There needs to be better distribution of wealth and not the middle class but the Uber rich and corrupt Wall Street needs to pay more to distribute wealth properly. Sins of nations don’t fade in 150 years.
So just for your benefit I cut and pasted relevant portion herewith:
The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans – including the death of Daunte Wright this month – have drawn attention to racial inequality in the public consciousness and renewed debate on how to remedy America’s history of racism toward African Americans, including reparations.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told USA TODAY late Tuesday that she hoped there would be openness to have real discussions on the question and asked: “Hasn’t the last year educated us or reeducated us about injustices, the historical injustices?”
Reparations – or compensation for historical crimes and wrongdoings with the aim of remedying injustices and helping specific groups of people or populations to prosper –have mostly been experimented with in international settings.
“By passing H.R. 40, Congress can also start a movement toward the national reckoning we need to bridge racial divides. Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation – and the hope that one day, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future,” Jackson Lee said.
Dean said she believes “the study of reparations is the reasonable thing to do.”
**According to an estimate from William Darity, an economist at Duke University whose research is devoted to inequality in the context of race, and Kirsten Mullen, a historian, the cost of compensating Americans descended from slaves for the legacy of bondage and subsequent racial oppression could be up to $12 trillion. **
In the U.S., support for reparations for the federal government’s role in slavery has been both growing and met with skepticism. Though Congress for the first time formally apologized for slavery in 2008, H.R. 40 has still faced opposition.
Opponents of the bill called it divisive and argued present-day Americans should not be held responsible for the consequences of slavery, which ended by the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865.
I think such discussions are a mere preparation of what is to come. White supremacist ideology has been at the heart of the US’ psyche. Soon you’ll hear the jury’s not guilty verdict and Dereck Chauvin will get away with murder. I saw a report sometime back that predicted a black insurgency in the US within 10 years. Such insurgencies could be countered with buying out black leaders and smoking out the regular black folks who try to put up a fight. A discussion of that sort is supposed to provide a framework for that. But there is another problem now. According to a Harvard research COVID-19 has cost around $16 trillion US dollars to the economy and the price tag is only going to go up if the pandemic could not be controlled by Fall 2021. So when I combine all that, it looks like there will be a lot more arrows and very few olives from the eagle.
I honestly wasn’t expecting the outcome, but I also do believe that anything other than a conviction would’ve resulted in mass civil unrest and the lawmakers knew that.
Also, law enforcement needs to ramp up recruitment of people from other ethnicities to reduce the ethnic disparity, I was listening to Cenk Uygur's podcast a while back, and something like 70% of the police force is white, so why does racially motivated police brutality even come as a surprise to anyone?
Black and hispanic cops also behave terribly so it is the police culture that needs to be fixed like mental health exams should be done right away when you are either admitted to the academy or hired in the police force. I guess that things aren't relatively that bad so military rejects with PTSD issues are cycled through the police forces in the US.
You are right that police culture needs to be fixed. But, what promotes this toxic culture is protection from accountability due to laws like qualified immunity and powerful police unions that have local political leaders in their pockets.
My suggestion is a radical overhaul of the system. Municipalities should disband their police forces and hire private security agencies to provide services. These private agencies should have their own liability insurance, no special immunity from the law and their contract can be terminated if their performance is substandard.
