Here’s someone who has some concrete suggestions to make:nathan_lott. He manages to both applaud the move of the African-Amercian polity to the mainstream (driven, I imagine by the black soccer moms I now see here in the formerly lily-white South Bay), and make some concrete and excellent suggestions (schools and housing) on what ‘reparations’ for Jim Crow might look like.
I’m wary of ‘reparations’ for slavery (or even for Jim Crow) as a justification for doing the right thing. I think the books on slavery were balanced by the blood of white boys spilled to free slaves during the Civil War…a simplistic construction, but nontheless true.
But that doesn’t mean nothing needs to be done. I like to think of it as nation-building…for our own nation.
Check nathan out and see what you think.
Date: 10/10/2002 00:00:00 AM
First let me say that greatly enjoy reading your blog. But: I was taken aback by your contention that “the books on slavery were balanced by the blood of white boys spilled to free slaves during the Civil War…a simplistic construction, but nontheless true.” Certainly the civil war was a unimaginable tragedy for the free citizens of this nation. There is a distinction, however, between the sacrifices made by essentially free citizens of a country torn by civil strife, and violent circumstances visited by one group of individuals upon another. To say that the blood spent freeing the slaves “righted the books” on slavery is to argue that the only crime visited on the slaves was a temporary confiscation of their freedom. One need not get into details to see that this isn’t the case.
Date: 10/09/2002 00:00:00 AM
If you’re pro-reparations, let’s start at the top, the Democratic Party.http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3730