The Argument for Reparations
Here’s a column on reparations for Afro-Americans that’s worth emailing to friends and family. The last two grafs:
Blacks worth $6k; whites $88k
…
African Americans that favor reparations should stop allowing discussions to be guided by perceptions that: 1) reparations are unlikely ever to be awarded; 2) reparations are undeserved by African Americans since all ex-slaves are dead; 3) today’s white Americans have not injured African Americans and should not be required to pay for sins of their forbears; 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.Don’t be deceived; opponents of reparations have benefited from a system of white privilege that is imbedded in American society. Let’s stop acceptance of a system of white privileges and Black disadvantages that has accrued advantages for whites for fifteen generations.
Or as Malcolm X, that stalwart of the civil rights movement, put it:
If you are the son of a man who had a wealthy estate and you inherit your father’s estate, you have to pay off the debts that your father incurred before he died. The only reason that the present generation of white Americans are in a position of economic strength…is because their fathers worked our fathers for over 400 years with no pay…We were sold from plantation to plantation like you sell a horse, or a cow, or a chicken, or a bushel of wheat…All that money…is what gives the present generation of American whites the ability to walk around the earth with their chest out…like they have some kind of economic ingenuity. Your father isn’t here to pay. My father isn’t here to collect. But I’m here to collect and you’re here to pay.
I demand equal reparations. My great grandfather came from Ireland and suffered terrible indignities under the iron fists of the American tyrants. He had to work 10 hours a day to make his boss rich. He was even called defamatory names. An OUTRAGE!
But I guess, I will have to get in line and wait for the American Indians to get their reparations first. After all, the white devils took all his property and only gave him multi-million dollar casino licenses. And don’t forget how the Italians were treated. What slanderous names. Oh, and how about the Chinese who broke their backs building the railroad to cross the country and make someone else rich!
Oh, the humanity!
.
Comment by JBenson2 — August 12, 2006 @ 7:32 pm
Can I just get a shade utilitarian on all y’alls’ asses? Reparations cost me, individually, as an extremely poor white American, close to zilch. So go ahead, have at it. I mean, we’re talking tiny fractions of pennies on every dollar of my taxes that already go to sweetheart contracts for the military-industrial complex and corporate welfare.
So by all means, set something up. I won’t notice it one whit. May as well.
Comment by teh l4m3 — August 13, 2006 @ 3:11 am
Since you seem to think this is such a great idea, why don’t you address some of the specifics?
* Will this only apply to blacks who are 100% negro? * What about the mixed marriages?
* Will the mixed marriage black got a percentage of the full allocation?
* Will it apply to a person who is only 1/32nd black?
* Will the blacks file reparations against the African blacks that made a lot of money by selling them to the white traders?
* and most importantly, who will calculate the total dollar value per black?
Why not also offer reparations to the downtrodden Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans who were treated poorly and were forced to work 10+ hours a day in order to make their bosses rich.
.
Comment by JBenson2 — August 13, 2006 @ 9:06 am
JBenson,
You do realize you’ve trotted out the two major arguments that crypto-racists use to justify their anti-reparation position:
1) It cannot be done.
2) The descendents of slaves do not deserve reparations.
The details of how a reparations program would be managed would (sadly, but inevitably) be decided by legislators. Our country does have some experience with race-based policies, so I’m most optimistic that it could be done fairly and with minimal shock to the economy. One upside that most conservatives would appreciate would be the near total end of welfare programs in urban centers. It would not solve the major problem of rural white welfare, of course.
The canard about your Irish immigrant ancestor is a gross exposure of your distaste and ignorance of the Afro-American experience. I take it that your great-grandfather was paid for his work. Although he may have emigrated from his homeland as a result of poverty or starvation, he was still allowed to become an American and ultimately take advantage of the infrastructure built on the backs of slaves.
On top of all this, you have that significant symbol of humanity to know something of your lineage; the same cannot be said of the descendents of slaves.
I’m truly disappointed that you are responding to this issue so emotionally and with such a closed mind. I recommend that you read (for starters) The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to get a bit of perspective on what American slavery and its legacy have meant to Black America.
Comment by Ryan — August 13, 2006 @ 11:52 am
Our country does have some experience with race-based policies, so I’m most optimistic that it could be done fairly…
Thanks for offering some vague concepts for the plan. After all, the liberal view is the thought behind the plan is what really matters, not the actual results.
Yes, the government does have some experience in these matters. For instance, consider the reparations to the American Indians with the the casino permits. Look at how it is has benefitted the Indian tribes across the USA. Those Indians are wealthy, well-educated and fully-employed. NOT !
I remember all the fighting that went on when a supposed “tribe” wanted to build a casino on Cape Cod. The tribe’s requirement was the owners had to have 1/16th of the tribe’s blood line in them. Now, come on, how does a member of an Indian tribe prove something like that? Just because a couple people claim their uncle’s great-grandfather was Chief Big Sitting Donkey?
Out here in Minnesota, a tribe refused to build a casino on their “homeland” and insisted on building it closer to Minneapolis because they could make more money. Take a guess who fought the plan and took them to court - another Indian tribe!
By the way, I could throw out the names of books that cover the tough times the Jews had, or the Irish, or the Japanese. That is just a slimy way of promoting links to potential web-advertisers.
.
Comment by JBenson2 — August 13, 2006 @ 12:32 pm
100% negro?
Comment by Auguste — August 13, 2006 @ 2:24 pm
JBenson, you’re essentially downgrading slavery to being equal to - at worst - wage slavery.
Are you aware that you’re skating dangerously close to St*rmfr*nt-level bullshit?
