I think we have to take our history as a whole. — Bitter Crank

Then it would be a good idea to supplement the celebratory statues of heroic arseholes with a plaque detailing the shit they produced.

No, I don't agree. I think that a debt is owed, It needs to be repaid, Laws such as affirmative action, which ought to be redundant are still needed. There are a lot of bigoted people in US. Just drop by your local service club on a Friday night and listen.

I don't doubt David Duke's remark to Trump yesterday. He tweeted:

I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/896420822780444672

Trump has yet to make a direct statement regarding the White Supremacists, sure his minions have said he denounced these bigots, but he has yet to respond directly. Apparently he looked in the mirror.

Reparations in some form or the other are needed if we want to see subsequent generations to become freed from the bigotry that is still so ingrained in our culture. Removal of the statues of historic oppressors is only one small step.

How to treat the past — Bitter Crank

Reparations in some form or the other are needed if we want to see subsequent generations to become freed from the bigotry that is still so ingrained in our culture. Removal of the statues of historic oppressors is only one small step. — Cavacava

If the idea is that public resources should not pay for the creation, presentation, storage and preservation of symbols of injustice and oppression, that is one thing.

If the idea is that all such symbols should be eradicated, that is another.

Context matters. If something is being kept as a record, artifact, etc. from history and pre-history, that is one thing. If something is being kept to glorify injustice and oppression, that is another.

Changing the name of a place​ won't cost us any cultural resources. Relocating something won't cost us any cultural resources.

But trying to eradicate records of the past will cost us valuable cultural resources that tell us who we are and how we got to where we are. A sanitized, sugar-coated past is not reality and cannot be used to heal or to make positive, permanent change.

So, are you in favor of removal of Robert E Lee's statue or are you suggesting that it be archived in some manner?

No, I don't agree. I think that a debt is owed, It needs to be repaid — Cavacava

By whom? People who never had anything to do with past injustices? Guess what, that would itself be unjust. So no, no debt needs to be repaid.

Laws such as affirmative action — Cavacava

Which are inherently racist and counter-productive.

I don't doubt David Duke's remark to Trump yesterday. — Cavacava

I do. He's in the wrong. Trump won because he got more white votes and more black and Hispanic and Asian votes than Romney in 2012.

By whom? People who never had anything to do with past injustices? Guess what, that would itself be unjust. So no, no debt needs to be repaid.

By the Nation, specifically to the black people who suffered under white oppression for 350 years...maybe you missed that. Black people, Hispanics, women, and others continue to suffer under a bigotry that is has been the rule not the exception in US

Which are inherently racist and counter-productive.

It's the law in the US.

No, I don't agree. I think that a debt is owed, It needs to be repaid — Cavacava

By whom? — Thorongil

And to whom?

To the descendants of "white trash" indentured servants who were cleaned off the streets of England and shipped over here?

To the descendants of the Irish who were scorned and abused?
To the descendants of the Italians?
To the descendants of the Jews?
To the descendants of the Japanese?
To the descendants of the Eastern and SE Europeans?
To the descendants of the Mexicans (lost much of their country)?
To the descendants of the Native Americans--as few of them as there are?
To the descendants of the blacks?
To the women who were discriminated against and who worked for nothing at home?

There are a lot of bigoted people in US. Just drop by your local service club on a Friday night and listen. — Cavacava

And you think the debate over reparations (to whom, from whom, how, and for what purpose) will end all of the bigotry? Ha!

By the Nation — Cavacava

Which is an abstraction designating a bunch of living, breathing human beings. Making them pay for crimes they did not commit is unjust.

specifically to the black people who suffered under white oppression for 350 years — Cavacava

This would be highly selective, as there were plenty of white slaves, Chinese slaves, Native American slaves, and so on. You would basically have to give money to everyone, unless you've created a special genetic device and a time machine so as to determine who was a slave and who wasn't. But then, we can go back even further and show that many of the white slave owners' ancestors, for example, would likely have been slaves in the Barbary States, or the Caliphates, or the Roman Empire, or even to their own people in pre-historic times. Everyone's ancestors have been slaves at some point in history, so your proposal quickly deflates into a purely ideological stance that ignorantly and unjustly wishes to arbitrarily privilege a certain population at the expense of another.

