I'm not certain what should be done. I've not yet studied the problem enough to know, and I don't know whether there are ANY perfect solutions, but here are some ideas. You can feel free to shoot them down, but I'd prefer to challenge you to suggest something that you think might work better.
Perhaps a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a la South Africa. I don't know if it would help to open up the subject of race in America to wide examination, but the standard White reaction of pretending the problem is only a problem when non-Whites bring it up fails as a solution. To paraphrase vito_excalibur, as long as non-whites keep quiet about race, race isn't a problem for whites.
I have no problem opening a discussion about reparations. I was raised in an almost exclusively white county, by northern Europeans of peasant stock who all came to the US after 1870. Nobody in my direct line lived in the South before Brown v Board and the Civil Rights era, but I recognize that I am privileged as a result of my birth as a white male in California. If we as a society claim to preserve life, liberty and property, then we as a society might justly ought to see compensation justly due when someone is improperly deprived of one or more of those. The country has failed to uphold the Constitution, a contract made by the people of the United States with the people of the United States. When the government unjustly mistreated American citizens of Japanese descent, it (eventually) admitted its liability, and sought to pay reparations. Those reparations were paid with the taxes of all Americans (including those who came to the US after 1945). If we didn't exempt my high-school Civics teacher from paying his taxes toward reparations (who arrived from Hungary in 1951), why should it exempt me from paying reparations to African-Americans (or their issue) whose lives, liberty and property were unjustly deprived.
Failing that, who should pay? Well, I suppose we might start with those people still extant who directly profited from slavery, for example. If a corporation is a person, and a person must be responsible for actions he/she takes, or actions taken under the authority of that person, then we perhaps might undertake a strict accounting of Chase, or Bank of America, who bought, sold, lent money for, and insured slaves.
Hell, I don't know. But I do know that what has happened, and is happening today is criminal. When we shrug our shoulders and say, "Sucks to be them," and not do anything about it, we're accessories after the fact.
no subject
Failing that, who should pay? Well, I suppose we might start with those people still extant who directly profited from slavery, for example. If a corporation is a person, and a person must be responsible for actions he/she takes, or actions taken under the authority of that person, then we perhaps might undertake a strict accounting of Chase, or Bank of America, who bought, sold, lent money for, and insured slaves.
Hell, I don't know. But I do know that what has happened, and is happening today is criminal. When we shrug our shoulders and say, "Sucks to be them," and not do anything about it, we're accessories after the fact.