Why draw a distinction between the working class and the white working class?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

79. Most Americans don't view reparations on the same footing as current problems.

https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/06/02/reparations/

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I'm personally very disappointed in the education / job training results from whites! Cash payments seem more like a slippery slope to me. Do we later pay all women reparations for ill treatment against their gender? What about people of Irish ancestry? The Chinese who worked on railroads? What about me? One of my ancestors had his farm in PA taken away, after about 50 years of clearing and developing it (no slaves) because a lawyer noticed a paperwork oversight with the county to essentially steal it?

I'm pleased that most Americans believe that slaves should have received reparations after the Civil War. That might sound like a "cop out" to some people, but it was also more cut-and-dry and practical back then.

Just like it would make more sense to pay reparations for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed by the USA for a totally senseless war NOW rather than in 150 years when it's unclear which Iraqis were directly affected by it. (I'm sure that most Americans wouldn't support such reparations, though... maybe not even a majority of African Americans.)

By the way, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that slavery alone (not to mention other racial issues that followed) was detrimental to many African Americans. Even if the uncompensated labor is ignored, there's also the issue that white people could accumulate property while slaves could not. Once there's a piece of paper declaring that people "own" something in this country, like land (limited supply), how are other people going to be on equal footing when they didn't even have an opportunity to acquire those legal contracts? Very few African Americans in rural areas today? It's not exactly a mystery!

The greatest wealth in this country is contract-based. It's STILL happening. Bill Gates? He didn't even create DOS! He bought it from another programmer who wrote it, thereby giving Gates a contract that declared him the "owner" of it. He then appealed to IBM who agreed to use it for their new line of PC's. Gates had a contract with them that declared he still owned the software. Once that money rolled in, he could then hire other MORE TALENTED people to work for him, and they helped him get even richer! On and on. (Gates' father was a contract lawyer.)

Anyway, reparations could also be paid to the very educated and talented people who work today to make the "owners" get rich! It's not nearly on the same level of exploitation as slavery, but it's still exploitation that most people accept as "the way it is" today... when people in about 150 years might think it's an utter outrage.