(July 25, 2013 at 1:48 pm)Texas Sailor Wrote:(July 25, 2013 at 1:47 pm)whateverist Wrote: Insofar as slavery helped build the wealth of the nation and insofar as it did so at great costs to the enslaved people and their descendants, I think we owe it to them to at least maintain a society with true upward mobility and opportunity. Personally, in recognition of the fact that we don't have that, I would be in support of efforts to give the descendants of slaves a leg up at least in regards to access to college and financial support as needed to make use of it.
I don't have a problem with that specifically. I just don't see how that can be offered without the segregation implied by the requirements to qualify for them. Especially since both, the original perpetrators and victims are long since gone. We should be trying to move forward. Innocent people repaying relatives of victims seems to be a wasted effort..
If your very wealthy parents had been robbed and killed so that you had to be raised a ward of the court and then later it was learned that the progeny of the killers were living large on your parents wealth, would you consider your lost wealth a lost cause and the beneficiaries of your parents wealth blameless?
So long as being born into wealth in this country is what determines your prospects -and not your talents, intelligence or effort- how can you say that those trapped in the economy's basement should suck it up and just move forward? That kind of social contract is untenable.
