My wife had this brilliant thought the other day (this occurs most days, the really brilliance is when my brain stays focused long enough to remember it): “If the government is just giving away money with this Economic Stimulus package thing, then why not at least give it to the people it was once promised to.” Brilliant.
Okay, so I know it’s a little late for the suggestion, but it’s worth dreaming about. The government is giving $600 to every person who made over $3000 and filed their taxes this year. Now, I don’t think it would right years of slavery and oppression, but it seems like it would be a small gesture in the right direction.
I believe the Economic Stimulus is a $168 billion bill, and at the 2005 census there were 40 million Black and Native People’s living in the USA. If you just split the money that way you’d have $4200 per person, and that included children.
It’s a shame that the term, “40 Acres and a Mule“, instead of being a honest attempt to right the terrible injustices of our history, is just one more indication of how the people of this country have been oppressed and mistreated. It was another unkept promise, one of many from the past and just another of the many to this day. I know this one might spark some controversy too, but I had to throw it out there.
Great idea. I never thought about recreations in that way. If were so willing to give out refunds why not reparations?
Although I don’t think $4,200.00 per person would be enough. 40 acres and a mule would have put someone on the path to economic stability. I would suggest something like 2 years of free community college or something similar.
Ariah, I think you and your wife are very thoughtful to ponder this. Knowing the government won’t do this, have you two thought about signing your checks over to the nearest black or native neighbor? It would probably mean way more to the persons getting it from you than from a faceless government.
Brian,
Agreed, definitely not enough. I would agree completely free tuition to any school (four year, Ivy league, community college) might be a step in the right direction.
Christian,
Great point. Don’t know if this is your first time stopping by, but I’ve already been encouraging folks to give away their Stimulus check to an important cause. My wife and I our still personally brainstorming about where that money will go for us, but it will definitely go to things within our neighborhood.
I didn’t know that. I posted about this over at NIT and will update it with that. I’ll probably be a lot more stingy with my check. You are doing more than most people, and that’s pretty amazing. I look forward to seeing what you decide to do with it.
Ariah –
OK, I’ll take the bait . . . 😉
1) Everyone who qualifies gets the checks, red, yellow, black, white, and brown. You’d feel better if everyone by the white people got that money? What about the poor white people? What about the rich red, yellow, black, and brown people?
2) Poor people get a lot of money and benefits from the government already, through free lunch programs, food stamps, WIC, Section 8 housing, public housing, welfare, need-based college scholarships, the Earned Income Tax Credit through the income tax system, and the list goes on, and they are not required to pay any income tax. Without pulling all the stats, I think it is fair to say that a higher proportion of non-whites qualify for and get these benefits than whites. So, you can’t argue that this country does nothing for the poor, whether they are descendents of slaves, native people, or they have oil barons in their ancestry.
On top of all of that, you think that $4200, or $42,000, or $42,000,000 would “right the terrible injustices of our history”, or atone for how “the people of this country have been oppressed and mistreated”? What amount would be enough?
How many generations back will ever be too far back to qualify for these reparations? Do you get more if you are the descendants of black slaves than if you descended from black Freedmen? What if your family emigrated from Kenya in the 1960’s?
How black or brown or red do you have to be? Should we calculate whether a person is 1/4 Cherokee, or 1/2 African American, or should the government just use color wheels with varying shades of brown and red to hold up to people’s skin in order to determine how much they get?
Besides that, how exactly do you morally justify taking money by force from those who never owned slaves or mistreated a native person, and giving it to people who never were slaves and never had their land taken? Seriously, how?
This is not to say that slavery or the routing of the native peoples was not a horror and a sin, or that there are or never were any lasting effects, but only to say that ideas like reparations are not the solution to any problems or divisions, and only would only lead to more problems and divisions.
Aaron, you crack me up. I hope we can have coffee some day.
The idea of actually FOLLOWING THROUGH ON BROKEN PROMISES by the fat and happy US Govt. is, in my opinion, a refreshing one. Your point on poor whites is not salient to this conversation, but the point about wealthy red, yellow, and brown folks is. Especially those who have had some help along the way (free College scholarships, huge casino revenues, etc.).
I am not a fan of handing a bunch of taxpayer money to deadbeats, drug dealers, or other unsavory characters, but there are MILLIONS of hard working people of color who would be ideal candidates for this type of program.
The devil is always in the details. What would the criteria be?
* Employed, or unemployed for a legitimate reason
* Over 18 to qualify, with a clause to have increased compensation for children – kinda like Bush’s proposal
* Not cash alone, but maybe a combination of cash and education stipends
* Financial advisory services as part of the “offered package”
What do y’all think?
Aaron,
Thanks for taking the bait. I’ve honestly really been enjoying the conversations lately, and it’s making me think about a lot of things I hadn’t considered before.
On your comment above, I think I’d have to agree with Chris on this one and say, though as you say, it would be a complicated idea, the opportunity of “Following through on broken promises” is what I think is worth considering.
Chris,
I like your criteria. Maybe we should present our bill to our local politicians 🙂
On a more reality note, do you think there would be any way on a person-to-person basis that one could do this locally that could come across in a positive way?
: )
So I hardly ever comment here – though I think it’s always thought provoking.
