of the world. It's a huge missed opportunity for the black community to build wealth, and that opportunity likely will never come around again.
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Just to add-on here, redlining also meant facing sellers/landlords with more market power than people of other races faced. Contract sellers and slumlords were the option for decades. Direct transfer of wealth from black families to exploitative whites.

This was the policy of our country. For decades. I don't think it's outlandish to suggest it needs to be made right. I don't think that's some crazy attention-seeking stance I think it's banal.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
This was the policy of our country. For decades. I don't think it's outlandish to suggest it needs to be made right. I don't think that's some crazy attention-seeking stance I think it's banal.
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For me, a large part of the problem is terminological. The time for "reparations" has passed and, for that reason, it's entirely unworkable now.

If, on the other hand, you want to have a thread to address poverty, crime, housing, etc., then, by all means, have at it. But phrasing it in terms of "reparations" stacks the deck in a way that attempts to predetermine the result.
 
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I'm only about halfway through the article, but it's a very fascinating piece of work and I'm enjoying reading it and learning something new.

One question that popped into my mind (and it's more of a comparison really) is what reparations, if any, were given to Native Americans?
 
Liquid Karma said:
I'm only about halfway through the article, but it's a very fascinating piece of work and I'm enjoying reading it and learning something new.

One question that popped into my mind (and it's more of a comparison really) is what reparations, if any, were given to Native Americans?
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I am not aware of any.
 
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