bbauska
I said in my initial comment 3 items of concern that are showing the bias of the author
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Bias?
He has written an essay that reaches this conclusion:
America is a nation with debts that no honest man can pay. It is too much to ask that these debts simply be forgiven. But perhaps the strange path of the eclipse suggests a need for reorganization. We have figured out, more or less, how to count every person. We have not yet found a political system in which every person counts equally
How would the three points you make change his conclusion?
Lincoln and the Republican party of the 18-40s to 18-60s were the political party that lead political battles fought to end slavery within Washington and across the country . And yet Lincoln nor many republicans actually believed in racial equality. Lincolns emancipation act did not make black equal citizens. In fact the though the 13th amendment formally abolished slavery throughout the United States, factors such as Black Codes, white supremacist violence, and selective enforcement of statutes continued to subject some black Americans to involuntary labor, particularly in the South
Byrd's history of opposition to racial equality would buttress his argument, okay. But so would Byrd's evolution on the subject, as it would demonstrate that the process has not been completed even if some like Byrd had become converts...
And yet, Robert Byrd evolved—he changed for the good. He apologized for his intolerant past and declared that he had been wrong. Although he voted against Justice Marshall for the Supreme Court seat, years later he also voted with 45 other Democrats against the candidacy of conservative Clarence Thomas. Byrd did not like Thomas’s assertion that he was the victim of a “high-tech lynching of uppity blacks,” and found the introduction of race into the Senate proceedings offensive. Most of all, he believed Anita Hill’s allegations against Thomas. Hindsight is 20-20 for those who were misguided enough to support Clarence Thomas, but looking back nearly 20 years, the senator had a very good point.
Sen. Byrd displayed a mix of conservative and liberal points of view in his later years. Remarkably, though, his politics resonated with the African-American community and came out on the right side of issues that are of concern to black voters. Byrd enjoyed a perfect 100 percent rating from the NAACP. He proposed $10 million to fund a Martin Luther King National Memorial in Washington, DC. The senator received a 67 percent rating from the American Civil Liberties Union, and a 65 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters on environmental issues. He forcefully and eloquently voiced his opposition to the war in Iraq under President George W. Bush, and voted against the confirmation of Obama’s controversial treasury secretary Timothy Geithner.
http://thegrio.com/2010/06/28/the-evolu ... -politics/Do you think the essays conclusion is wrong?
bbauska
Would you say that the term racial equality would mean treating every person equally, and not giving special treatment according to race?
You mean that regardless of race a person has the right to equal treatment under law?
Sure.
Would you agree that someone who has been denied this right, should over time, be compensated for any systemic denial of their rights? If someone (or some class of people) has suffered economically, through systemic denial of their right to equal treatment, how shall their losses be recompensed?
In some cases the notion that discrimination that destroyed equal opportunity should be in a small way be compensated through affirmative action which provided preferred access to some . Where for example white veterans were gifted the GI bill and its benefits, black veterans were not.... Should they or their descendants not be allowed to be compensated for this systemic discrimination?