11
votes
Reparations are not the answer - The struggle against poverty needs to be a collective fight
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- Title
- Reparations Are Not the Answer
- Authors
- K.A. Dilday
- Published
- Jun 29 2019
- Word count
- 495 words
Kinda a clickbait title, but an interesting piece I think.
This can be kinda divisive in the leftist circles I'm in. Questions like "Should Native Americans get 'their' land back?", and "Does any ethnicity have the right to 'own' land" can bring up a bit of controversy.
I am sympathetic to the argument that rather than race based reparations, we should simply seek to eliminate poverty. That said, sometimes I worry that if we 'water things down' so to speak we might end up achieving less than we hoped.
this is not a particularly big thing, but "eliminating poverty" is one of those weird things that's a noble goal but fundamentally, i kinda feel like shouldn't be the goal for people to aspire to (especially with the reparations discussion) specifically because eliminating poverty almost certainly entails a comprehensive reform of the system, at which point you'd end up doing a lot more than eliminating poverty and thus framing it that way ends up becoming reductive. like, there are so many things which go into how poverty works out between different races in this country, factors which play into it, how poverty is expressed, etc that probably need to be addressed to eliminate it as a thing because in this country especially, it's such a stupidly complicated issue and it ties into so many other problems that exist that it's nearly impossible to tell what it doesn't play into and what doesn't play into it.
I mean, if we say it is a good goal to return Native land to Native Peoples, isn't that basically "Europe of Europeans"? I'm just not big on ethnic ownership of land.
What is not "ethnic ownership of land" but Europeans coming to America in the 1700's and effectively stealing land used & grazed by those who were inarguably there first?
I mean, while I agree with you, just because colonialism is awful doesn't mean I agree with the idea of any ethnicity "owning" land. If anything, I think that shows why the idea of ethnic ownership of land is not just.
I wish not to come across as passive agressive, so please do not read the following thinking that this is my goal. The analogy that I just thought of was the following scenario.
Person B steals from person A. When people say "well that is unfair! give it back!" would you then say "Well I think private ownership is wrong anyway so let's keep this status quo".
Now you might say that this all took place a long time ago, but that is a different argument from saying tribes can't be justified in claiming a plot of land anymore.
It's more complicated than that though, isn't it? Person B may have stolen from Person A, but both persons A and B have been dead for hundreds of years. Person C is a descendant from Person A, but is also a descendant of Person B. Person Q was born here, but his father, Person P just got here 30 years ago.
Who owes who which land? And if someone gets their land back, where do the people currently living on that land then go?
I get where you're coming from. I'm not trying to say "Well, no ethnic ownership, let's keep stuff how it is". What I'm trying to say is that land reform should happen but it shouldn't be based on some idea of ethic land ownership, it should be equal.
Its totally a false equivalency, I'll admit that. Still, it ultimately stems from the idea that ethnicities have legitimate claims to land