Reparations

9 Replies to “Reparations”

1. As we discussed in class, I believe that it would be extremely difficult for an actuary to be able to find out which families deserve to be compensated and how much they deserve to be compensated for. In the past, we have seen the US government grant reparations for the families of Japanese internment camp prisoners, 9/11 victims, Holocaust survivors, Native Americans and many more. However, the distinction between these events and enslavement is that an actuary can directly pinpoint a specific time and place for when these events occurred, and calculate the future earnings of that deceased person to come up with an specific financial amount that should be paid out. This is much easier to calculate than for families with ties to enslavement. The debate for slavery reparations has been ongoing, with arguments for compensation to be paid out in individual monetary payments all the way to land-based compensation. This argument has dated back to the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, in which it was stated that freed families would be granted forty acres of tillable land and a mule from the Union Army. This plan was reversed by President Andrew Jackson and the land was returned to the plantation owners. However, nowadays, some institutions, such as Georgetown University, announced that they would offer free tuitions for the descendants of the 272 slaves that were sold in 1838 to help pay the university’s debts (pbs.org). The issue with the reparation program would be the cost. Walter Williams, an economics professor at George Mason University said that it could cost the government up to $10 trillion dollars for such a program. Through research, he has found that reparation advocates say their goal is not necessarily to receive a big check, but they want a massive infusion of money into programs of education and training (abcnews.com). It will be interesting to continue to watch this debate progress through the Trump presidency.

   http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/reparations-african-americans-un/

   http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=124115&page=1

2. The idea of the federal government granting reparations to African Americans for enslavement is extremely complicated. If the government were to embark on such a program, it would be very difficult to implement and maintain. The program would have the challenge of trying to put a monetary number on the suffrage and hardship that African Americans slaves had faced. The program would have the goal of giving back property and belongings that were taken from slaves. In the article by the Atlantic, The Case for Reparations, we follow the history of Clyde Ross’s family and the hardship they faced in Mississippi. For example, Clyde’s family lost most of their land, horses, and other livestock, which was their main source of income. The fact that the family was illiterate and not represented, they couldn’t defend themselves whatsoever. The goal of such a program would put a value to losses incurred like Clyde’s family, and pay them back for those losses. In class we spoke about the reparations given to 9/11 victims. Personally I believe a similar program like this should be given to African Americans for enslavement. This being said, the beneficiaries of the program would have to show how their families and their selves have had something of monetary value directly taken from them (like Ross’s family in Mississippi). Potential downside to a program like this is the fact that it would likely lead to disagreement between the government and the former enslaved African Americans on how much reparations they deserve. This likely disagreement will lead to further angst towards the government by African Americans. If this turned out poorly it could actually lead to more separation between African Americans and whites, which is very risky. This is why I believe a program like this has not been implemented.

3. A downside of reparations is that money alone cannot right a severe wrong after people have already suffered emotionally, physically, and financially. I think that reparations get their true value not from the direct utility of the money received, but more so, they serve to help heal divisions and scars by showing formal recognition and regret for a wrong, and serve as a promise to never repeat that wrongdoing. Reparations can help bring unity after times of turbulence. We could give reparations through formal national recognition of the severe suffering of enslaved African Americans, as well as the suffering they and their descendants experienced through discrimination and violence and economic injustice, which caused the generational suffering of which the reverberations are still experienced today. If direct monetary reparations are too difficult to figure out, reparations could at least be paid in the form of a formal apology from the United States to African Americans for allowing the institution of slavery to continue in a supposedly free country, for the atrocities they continued to experience after the Civil War, as well as for the injustices they experienced because of state-sponsored discrimination such as Jim Crow laws and preventing African American access to the legitimate housing market. For example, I think that while the United States did provide economic reparations to Japanese Americans, I do not think that we have done enough to provide formal, widespread recognition of the wrong done to those people. In public schools, we speak very little about the United States forcing its citizens into concentration camps just because of their heritage. When we discuss the United States during World War II, we hardly ever discuss the internment camps, because that history makes the country look bad. However, if our nation is to heal the injustices of the past, we have to be willing to face the uncomfortable truth of our wrongdoings and discuss them frankly with each other. I think that many people are also uncomfortable discussing the true extent of the racism, violence, and discrimination that African Americans have faced throughout our history. In school, we never learned about the true extent of the brutality that African Americans endured. We did not learn about redlining or buying on contract. We are not willing to admit that centuries of slavery and subsequent rights violations might have led to systemic disadvantages that are still holding back African Americans. By recognizing these lasting effects, we could give reparations by spending more money on programs that help African Americans. However, there will not be enough support for this until we are willing to educate the public about the true extent of our wrongs. Therefore, we could provide reparations by issuing a formal apology, educating our people about what we did, and what we can do to make things better.

