Disclaimer: my parents are immigrants, and I have absolutely no genealogical connection to American slavery.
> having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be
I just don't understand how someone can talk about a "well-founded number" for reparations in a serious way.
How can you calculate a dollar amount, even within 5 orders of magnitude, for something that happened to millions of people for hundreds of years, affects millions of people today, and we don't have details about any of it?
There are many people who:
- had African ancestors who sold other Africans to slavers
- have a mixture of heritage
- immigrated from Africa long after slavery ended
It's nonsensical to come up with a dollar amount for even a single person, so how can we possibly do it at scale? Should African Americans descended from slave traders be paying reparations to African Americans descended from slaves? Should African Americans pay reparations to Native Americans for living on land that was stolen from them?
There are so few records for any of this, it just seems absolutely insane to me. I am a huge history nerd, and there aren't concrete answers for a lot of things that happened this decade, even with impeccable records.
> having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be
I just don't understand how someone can talk about a "well-founded number" for reparations in a serious way.
How can you calculate a dollar amount, even within 5 orders of magnitude, for something that happened to millions of people for hundreds of years, affects millions of people today, and we don't have details about any of it?
There are many people who:
- had African ancestors who sold other Africans to slavers
- have a mixture of heritage
- immigrated from Africa long after slavery ended
It's nonsensical to come up with a dollar amount for even a single person, so how can we possibly do it at scale? Should African Americans descended from slave traders be paying reparations to African Americans descended from slaves? Should African Americans pay reparations to Native Americans for living on land that was stolen from them?
There are so few records for any of this, it just seems absolutely insane to me. I am a huge history nerd, and there aren't concrete answers for a lot of things that happened this decade, even with impeccable records.