Well yeah, people are allowed to decide who gets their stuff when they die. So what?
Well, I have lots of opinions on this matter, but the one most topical is this: if you have a time, 50 years ago when redlining was legal, and a time 100 years ago when murder was tolerated and even encouraged in the form of lynching, and 150 years ago when slavery was legal, that is a lot of time to build up a pretty substantial reservoir of unearned, unfair, unjustified advantage. And if you have a system that allows those ill-gotten gains to legally be transferred people living in the present even though the means used to accumulate that wealth is no longer legal… well, you’ve got a problem.
I think it is wrong to simply label everything that white people have today as ill-gotten.
Me too, which is why I so carefully tagged only those gains made via slavery, etc as ill-gotten, though they are substantial. I think this moots the rest of your questions, so I’ll leave it at that.
I’m not so sure it does.
However, how do you determine, of the stuff white people have today, what is and is not an ill gotten gain via slavery? What about those white people whom are decedents of people who came to America after slavery was ended?
I feel like you are trying to get a clear answer, and there isn’t one for a lot of this stuff. The real question is, when faced with tough questions like this, do we default to ‘leave it as is, its too damn hard to figure out’, or do we struggle to find a solution that is better? Our approach to finding an answer matters more than our answer sometimes.
I am open to Affirmative Action if that is what you mean, but I don’t think I am open to passing a law requiring all white people to give 50% of all they own to someone who is non-white. I am also open to suggestions.