Would you support a white privilege tax?

[parochial boy]

One of the craziest things is that when slavery was abolished in the British empire the former slaveholders were "compensated" by taxes paid essentially by the poverty stricken British working class. The descendants of those slaveholders are now disproportionately, overwhelmingly overrepresented among the biggest fortunes in the Britain today. Off the back of the exploitation of slaves and money literally given to them by the British working poor.

It may not be a "white privilege class", but should be these people now be subject to confiscatory wealth taxes on the gains that they inherited? Of course. And should this money be used in part to recompense the British tax payers - but also the plantation colonies - that made these people rich? Well I think so, yes.

Also France should definitely pay the "debt" that it carried on extorting from Haïti well into the 20th century

But all this can be achieved through simple wealth redistribution, without using the power of the state to actively codify and reify racial categories. It is a fact that there are enormous wealth disparities across racial groups, but the logical corollary of that is that policies that take from the rich to give to the poor ALSO have the potential to significantly level racial disparities. It's not a perfect tool, to be sure, but it certainly has a better track record than affirmative action, as the American experience should have made abundantly clear.

And yes, of course I support full reparations for Haïti, but international reparations are a wholly different concept from state redistribution policies, and conflating the two strikes me as obfuscatory.

That's sort of what I was hinting at overall, that the best "white privilege" tax would simply be heavy taxation and redistribution of wealth overall and to everyone rather than by making some attempt to identify and classify specific victims.

That is, in so far as, a lot of today's worst inequalities both within and between nations still trace back to how one privileged class exploited everyone - obviously very particularly the slaves themselves, but also the working classes of their own countries. Overall it is another moral case in favour of massive wealth redistribution. One among many, but one nonethless.

As for Haïti, I brought it up because an often repeated argument against reparations for slavery is that no-one living was directly affected by it. In the case of Haïti though we do have an actual nation state whose current economic situation still is directly impacted by the fact that it was robbed. The point wasn't to compare it to redistribution, but to point out the fact that actually the ongoing consequences of slavery aren't just the woke fantasies of whatever strawman the OP was making up.

[Antonio the Sixth]

One of the craziest things is that when slavery was abolished in the British empire the former slaveholders were "compensated" by taxes paid essentially by the poverty stricken British working class. The descendants of those slaveholders are now disproportionately, overwhelmingly overrepresented among the biggest fortunes in the Britain today. Off the back of the exploitation of slaves and money literally given to them by the British working poor.

It may not be a "white privilege class", but should be these people now be subject to confiscatory wealth taxes on the gains that they inherited? Of course. And should this money be used in part to recompense the British tax payers - but also the plantation colonies - that made these people rich? Well I think so, yes.

Also France should definitely pay the "debt" that it carried on extorting from Haïti well into the 20th century

But all this can be achieved through simple wealth redistribution, without using the power of the state to actively codify and reify racial categories. It is a fact that there are enormous wealth disparities across racial groups, but the logical corollary of that is that policies that take from the rich to give to the poor ALSO have the potential to significantly level racial disparities. It's not a perfect tool, to be sure, but it certainly has a better track record than affirmative action, as the American experience should have made abundantly clear.

And yes, of course I support full reparations for Haïti, but international reparations are a wholly different concept from state redistribution policies, and conflating the two strikes me as obfuscatory.

That's sort of what I was hinting at overall, that the best "white privilege" tax would simply be heavy taxation and redistribution of wealth overall and to everyone rather than by making some attempt to identify and classify specific victims.

That is, in so far as, a lot of today's worst inequalities both within and between nations still trace back to how one privileged class exploited everyone - obviously very particularly the slaves themselves, but also the working classes of their own countries. Overall it is another moral case in favour of massive wealth redistribution. One among many, but one nonethless.

Oh, okay, then I totally agree. My only point here would be that bringing race into our rhetorical case for wealth redistribution is likely to undermine it rather than strengthen it. It's a mistake US Democrats always seem to make, going "this program designed to lift up poor people will help POC communities!" and leaving it to that. The sad truth is that when a lot of White people (even especially, poorer White people who would also benefit) hear that, they tend to assume that this means it's screwing over them somehow. It's an unfortunate fact about our tendency to think in terms of insider vs outsider dynamics. So I agree with the substantive case entirely, but I just wouldn't front it in arguing for redistribution.

As for Haïti, I brought it up because an often repeated argument against reparations for slavery is that no-one living was directly affected by it. In the case of Haïti though we do have an actual nation state whose current economic situation still is directly impacted by the fact that it was robbed. The point wasn't to compare it to redistribution, but to point out the fact that actually the ongoing consequences of slavery aren't just the woke fantasies of whatever strawman the OP was making up.

Oh, yeah, that's totally fair. I mean to argue that slavery doesn't continue impacting the socioeconomic organization of the world seems so ludicrous that I can't imagine seriously arguing against it, but I know these types exist unfortunately.

[parochial boy]

Oh, okay, then I totally agree. My only point here would be that bringing race into our rhetorical case for wealth redistribution is likely to undermine it rather than strengthen it. It's a mistake US Democrats always seem to make, going "this program designed to lift up poor people will help POC communities!" and leaving it to that. The sad truth is that when a lot of White people (even especially, poorer White people who would also benefit) hear that, they tend to assume that this means it's screwing over them somehow. It's an unfortunate fact about our tendency to think in terms of insider vs outsider dynamics. So I agree with the substantive case entirely, but I just wouldn't front it in arguing for redistribution.

That's fair enough - I mean that's basically what I think overall. To be honest my original post was just a slightly facetious attempt to shoehorn that point into an OP that was mostly a reflection of the right's seeming obsession with these types of culture war issues. Or in other words, mostly slightly out of frustration against the fact that a lot of right wingers seem to define their conception of the "left" and their politics solely over this sort of stuff when actually, as I think we both passionately agree, wealth redistribution and economic equality are the heart of what any left wing project should be.