"Reparations is the controversial yet intuitive idea idea that the African American descendants of slaves deserve money to rectify the centuries of economic and social harm they were AND CONTINUE TO BE subjected to." There, fixed it for you.

1

And then, there's the Native American genocide...

Caution: NeoCon heads are gonna Explode over this one.
Which, when ya think about it, might just be okay, in the long run:
speed up Attrition ~ NOT a bad thing.

Go Italy! I don't know why we don't fine people more for their willful negligence.

You guys couldn't find a stock photo of a Chinook?

@1: Well, are you saying that only slave descendants are continued to be subjected to social harm? Or did you mean all blacks? What about those whom can't prove they're descendants? Unless you resolve those questions, reparations will never go anywhere.

@6: The answer to your last question is a resounding NO. That's a sophomoric conflation without logic and is beneath you.

@6- perhaps the dumbest thing I've heard on this platform in a long time. And you had to compete with Nelsonia for that title- so congrats.

@5- I think the issue will be that it is difficult to establish a legal standing for reparations to folks who did not have enslaved ancestors. Even if we use the wildly insulting '40 acres and a mule' standard: a good mule costs around $5000 today, and farmland in rural Virginia is going for $4,300/acre- so $172,000 +5,00 =$177,000. We can think of this distribution to ALL decendents (rather than per former slave) as a late payment penalty. Again, this would be an insultingly low number, given the economic and social damage.

Court-packing was something Roosevelt tried in the 1930's and it was shot down in flames - by the Supreme Court. Pete Buttigieg (whoever the fuck he is) apparently slept through that lecture during American History.

Replacing the culverts will restore salmon stocks for everyone, not just the tribes. The tribes are entitled to half the catch, by treaties, and they are the ones who sued to make sure there is a catch to be divided.

Holy shit, we're so far into the bad timeline that some people are now honestly asking, "Were African Americans hurt by slavery?"

A little off topic. For those that ride the bus out there, is it ever okay for a woman to put on her makeup while riding on the bus? Or is this tantamount to personal grooming.

@11
Isn't that what restrooms are for?
Not to mention nail-clipping on the bus/light rail!
Yeech!!

@11: I think a quick touch up is fine, but extended gawking into the compaq tweaking your mascara, blushing up, and lipstick is distracting.

Also, a scene from 'Airplane' comes to mind.

@15

And so it is. And we can let those kids stay privately with the parents and keep them away from the rest of us. Can't be more accommodating than that.

A very good case can be made to modernize the supreme court in order to make it more representative. It was the case even before the SC was de-legitimized by Republicans stealing a supreme court seat (never miss an opportunity to point it out) . Making it larger with term limits would address at least part of the problems.

@15 - I can't for the life of me understand such a disposition if you've ever had a sick child.

@9 - you're the one who needs to crack a history book. The Supreme Court has no power to stop court packing. The Constitution allows the Congress to change the number of justices with a simple act. CONGRESS shot FDR down, not the Court.

You may be confused because the REASON FDR wanted to pack the Court was that the Court kept declaring parts of the New Deal unconstitutional, and if you skim an history book about the incident you might conflate the two.

Look, it is obviously not going to be just cash payouts. That is dumb.

Maybe if we devoted resources to ensure poorer families, which are proportionally more likely to be black, to give them some kind of supplemental nutrition assistance program, or maybe something specifically for women, infants, and children to help them afford groceries.

Also, we could initiate specific housing projects or set aside certain sections of housing where there are government subsidized rents.

Furthermore, we could have programs that transport children from inner city schools to better funded and operated schools in wealthier areas, and perhaps have special school meal programs where food is also government subsidized, and schools with a higher number of students in poverty get more federal grants.

Lastly, institutions could change their standards in order to ensure more minority members can be admitted, and even institute quotas where a certain number of minority/african americans have to be admitted. Some kind of action to affirmatively raise the number of minorities in said institutions or professions.

Seems like steps like these would do more than a cash payout. We should really try some of this stuff.

25

Okay. But, if we're going to attack systemic poverty, and we'd better, soon, let's also reconsider how we fund our schools -- by taxing the locals. Which is why places like Mercer Island's and Medina's students have such enormous success in Life (born on Second Base!), and children born into ghettos (next to a dirt field sans bases) face Enormous challenges -- those with gilded bootstraps vs. the shoeless.

Confining Poverty will always be a lose/lose propostion.

Gated Communities need to pay their Fair Share as well.

@19, I'm very pro reparations. And I think we should pay it within a 5 to 10 year time frame. Then once it's been paid off all affirmative action laws and the like need to be wiped from the books on all levels of government and all government programs that are tied in anyway to race should be abolished. Payment of reparations means we are fully a meritocracy.

@30 then NO to reparations. Take one or the other: cry victim or take the reparations and say it's a clean slate.

21

... because, if it didn't fix The Problem, we cannot try anything else.

Excellent.

31

oops

Conservatives get so triggered when you explain to them that reality isn't as one-dimensional as they have to pretend it is to cope. It's so sad they think anyone outside their cult would play pretend with their simplistic make believe solutions. And then they whine about nobody taking their asinine ideas seriously, as if people are supposed to just cuz it came from them.

Sorry professional victims, that fairy tale only works on Fox entertainment. Now go parade Jesus around as a prop while trump signs your bibles.

@34 -- That's one of those Gold Star comments.

Thanks and well done!