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The Reparations Bandwagon
The question of reparations for racial slavery is one of the nation's most substantive issues. It is also one
of the most disparaged.
The national movement to gain reparations for the descendents of enslaved Africans was a fast-rolling bandwagon until slowed
by events of 9/11. Well, it’s accelerating again.
In truth, it’s been picking up momentum since Hurricane Katrina blew the cover off this nation’s well-camouflaged
race/class divide. The distress revealed in that storm’s wake moved even President George Bush to urge redress of poverty’s
racial disparities. He quickly moved past that urge, but the national conversation continues.
As I see it, the question of reparations for racial slavery and Jim Crow apartheid is one of the nation’s most substantive
issues. It’s also one of the most disparaged.
In fact, anything relating to slavery seems to repel white Americans. Whenever someone floats the idea to issue a governmental
apology for abetting racial slavery, the notion is quickly condemned. The last official to suggest such a public apology
was former Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), who proposed a bill for an official apology in 1998 and again in 2000. Hall was flooded
with angry mail and the legislation languished.
Americans must lose this aversion if we want to effectively confront the nation’s widening racial disparities. Slavery’s
legacy is the primary instigator of those disparities —though its role is hidden to many Americans.
The reparations model provides a conceptual framework to help clarify the crippling affects of that legacy by taking careful
account of the structural and intergenerational dimensions of racial advantage and disadvantage. This approach is not concerned
with inducing guilt or moral suasion; it defines slavery in terms of unjust enrichment and racially biased distribution of
resources.
Many kinds of capital were systematically diverted from blacks to whites through racial slavery and discrimination for
more than 15 generations. This produced a wide racial gap in income and wealth distribution, disparities that were then compounded
through many generations.
A comprehensive attempt to redress slavery’s damage resonates with global efforts to compensate history’s victims.
Most modern nations now realize that the vagaries of history sometimes produce victims with real injuries: There have been
Chilean reparations to the indigenous Mapuche people, Canadian reparations to indigenous Inuits, U.S. reparations to Japanese-American
survivors and various Native nations, German reparations to Israel, and more.
The issue is gaining more advocates. Reparations conventions and forums are occurring across the nation.
A group of heavyweight attorneys (including Harvard’s Charles Ogletree and the law firm of the late Johnnie Cochran),
formed in 2002 to advocate reparations issues on the judicial front. Several lawsuits are pending and others are anticipated
against insurers, railroad corporations and banks seeking reparations for the profits of slavery.
City councils across the country have passed pro-reparations resolutions, including Chicago; Cleveland; Detroit; Washington,
D.C.; Baltimore; Los Angeles and Oakland.
Most of these resolutions urge support for a bill annually introduced by Michigan congressman John Conyers that seeks merely
to establish a commission to examine slavery’s consequences and recommend remedies.
At least 12 municipalities (including Chicago, which was the first) have passed slavery era disclosure laws, which require
businesses to report on any historical connections to the slave trade. Several mainstream institutions, churches and a number
of prominent white Americans also have become reparations advocates. In May 2001, for example, the Philadelphia Inquirer published
a two-part editorial supporting reparations.
“Slavery and the century of government-sanctioned discrimination that followed were national policies that denied
fundamental rights—justice, equality, freedom—to African-Americans. It will take a national effort to answer for
that,” the paper argued. It was the first time a major publication had come to such a conclusion.
And just last June, Ken Woodley, the winner of the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2006 George Mason Award,
urged American journalists to support a national apology for slavery and reparations during his acceptance speech.Woodley,
the crusading editor of Virginia’s Farmville Herald, told the audience that the nation needs “a domestic Marshall
Plan” providing blacks with education, healthcare and economic development as a form of reparations.
Most recently, a coalition of student groups, reparations groups, social justice advocates and some elected officials (dubbed
the “corporate restitutions movement”) launched a student loan boycott against banks complicit in slavery, including
JP Morgan Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank America, FleetBoston Financial Corp., Bank One and Wachovia.
The bandwagon rolls on.
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times, where he has worked since 1983, and an
op-ed columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He is currently a Crime and Communities Media Fellow of the Open Society Institute,
examining the impact of ex-inmates and gang leaders in leadership positions in the black community. More information about Salim Muwakkil
Legal Arguments in Support
of Reparations
"Many Billions Gone:
Is It Time to Reconsider the Case
for Black Reparations?" (excerpt)
by Robert Westley
Associate Professor, Tulane University Law School
Compensation
to Blacks for the injustices suffered by them must first and foremost be monetary. It must be sufficient to indicate that
the United States truly wishes to make Blacks whole for the losses they have endured. Sufficient, in other words, to reflect
not only the extent of unjust Black suffering, but also the need for Black economic independence from societal discrimination.
No less than with the freedmen, freedom for Black people today means economic freedom and security. A basis for that freedom
and security can be assured through group reparations in the form of monetary compensation, along with free provision of goods
and services to Black communities across the nation. The guiding principle of reparations must be self-determination in every
sphere of life in which Blacks are currently dependent.
