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Peter Gerdes's avatar

This isn't to say that I don't see any argument for reparations. I think there could be important (though hard to quantify) benefits to people seeing that, as a country, you've acknowledged the harms you did to their group and treated it like a bad act that you made up for. Unfortunately, this is a two-edged sword because paying reparations for one past injustice has the immediate effect of saying the injustice suffered by this group is more important than those suffered by other groups.

And that has to be balanced against the concern that it encourages us to see racial groups as the appropriate unit of moral redress and raises further difficulties in discouraging us from seeing race as a salient feature of someone that we use in making generalizations about them.

However, what I'm quite sure of is that we absolutely shouldn't try and pay reparations right now. Much better, for the moment, to focus on the simple (but not as sexy) issues of improving the infrastructure, educational opportunities, decreasing crime rates, repealing unfair drug laws etc...

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Weaver's avatar

Sometimes the cost of enduring conflict is lower than the cost of settling it. At least for some actors.

This is one of those times. Especially when the risk is considered; non-blacks would be signing up for potentially unlimited damages. No one is going to do that, not without a guaranteed payoff much greater than the vague promise of "settlement".

Or "Whilst this money goes some way to recognising the crimes of white people, we must understand that racism will always....yadda...yadda....yadda...."

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