Reparations for slavery

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Reparations for slavery is a proposal in the U.S. for the federal government to pay reparation, in various forms, to slave descendants for the transatlantic slave trade. There is also a newer movement to secure reparations, particularly from Western, ex-colonial powers, for Africa and African nations. In 2001, at a UN-sponsored World Conference against Racism, African nations demanded a clear apology for the slavery from the former slave-trading countries, but with no success.

Contents

1 Historical context
2 Proposals for reparations

2.1 Government payments
2.2 Private payments
2.3 Land
2.4 Social services

3 Arguments for reparations

3.1 Accumulated wealth
3.2 Symbolic healing
3.3 Precedents

4 Arguments against reparations

4.1 Relocation of injustice
4.2 Identification of victims and of levels of victimization
4.3 Comparative utility
4.4 Legal Argument Against Reparations
4.5 Reparations could cause increased racism

5 See also
6 External links

Historical context

The arguments surrounding reparations is based on the formal discussion about reparations and the actual land reparations received by African Americans which were later taken away. In, 1865 after the South was defeated in the American Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 that set aside tracts of land in the sea islands and around Charleston, South Carolina for the exclusive use of Black people who had been enslaved. Around 40,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) in Georgia and South Carolina. However, President Johnson reversed the order after Lincoln was killed and the land ownership reverted back to Whites. In 1867, Thaddeus Stevens sponsored a bill for the redistribution of land to African Americans, but it was not passed.

When reconstruction abruptly ended in 1877 rather than addressing the atrocities of slavery, a deliberate movement of regression and oppression arose in southern states. (Jim Crow) laws passed in the South to reinforce the existing inequality that slavery had produced. In addition White terrorist organizations such as the KKK engaged in a massive campaign of intimidation throughout the South in order to keep African Americans in their prescribed social place. For decades this inequality and injustice was rationalized away in court decisions and in public discourse.

Proposals for reparations

Government payments

- Some proposals have called for cash payments from the U.S. government. The question of who should receive such payments, and in what amount, has been highly controversial, since the United States Census does not track descent from slaves, and relies on self-reported racial categories.

Private payments

Much of the profit derived from slavery went to private businesses. The Washington Times reports that the NAACP has called for legislation at the city level to demand reparations from companies which profited from slavery. It quotes Dennis C. Hayes, CEO of the NAACP, as saying, "Absolutely, we will be pursuing reparations from companies that have historical ties to slavery and engaging all parties to come to the table."http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050712-120944-7745r.htm Brown University, whose founding family was involved in the slave trade, has also established a committee to explore the issue of reparations.

Land

These proposals would deed public lands in the south to black people who can prove they are descended from slaves. Supporters claim that through development of this land they would gain pride of ownership and a real stake in wider society, which would cause positive sociological effects throughout the African American community.

Social services

Chicago city councilwoman (Alderman) Dorothy Tilman made the argument that reparations for slavery should not take the form of money paid directly to anyone. She said that increased funding for schools, healthcare and welfare in the black community could be used as a form of reparations. For example, funding could be used to improve public schools in the predominantly black south side of Chicago. see also Education in the United States.

Arguments for reparations

Accumulated wealth

Supporters of reparations claim that, had emancipated slaves been allowed to possess and retain the profits of their labor, their descendants might now control a much larger share of American social and monetary wealth. In fact, however, they were not only robbed of these profits, but even of the small amounts of compensation paid to them during reconstruction. Conversely, some people and corporations which are now wealthy derived their starting capital from slavery. According to this view, reparations would be valuable primarily as a way of correcting this economic imbalance.

Symbolic healing

Another suggested benefit of reparations is that a token payment of reparations could act to validate the feelings of the African American community. Some proposals aim to accomplish this through only a formal apology by the United States government; others couple this apology with some form of payment. Opponents have argued that any apology by the government would be used as an admission of responsibility for slavery, leading to civil suits demanding monetary compensation.

Precedents

Currently the Japanese Americans interned during WWII are receiving reparation for their loss of property and liberty during that period. For a very long time Native American tribes have received compensation for lands ceded to the U.S. by them in various treaties. Other countries have also opted to pay reparations for past grievances see Holocaust reparations. Opponents argue that the precedent does not apply because the people receiving compensation are direct victims of the governments' misdeeds.

Arguments against reparations

Relocation of injustice

The principal argument against reparations is that their cost would not be imposed upon the perpetrators of slavery (who were a very small percentage of society, and in some rare cases actually African American), nor confined to those who can be shown to be the specific indirect beneficiaries of slavery, but would simply be indiscriminately borne by taxpayers per se. People making this argument often add that the descendants of white abolitionists and soldiers in the Union Army might be taxed to fund reparations despite the sacrifices their ancestors already made to end slavery. (It is sometimes further noted that, while slavery prevailed, the principal indirect beneficiaries of American slavery were Europeans, who took possession of expropriated labor in the form of reduced pricing of American agricultural exports.)

Identification of victims and of levels of victimization

Identification of actual descendants of slaves would be an enormous undertaking, because such descent is not simply identical with present racial self-identification. And levels of actual victimization would be impossible to identify; had freed slaves been given their recoverable damages, they would have followed different patterns of marriage and of reproduction, and in some cases would not have made their offspring the sole or even principal heirs to their estates. (Opponents of reparations refer to the lost wealth of slaves as “dissipated”, not in a sense of simply having ceased to exist, but in a sense of being untraceably transmitted elsewhere.)

Comparative utility

It has been argued that reparations for slavery cannot be justified on the basis that slave descendants are subjectively worse off as a result of slavery, because it has been suggested that they are better off than they would have been in Africa if the slave trade had never happened. For example, neoconservative commentator David Horowitz writes,

The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped. (From [Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too])

During the 1850s, Southerners frequently used similar reasoning to justify the continuation and expansion of slavery. Critics of reparations see little similarity between this and their stance, however, as the historical pro-slavery argument compared enslaved people in America to free people in Africa, whereas the anti-reparations argument compares two free peoples.

Some respond that this argument follows from a classic ethnocentric view that assumes that the natural order of Africa was preserved over the course of time, and places insufficient blame for the current economic situation in African nations upon the colonization of various parts of that continent by European and American nations during the 19th and 20th century. Others assert that comparing American slave descendants to Africans is irrelevant; that African Americans are worse off than non-African Americans because of slavery, and that it's upon that basis that reparations should be considered.

Legal Argument Against Reparations

Many legal experts point to the fact that slavery was not illegal in the United States prior to the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ratified in 1865). Thus, there is no legal foundation for compensating the descendants of slaves for the crime against their ancestors when, in strictly legal terms, no crime was committed. Slavery was highly immoral, but perfectly legal at the time.

Reparations could cause increased racism

Anti-reparations advocates argue reparations payments based on race alone may be perceived by nearly everyone forced to make payments as a monstrous injustice, embittering many and inevitably setting back race relations. Apologetic feelings many whites hold because of slavery and past civil rights injustices would to a significant extent be replaced by anger.

The Libertarian Party, among other groups and individuals, has suggested that reparations would make racism worse:

A renewed demand by African-Americans for slavery reparations should be rejected because such payments would only increase racial hostility... (From [press release])

External links

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