If you don't know what happened in Tulsa and Rosewood, you might want to do a search on those names with the added words "black history" before watching this video. ... At some point you gotta pay the piper and do the right thing, as there's more interest to pay the longer you wait.
I reject several major points of the woman's reasoning. I can't cover all of them, hence I'll limit my response to two:
1. The entire diatribe is predicated on the notion that each race, collectively, is somehow one unified "player" in a game, and that the fortunes, responsibilities, and faults of every citizen are determined by their membership in their "player". This idea is not only morally untenable, it's textbook racism.
I did no wrong to the citizens of Tulsa and Rosewood; I don't inherit the guilt of any white perpetrators who did because I happen to share their skin colour. My ancestors did no wrong to the citizens of Tulsa and Rosewood either, but even if they had, I don't inherit the guilt of their sins. The white race is not my "player". I signed no contracts. I reap no dues or benefits except those afforded to every citizen. I can be (and have been at various times) indebted, financially insecure, demonized, and marginalized. I fear breaking the law. I have no great inheritance, no title, no political ties, no special legal immunity or privileges. If "my race" has played for 400 turns, where are my houses and hotels? Where are my properties? Where is my stack of cash?
And suppose I did inherit these things. If a black man burns down one of my hotels, does the black "player" now owe the white "player" one hotel? What about black Americans whose statistics differ significantly from inner-city averages, such as Nigerians? Are they a part of player black or do they get their own game piece because they're generally as wealthy as player white? What about the impoverished white? Are they part of player white or do they get their own game piece?
It's madness. These "players" are a fiction. If you were arguing reparations on the basis of pure communist redistribution (which is class-based, not race-based, but I digress), you'd at least have a prima facie case, but reparations as "paying the piper" because I inherit the sins of white-skinned men long dead? Maybe we should start confiscating Japanese citizens' property and giving it to Chinese citizens as "paying the piper" for the Japanese occupation of China 80 years ago. Let's make "Japanese" and "Chinese" tokens on our game board, and according to your rules, player Japanese owes player Chinese for player Chinese's ancestors' ill-gotten hotels.
If you can't see how this attitude is racist, illogical, immoral, and completely antithetical to social harmony, I urge you to think critically about what it implies about race, individuality, and citizenship. Apply the same reason to literally any other situation and it should become clear that races as players in a game has absolutely no legitimacy as an argument.
2. Money changing hands does
not "fix historical wrongs".
In the case of individual A causing a tort to individual B, when this tort is recognized under the law, when a monetary value can be assigned to the tort,
then it is just that individual A be compelled by the courts to repay individual B to make him whole, after which the debt is expunged.
In the case of reparations: i) "individual A" doesn't exist; a race of billions of people is not a "player"; ii) "individual B" doesn't exist for the very same reason; iii) no law has been broken by nonexistent individual A; iv) there is no objective or defensible way to determine the value of the tort; v) a windfall of money changing hands would fix nothing and almost certainly destroy more black lives than it assists (read up on what happens to lottery winners if you doubt this); and vi) only a fool would believe that player white paying player black money would expunge player white's "debt" to player black.
In other words, even if the idea of racial "players" wasn't morally repugant (which it of course
is), reparations as a bastardization of tort law is even less defensible. It's incompatible with the fundamental purpose of tort law. It's as wrongheaded as a New Yorker driving down to a random Mississippi home, breaking in and stealing $10,000 in jewelry, then justifying himself by claiming the Mississippian's distant ancestors probably fought for the Confederacy, the New Yorker's ancestors probably fought for the Republic, and as he figures it, the man he robbed owes him $50,000 for loss of inheritance. The only difference is that in the case of reparations it's the state perpetrating the robbery and doing it at millions of times the scale.
The fact that injustice exists and that life isn't fair isn't an excuse for this kind of madness.
