George W. Bush’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Was a Slave Trader

[branford]

194. You challenged my specific claim that most Americans do not support reparations

or anything similar. I provided recent polling demonstrating overwhelming opposition to reparations and similar measures. I don't understand how you now claim that it wasn't the topic.

In any event, in response to your points:

1. As indicated in a number of my other more detailed posts in the thread, I support government action to actively enforce anti-discrimination laws and policies to ensure that all Americans, regardless of race, have an equal opportunity to benefit from our society. It's not reparations, because such policies are targeted equally at everyone, and not designed to only benefit blacks, no less at the expense of individuals who bear no personal responsibility for slavery or its legacies. I would not under any circumstances support any directed transfers from one racial group to another, or payments to distant ancestors of individuals on account of race alone. As I also mentioned earlier, I have no objections to taxes funding government programs. However, taxation cannot be arbitrary, punitive or the responsibility of a group based on their race. Such a taxation scheme would be unconstitutional and abhorrent.

2. It's not a competition between Jews and blacks as to who have suffered more or are entitled to compensation, and that certainly wasn't my point. However, it is undeniably that neither my ancestors or myself had any responsibility for slavery in the USA. I feel no guilt nor obligation to compensate anyone for historical events over which I, or even my distant ancestors, had no control based solely on the color of my skin.

Moreover, I find the notion of categorizing all "whites," both historically and today, as some monolithic and amorphous group of oppressors to be particularly offense. There are many purported "whites" who belong to culturally and ethnically distinct minority groups in America, such as Jews, Italians, Irish, Polish, etc., who primarily immigrated to the USA well after the end of slavery and were who were systematically oppressed by the government and other majority Anglo Protestant whites (and treated in a similarly poor manner by other minority groups). If you think groups like the Jews, Irish and Italians could just "disappear" into majority white society, with all due respect, you need to study history far more carefully, and pay more attention to international politics today.

Your "white society" theories also happen to fail to account for the various groups of Asian Americans who faced severe institutional discrimination, are just as easily differentiated from whites as blacks, often immigrated well after the end of slavery, were actually interned by the government in the 20th Century, yet prosper without reparations in "white society," and are even sometimes held to a higher comparative standard due to ethnic success under programs like affirmative action designed specifically to help African Americans.

3. You and I have apparently have different ideas about "societal responsibility." As stated above, I believe society should ensure that laws guarantee protections against discrimination, not enforce a redistribution scheme from people who had no responsibility for slavery to the descendants many generations removed of those wronged.

Simply, as polls clearly indicate, I and most Americans, including a great many Democrats, do not view everything and everyone through the lens of "white privilege." Even if I were to accept the position as you understand it, I cannot envision a compensatory scheme today other that strict and actively enforced guarantees of equal protection that would be remotely constitutional, no less supported by anywhere near a majority of Americans.