{"id":1290057,"date":"2023-05-19T20:10:03","date_gmt":"2023-05-20T00:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/do-whites-also-deserve-reparations\/1290057\/"},"modified":"2023-05-19T20:10:03","modified_gmt":"2023-05-20T00:10:03","slug":"do-whites-also-deserve-reparations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/do-whites-also-deserve-reparations\/1290057\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Whites Also Deserve Reparations?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Do Whites Also Deserve Reparations?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

In the United States, calls for reparations are, once again, heating up. <\/strong>A Duke University professor recently\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0for $14 trillion in reparations for the descendants of American slavery (roughly $350,000 per recipient).<\/p>\n

The professor, William Darity, isn\u2019t the only one calling for reparations. The mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu,\u00a0has established<\/a>\u00a0a task force that will explore compensation for black citizens. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams\u00a0has signaled<\/a>\u00a0his support for the idea. Detroit\u2019s Reparations Task Force\u00a0is currently exploring<\/a>\u00a0forms of compensation for the city\u2019s black residents. Similar events are\u00a0taking place<\/a>\u00a0in St. Louis. In early May, California\u2019s reparations task force\u00a0approved recommendations<\/a>\u00a0that could see some black residents receive $1.2 million each as compensation for slavery and racial discrimination.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Reparations are a terrible idea. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Calls for race-based compensation appeal to emotion, not logic. First, how do we define slavery? Contrary to popular belief, African Americans weren\u2019t the only victims of slavery. As Stephan Talty, an author who has researched slavery in great detail, has noted, white people were also the victims of slavery.<\/p>\n

In a piece for\u00a0Salon<\/a>, a hyper-progressive online magazine, Talty discussed the fact that, contrary to popular belief, white slavery did occur prior to the occurrence of the Civil War.<\/strong> Talty referenced the work of Joel Augustus Rogers, a historian who meticulously documented the many ways in which whites were kidnapped and sold into slavery. These kidnappings occurred from the early 1700s right up until 1861, the year the Civil War started. Some of the victims were orphans or unwanted babies, while others were impoverished immigrants. White slavery\u00a0occurred in America<\/a>. This is an inconvenient truth that receives little or no attention, probably because it contradicts the\u00a0\u201cwhite privilege\u201d<\/a>\u00a0narrative that continues to do the rounds.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even if we were to agree on a definition of slavery, how are we supposed to verify those that claim to be victims? Then, of course, there\u2019s the matter of financing reparations. Where will the money come from?<\/p>\n

For comment on the matter, I reached out to\u00a0David W. Rasmussen<\/a>, the director of the Policy Sciences Center at Florida State University. Rasmussen recently published\u00a0a paper<\/a>\u00a0discussing reparations for black citizens, and why such a system of redress for past injustices deserves criticism.<\/p>\n

Rasmussen told me that although it\u2019s easy to make the case that black citizens are owed reparations\u2014the right to own slaves is embedded in the Constitution, after all\u2014this doesn\u2019t mean that the case being made has any real substance. The idea of reparations, noted Rasmussen, fails for many reasons.<\/p>\n

First off, reparations are expensive,<\/strong> with \u201creasonable\u201d estimates ranging from about $500 billion to $2.7 trillion. The highest estimate of damages is $7 quadrillion,<\/strong> he said, \u201ca figure that emerges because damages are compounded at an annual interest rate of 6 percent.\u201d For the mathematically challenged, a quadrillion is 1,000 trillion.<\/p>\n

Moreover, black reparations would benefit about 12 percent of the population.<\/p>\n

In other words, said Rasmussen, \u201cWe are asking 88 percent of the population to pay as much as $500 billion (probably over a period of years) to bear the cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

All Americans, including those who are currently struggling to put food on the table, would bear this cost <\/strong>(40 million<\/a>\u00a0Americans, more than 25 percent of the population, currently live in poverty). Only\u00a030 percent<\/a>\u00a0of Americans are in favor of some form of reparations. \u201cMany of these,\u201d according to Rasmussen, \u201cmay find a $500 billion price tag a hard sell.\u201d Indeed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s common for those in favor of reparations to insist that\u00a0all descendants<\/a>\u00a0of slaves, regardless of their economic situation, should receive reparations. Thus, individuals such as Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey, would be eligible. Rasmussen, like many other Americans, is against income transfers to high-income households\u2014and for good reason. It makes absolutely no sense.<\/p>\n

Which begs the question: What, if any, palatable alternatives to reparations exist?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rasmussen asks, \u201cIf we are genuinely interested in helping black families locked in poverty in communities with high crime, inferior housing, and bad schools, why not address those problems?\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s right. Rather than creating race-related policies, the United States must create policies that address specific problems. <\/strong>This is the only way forward, largely because Native Americans, Hispanics, and poor whites would also stand to benefit. Again, contrary to popular belief, the United States is no longer divided by race. It\u2019s divided by class. To be specific, it\u2019s divided by\u00a0four distinct classes<\/a>: upper, middle, working, and lower, with more and more Americans falling into the final two categories.<\/p>\n

As noted earlier, tens of millions of people of various skin colors are living in abject poverty. To truly help those in need, those struggling to survive, we need to move past the idea of reparations for black individuals. Now, more than ever, we must move past the desire to use skin color as a defining metric.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 05\/19\/2023 – 23:00<\/span><\/p>\n

From:Zerohedge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do Whites Also Deserve Reparations? Authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times, In the United States, calls for reparations are, once again, heating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1290057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-5pBn","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}