To this end, a private trust should be established for the
benefit of all Black Americans. The trust should be administered by trustees popularly elected by the intended beneficiaries
of the trust. The trust should be financed by funds drawn annually from the general revenue of the United States for a period
not to exceed ten years. The trust funds should be expendable on any project or pursuit aimed at the educational and economic
empowerment of the trust beneficiaries to be determined on the basis of need. Any trust beneficiary should have the right
to submit proposals to the trustees for the expenditure of trust funds.
The above is only a suggestion about how to
use group reparations for the benefit of Blacks as a whole. In the end, determining a method by which all Black people can
participate in their own empowerment will require a much more refined instrument than it would be appropriate for me to attempt
to describe here. My own beliefs about what institutions Black people need most certainly will not reflect the views of all
Black people, just as my belief that individual compensation is not the best way to proceed probably does not place me in
the majority. Everybody who could just get a check has many reasons to believe that it would be best to get a check. On this
point, I must subscribe to the wisdom that holds, if you give a man a loaf, you feed him for a day. It is for those Blacks
who survive on a "breadconcern level" that the demand for reparations assumes its greatest importance.
Citation:
Westley, Robert. "Many Billions Gone: Is It Time to Reconsider the Case for Black Reparations?". Boston College Law Review,
December 1998, Volume XL, Number 1.
"If the Shoe Fits, Wear It:
An Analysis of Reparations
to African Americans" (excerpt)
by Vincene Verdun
Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College
of Law
This almost constant plea for reparations over the past one hundred and thirty years appears mysterious
and even irrational from the perspective of many Americans. The perception among many that reparations are threatening or
ineffective is revealed in a number of contradictory arguments, for example: 1) reparations are unlikely ever to be awarded,
after all, no relief has been given for the past one hundred and thirty years; 2) reparations are undeserved by African Americans
since all ex-slaves have been dead for at least a generation; 3) white Americans living today have not injured African Americans
and should not be required to pay for the sins of their slavemaster forbearers; 4) it is impossible to determine who should
get what and how much; and 5) African Americans must become self-reliant and determine their own fate and stop waiting for
relief from external sources. Opponents of reparations to African Americans are so overwhelmingly entrenched in the rightness
of their position that they conceptualize the cry for reparations as frivolous, meritless, and divisive.
However, the
reparations movement cannot be easily dismissed or discredited, in part because so many of its supporters are part of the
American mainstream. For the same reason, the movement cannot be classified as radical or extremist. A movement that has been
sustained through several generations and that has won the support of knowledgeable and reputable people throughout history,
including members of Congress, business people, professionals, academicians, attorneys, educators, and other hard working
people cannot be dismissed as frivolous. Proponents of reparations pursue their cause with fervor equivalent to that of its
opponents and stand firm in their assertion that the reparations given to Jews by Germany, and to Native Americans and Japanese
Americans by the United States, set precedents for the payment of reparations to African Americans. The moral basis for reparations
is simply stated: 1) slaves were not paid for their labor for more than two hundred and sixty-five years, thereby depriving
the descendants of slaves of their inheritance; the descendants of the slavemasters inherited the benefit derived from slave
labor, which properly belonged to the descendants of slaves; 2) the United States Government promised ex-slaves forty acres
and a mule and did not make good on that promise; and 3) systematic and government-sanctioned economic and racial oppression
since the abolition of slavery impeded and interfered with the self-determination of African Americans and excluded them from
sharing in the growth and prosperity of the nation.
Unfortunately, the proponents and opponents of reparations maintain
diametrically opposed points of view, and both groups are deeply entrenched in the correctness of their beliefs. Reasonable
people may differ on any topic, but when two groups of people from the same society assume such polar positions on an issue,
the foundation of such opposition is usually traceable to some basic normative difference. For example, the underlying normative
difference in the abortion debate between pro-choice and pro-life advocates is the belief by pro-life advocates that abortion
is sinful or wrong - a belief that is usually grounded in religious or biblical principles so deeply imbedded in the perception
of the believer that there is no room for compromise. Pro-choice advocates, who do not perceive abortion as a sin or wrong
and who do not share the beliefs of the pro-life advocates, stand firm in their protection of the rights of individuals to
make their own decisions.
Likewise, opponents and proponents of reparations approach the issue of reparations from
two distinct perspectives that are based on differences in the beliefs imbedded in the perception of each group. Opponents
of reparations, who are usually white, frequently approach the issue of reparations from the dominant perspective - a system
of values and perceptions common to the group that exercises economic, political, and ideological control over society. Proponents
of reparations, most often African Americans, evaluate reparations on the basis of a consciousness - the African-American
consciousness - spawned from generations of survival as an oppressed people in a hostile environment and rooted in the heritage
of the African culture, which survived the trip across the Atlantic Ocean and the institution of slavery. The differences
in these two value systems and the perspectives they engender form the foundation for the polarity between opponents and proponents
of reparations.
Citation: Verdun, Vincene. "If the Shoe Fits, Wear It: An Analysis of Reparations to African
Americans". Tulane Law Review, February 1993, Volume 67, Number 3, p. 607-610.
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