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I disagree fundamentally with some of @Hoffmeister25's axioms, but in the formulation of the problem he's more or less straightforwardly correct. Blacks will never accept being an underclass any more than whites would, and there is no reason to believe that any solutions inside the Overton window can actually extricate them from their underclass status.
As for solutions, here's a modest proposal I wrote awhile back. As a list of things that are never going to happen, I think there's much to commend it.
I think Hoff would not be wildly enthused with a plan like that, but I wonder if he'd take it. I wouldn't be wildly enthused for it either, and my expectation is that the zone would either turn into a corrupt shithole or what many now would consider a draconian police state in fairly short order. The idea of enforcing "racism is over" outside the zone is likewise laughably unrealistic; blues will never, ever let that weapon be pried from betwixt their fingers.
In any case, I think he's right that the colorblind 90s aren't coming back. Some problems don't have acceptable solutions. We can in fact keep right on burning social cohesion trying to bail water with sieves until things actually fall apart in a serious enough way to leave us with more pressing concerns.
True, and that's why the only solution is to abandon the framework where the measure of equality is the equality of statistical outcomes between races (or any other large population-wide categories, for that matter). This framework is not something that is inevitable and it's not something that is necessary. I don't care how many people who have the same eye color as me and the same nose length as me are rich and how many are poor. I care if I'm rich or poor, I care about whether my family and my friends are rich or poor. I care about whether I could be prevented from being richer or made poorer by unjust means. But wide-area statistical frameworks are meaningless to me - unless they are made meaningful by adopting them as political and cultural framework that is dominant in the society. There's no inherent reason why US should have adopted the racial framework. To be an "underclass" you should first be a "class", and "classes" are entirely arbitrary. Stop obsessing about them and the problem will be gone.
Who are "they"? Any man that can prove a drop of African blood? That's much more people than you think. What happens to other people living there, if they don't want to live in the racist paradise? What does it mean "control completely" - does it secede from the US? What happens to people that want to keep living in the US and keep being US citizens and keep having US laws? I don't see why for example a black professor at local university would suddenly want to subject himself to a regime that may not be able to sustain any universities at all. Doesn't he have any rights?
Areas can't write laws. People write laws. Who will be choosing these people? Will it be mass combat or lottery or how are you planning to choose those people? What if there would be 10 groups of people writing ten competing sets of laws - which group is the real one that gets the full control? How this control would be enforced - will US army and police participate if armed conflict happens? Will it blockade the area if there would be threat of violence spreading out? What about if they decide to build a giant meth factory and ship it to the US? Or even much worse, a giant generic drugs factory, without respecting any US drug patents? Will there be a complete trade embargo?
They already have this status, why we need the racist paradise to achieve what we already have?
Again, we can do it right now - why we need the racist paradise? What if the blacks don't want to live in the racist paradise, but want to keep living in New York and California, only better than they live now? I'm not sure what exactly having the racist paradise zone achieves. If you have a mechanism that can stop the racial grievances, I don't see why you can't use it without that, and if you don't have that mechanism, what did you achieve then?
The past is never coming back, but we're coming into the future, and it can be made better than the present, if there's a will.
Humans form tribal feelings for other people who seem like them. Humans are predisposed to perceive those who share their race as "like them". This can be overridden, but the effect is real and overriding it is not easy, especially when the environment seems threatening. Blacks have an environment that seems threatening, and there is no plausible way to get them to stop forming tribal attachments to others of their race. And this is doubly so when one of the tribes outputs a constant firehose of propaganda about how all their misfortunes are the fault of the other tribe, who hate them explicitly because of their race.
I care when people say that whites should be discriminated against or disadvantaged, because I'm white. I care when people hurt or kill white people explicitly for their skin color, because, again, I'm white. I mostly don't care how rich other whites are, because I'm doing pretty okay. If whites were an underclass, and I had reason to believe that the upper classes were keeping us down on purpose, I would definitely care about that.
And they manifestly were being made poorer by unjust means, and they've been told for decades that they still are being made poorer by unjust means. Our whole society is built on propagating that idea. Why would they not believe it?
