> One problem with this line of argument is that it is often advanced in bad faith by people whose actual goal is to avoid addressing the problem at all.
Why does the intent of the person making the argument matter? The argument stands on its own merits or it doesn't.
> Another problem with the "do nothing and let it work itself on its own" approach is that it goes against many conceptions of justice.
Firstly, nobody said "do nothing." There are plenty of ways to help underprivileged people that _don't_ take their skin color into account. Secondly, do you think that affirmative action does not go against many conceptions of justice?
> If you repeatedly stole money from me, most people wouldn't consider the matter settled if you got to keep what you stole and were merely prevented from stealing yet more in the future: justice requires at least some effort to repair the past damage, even though those efforts usually quite imperfect (e.g. monetary compensation for wrongful death).
OK, let's run with your example. Let's say I stole a bunch of money from you over a period of years and blew it all on drugs. I get caught, go to court, am found guilty. I have no money (or very little, certainly not enough to pay you back), and eventually the drugs catch up to me and I die. But I have a son. Would you submit that "justice" is you collecting money from my son?
That's essentially what's happening. Nobody alive in the US today owns a slave, nor were they a slave. You can spend literally forever talking in circles about the effects of history on people of present day. Yes, things like slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining had bad impacts on black communities. Do we spend forever talking about it? No. And who gets to decide when the wrong has been "righted", anyway?
What we can do is try make society like the society we want to see. Is it "perfect"? No, it will never be. But it's better than playing swing-the-social-pendulum for another 200 years.
The whole point of my original post, and what so many people miss, is how the effort to "repair past damage" _also has negative effects_. Nobody at the time thought about the fact that welfare was trapping blacks in poverty. But it did. A well-intentioned policy change at that time arguably did more harm than good.
Today, I can tell you with confidence [1] that there are lots of white people who have taken notice that medical schools, universities, government institutions, big companies, etc. are happy to lower the bar for black folks. This has two problems: the first is that it doesn't feel fair, which is going to enrage people when the whole conversation is about what's fair. The second is that high-achieving black people will be perceived as less competent by their peers.
> I would guess that a significant contributor to the problems you outlined was an unwillingness to go the full measure to address the problem
What would "full measure" be?
[1]: with over ten anecdotal experiences, because something like this is not "socially acceptable" to study