Re: Re: reparations

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> <JKSCHW@xxxxxxx> 02/11/00 10:16PM >>>
In a message dated 2/11/00 4:20:39 PM Eastern Standard Time,
CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

<< Defining a Black person would be something like whether they have held
themselves out as Black or been officially considered Black in the various
places where race has been required to be chosen on forms and the like. If a
person has identified as Black , then they have been Black , for purposes of
compensation for racism, which is basically how the slavery has impacted
people today ( that is through the impact of racism). >>

Pardon me for having the creeps, but I not so long ago read Ingo Mueller's
account of the Nazi jurists struggled with the definition of who is a Jew,
the results of which they codified in the Nuremberg laws. I don't think we
ought to have a legal definition of who is Black beyond the rough-and-ready
criteria we now have in place for limited purposes. Self identification
obviously wouldn't do, btw, if you were to be handing out large chunks of
change. Anyway, all this is academic in bad sense.

&&&&&&&&&&


CB: Of course, it would be evidence of self-identification as Black before the distribution of money became a likely occurrence. So it obviously would do. A substantially accurate determination could be made  of which people  have identified as Black when it was a social , economic and political disadvantage, and at a time without the likely prospect of reparations.

Your creepiness on definition of Black is confused. Black Americans had their "Nurembourg" legal determination long before the Nurembourg laws; and have suffered the disadvantages of it for many decades.  It has been in effect for a long time, with all the disadvantages and horrors this has meant for the lives of many Black people who were enslaved and discriminated on the basis of that definition. All we would be doing now would be using that same definition to mete out reparations for the wrongs that were committed based on the definition. It would be rather a sad irony if at this late date , some patronizing "quesiness" about this definition of "Black" were used to avoid reparations for the crimes based on it, when most of the crimes based on the definition have already been committed.

Keep your creeps off my reparations.

CB