I just think that we should do SOMETHING – even if the details aren’t cut and dry…why throw the whole idea out just because you can’t hammer out all the details. I think that if each of us who cares about reconciliation and the great wrongs that are in OUR history/herstory should be willing to look in the mirror and take responsibility for unkept promises – which may not be clean…it may be messy…and it may not be perfect, but at least it could be a step in the direction for true peace and more understanding – and just in the general direction of what I would consider justice (not charity, by the way…which I think we tread the dangerous line of doing)…
Let’s just be just people!!! Even if WE didn’t make the promises or participate personally in what we consider direct oppression we STILL need to admit where we have received privilege and where we still participate in the systemic problems of racism, sexism, classism, too many destructive-isms to count.
Just a thought….and by far not a total solution…
Mindy (the wife)
We (meaning at least we the people through the government here) have and do “at least do something” already. As I noted above, there are myriad ways that this country has and does take from the “haves” and gives to the “have nots”. Is that nothing? So what if we have not called it reparations, or said “here’s a benefit because you are descended from slaves or native people” rather than “here’s a benefit because you are poor”? It seems the difference maker to those pushing the idea is what we call it, or who we give it to, rather than what it is. A dollar is a dollar whether I get it in a welfare check or a reparations check.
Which leads me again to: how much will be enough? $4200, $42K, $42M? How much will be enough to repair the damage, or assuage your guilty feelings (and which is this really about)? Having money does not heal the continuing bad feelings over slavery and racism. Check out Spike Lee, the film director, for example – he has done very well for himself, and continues to complain about mistreatment – not just for black people in general, but for himself. He has more than 99.9% of people in the country, and was never a slave, but he is still ticked and feels mistreated.
Giving money away is not going to make you feel better about it either. Try giving away your rebate check, liquidating all the money and goods that have and giving it to one “aggrieved” citizen. Arguably you would have done justice by and between you and that person – do you really think that you will feel better and be able to move on, or won’t you continue to feel this guilt?
Switching gears here, do you not consider the economic impact of paying all this money to people suddendly, or even if you stretch it over time? If you do it suddenly, then the tendency for a large majority of people is going to be that they blow it. This would create a sudden increase in demand for goods, which might in turn drive up the price of those goods suddenly, and until the money runs out. Sure, some would spend and invest wisely, but many would not. If you let it trickle out over time then the same thing happens on a slower scale. The incentive to work is lessened, since there would be a stipend check coming to fill the gap. What about all those people who had that money taken from them in taxes? (The fat and happy US government gets it money from us, Chris.) My point is that by trying to do this nice or “just” thing, you would create a nightmare for the economy. So, in the end, would you have really solved anything?
Read this article and think about it:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21636
Aaron,
Interesting points and interesting article. What I gather is that it’s simply too complicated to make work, and in some ways I agree.
The reason I brought it up on this post is because the government has decided to take 168 Billion dollars of the taxpayers money (all taxpayers) and just give it away to everyone. So, I think many of your questions, I have also for the US Government.
The last line of the article gets me:
“There’s a reparations issue completely ignored: Blacks as well as whites live on land taken, sometimes brutally, from Indians. Do we blacks owe Indians anything?”
It sounds like when people say, “but all companies are corrupt in some way”, as an excuse not to try and avoid supporting sweatshops, etc. It’s a terrible cop out. My response is, yeah, we should consider how to right any broken promises to the Native people as well.
Ariah –
It is a useful conversation, I don’t deny that. Where one comes down on questions like this and the logic used to arrive there is telling.
Your premise that “as long as we are giving money away”, and your reparations proposal touch on at least two themes.
One is for whar purpose government should take money away from those who work in the form of taxes. Some people think that money should only be taken as taxes from people who earn it to provide for necessary services, like schools, bridges, infrastructure, defense, police protection, etc. Some people think that money should be taken away from people who earn it for the purpose of trying to change economic outcomes, make standards of living more nearly equal, encourage or discourage certain activities, punish some people, or compensate other people.
I don’t want to pigeonhole anyone else here, but as for myself, I am more nearly in the latter camp, although I am open to some degree to seeing government take and spend to encourage some activities that are good for society. Encouraging can become manipulating or micro-managing, which makes me uncomfortable.
The second theme is basically whether “justice” can done generations down the road between the descendants of perpetrators and victims. I do understand the impulse to feel bad about what happened to people in the past, whether you are talking about slaves or natives or any other group. What I disagree with is the conclusion that because there was a wrong done by people many, many years ago, and a promise to compensate for that wrong broken many years ago, that one group of people who never committed the wrong, or made the promise, or broke it, should be required to pay for that now. I also disagree that another group who was never enslaved or had their land taken, or had a promise made to them, or had a promise broken, should be compensated for those things.
**Yes it would be impossible to administer and do more harm than good for the reasons I noted, but that is not the main reason I oppose it.** I mainly oppose it because it is not the right thing to do. There is simply no principle in law or morality that requires that the sins of one generation be paid for by another.
One other point not directly related to my last comments:
The gov’t is not “just giving money away”, it is more nearly giving money back. That is, giving it back to the people it was taken from so that they can do what they want or need to do with it, whether that is buying food or goodies for themselves, or giving it away to whomever they choose, out of whatever motivation they choose.
By the way, acting like the money just disappears somehow is silly – it will go back in to the economy where it will pay people’s wages, or get them goods, and some of it will end up being used to provide help to the poor, who will use it to buy goods and services which will in turn pay people’s wages and get them goods, and the cycle will continue so on and forevermore ’til Jesus comes back.
As for whether it will or won’t stimulate the economy, or whether the government should even try, that gets back to the first issue I noted above.