It could be argued that "Jew" is an arbitrary class. But if the Nazis have settled on a definition that includes you, and are actively trying to exterminate you, recognizing the arbitrary nature of "class" doesn't resolve the problem.
In the same way, Blacks are, as the saying goes, "less likely", and not by a small margin. It is not in their individual or collective interest to reject group identity as arbitrary, because then most of them would still be in the same miserable position, only now they'd be alone, with their community ties severed. For most of them, that would very likely put them in a strictly worse position, and this fact is sufficiently obvious that they simply aren't going to do it.
The actual, current black community, or whoever they choose or designate from among that community. If it's actually a problem, let Oprah and Obama pick a panel to get the ball rolling. It doesn't really matter who they are, so long as they're unambiguously recognized as black by other blacks. The point is that it not be me or you, because if it's us, we'll be blamed for any bad outcomes that result. Many Blacks see themselves as a separate group, and the point is to give that group absolute power to do things its own way while insulating anyone who doesn't want to participate from the consequences.
Effectively, yes. The people inside run it however they want with zero interference from the rest of the country, but with the current level of funding that the occupants would otherwise receive under our current system, and possibly significantly more. They can keep our laws or write their own, interpret our laws however they want or discard them entirely. Let them do things exactly as they think they should be done. If they want to ban private property or institute full communism or legalize murder of white people or make everyone attend their local Baptist church on Sundays, that's fine: everyone there is there because they want to be, and if they don't like it they can leave at any time.
...You have fundamentally misunderstood the proposal. No one of any race has to go there, at all, ever. Participation is entirely voluntary. It's a place where the only legitimate legal authority is expressly reserved for its black occupants, carte blanche, but where no one at all is actually required to go, and funded out of the outlays we'd already be providing to the percentage of the population who chooses to live there voluntarily, plus however much extra is required to sufficiently sweeten the pot. The people who believe that US society is founded on white supremacy and structural racism would now have an alternative that has had any plausible influence of white supremacy removed, while sacrificing as few of the advantages of American citizenship as possible. Meanwhile, everyone else can move on with their lives according to colorblind rules. If someone in the rest of the country complains about racism, you now point out to them that if they have a problem, there's an alternative easily available to them, and if they keep complaining, you mock them mercilessly until they shut up.
It would not be my place to say, nor yours either. The point would not be to create what you or I think of as good governance. The point would be to create, as explicitly as possible, governance by Blacks on their own terms and in their own way, as an explicit alternative to the system governing the rest of the country.
That would be for them to sort out. The whole point is that they're in charge of this area, with no plausible legacy of white supremacy and racism to hinder them. Intervening in any way other than the unambiguously positive, ie providing a steady supply of cash, would be completely counterproductive.
Their authority is absolute inside the border and null outside it. People who want to leave can at any time, but are subject to standard colorblind US law as soon as they cross the border. That probably should handle any actual problems short of weapons of mass destruction.
We check goods at the border and confiscate contraband. We don't do anything to those inside manufacturing the meth, we just don't let them export it to the rest of the country. Ditto for whatever other hypothetical; treat it like a foreign country, but with more leniency than usual. If they decide to make low-cost drugs and export them to the rest of America... that might not actually be a bad thing.
The point is that many of them don't believe that colorblind society is actually operating in good faith, so you need to give them a demonstration of good faith, and that demonstration of good faith needs to actually resolve the concerns in a reliable way without opening the rest of us up to exploitation. Reparations are an example of an exploitable demonstration of good faith. This would cost less and be highly resistant to exploitation, and offer a good chance to actually resolve the majority of the distrust.
...The rest of your questions seem to be predicated on people being forced to live in such a zone, rather than being offered a free choice to live there or not as they see fit, so I'll end it here.
And so should you. That's why "no discrimination against any group for any quality" is the right answer. The law should be blind to arbitrary class categories.
Why do you think such a "community" exists? So far there's no any indication of it. Black separatists do exist, but they are tiny and vast majority of black people has no idea who they are and if they do, they do not support them. If there would be a unified black community that would show interest in separatism, there could be some discussion about it, but what's the point of discussing making deals with entities that are entirely imaginary?
