All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

[caramida]

[n.b. This is a slight re-write of a response from comments in a prior journal entry.]
What are we supposed to do? How can we possibly fix America's race problem? Perhaps trying to meddle with a bad situation could lead to unintended consequences that would spell ruin for the nation. How can it be moral to take something from someone who earned it, and give it to someone who didn't? Wouldn't it be best to just be good to people individually? We can't be responsible for the horrible actions of bigots and detestable people? They're valid questions.

I'm not certain what should be done. I've not yet studied the problem enough to have a strong opinion, but here are some ideas. You can feel free to shoot them down, but I'd prefer to challenge you to suggest something that you think might work better.

• Perhaps a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a la South Africa. I don't know if it would help to open up the subject of race in America to wide examination, but the standard White reaction of pretending the problem is only a problem when African-Americans and others bring it up fails as a solution. To paraphrase vito_excalibur, as long as persons of color keep quiet about race, there is no race problem...for whites.
• I have no problem opening a discussion about reparations. I was raised in an almost exclusively white county, by northern Europeans of peasant stock who all came to the US after 1870. Nobody in my direct line lived in the South before Brown v Board and the Civil Rights era, but I recognize that I am privileged as a result of my birth as a white male in California. If we as a society claim to preserve life, liberty and property, then we as a society might justly ought to see compensation justly due when someone is improperly deprived of one or more of those. The country has failed to uphold the Constitution, a contract made by the people of the United States with the people of the United States. When the government unjustly mistreated--at Manzanar, for example--American citizens of Japanese descent, it (eventually) admitted its liability, and sought to pay reparations. Those reparations were paid with the taxes of all Americans (including those who came to the US after 1945). If we didn't exempt my high-school Civics teacher from paying his taxes toward reparations (who arrived from Hungary in 1951), why should it exempt me from paying reparations to African-Americans (or their issue) whose lives, liberty and property were unjustly deprived.
  
  Failing that, who should pay? Well, I suppose we might also look at those 'people' still extant who directly profited from slavery, for example. If a corporation is a person, and a person must be responsible for actions he/she takes, or actions taken under the authority of that person, then we perhaps might undertake a strict accounting of Chase, or Bank of America, who bought, sold, lent money for, and insured slaves.

Hell, I don't know. But I do know that what has happened, and is happening today is criminal. When we shrug our shoulders and say, "Sucks to be them," and not do anything about it, we're accessories after the fact.

And I don't mean such to say that you aren't doing anything. I recognize that treating people individually with respect is far from nothing. Individual action is important. Still, this as with so many other things, is bigger than any person can do singly. Isn't that what we have government for? I can't singly protect my family from the depredations of North Korea1, but I pay my taxes so that my government can use my resources and others together to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

1 Ok, not the best example.