I never said it would end all bigotry, but I believe it is a step in the right direction. Symbols are important, and the symbol of Robert E Lee, as the head of the Confederate force in rebellion is still a potent one, it just cost some one their life.

You want me to answer what kind of reparations, and I would say whatever we can do to make sure that people are being treated fairly, even if that is somewhat to the detriment of the majority.

No, it is just, That's why we have laws like Affirmative Action, to attempt to offset past injustices.

Never said anything about money.

No, it is just, That's why we have laws like Affirmative Action, to attempt to offset past injustices. — Cavacava

>:O Now you're just repeating yourself, having failed to challenge what I said or offer support for your claims. I never thought I'd see you admit defeat this soon, but I suppose I'll take it. I suggest some aloe vera for the ass spanking BC and I just gave to you.

The truth is the truth regardless of how hard you try to doge it.

The justification for reparations is gradually erased by time. Time doesn't make injustice into justice, but the connection between the last generation abused by slavery (and the last generation of slavery beneficiaries) -- is now 150 years past -- and continuity is too diluted, too distanced, too remote, too disrupted.

The now deceased Ottoman Empire's Holocaust of Armenians is a century in the past. The time when reparations can effectively be made hasn't passed, but it is slipping away. The Jewish Holocaust remains close enough in time for reparations to continue.

Reparations for Native American genocide is even more problematic, since it was an on-going process over several centuries. Maybe 1890 can be fixed as the end of outright war against Indians--the battle of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. How many of the Indian peoples have any extant trace remaining? (Some clearly do.)

Determining the costs of slavery, genocide, or cultural extirpation, and thus the bill of reparations is practically impossible. It is larger than any sum that later, uncoerced generations will be willing to pay. None of problems of reparation undermine the injustices and great wrongs that were done. But the bad things that happened in the past can not be undone.

The truth is the truth regardless of how hard you try to doge it. — Cavacava

????????

You seem to be trolling, then.

Why? Because I am trying to present a coherent view...one which you will not reply to....you're the troll baby.

Good work, Cava. You had me fooled for a couple minutes. 6.5/10. (Y)

The Revolutionary War might have been 150 years ago, but we have seen and we we continue to see racism systematic in the US, I believe the real civil war happened between 1955 and 1970. It was the legal version of the Civil War, it changed the way we do business, which for a capitalistic society means the way it will act.

As I stated symbols are important...archive the statue of Robert E. Lee to a swamp where such things belong, and not the middle of a city.

No, it is just, That's why we have laws like Affirmative Action, to attempt to offset past injustices. — Cavacava

In 1961 John F. Kennedy issued the first "affirmative action executive order" and Johnson followed up later with enforcement. Past injustices were, no doubt, on the minds of policy developers, but Affirmative Action was intended to achieve present and future fairness for those who were then experiencing discrimination in the present time.

For the most part, affirmative action achieved modest success, at best. Local government employment seems to have been the area showing the most success, likely because increasing visible employment among minorities would usually be good politics for local politicians. But affirmative action is also known to be a divisive factor among workers and organized labor. That a significant portion of minority hires under affirmative action direction resulted in less competent hires is a common assumption.

Applying affirmative action to college admissions has been much more contentious. Institutions can not simultaneously follow an admissions policy based on merit and at the same time on compensatory quotas.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 enacted July 2, 1964 is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. That changed things.

Beside Robert E Lee was a traitor, a turn coat...who should be abhorred as much as Benedict Arnold. Let the polliwogs in a swamp adulate to him.

(P.S. Maybe Mr. T will join them)

If you want to argue for reparations, a better focus would be national housing policy between the 1930s (under FDR) and the 1980s when the Federal Government actively and explicitly excluded blacks from housing assistance of any kind. The Federal Home Loan program was powerful enough to bring banking loans and real estate practices into line. The combination effectively resulted in apartheid. Loans could not be made to whites on blocks with 1 or 2 black families (which should never have happened in the first place) or for blacks to buy houses anywhere. Suburban developments were funded with the legal requirement that they start and stay white. (The covenants which underlay this expectation were eventually ruled unconstitutional, but... too late to make a huge difference.)

