Kevin Kelly
Feb 5, 2023

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When I first read this, I thought you might be saying that individual white people should hold themselves responsible/guilty over the injustices that other white people committed in the past. But I think what you’re saying is that all of us - white or otherwise - should have a sense of sympathy for and desire to help those suffering the intergenerational effects of slavery and segregation, in which case I agree. Personally, I’ve never supported equity in the universal race-based sense by which it’s often applied. But I do believe we could stand to enact a form of reparations specifically targeted towards those whose families were affected by slavery and segregation. Indeed, we provided reparations to the Japanese interned during World War 2. Libertarian candidate for New York governor Larry Sharpe has put forth an interesting idea for reparations to American descendants of slaves: https://larrysharpe.com/2021/02/zero-cost-reparations-plan/.

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Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly

Written by Kevin Kelly

Poetry & opinion writer, nature lover and Upstate New Yorker.

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