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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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Black people are benefiting from it too right now, so where's the issue?

They are benefiting from it, but presumably less than their rightful due for the work they (were forced to) put in. Imagine I enslaved you to build a bridge in your city. At the end I let you go and when you complained that you have been exploited I said "you benefit from the bridge too now that it has been built". Nobody would seriously consider that as a justified response.

The real question is can you kidnap someone from some “shit hole” and put them in terrible conditions that on the margins help build society. Then do their descendants 160 years later get to claim some amount due? Isn’t the appropriate calculation for the descendant are there better off in your society or the “shit hole” from whence their forefather was stolen?

That is, I think the forefather had a clear claim to restitution. I think the current generation has actually benefited from slavery.

At the end I let you go and when you complained that you have been exploited I said "you benefit from the bridge too now that it has been built".

No, it's more like my great great great... grandchild was told that, after they became an equal under the law, and after an ever-expanding system of inequality correction was set up that specifically benefits them.

They contributed exactly nothing to the bridge and benefit from it exactly as much as the descendants of the people that enslaved me. So again, where's the issue?