The Federal housing policy deprived the population in black communities of the opportunity to leverage home ownership into a substantial amount of wealth. Even if blacks were able to buy homes (as they were) various factors prevented most of them from harvesting accumulated value. Segregation prevented privately owned housing from appreciating. The Interstate Highway Program tended to steer freeways through black or poor neighborhoods. "Urban Renewal" and "slum clearance" were often euphemism for "black removal".

Blacks suffered a great deal because of these policies. Reparations can't take blacks back to a time when many suburbs were just forming, can't duplicate the long-term rise in home values between 1945 and the present, can't make up for the 2 or 3 generations whose educations were quite inferior, who had little access to employment, and were left out of the post war economic boom (which is now decidedly over). But...

A compensatory program for the people and their descendants harmed in the last 25 to 50 years of federal housing policy is possible. It won't seem like manna from heaven, because individuals will have to strive hard to take advantage of housing, education, and labor training programs with clear-cut goals, even if they are free of cost and offer great future benefits.

Beside Robert E Lee was a traitor, a turn coat...who should be abhorred as much as Benedict Arnold. — Cavacava

Who, these days, "abhors" Benedict Arnold?

Arnold was born in Connecticut and was a merchant operating ships on the Atlantic Ocean when the war broke out in 1775. He joined the growing army outside Boston and distinguished himself through acts of intelligence and bravery. His actions included the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga in 1775, defensive and delaying tactics at the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain in 1776 (allowing American forces time to prepare New York's defenses), the Battle of Ridgefield, Connecticut (after which he was promoted to major general), operations in relief of the Siege of Fort Stanwix, and key actions during the pivotal Battles of Saratoga in 1777, in which he suffered leg injuries that halted his combat career for several years.

Despite Arnold's successes, he was passed over for promotion by the Continental Congress, while other officers claimed credit for some of his accomplishments.[3] Adversaries in military and political circles brought charges of corruption or other malfeasance, but most often he was acquitted in formal inquiries. Congress investigated his accounts and found that he was indebted to Congress after having spent much of his own money on the war effort. Arnold was frustrated and bitter at this, as well as with the alliance with France and the failure of Congress to accept Britain's 1778 proposal to grant full self-governance in the colonies. He decided to change sides and opened secret negotiations with the British. — Wikipedia, Naturally

Maybe he wasn't as craven as some would have it.

As you no doubt are aware, the Civil War was an ambiguous issue for many Americans, North and South. Traitors? Of course they (the Confederates) were. Just like deserters were during the Vietnam war who went to Canada -- I thought then, still think, they were on the right side.

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

TA-NEHISI COATES

You don't have to look that far to see that gerrymandering in some states is skewed to the determent of poorer, blacker neighborhoods. The FED still has to monitor bank's lending due to Red Lining. The Wells Fargo Bank paid $135 million and Bank of America $335 million to settle discrimination suits in 2011, but the damage was already done.

'Tear down that statue'

The statue of Robert E. Lee, try as it might, hasn't harmed anyone since it was erected in 1924.

Tell that to the family of the lady who was killed or the other injured.

The lady who was most unfortunately killed, ("Heather D. Heyer, a paralegal who was killed on Saturday, was a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised, her supervisor said.") was not injured by the statue, which wouldn't fit into the smallish car that was driven by James Alex Fields Jr. Fields may have intended to drive his car directly into the crowd, but that isn't what happened. He plowed into a parked car (at x speed) and the force of the collision caused a chain reaction, at the end of which was Ms. Heyer, and 19 other people who were injured. That's probably why Fields was charged with second degree and not first degree murder.

The statue was not named in the charge and has refused to comment.

The upcoming removal of the statue was the reason why the White Supremacists, KKK and others went to Charlottesville, The lady went to stand up for the statues removal, 'They' killed her.

So yes, while the statue did not fall on her, it was indirectly contributory to her death. If the statue was not there she would still be with us.

A monument to Robert E Lee is just wrong.

I agree, he was a traitor, who fought against our country. He should have been hanged.

The Revolutionary War might have been 150 years ago — Cavacava

Bruh.