[nicmarlo]

"If we are all equal and made in God's image," said Ruth Dougherty of Leonia, "it's a no-brainer."

All things being equal, my ancestors never owned slaves, and shed blood during the Civil War to free the slaves....so don't plan on coming after me or mine.

[Mr. Rational]

Don't plan on reparations proponents excecizing any judgement. This isn't about right and wrong. This is about blame and victimhood.

[kromike]

Agreed. These angst-ridden fools can unload all of their own emotional baggage that they want. Just so long as they soothe their collective consciences with their own money, not my tax dollars. EVER.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Enough of this nonsense. Blacks were better off coming here as slaves. Does that make it right? Of course not. In Africa they would eat each other.

[HitmanLV]

Part of the argument is that even if your ancestors didn't own slaves, you benefited from the cultural structure that slavery and institutionalized bigotry created. That you or your ancestors didn't want the benefit is immaterial. Whites derived a benefit at the expense of blacks, so in the interest of equity it should be addressed.

I think the best argument against slave reparations is that any accounting of damage suffered in calculating economic harm suffered by blacks must necessarily be offset by any benefits derived by blacks.

That is, but for slavery many blacks in the USA would have been born in Africa and living there now. Compare things like standard of living, standards in health and healthcare, life expectancy, income, disposable income, etc between what benefit they enjoy in the USA vs what benefit they would enjoy if they were born and raised in Africa.

By that standard, I think a case could be made that when all the damage suffered is compared against all the benefits (relative to a lifelong existence in Africa) derived, black people may very well owe the USA money.

A calculation that only calculates damage without offsetting it by benefits is fundamentally unfair.