Weren’t you just saying that it’s a straw man that CRT says we are guilty because of what ancestors did? And now you are literally arguing that we are guilty because of what ancestors did?
I consider the opportunity to be the inheritance, or a large part of it.
That opportunity is only there because of all the work of our ancestors.
To go back to the settler analogy. Maybe the settler who gets the homestead didn’t drive the indians out (although the history didn’t work that way i don’t think.) But once he accepts the opportunity created by that homestead, he becomes in some way indebted to the people who created it for him. In this case, that includes their sin of expelling the indians.
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But that opportunity gap is created by the people treating the black family differently. That isn’t something inherited that we’re dealing with the results of, it’s the present day decisions. In it’s ideal I think this is the American dream type answer to the historical crimes, we should solve the opportunity gap.
I’m not arguing we are guilty for what our ancestors did.
Notice I am specifically included immigrants whose ancestors were not even here yet.
I’m saying once we accept the fruits of the history of the US, which includes racism, then we also participate in that history, and gain responsibility for it.
Once we participate, then our guilt and innocence become ambiguous, because it is never clear whether we are living up to our responsibility to make things better.
That’s dumb
See my response to mayanactuary above.
I think participation in that opportunity creates the obligation to make it equal opportunity for all. So i don’t think i’m disagreeing with your post here.
I probably would disagree that that all this is not inherited. I’m not sure what you mean by that, since clearly it was here before us, and passed on to us.
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And that response is boring.
I think the “passed on” bit is where I’m drawing perhaps a small distinction. For example say an immigrant buys a house in a neighborhood that restricted sales to black people. The immigrant family didn’t have the house “passed on to them”, they purchased it with their own assets that in most cases were the result of their own toil.
In fact I think this has been a big part of the problem, restricted ability to buy assets by race, at least historically, and those assets have since appreciated at different rates geographically. But if you’re buying that asset today you’re not inheriting anything, but you might have an opportunity to buy that others don’t/didn’t which is key to fix.
I’m probably using inheritance is a broader, and more analogous sense than you are. I agree that if you are an immigrant, for example, then it’s not like you inherit a large estate that was tended by slaves at one time. This may not be the case if you come from a rich southern family that does have a plantation home.
I tend to see things as too tied up with each other to make those kinds of distinctions useful. I’m sure there are exceptions.
Part of what I am trying to push back against, which is not an argument you are making, is this idea that we do not have an obligation to fix things.
What is innocence if not that? We do not usually consider people responsible for fixing a problem they are innocent of.
That makes sense, and I agree it becomes a mess trying to tease out things based on fault of people generations ago. In fact I think that’s a big argument for actually fixing things simply based on a socioeconomic basis. We should certainly teach the history fully, but I don’t think the money saved by not helping poor non-black people really does any favors to the efforts of fixing things.
I’d also say I think racism/bigotry is mainly solved through exposure. The more we can allow all people similar opportunities from a young age the more people will be exposed to people different from themselves and that results in diminished bigotry. With the Irish/Italian immigrants a case in point, there was huge prejudice against them because of their religion and even marriages between catholics and protestants was a big deal for a while (and still a big deal to the priest at the church I was married in…), but intermingling across all parts of life is key, I think.
Except that there was lots of exposure to black americans in the south. It hasn’t fixed anything.
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Yeah that’s true. I don’t have a great explanation for that one…
sounds like the problem is with white people /s
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And white peoples are just people who have been designated as white.
So the problem is the nature of people.
Which is kind of at odds with the liberal optimism the US was founded on.
black people may steal things,
but white people steal people
/s
I think its a perfectly reasonable analogy. When my parents die and I inherit their house, I can’t just ignore the outstanding mortgage liability. Like you said I inherit the the asset and the liability. This doesn’t mean I am responsible for my parents taking out the mortgage in anyway.
This seems like a stretch. Did the poor, often mistreated immigrants really benefit from slavery and massacres? What exactly is the counterfactual there?
I think when they first come to the US, and are mistreated, then they are paradoxically both the victims and beneficiaries of racism, aren’t they?
Whatever opportunity they have in the US is in part due to historical enslaved labor. This follows from the fact that, otherwise, there would be no US for them to immigrate to. But they are also being discriminated against, even as they perhaps were treated better than black americans.
Most of the european immigrant groups have since moved beyond discrimination, and are simply considered white now. I think I addressed this case already.
What exactly do you mean, “no America to immigrate to?” You seem to be implying that if slavery had been illegal in America, nobody would have bothered coming here?
Or maybe that growth would have been stifled? But how much then? And if they didn’t immigrate here, did they have opportunities somewhere else? In other words, if America decided to not have slaves (and not commit crimes against the N.A.s) then what country would exist here? And where would an immigrant thinking of immigrating here go to?
If we are including exploited immigrants in our model of people who benefited from slavery, then should we also include people who receive American investments all over the world?
In short, I think I need a more refined argument. Did slavery permanently increase our GDP? Is slavery something we needed to become a world power? Or what exactly?
When they first moved to the US a lot of Italian immigrants probably faced discrimination. But a generation or two later American citizens of Italian descent basically enjoy all of the advantages of being white. People don’t assume they got their jobs or got into college to fill a quota. Cops don’t tail them if they drive nice cars. People don’t clutch their purses tighter or lock their car doors because they see an American of Italian descent walking by.