In my opinion, reparations are due to all who suffered material/financial/bodily autonomy denials or losses under white male domination in the United States.
Here is my take on the matter.
The history of white male domination in the United States continues to this day; it is not something that happened in the distant past exclusively to enslaved individuals, as you may have been led to believe.
PRECEDENT
Just as individuals of Japanese American ancestry received reparations (pale and puny as it was, given all the families incarcerated and harmed and the indignities they suffered during WW II), Black and Brown people, Native American Indians, Chinese, and all women are owed reparations for the many ways in which we have been dominated by white males during our entire history.
The Equal Rights Amendment has never passed. White women still get 22% less when working in jobs which both genders fill. Women of color receive even less than that. This, despite the reality that women live years longer on average than men, and need the income to establish and grow retirement accounts. (If I had 22% more in my retirement account than I have right now, I’d be sitting pretty. As it is, I will probably outlive my money and end up needing to accept welfare unless I move out of the country, something I’m unfortunately having to consider).
Women were kept from political power in most of the United States until 1920, when they got the right to vote throughout the country. They couldn’t even get a credit card under their own names until the 1974.
Marital rape was legal until the 1993.
Women could get fired for getting pregnant until 1978.
Many women couldn’t serve on juries until 1979. (Utah women have been able to serve on juries since 1879.)
Unmarried women in some states couldn’t get (or be prescribed) the birth control pill until 1972.
Need proof? Here you go! https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/28/fact-check-9-things-women-couldnt-do-1971-mostly-right/3677101001/
White male domination is bad news for everyone except white males.
No wonder so many of them stormed the Capitol on January 6th in a desperate attempt to keep their Fuhrer — Donald Drumpf — from losing his spot in the catbird’s seat.
We can’t go backward any more. The Supreme Court needs to be expanded to make it less Puritan/right wing ideology-wise. Women’s reproductive/bodily autonomy rights have already been put in serious jeopardy again. They don’t plan to stop there.
Every American deserves EQUAL RIGHTS AND JUSTICE UNDER THE LAW. A great many ludicrously wealthy and politically influential white males disagree. Fortunately, there are a lot more of us than there are of them. We need to vote en masse (BLUE/DEM) up and down the ballot this year so we can codify equal rights across the board. Any other result just keeps us under their autocratic male white supremacist rule.
I’m for reparations that REPAIR the many injustices imposed by white male supremacists, in the amounts owed to which each subset of marginalized individuals falls. More for black, brown and Indigenous individuals and all women whose lives have been hampered not by male stewardship but by male minimization, misogny and contempt.
It’s long past time to present the bill for seriously overdue accounts.