So why anybody would? Why they don't just stay right where they are and keep demanding reparations from the US? What is going to stop them?
What do you mean by "them"? The US just declares on 1.1.XXXX the US laws stop working in Atlanta? That's not what any lawful framework in the US could ever allow. And I don't see how it wouldn't just invite Sinaloa cartel (or anybody else quick on their feet) to capture the territory by force and not give a whistle about your racist paradise plans at all?
You know how well it works on Mexican border, where the counterparty is the actual functioning government that kinda wants to help us with that? Now imagine how well it would work when the government on the other side actually actively wants it not to happen. You will confiscate exactly nothing and you will have zero control over it.
If any of the populated area is turned into the racist paradise, the people living there would be forced to either live there or lose their homes, jobs, social environments etc. Why would they agree to that? Say, why Oprah would want to live in this racist paradise enclave, if she's already a billionaire in America? I think she'd certainly prefer keep living in America - as she does. If there would be any desire on the part of the black Americans to live in something like that, black separatism wouldn't be a political nonstarter. Yet, it is.
Moreover, why limit ourselves to American blacks? There are millions of people who already enjoy this deal - living in a places where US does not control it, and doing whatever they want there, mostly. Yet, we are witnessing millions of them, day after day, at great personal expense and risk, to try to get into America and stay there. Why do you think black Americans - who already enjoy full citizenship right, full access to welfare services, significant representation in all power structures and undying admiration of at least one powerful political movement - would want a worse deal than Haitian blacks want? I see no evidence and no logical reason why they would, and this makes this whole scheme doomed and useless.
How do you know they'd take it as a demonstration of good faith? I don't see any indication from them that they would. Again, black separatism is not exactly popular, and if people understood what it actually means - e.g. losing all access to all the welfare state goodies, US citizen benefits, etc. - it's be even less popular. If they think US is built mostly by their ancestors (let's no argue how true it is but assume that's what they think) but they aren't getting their fair share of it, how giving them a soon-to-be-shithole area and absolving ourselves of any responsibility of what happens there would sound like a good deal? They want a fair share of everything, not some scraps that somebody decided to throw to them and lock them out of the rest.
Because I observe it existing at this very moment. There is a significant number of black people who believe that they are being harmed by my tribe in particular, and that we will continue harming them until they and their allies have all the power and we have none. This is encouraged by Blue Tribe, who amplify such claims to distract from the consequences of the power that they have exercised for decades. "Black Sepratists" are beside the point; the system is not aimed at them, it's aimed at people demanding dominance over our current society. The point is to seperate "control over themselves" from "control over me", to highlight and isolate those for whom the later is in fact the actual point. Further, it highlights the degree to which this has already happened; how Blue enclaves already are not constrained to any great degree by Red preferences or institutional markers.
I am pretty sure that if you established a new political zone with with no practical limits on policy and a significant guaranteed cash flow to anyone willing to form a government, a fair number of people would be lining up to give it a shot. If Oprah wasn't interested, BLM would, and if not them, some black-fronted libertarians. Depending on who was running it and how, I might be willing to move there.
The point of the thought experiment is to try to imagine what it would actually look like to take their concerns seriously and give them as much of what they say they want as possible, while insulating the rest of us from any harmful effects that might result. Given that they are observably pushing schemes such as absolute racial dictatorships, "reparations" to the tune of dozens of trillions of dollars, and the complete overthrow of our justice system, I see no harm in exploring less-insane portions of the possibility space.
Nothing, of course. but rhetorically, the point would be proving that they do, in fact, prefer to stay where they are and demand reparations, when this would satisfy their stated goals much better for much cheaper.
Offer them compensation for moving if they wish to move, and likewise for people who wish to move in. Expensive, sure, but a fraction of the cost of some of Kendi's proposals.
The blacks who freely choose to move there and establish local government.
Yes. Why should they be forced to live under white supremacist institutions, when it would be so easy to simply not do that? What harm is caused to the rest of us if Atlanta gets to make its own laws as it sees fit?