4. I completely agree with this comment in that I think the recognition of the wrongs perpetrated by a certain group is necessary to any kind of reconciliation. I think it’s really disheartening that students are taught vastly different stories of slavery depending on the school, state, and even their teachers. Just last year, there was a small uproar about the First Lady saying that the White House was built by slaves. This comment not only launched a discussion about the role of slaves in building this country’s buildings and monuments, but it also sparked discussion about whether or not slavery was “that bad”. Americans are not on the same page about slavery let alone the rest of racial injustice in America. If we were, then I don’t think that there would have been such an uproar about Colin Kaepernick choosing not to stand for a country that has continuously remained seated for folks who have looked like him. So yes, I agree that this country really needs to recognize its history or else we are going to continue having the same conversations over and over again.

   I also agree with how this and other comments alluded to how difficult it would be to trace which black Americans “deserved” money and which ones did not. I also don’t know how much good signing a check for all slave descendants would do. Furthermore, even if that did happen I don’t think that it would be enough. Therefore, I think when talking about individual compensation, we should look directly to families that can trace how they were discriminated against or stolen from, most likely starting post-Civil War.

   However, beyond direct compensation, I think that reparations could look like pouring in funding into the black community. Although money won’t solve racism, it can solve some things. Therefore, this money could go to public school funding, after-school programs, scholarships, job initiatives, infrastructure programs etc.

   In short, I believe that reparations should take the form of both individual compensation and mass compensation for the black community. This would take a lot of money and it would be messy but I think that it is necessary. People may think that with reparations would come complacency for white people but I feel like that already exists because no one feels that they have a responsibility because they aren’t practicing chattel slavery themselves (and my favorite, that slavery was so long ago that black people should have gotten over it by now.)Reparations won’t solve racism but it is the right thing to do. This country became an international economic powerhouse on the backs of slave labor. Cities were built on the backs of slave labor. Beyond economics, we also need to account for morality for treating a group of people as property/second class citizens. America needs to account for the mental, emotional, and physical abuse that slaves faced every day. What’s more is that the terrorization of black folks didn’t stop with slavery. Slavery didn’t even stop with the “end of slavery” because of peonage laws. We are talking about hundreds of years of discrimination and abuse. We often try to remove ourselves from the country’s uglier past but I think we need to look at it head on and account for all the sins that have been committed so we can even think about entering this “post-racial” society in which so many seem to believe that we are living.

5. In class we spoke about how the government gave millions of dollars in reparations to the families of 9/11 victims. I believe that African Americans should receive similar reparations because of enslavement. However, if the government decided to grant reparations, the main concerns would be who gets monetary reparations and how much they receive. It is easier to grant reparations to the families of 9/11 victims because information on the victims was documented and thus the government knew how much to give the families. In the case of slavery, the government does not know which families were enslaved and how property was taken away from those families. Not every family can show what property has been taken away from them. Additionally, reparations may also include compensation for emotional harm which is something that cannot be measured. Because there is limited information about what, specifically, was taken away from families, it will be extremely difficult for the government to agree on how much money in reparations a family should receive.

   I agree with the previous comment and think that instead of giving money directly to families, it would be more practical to put reparation money into African American communities. The money should be directed into funding schools and creating jobs in African American communities. By doing this African Americans still receive compensation and disputes about money can be avoided.

6. I agree with the previous posts that individual checks given to families that have been affected by enslavement would be difficult to issue. We would also run the risk of excluding some individuals who we may not consider affected because of the tone of their skin. For example, if a man with white complexion had a grandfather that first arrived to this country as a slave, would we grant him reparations. Unfortunately, due to America’s complex race distinctions and long history of miscegenation, I believe it would almost be impossible to correctly issue reparations. However, that is not to say that I think nothing should be done.
   Although we cannot pinpoint exactly what slaves have lost, that is not to say that they haven’t lost something. The majority of Americans can agree that subjugating a human being to the classification of property is a major loss within itself. The federal government could set aside money to fund programs that benefit African Americans. They have paid out money to Japanese interment families, Native Americans, and 9/11 victims. This would not be anything new within our society, however I truly believe it will never be done because of the way we see blackness in the country. African Americans are the only minority group in the United States to arrive as slaves. After a long history of enslavement and Jim Crow, we are still chained down by racially charged policies. The idea of blackness in this country does not promote sympathy and cannot produce empathy. When we think of the pain and experiences of the other groups above, it is easy to imagine the pain and suffering. However, to imagine the trauma that chattel slavery was in the United States is something unique only to black people. Therefore, as a non-dominant group in the United States, we cannot appeal to the dominant group because there is a disconnect of emotion associated with that historical point in time.

