2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Ta-Nehisi Coates: Why Precisely Is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations? [View all]MellowDem
(5,018 posts)They're about as ham-fistedly simple of a way to handle a problem as possible. If you want to solve widespread racial inequalities in society, reparations wouldn't do it. Once paid out, they would hinder any efforts to address structural problems of racial inequality and deeply divide everyone. Many people's ancestors were oppressed and were oppressors, so where would anyone draw the line? It's not practical, and if done, would end up for sure taking money from people who were also oppressed and in some cases give it to present day oppressors. Such is any policy based on "ancestral guilt", a policy so establishment that none other than the genocidal God of the Bible came up with it.
Something being unpopular doesn't make it "radical". Sanders ideas are not radical in most of the developed world. Assuming Sanders must take all unpopular positions to be consistent is just... stupid.