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danasider on 18 July 2013
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spurgeonryan said:
danasider said:
Even though it would be fair and ideal, in the real world life isn't fair. What would it take to make amends with these broken people? In order to repair what America destroyed, how much is enough? Just look at the African Americans, reparations didn't change their trajectory much because throwing money or land does very little against several generations of suppression and hate.

It's sad, but this country, especially in the current global economy which its state affects so easily, can't afford to do what's right with the Native Americans. I'm neither racist nor apathetic to either Native Americans or African Americans, but I am a realist and don't see our country even pondering something like this when we're scratching ourselves out of a seemingly bottomless ditch of debt.


We give the poor and minorities plenty of help. We go above and beyond to help them. No matter how much we are in debt.


Yes, I know this and I am in no way disagreeing with the idea that Civil and Human rights matter.  I think it's great that the US tries to make up for generations of redtaping and other institutional suppression that has kept down minorities and is one of the reasons this country is so great.  I, myself, am 100% Puerto Rican, a minority once part of the lower class who has been fortunate enough to have a family (immediate only because the rest of my family is inner city, very uneducated, and very poor) that moved up to the middle class.  I don't want my prior post to mislead anyone into thinking I am some right winged nut who doesn't believe in helping others and only looks at the bottom line, because I know what struggle is.

I'm just saying that despite what we've done so far as a country (not enough of course) like allowing Native Americans to go to (I'm guessing public) universities for free, setting them up with casinos and giving them reservations, the people suffer because we uprooted them from their lands.  I don't think the damage is just one of material value but of an identity as a people (in terms of individual tribes because these native peoples are so varied that it'd be ignorant to lump them up into one identity).  I took an english course about Native American literature taught by Ron Welburn, a Native American professor and author, and to this day, many of these peoples, the newer generations as well as those lost to history, saw the land as a part of them and not something that anyone "owned".  This almost religious idea of the land being their extension makes me think that no amount of money would fix the problem because the problem isn't simply materialistic.

What we've done cannot be undone and I don't see anything short of giving them back America as a way to even the score.  Obviously this is impossible, but what amount of money could the government give these peoples to make things right?  Not enough, in my opinion and any amount even close to what they deserve would bankrupt this country even further into oblivion.