Obama saying that all black Americans deserve reparations may be one of the most idiotic things I observed today. Maybe justice is never a one-sided affair, making persons of those at opposing ends.
Realistically, such a venture would have its cost funded from the same political avenues usually cut by elected leaders, namely, traditional welfare programs. Millions receiving food stamps, unemployment or WIC will ultimately receive roughly the same figures, only under this different label. And millions more receiving those benefits will no longer see them at all, not for having done anything wrong but for the color of their skin. So such a venture would only perpetuate problems of racial bias it claims to oppose, suggesting its proponents really are not so inclined toward equanimity as they are towards raising their own profiles no matter who must suffer to have it happen. It sure as shit won’t be the tax-dodging millionaire/billionaire/trillionaire class who funds this, although they could in a heartbeat, but the hundreds of millions of indentured servants paying taxes on their behalf. In many cases people will be paying for their own reparations, and in many other cases people will be expected to pay who had nothing whatsoever to do with humiliating or endangering anybody. It is shear fantasy to believe the government will trim billions from military budgets or the like to fund such a thing. The majority of the population needs help, but further victimizing anyone to make it happen is only adding new dimensions to the same old problems.
The analogy I’ve used before is that, were it to be unearthed that my great-great-great grandfather robbed a stagecoach but avoided capture, should I now be held accountable for the crime? The victims as well are long gone, so should their own descendants be the recipients of a fucking awesome mail day, rewarding them simply for existing in a royally fucked society? Too many fans of financial reparation are evidently not opposed to robbing stagecoaches, provided they reap a piece of the action. Break whichever old lady’s leg to steal her purse you please, just share its contents and everything’s groovy.
It’s as ill-informed as raising minimum wages while eternally giving uncapped maximums a pass. Or fighting for Universal Basic Income when costs of living will immediately skyrocket accordingly, so that the same profiteers see the same results as ever before. None of it is solving any verifiable problems, only presenting a temporary gratification as the problems endure.
Black Americans have all cards of the deck stacked against them. But racism is not the lone handicap holding them back, because every iota of this society and its culture is structured so that nobody advances in life without using and abusing all those around them. And this does not pertain exclusively to any subset of the population. Neither wealth, power or authority results from good intentions, with only the most self-serving pricks among us successfully achieving those ends. Anybody who believes that black Americans alone suffer the side-effects of this are dramatically sheltered. It is wrong to presume that millions of minorities receiving welfare benefits are ignorant or lazy or victims of circumstances within their control, and it is every bit as wrong to make the same presumptions of anyone else struggling who is not a minority. I had to leave school at 14 to work. Years later, I experienced the absolute goddamn pleasure of a costumed patrolman waking my homeless self by urinating on me in a garage park in the dead of winter, and it had jack to do with my being one-fifth black or whatever. My employer of that time’s being several months behind in my pay shared as much of the blame as that cop’s inferiority complex, but who would take the word of some poor guy, versus a proud local job creator? I’ve never known a happy day in my life, but I’m not arrogant enough to believe such an occurrence might only occur with me.
Racism is real and it brutally claims lives every moment of every day across the planet, but as with sexism and homophobia, it is only a symptom of a far greater disease, ego-centrism. The wealthy are not rich because they are racist, for the only superiority they believe in is their own personal superiority and not that of any branding. They believe in nothing, not patriotism or anything else but their own enrichment, proudly outsourcing jobs even from their hometowns, dodging taxes from their home states, investing in political campaigns to bleed the entire nation dry as bone. Even a black American in today’s world can become rich and famous, if only they use and abuse enough people to make it happen. But then, when the lone thing shared by all Americans is the misnomer that simply not getting what they wish is somehow direct persecution, does anybody honestly deserve a kindness? Observances of actual faults and fallacies, any call for critical self-reflection for persons unwilling or incapable of it is regarded as racist or sexist or homophobic or whichever other branding to permit one to feel the more persecuted, even when critique involves nothing of the sort. Like Trump’s followers seeing only the second coming.
There is no humility to be found in the citizens of this country, no matter the stripe, as one and all are they entitled to feel that deprivation of what they want is no different from deprivation of what they need.
The notion that a bag of free money will save you is buying into the same bullshit marketing of self-centeredness which allowed all of these societal poxes to fester and grow and obfuscate all opportunities. The American dream is to just get rich enough and then you too can escape the horrors of modern blue collar living, escaping without repairing those issues. We need massive societal reforms, to education and healthcare, to infrastructure, taxation and especially law enforcement. Some getting short-cuts, workarounds or a free ride at cost to others undoes none of these issues. And how fucking dare Obama imply that looking out for yourself, consequences be damned, is some moral victory. It literally is the problem, the real problem for those who can see outside themselves.
I am not belittling the experiences of anybody whose life is constantly jeopardized by racists. I am not suggesting that anybody just needs to work more, or work harder, and never in a zillion years would I ever say that someone ought to just trust the system of imaginary checks and balances. I am however, insisting that moving ahead in line at the chain gang is not undoing said chain gang. The government could get a wild hair up its ass and confiscate the holdings of every billionaire, redirecting it equally to all those under a certain tax bracket of annual earnings. But it would not change the mechanics of how those billions are compiled. People would still be over-worked and underpaid, overcharged and price-gouged into exhausting defeat. A fat payday allowing you to move to a more ideal neighborhood is not going to magically stop racists from thinking so highly of themselves, and it will not prevent them from continuing to do precisely what this society proactively awards: looking out for number one.
And I am not saying to just go along with any of it, being a continuous victim of lying, cheating and stealing by the Powers That Be or those sycophantic animals blessed by them. I am saying that the resolution is not simply some other flavor of selfishness. Putting a dollar amount on injustice, on lifetimes of injustice, is agreeing that proprietors of injustices are free to continue their misconduct so long as they can afford it. Adherents of restitution are thus naming their price for their acquiescence to be bought. Cashing in is not at all how one relinquishes their role in the insanity. To the contrary, it plays into the insanity.