“[Paul] Street doubts that a just society is possible under capitalism or without reparations that acknowledge and reverse the ‘windfall bestowed on sections of the white community by “past” racist policies and practices.”‘ —Deanna Isaacs, October 25
What Debt Do You Owe?
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This sent in response to Paul Street’s race reparations analogy, where one poker player starts playing by the rules after 300 years of cheating but keeps his ill-wrought chips [“The Racist Problem” by Deanna Isaacs, October 25]. In the chess game, there are two players. In the U.S. social-political game, there are hundreds of millions, with attendant personal variables changing the mix throughout history. In assessing a slavery reparations tax, how do we treat descendants of white people who did everything they could to end slavery? Slavery would not have ended without fiery commitment from white abolitionists who detested it. In between the two, what of those who took no part in the crime, yet risked their homes, families, and lives to provide safe passage to their black brothers? What of the hundreds of thousands who ultimately gave their lives to end slavery? Do we really believe the bloodiest war in U.S. history was fought over the contours of federalism?
S. Haake
JT Robertson
Lincoln Square
I’m inclined to have some sympathy for those posters who suggest that it is, at least, charmingly optimistic to trust an $1,800 bike to a rack on the front of a bus maintained by the CTA.
