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August 19, 2001
Key ArgumentsIn recent times, the issue of reparations for slavery,
long on the fringe of political thought, has come increasingly to dominate
mainstream discussions about racism, colonialism, and poverty. In the United
States, the debate's current prominence can be traced to the publication of
Randall Robinson's argument for reparations, "The Debt: What America Owes to
Blacks," and David Horowitz' response, "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks Is a Bad Idea for
Blacks--and Racist Too."
Robinson argued that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and racial violence
against African-Americans lives on, preventing blacks from attaining an equal
standing in America, both economically and politically. In seeking redress for
the injustices suffered by African slaves and their descendents, blacks, along
with American society as a whole, can begin the process of healing.
Opponents of reparations such as Horowitz argue that, unlike the Jews who
suffered through the Holocaust or the Japanese-Americans awarded remunerations
for WWII internment by the U.S. government, neither the victims nor the
perpetrators of slavery are alive today, and it is unfair to hold the
descendents of slave-owners responsible for the actions of their ancestors. They
further argue that the Civil Rights measures passed in the 1960s -- especially
affirmative action programs meant explicitly to compensate for the injustices of
the past by leveling the playing field for blacks in the future -- have
effectively discharged the debt owed to African-Americans. John McWhorter, a
linguist at UC Berkeley and author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, has
written that the notion of American blacks as a racial underclass is itself a
racist image, one at odds with the very real advances made in the past several
decades, such as the incredible growth of the black middle-class (which is much
greater than the number of blacks living at or below poverty level).
Reparations advocates disagree, citing differences in prison populations,
bias in the application of capital punishment, disparate childhood mortality
rates, unequal access to education and health care, and other ongoing
inequalities faced by blacks and other minorities in the United States. While
opponents of reparations point to the unprecedented wealth of the United States,
proponents note that this wealth is not evenly or fairly distributed, and that
the systematic exclusion of slaves and their descendents from positions of
political and economic power, though it may no longer be legally sanctioned,
continues to haunt African-Americans. Racism continues to shape the lives of
African-Americans; thus reparations must be directed toward repairing the
damage inflicted by slavery and racism.
Notably, the debate over reparations for slavery is not confined to the
United States, or even to former slave-holding countries. A coalition of NGOs
has brought the debate to the global level, successfully lobbying to have the
issue of reparations and other forms of compensation included in the agenda for
the UN World Conference against
racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance that was
held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.
The NGO coalition demanded that former slave states begin the reconciliation
process by issuing formal apologies for the crimes committed by the nations or
their citizens over the 400 years of the African slave trade. To help counter
the lingering damage inflicted on Africa by generations of slave-trading and
colonialism, the coalition further demanded that Western nations back up their
apologies with new commitments to the economic development of African nations,
arguing that the slave trade and colonialism are largely responsible for the
continued economic backwardness of the continent today. The United States
threatened to boycott the conference because of the focus that many of the
participating countries wanted to place on Israel.
Major Ethical QuestionsTo sum up, the "reparations for slavery" debate
raises several key ethical questions:
- How can people repair the damage brought about or suffered by their
ancestors?
- Can money, whether in the form of foreign aid to those countries most
affected by the slave trade or of payments to slaves' descendents of slaves,
begin to heal the wounds of the past? (If not, what can?)
- Were the policies enacted during the Civil Rights era in the United States
sufficient to "level the playing field" in this country; and, if so, can similar
policies be applied on a world scale?
- How are reparations linked to the ongoing social, economic, health, and
political crises that continue to wrack the ex-colonial nations that supported
the slave trade for so many centuries?
- Finally, what moral obligations do people living today have towards the
descendents of slaves and towards members of societies most heavily impacted by
the slave trade?
Links to Explore:N'COBRA
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations
in America, or N'COBRA, is a coalition of organizations and individuals
committed to the economic, cultural, intellectual, political, social, and
spiritual empowerment of black people in the United States. N'COBRA argues that
"Reparations are needed to repair the wrongs, injury, and damage done to us by
the U.S. federal and state governments, their agents, and representatives".
Africa Reparations Movement
(UK)
ARM(UK) believes that "people of African origin have an historic
task to perform, that is to ensure that the truth of what happened to people of
African origin is exposed and that reparations are made to African people."
The Afrocentric
Experience: "Reparations"
This page surveys the main legal arguments for
reparations, tells the history of the modern reparations movement, and reports
on the latest news stories.
It's Time to Talk About Reparations for Slavery, A Web-only
essay by Lance Morrow, Time (8 February 2000)
Lance Morrow discusses
the issues raised by the publication of Robinson's The Debt. According to
Morrow, "discussing the case for reparations seriously would... clarify the
American mind, and that itself might be a kind of exorcism."
"The case for slavery reparations," by Michael Miller,
South Florida Business Journal (2 February 2001)
Miller argues in
favor of supporting Rep. John Conyer's call to set up a commission to consider
reparations for African-Americans. In his view, the United States would benefit
from taking a forward-looking approach to reparations: "Atonement for slavery is
not just a salve for past scars; it can be a balm for the future, a way to ease
some of the anger that divides our country."
"The Question of Reparations to African Americans," by Marie
Roberts, Exodus Online (1 December 2000)
"I see [reparations] as due not
only for what happened under the enslavement," Roberts writes, "but for what has
followed since." One by one, Roberts takes on and refutes the main arguments
against reparations: that today's taxpayers are not guilty of slavery, that
"descent" is difficult to measure after centuries of slavery; and that Africans
are not the only victims nor Europeans/Americans the only perpetrators of
slavery. "Black people worked long, hard, killing days, years, centuries--and
they were never paid.... There is a debt here," concludes Roberts.
The Case
Against Reparations, by Adolph L. Reed Jr., The Progressive (December
2000)
Reed challenges reparations advocates, asking how the issue of
reparations came to be in the American political mainstream and what
significance reparations, and its new-found salience, has for American political
life. Reed concedes that American "blacks have been systematically disadvantaged
as a result of slavery and its aftermath", but argues that rather than
addressing the very real material consequences of their history, the idea of
reparation is being used "to create or stress a sense of racial peoplehood as
the primary basis for political identity," a strategy that he ultimately finds
to be "not equipped to challenge existing relations of power and distribution
other than marginally, with token gestures."
A
Roundtable on Reparations, African Studies Quarterly 2.4 (1999)
A
special issue of African Studies Quarterly featuring four articles
looking at various aspects of the reparations debate. The participants review,
among other things, the option of establishing a UN Tribunal modeled after the
the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals and similar to the recent tribunals for
Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which would charge slave states with crimes against
humanity. Some argue in favor of an "African Marshall Plan," combining debt
relief with capital transfers to the nations affected by the slave trade. All
four writers agree that discussions of reparations must "move beyond slavery to
engage contemporary issues of power and development."
"Lawyers Plan Slave Reparations Suit," by Paul Shepard,
Washington Post (4 November 2000)
Shepard reports on a group of
lawyers who call themselves the "Reparations Assessment Group." "We want change
in this country," they insist. "We want full recognition and a remedy of how
slavery stigmatized, raped, murdered, and exploited millions of Africans." The
group, which includes Harvard law professor Charles J. Ogletree and lawyer
Johnnie Cochran, are investigating a range of legal actions that could be taken
to repair the legacy of American slavery.
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