Reparations for political correctness?

Question

Bearing in mind that all things seem to go in cycles, are we on the verge of an era where universities, governments and corporations must begin to pay reparations to individuals and groups who claim harm from "political correctness"?

Answer 1

It seems the cycle of blown-out-of-proportion social rhetoric has swung much farther than usual into outlandishness, because:

Political correctness is a social effort to stop rudeness and hostility - and universities and workplaces enforce it much the same way they do about any behavioural issues. Are they going to get sued for their past rigidness in dress-codes? NO - quit being a chump.

As for reparations - you have another phantom issue as no reparations for injuries toward historical group injuries have been paid anywhere, so why would they suddenly get paid for behavioural issues?

Answer 2

First, there is not a single former slave alive today. If there were they would certainly be due just compensation for their labor, but the ancestors of atrocities do not deserve compensation in any way. As a precedent for this point of view, from the last century, let us look at how the compensation of slave labor during the holocaust of World War II has been handled. The thousands of people that survived that inequity are being compensated by both the government of Germany and by the companies that gained from their forced labor, and rightfully so. But their children have no inherited right to collect for the uncompensated labor of their parents. Certainly the grandchildren and great grandchildren of American slaves never experienced the appalling life of slavery, and therefore, like the children of Jews and others enslaved in Germany 50 years ago, they have no claim for themselves.

Secondly, blacks do not have a monopoly on living in poverty in this country. According to the latest census data approximately 30 percent of blacks and whites live in poverty. Hispanics unfortunately have an even higher percentage living below the poverty line. All this current day poverty can not be attributed to a disgusting institution that was ended 150 years ago. It can however be attributed to present day governmental policy. There should be a monumental effort made by the government, at all levels, to get all Americans out of poverty, but a policy centered on only one race is just as wrong as slavery was.

Thirdly, slavery could not have existed without the complicity of black Africans who supplied most of the unfortunate humans that were sold into this dreadful condition. It was not just whites that kept this retched institution going for over 200 years. In addition, there were over 200,000 white Americans that paid the ultimate retribution during the Civil War, when they gave their lives to end slavery. The reparation debt owed to slaves was paid a long time ago when the North won the Civil War and freed them.