Debra Dickerson and Erroll McDonald
Hey Erroll,
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StumbleUponYou know, when they asked me for a bio to run with "The Breakfast Table," I crammed every accomplishment I could into it. I think I even mentioned that third-grade penmanship award I broke prissy little Nellie Morgan's fingers to win ("one line," my heinie). Yet, you simply identify yourself as "an editor at Pantheon." Too embarrassed to own up to being my editor at Pantheon? Or Toni Morrison's? Or Henry Louis Gates? Miles Davis? Oprah? The list of luminaries is endless--why not drop a few names, tell a few tales? Regale those of us who toil in obscurity with the doings of the great ones. Tell the world that great Salman Rushdie prank you pulled with the ayatollah costume. (This is fun. Told you I'd get you back for making me rewrite my ending.)
New York what? Trump who? This is D.C., honey, we talk members of Congress here and argue about welfare policy over non-alcoholic drinks while breastfeeding our 5-year-olds. Except, the Trump thing, I suppose, might be in the "Business" section, that pile of pages next to the "Sports" stuff. If it ain't "Style" or "National/Local" news, I ain't with it, so I'll have to take your word on that casino business. I'd have to beg to differ with you though on exactly whom it is that The Donald and The Indians are fleecing. It's not just white fools that they're parting from their money. I have some priest friends from my old neighborhood in St. Louis. Once stable and working class, now it's a wasteland. When riverboat gambling came in a few years ago, they said they could see the difference within the first month. Poor black folks by the hundreds spending their pittance gambling. They said domestic violence, child neglect, and abandonment, evictions--the whole pathological shmear went through the roof overnight. Remember black Sherrice Iverson, murdered in that casino by a white psychopath whose friend stood by and let it happen? That little 8-year-old was with her father (grandfather?). It was 4 a.m. Security had had to bring her back home on numerous occasions while he lost himself gambling. Why was a little girl in a casino at all, let alone in the wee hours? Gambling does not differentiate among fools by color.
My own mother drives four hours to cross a state line so she can buy lottery tickets. She's played for years and never wins. (Of course she doesn't! I keep telling her the odds, but she just says, "somebody's going to win." She makes me mail her Virginia lotto tickets. When I read her the winning numbers over the phone once, she broke my heart by whispering forlornly, "I've played numbers just like them." I keep telling her I'm her lottery ticket, but she somehow remains unconvinced. So y'all buy my book so I can stop my mama from gambling!) In Houston, poor black folks ride buses for six hours after work to gamble in casinos, play all night, sleep on the bus ride back, then go straight to work. They take 'ho baths in the bathrooms at their factories and restaurants. Slate's David Plotz has written prolifically on this subject.
I'll get to Dubya in a minute (what a scaredy-cat!). Didja see the follow-up on the old guy who fell through the rotted floor of his privy in rural Ivanhoe, Va? On Aug. 12, 75-year-old Coolidge Winesett fell through his privy floor five feet and spent three days amid snakes and other critters before his mail man got worried. It turns out his 90-year-old house was so dilapidated, a state agency had been for years trying to get him to let it build him a new house with modern plumbing. Now, the Post reports, "he's agreed he needs more modern facilities." Sometimes, it's fun to be a writer. Imagine the giggling in the newsroom over that line.
I've got The Final Call, Code, and Ebony all lined up in front of me. What are you reading, oh swami editor of mine?
Editorially yours,
Deb
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Reader Comments from The Fray:
Indian gaming may seem like a form of reparations in our tort-minded culture, but this is a false analogy. Indians are permitted to operate casinos because they have sovereignty over their reservations by treaties signed in the preceding centuries. When the federal courts ruled that states could not bar tribes from running casinos, states negotiated agreements with them regulating their operation (restricting alcohol, for example). Indian gaming, fishing rights, and sales tax exemptions are not gifts of guilty white liberals. They are an acknowledgement of legal obligations from another era.
--Andrew W.Cohen
(To reply, click here.)
I believe the best reparations would be putting forth the effort to treat Black Americans and Indians with the respect and equality human beings deserve. What good would money and property do, when white folks can still treat Black Americans and Indians as less than human, therefore less than equal? What would I, a Black American, rather have: 40 acres and a mule, or to be treated and given as much respect and equality is my white brother and sisters? Forget the money and the property, give me my equality and my respect. That is the best reparation any oppressed people can ask for.
--philiagoddess
(To reply, click here.)
The purpose of reparations is justice. The purpose of group reparations (vs. individual) is approximate justice. So it is necessary to decide how approximate we wish our justice to be. I believe that reparations for the dead (eg slaves) paid to their remote descendants is too crude. However, after slavery there was still a long-term injustice towards blacks: Jim Crow. This depressed the wages of Afro-Americans. Some of these victims are still alive. Since they would be mostly retired now, I suggest compensation through the Social Security system. This could be done in many ways, for example by adjusting the probability distribution of wages of blacks to mirror that of whites (on a year-by-year basis, up to some cutoff date), and then using that adjustment to adjust individual wage histories, and so finally increase Social Security payments.
--Bob Cox
(To reply, click here.)
We do owe the black people. The whole country does, because we took their share of work for building this country up, for free, and on top we dragged them through the hell of slavery, and broken families, and constant humiliation. And even now 140 years after the Civil War, the prejudice continues. If we inherited all the good stuff from our predecessors in this country, we also inherited their debts. And the debt to the black people still needs to be paid.
--Amyntas
(To reply, click here.)
Several questions:
1)If we're starting with home-grown folks, should we be planning to collect reparations from black slave owners' descendants?
2) Would you prefer African-Americans have quasi-sovereign nations to live on like Native Americans tribes, and thus be immune (to a large extent) from the state and federal government?
3) Did Bill Clinton oppose the war before or after he signed up for ROTC, and then dropped out once he realized he might get drafted?
4) Was Gore struggling along as a pauper while Bush was living high with his family's money?
--MRB
(To reply, click here.)
Notes from the Fray Editor: Debra Dickerson does a splendid job of explaining The Fray. (In fact, our job--thanks Debra.) This is the post she mentions about the National Review. Views on reparations can be found all over The Fray, and we picked out some of what we hope she will think the more intelligent and thoughtful ones, above. And WillV liked Ms Dickerson's description of the shooting--Tuesday-- so much he thought she should be be hired by Slate to write a cops and crime column.