A 2016 Marist poll found 58% of black Americans were in favour of reparations, while 81% of white Americans opposed the idea. A 2018 Data for Progress survey also found reparations to be unpopular among the general public, and especially so among white Americans.Being opposed to a cash payout reparations tends to push the number up even higher.
Bayard Rustin, who organised the March on Washington and was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr, called reparations a "ridiculous idea".Mr Rustin told the New York Times in 1969, "If my great-grandfather picked cotton for 50 years, then he may deserve some money, but he's dead and gone and nobody owes me anything".He later expanded on the views, writing that a payout would demean "the integrity of blacks" and exploit white guilt.The issue here being time at least five generations of US blacks have been free (i.e. were slaves). Sure we can talk about the discrimination in the South, but what do you do with a Kay Coles James or a Madam C.J. Walker? The name Pat McGrath came up during this search.
You don't need a white person to debate this issue since I know that blacks have opinions on the topics, but Ta-Nehisi Coates found a great topic to grab some attention. Unfortunately most of the talk is divided by race. It would be nice if some conservative blacks weighed in on the topic.
Coates mentioned debt, which is one thing which started me thinking about this topic. The Western Countries wrote off Africa's debt back in 2005, but the countries are now worse than they were BEFORE the write offs. While the reasons are different, the bottom line is the same:
Unless something is changed the debt will return worse than before.
In other words, people can throw as much money as they want at a problem, but fuck all will happen unless the underlying causes are addressed.
On problem with the US is the myth of abundance, in particular and abundance of land so that rich people can move out of the cities. That means the cities are left to decay (I blame most of Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw's problems on the industry the built those cities: the automobile).
Mr. Coates needs to integrate himself since there are poor whites living in those places. Of familiarise himself with Fred Hampton who understood the issue 50 years ago.
I wouldn't say that whites are better off economically by looking at a graph. I am no where near a Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or other 1% than Ta-Nehisi Coates is to Pat McGrath. And Pat McGrath still doesn't raise the income of poor blacks. On the other hand, those people skew the numbers when you look at averages. The average white person in Appalachia is in no way affluent.
There's a lesson in here somewhere, but I think that reparations will fail when it comes down to it. it's something that sounds intriguing, but is doomed to failure if anyone tries to implement it.
