flobaba wrote:
Klaus, I’ve not thought about it much, admittedly, but I feel you have to make an attempt to redress injustice in any way possible. It may be a tad more complicated though for a few reasons off the top of my head: First, unfortunately for the Native American communities, out of sight is out of mind, and since the government was successfully able to hide them away in the seclusion of reservations, there is little to no visibility to their plight. Secondly, because of the vast swathes of land we are talking about in the Native American case, and the annihilation of most of the population (if I recall correctly they constitute about 2% of the population of the USA, about 6 million people), land return is a more difficult argument to try to trace or make. Additionally, their lack of numbers do not permit them to be a strong political force.
I feel like the government needs to enter into good faith agreements with the leftover communities though, and seek to reestablish or support them in viable locations and economies, and most importantly, enforce policies that grants them the freedom to live their lives and retain their traditions and cultures in peace and without discrimination. In short, “reservations” and casinos in deserts definitely ain’t it. Access to free basic education and health care if they want it, has to be guaranteed. I might be being naive, but that’s just how I see things. There is more than ample land and resources in this country if there is a real conscience and thirst for justice. The political power and will is what is lacking.
A social democratic welfare state that's not intent on locking people away would to a great extent take care of all of these things (access to housing, productive lands, healthcare, education, freedom from arbitrary discrimination, etc.). Additionally, it would do so without the need for "benign" bureaucratic racism where groups of people get special deals based on their identities as determined by a third party.
I do agree that agreements with communities are necessary, that building trust matters, and that symbolism is essential to nation-building, but I think equal universal coverage within a stipulated period of time ought to be the end goal.
I am replying both to posts regarding native american and african-american issues here. While the historic treatment of some populations has definitely been worse than the treatment of others, the truth is that if you go back a few hundred years virtually all of us have ancestors who were exploited, abused, or brutalised (for me personally you only have to go back a few decades).
Rather than "redress injustice" with focalised action, it appears to me that trying to imagine a society where individuals are provided with the facilities to live a dignified life and the tools to develop their full human potential would generate conditions of justice much more elegantly.
Targeting universal well-being also let's you skip the endless ethical considerations that would plague attempts to redress specific injustices. Rather than wasting time debating and trying to figure out whether someone whose ancestors were wronged but grew up in a loving middle-class family requires more help than someone whose ancestors were generally privileged but whose immediate progenitors were abusive mentally ill drug-addicts, it is far more parsimonious to construct a social system that universally adapts to the needs of individuals.
No easy task, of course, and there would be lots of overlap with many of the policies required to address racial injustice in countries like the USA... but this approach is what makes most sense to me at this stage.
