by The wave of mobilisation against racism and racial discrimination poses a crucial question: that of reparations for a past history involving slavery and colonisation. This is an issue which has still not been fully confronted. No matter how complex the question may be, it cannot be eluded for ever, either in the United States or in Europe.... No amount of monetary compensation in present day individuals is sufficient for system racism and systemic sexism. Not that some individual compensation is not in order, but it alone cannot undue the long history of wrongs that has resulted in the unequal status of ethnicities and women.This is a systemic problem involving culture, tradition, and institutions, law in particular. But even changing laws is insufficient if courts do not stand behind
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The wave of mobilisation against racism and racial discrimination poses a crucial question: that of reparations for a past history involving slavery and colonisation. This is an issue which has still not been fully confronted. No matter how complex the question may be, it cannot be eluded for ever, either in the United States or in Europe....No amount of monetary compensation in present day individuals is sufficient for system racism and systemic sexism. Not that some individual compensation is not in order, but it alone cannot undue the long history of wrongs that has resulted in the unequal status of ethnicities and women.
This is a systemic problem involving culture, tradition, and institutions, law in particular. But even changing laws is insufficient if courts do not stand behind the intent of the law.
We should not fool ourselves by thinking that superficial "remedies" are sufficient when they are actually superficial. This is a huge and highly complex issue that may seen so intractable as to call for implementing symbolic "solutions" and calling it done, while the same conditions remain in place.
It is a "deep" problem because it is much more subjective than objective, although it manifests in the physical world as inequality, discrimination and the like that are quite visible in terms of social (status, access), political (power, influence) and economic (income, wealth) asymmetries.
This makes it a historical and generational problem that extends from attitudes of individuals to the prevailing cultural world view. The only way to justly compensate for this longstanding injustice is implement a plan to address it, realizing that the plan is only the beginning of action.
This is going to be expensive monetarily to the degree that only a currency issuer can handle it. It is also going to be costly in terms of real resources allocated. For example, universal health care requires building out the health care system, including training personnel, to accommodate the increased number of people in the system, with all having the level of treatment. Same with education that is designed to result in equal opportunity for all. That is, if the objective is a democracy as governance of, by and for the people rather than the few that are privileged by the system to varying degrees based on status, power, and wealth.
This is not only a national problem, it is an international one owing to the history of imperialism and colonialism that not yet over. The problems cannot be addressed adequately without addressing this, too.
Le Monde (FR) — Le Blog de Thomas Piketty
Confronting racism, repairing history