7. The flaws that come with trying to trace who the descendants of slaves are and how much compensations their labors would garner seem to endanger any form or reparations. These shortcomings are fatal only if one can conceive of reparations through the lens of corrective justice (i.e. “X was harmed; therefore X must be compensated). However, it is undoubtedly one of the provinces of the government to work toward full employment and an equitable distribution of the wealth. Several indicators show that the household wealth for white families is vastly greater than that of black families. So, in pursuit of the goal of distributive justice, reparations remain necessary in the form of massive public investment. As Coates explicates expertly, many communities in the “inner-cities” are economically depressed, and contrary to popular assertions, it is not due to a widespread poor work ethic.

   Decades of redlining and racial zoning raped what was then a burgeoning, black middle class and consigned it to cyclical poverty. These measures preempted precious capital flow which is crucial to urban development. Segregation and funding schemes based overwhelmingly on real-estate values have dramatically weakened the public school experience for many students of color. Despite Brown v. Board of Education, public schools, according to the GAO, have actually been re-segregating. These forces preclude any hope for a lot of kids of moving themselves out of poverty through education. What’s more, recent developments have indicated that, despite education, black people still have a hard time accumulating wealth. An Economic Policy Institute study found that black college graduates lost an inordinate amount of income during the Great Recession while white college graduates saw their incomes rise. At best, this troubling finding hints at rampant structural unemployment (i.e. workers have skills that are not in demand by the employers who are hiring near their place of residence). At worst, this hints at persistent discrimination.

   The government is more than obligated to continue its existing efforts to combat these issues and intensify its commitment. It must work toward retooling public schools, ensuring that kids in especially poor communities have a shot at a good education. It must facilitate the flow of capital for business loans and mortgages into urban areas, while protecting minority groups from predatory lending. It must ensure the availability of banking services for denizens of the government-created ghettos, which would help black consumers build wealth. For the immediate future, the government must launch huge infrastructure projects that help the macroeconomy and employ those who have been waiting longingly for jobs.

8. Because a lot was said here and I do not want to repeat the same things, others have written, first of all I would like add some at least a bit similar or relevant issues from a Central European point of view. It could illustrate the complexity of the problem discussed. The territory of contemporary Czech Republic, what used to be Kingdom of Czech lands and other similar state formations centuries ago, has never experienced slavery. Although there were older systems not that far from slavery like feudalism and serfdom, when people had to work for aristocrats, so that they could reap pleasures of life. As far as I know, reparations regarding serfdom (that was abolished gradually between 1781 and 1848 in Austrian Empire) are not a issue in contemporary society. Considering the fact that vast majority of inhabitants were serfs, it is not very surprising.
   An issue that is quite discussed in Czech society and still was acutally one of the main topics of campaign before presidential elections 4 years ago (which are, by the way, not that important in Czech Republic, unlike USA) is reparations for Germans who used to live in some areas of then Czechoslovakia. After WW2 they were at first violently and illegaly and later legally moved to Germany and Austria, because most of them were Nazis or collaborated with Hitler and were one of those who violently annexed the territory of contemporary Czech Republic to Hitler’s Germany in 1938 and 1939. Those “Czech Germans” were forced to leave their properties and were taken to German speaking neighbour countries. Because in most cases we know, who they were and what they owned, the reparations would be much easier than in the case of African American slaves.
   Similar case could be reparations and returning of property stolen and taken under state control by the communists at the beginning of their 40 years lasting rule. Individuals and families and later also catholic church (and other churches) were given property that used to belong them. Again, it was rather known what was stolen and whom, although many cases were probably very complicated and for sure, a lot of injustice happened. The case definitely was still less complicated than the case of African Americans. Moreover, it was the state that caused the demage and thus it was clear that it should be the state to try to set it right. It is a question if it was the US as a state that profited from the work of slaves. Partially yes, but slaves were exploited by individuals and families as well. Is it the state then which should pay? (Considering the cases like 9/11 etc., sure, why not…)

   I believe that somthing (more) should be done for African Americans (all Americans with African origin, or just for those whose ancestors were (provably(?)) enslaved or later harmed in different ways (?)) and I believe higher level of justice could be quite easily achieved – like in the case of reparations for those defrauded by communists. Although not everything was done accurately and justly, the level of justice is definitely higher than if nothing would be done. Certainly, it would be really hard and complicated for many reasons meantioned in comments above.

   • Dominik: Some might say that the Czech Germans deserved to have their property confiscated. The case for reparations in the U.S. seeks governmental redress for labor that helped build the nation. Perhaps we could begin with specific corporations that benefitted from slavery and move out from there. They could assist the government in providing recompense.

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