It seems like you are not grasping the principle here. I have no terminal interest in controlling the lives of my outgroup or my fargroup. If black people or Blue Tribers don't like being ruled by me, it is straightforwardly in my interest to facilitate an amicable separation whereby they do their thing in their area and I do my thing in my area and we simply leave each other alone. I may think their thing is awful, but if they're not willing to work with me and they're not willing to change, it is much better for permit them to do their awful thing somewhere far from me, rather than trying to force them to do things my way. I do not want to be ruled by people who hate me, but neither do I wish to rule people who hate me.
It is useful to frame the conversation this way, because some people really do seem to want to rule their outgroup, apparently as a terminal goal. Others believe that simply leaving each other alone is impossible, which amounts to the same thing. When discussing and organizing politics, it seems quite important to me to have a firm understanding on which people are genuinely just trying to be left alone, and which mean to rule.
In that case, I submit that since we already have a thousand-mile border with a giant uncontrollable narco-state, adding another, much smaller narco-state won't actually make the problem all that much worse.
For the same reason they agreed to letting BLM and antifa burn their cities, I'd imagine: stupid virtue signaling, purity spirals, and a maniacal commitment to Progressive ideology. The prize would be too big for the Black Community to coordinate refusal, and acceptance would be too-well rewarded for the rest of the Progressive movement to withstand the incentive gradient.
She probably wouldn't. But I bet once it got rolling, she'd be interested in trying to steer it toward good outcomes. Ditto for Obama.
It's a political non-starter because it is so obviously all downside. The point is to formulate the minimum viable upside to make it attractive not to people like you, but specifically to the sort of person who genuinely believes that our society is shot through with racism and white supremacy. Hence the financial incentives created by giving the zone a guaranteed cashflow and guaranteed political autonomy.
Those places don't enjoy the advantages of being a literal part of America, which this state would. They also don't enjoy guaranteed, no-strings-attached cashflow from the US federal government, which this place also would. Their citizens couldn't return to the US at will, which this state's citizens could.
It's easy to propose some sort of mean-spirited deportation scheme under some level of veiling. The point of this is to actually explore the degree to which their preferences could actually be satisfied without unacceptable costs to the rest of us, and to explore what costs are actually "unacceptable".
Americans of any color who chose to move to this state would still enjoy full citizenship rights in the colorblind US, to which they could return at any time, and full access to welfare services (guaranteed when outside the zone under colorblind law, and inside it depending on the laws they collectively write). Black Americans who chose to do so would have significantly greater representation in local power structures, and to the degree that they have no control over national power, they also are granted complete immunity from it within their border. Nor is there any reason to suppose that Blues would stop admiring them. There is no hook or secret gotcha here for the occupants.
My offer is specifically designed to avoid costing them these things, unless they themselves chose to reject them, which I absolutely do not expect them to do.
If Blue Tribe offered me a deal like this, a city or a small state with existing infrastructure, a significant guaranteed cashflow, and complete freedom from their political and social interference, where the government could only be held by, say, Gun Culture types or Christians, and where we could live under whatever laws we prefer, I would move there in a heartbeat. And again, this is another point of the exercise: to generate a sincere, good-faith offer to your opposites that you yourself would take if the positions were reversed, to explore the degree to which compromise is possible even in principle.
I see no reason why they would believe that it would be a soon-to-be-shithole. I expect it to turn into a shithole because I believe that shitholes are what their ideology reliably produce, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. And I'm not "absolving myself" of responsibility; I'm offering them the chance to take responsibility, because the ability of Blacks and Blues to shirk responsability for their own actions and decisions is a huge part of the problem we're stuck with. I would be happy to take a deal like this offered to my tribe, even if the people offering it did so with the full expectation that my ideology would result in an immediate shithole, because I think they're wrong.
On the other hand, I'd be fascinated to hear why those offered this deal in good faith would reject it, because it would seem to me that rejecting it would be a tacit admission that they know on some level that my tribe is right, that their ideology would in fact create a shithole, and that they are in fact dependent on my tribe to cover for their excesses and abuses.
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