Victoria Heller wrote: > > Through affirmative action and welfare/entitlement programs. It hasn't helped. > We have not paid any reparations. Affirmative action was and is designed so that we do not lose millions of people's talents to the work force through stupidities like racism, sexism, classism, etc. In a direct way it helps many thousands of people get and keep jobs which match their skills and education. It was created to change a foul usiness/government habit by insisting that we will consider people for their talents and we will hold people in positions to make those decisions accountable for their actions to the nation. Indirectly it produced a bumper crop of benefits--from working as a bus driver or snow plower to teaching at a university as a PHD or working on your insides as an MD, or DDS. And committing bazillions to the tax base. Further, it built on the continuing struggle of all people to be judged on their merits and considered good potential candidates for jobs. Thirty or so years later, it is far more likely that my bright foster daughter will get a job that engages her brains so that we all get the benefits (she's Black, Queer, and has a middle Eastern name). It is a way of us all holding ourselves to account for doing right by people as a general principle.
Welfare/Entitlement programs are not reparations. Welfare was initiated during the Great Depression (other econmic depressions being only good or so-so depressions) because millions of people, primrily White people, were literally starving to death in this country. They are now used in a different way, but they serve the same purpose--they keep us from having huge strikes, dissident groups with the determination to bring down the nation, and other discontents of civilization. It's a cheap, degrading way to keep the wheels of industry humming along. All told, it takes less than 1% of our national resources. During the period since 1933?), all the folks who received those insulting donations were too busy filling out forms, listening to lectures from perhaps well meaning, but utterly clueless representatives of the system telling them to "fix" themselves so they can be part of the system. Reparations, on the other hand, are the wages of sin. They're designed to ask the forgiveness of the offended parties. Though they never cover the pain inflicted on people, they mark the official apology into the Congressional Register, the Treasury's balance sheets, and, if used wisely (by their self-chosen standards) by the offended parties, who can indeed improve their economic circumstances with a mega-dose of one of the best cures for poverty--money. The official apology automatically admits that the sin happened, and that it was a sin--a crime against humanity. We have not made our apology as a nation to the Africans and African Americans, the issue of people brought here enslaved and against their will to essentially build, clothe and feed this baby nation from the beginning through the Emancipation Proclamtion, as I understood it. WizardMarks, Central > > > _______________________________________ > Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy > Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: > http://e-democracy.org/mpls _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
