I added her preceding sentence your Gertie's quote, because it is the major premise of her argument. That premise, taken for granted by many as the explanation for the differentials disfavoring US blacks in incomes, net worth, educational attainment, crime rates, et al, is not well-supported by evidence, or even very well researched. Other explanations, genetic, environmental, cultural --- are better researched and more plausible (and all controversial, of course).Something_Different wrote: ↑June 27th, 2020, 7:41 pmI think we're 100% agreed on this point. The American government (meaning the people who are currently in the American government, and indirectly, the people who chose to vote for them) can consider such questions and in fact have a moral obligation to do so.Gertie wrote: ↑June 27th, 2020, 3:45 am But it is also true that the effects of their actions still impact people today. The American government can decide if it now feels a collective moral duty to try to address this via compensatory laws, grants, policies, affirmative action, tax breaks or whatever, in effect mitigating those inter-generational effects with specific actions. Or not.
I take the gist of what you're saying there to be that we have moral obligations to mitigate others' hardships, regardless of the causes of those hardships. And I'd agree with that, with qualifications. But that obligation does not devolve upon us from the sins of persons who occupied this territory 150 years ago.