I was directed to this thread with the promise of amusement. For some reason, this bickering didn't quite amuse me. It made me tired. However, having invested the time reading the thread, I can't walk away without saying something.
What I hear is people fed up with debt, whether financial, moral, civic, or some ambiguous combination thereof, deserved or not, and expressing their frustration in racist terms (because, obviously, the face of America is still white). (You can backpeddle, I mean, "clarify" all you want, but the initial snarky remarks were racist.)
Someone, Sandman? made some good points about why reparations won't work, but whitewashed (heh) the century of institutionalized discrimination that followed the Emancipation.
The New Deal (as someone else mentioned) wasn't created to assist specifically black Americans or descendants of slaves. The New Deal was meant to provide a safety net for all Americans after the Great Depression. Affirmative Action, on the other hand, was created to try to combat the existing inequalities (in education, in economic opportunities) most black Americans (and women) faced.
If anyone tries to convince me that the socio-economic playing field was leveled with the Emancipation Proclamation (or women's right to vote), I'll just tell you to go back to your crack pipe. Cos that's just willful delusion.
And yes, privilege is awfully hard to lose, so I understand the resentment.
What gets lost in discussing racism is the a priori advantage that white people, and especially white men, have just for being born white in this country. To use what I hope is a non-controversial example, back when I was growing up (in the 60's and 70's), news anchors reporting crimes didn't use the race signifier "white" when the suspect was white. It was socially understood (i.e., taken for granted) that unless there was a race signifier (black, Chinese, Hispanic), the suspect was obviously white, so there was no need to make that distinction.
If those of you white men eager to pay the fare for Sharpton, et al, to go "back to Africa" are suffering during this dismal economic period, your individual experience doesn't negate the fact that the vast majority of the wealth (both financial and political) in this country belongs to... white men. As a group.
What I'm saying is that you can't extrapolate your anecdotal evidence into a broad social commentary (the backlash bash) or a narrow good-ol'-boy squeakslap against "those people" and not expect to be challenged when you do. In public.
The irony here is the person who extrapolates his experience into a general social dynamic and yet can't grasp that he does the opposite when judging others.
To the person who threw down the "vets fought and died in battle so you could have freedom of speech" gauntlet, I say, Dare we make a travesty of their valiant sacrifice by silencing perspectives you, the self-proclaimed arbiter of acceptable speech, find absurd, a "debauchery"?
To SaburoS: I don't think racism or prejudice or bigotry can be reduced to a self-esteem issue. Jealousy, maybe, but not racism. Racism, and I'm not an expert in psycho-social dynamics, I see as more of an ignorance and superiority-complex issue, the latter of which would dovetail with the idea of the "white standard," a sort of divine-monarchy complex of the white male in America with its inherent social (but not biological) advantages. Who but the most enlightened and noble-minded would want to give that up, or even share it? All men were not created equal, but we should all have equal opportunity. Let character determine the rest.
To get back on the ostensible topic, I don't support reparations for slavery. The concept of compensation for the sins of our fathers, while perhaps fairminded and filled with good intentions, seems inherently convoluted to the point of inefficacy.
As for this current zeitgeist of entitlement, I'll tell you what gets my back hairs up. Families of WTC victims expecting a free ride for the rest of their lives and their children's lives, as if no one ever lost a spouse before September 11.... But that's another topic.