Comment by Auguste — August 13, 2006 @ 2:28 pm
JBenson, children born to slave women that were fathered by rape were still slaves.
Comment by Amanda Marcotte — August 13, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
Ryan,
It’s glad to see that yet again, you take the side of an issue which is completely radical, unsupportable by facts, and not favored by the majority of Americans (thank God). And in supporting this extremely unpopular, stupid issue you refuse to use any intelligent arguments, but just call the people who disagree with you names (on the immigration issue they’re bigots, on the slavery issue they are racists). In addition, you continue to not answer specific questions raised by those who can see through and tear apart your extremely weak and pathetic arguments (much like the amnesty issue). Seriously, have you ever participated in a debate with someone in person about the insane radical positions you support?
Comment by truthmattersfa — August 13, 2006 @ 3:18 pm
TMFA, I’m looking for a serious anti-reparations question asked in this thread, but all I can find is racist bullshit.
Comment by Auguste — August 13, 2006 @ 4:48 pm
Shorter truthmattersfa: To back my assertion that I’m more logical than you, I shall refute your thoughtful argument by calling you crazy.
Comment by Amanda Marcotte — August 13, 2006 @ 4:51 pm
Auguste: “100% negro?”
Yeah, that pricked my little mongrel ears up, too.
Still, I fail to see what the big deal is. At the end of the day anyway there’s really no downside to supporting a reparations program. It’s not going to impoverish the nation, and it could only benefit everyone.
Of course, I provisionally agree with a general “it can’t be done” statement — at least, it’s probably true in the very short term. I mean, right now we’re dealing with a Congress that couldn’t see fit to pass even an anti-lynching law, IIRC…
Comment by teh l4m3 — August 13, 2006 @ 5:08 pm
My apologies to anyone who was offended by the term 100% negro. I should have used the politically correct term: 100% member of the Negroid race.
Ryan said:
Our country does have some experience with race-based policies, so I’m most optimistic that it could be done fairly…
I agree that the US government does have some experience in race-based policies. Take a look at the past results of the American Indian policy. All those casinoes have made a lot of wealthy, self-supporting, well-educated Indians. Right? NOT!
On Cape Cod, a tribe was given the rights to build a casino. The tribe members set a minimum race factor of 1/16th Indian. How will a person prove his ancestry 8+ generations ago? These are the type of hard issues that have to be addressed when you promote reparations. Don’t hide behind name calling.
And out here, a small tribe in northern Minnesota was given a casino permit, but they wanted to build it closer to Minneapolis in order to make more money. And they were sued! Guess who sued them? Another Indian tribe!
This whole idea of reparations is just another government hand-out that will result in more lawsuits, more resentment on all sides, and another expensive government bureaucracy.
The liberals love these types of plans. Sounds wonderful to them, but the results are far worse than the original problem. And as I mentioned before, the liberals love to point fingers and complain. Why can’t they answer the important question: What criteria will be used to decide who is eligible???
Will Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan be waiting at the front of the line?
.
Comment by JBenson2 — August 13, 2006 @ 6:03 pm
The problem with reparations is that ALMOST all human beings throughout history benefited from mistreating other humans. If black Americans were to get reparations, they’d have to pass that reparations money to non-Bantu blacks that black West African Bantus displaced in their migration. The non-Bantus would probably have to pass the reparations to descendants of now extinct tribes. It really never ends.
Instead of focusing the discussion on “What have you done to Harm me and how much do you OWE me” maybe the more profitable discussion would be on “How do I do the best with what I have”?
Comment by Ivy Research — August 13, 2006 @ 6:13 pm
Ivy Research,
Can you sell me a term paper on this topic?
Comment by Auguste — August 13, 2006 @ 6:24 pm
Hey, that’s just the invisible hand of the marketplace at work.
Comment by bvac — August 14, 2006 @ 12:28 am
Mr. Benson,
You wrote:
Please refrain from commenting on my blog from now on. A detailed apology after in few months may change my mind. Thank you.
Comment by Ryan — August 14, 2006 @ 1:39 am
Heh.
Anybody remember that LA thread where it was established that it’s only liberals that use racial epithets?
Comment by Auguste — August 14, 2006 @ 2:05 am
Hey JBenson2.0, I’m wondering.. by your own logic, do Jews (or the Kike race, as I’m sure you’d prefer to call it) deserve the state of Israel?
Comment by bvac — August 14, 2006 @ 2:43 am
I’m still finding it hard to believe that you honestly think this could work, for one big reason: you require the rich, white men of Congress, whose power was brokered by the economic system built on the backs of slaves, to pass this tax as you would like it to be written. Instead of, as one can only expect, riddling it with as many loopholes for themselves as possible.
You also require the rich, white men who support the aforementioned rich, white men in Congress with donations and the like to simply pay up, instead of sheltering and guarding their money.
Comment by Katter — August 14, 2006 @ 12:51 pm
Katter,
You’re absolutely right. Things don’t look promising; they haven’t for the last 120 years. But anything is possible with enough political pressure, which will require changing the minds of the white population of the U.S.
Like many Americans, I’m optimistic when it comes to how we as a society address questions of morality.
Comment by Ryan — August 14, 2006 @ 1:06 pm
Blacks were enslaved for hundreds of years and it was considered legal by various colonial/state/federal governments. The descendants of people enslaved have a legitimate grievance against the government that can be quantified monetarily. If the US government legally sanctioned the mistreatment of Irish and Italians, then they would have a legitimate grievance they could sue over too. The difference is that the mistreatment they suffered was largely interpersonal racism, not a matter of being stripped of legal rights like blacks allowed to be enslaved.
Reparations would not be taken from the pockets of whites and transfered to blacks- it would come out general government revenue, which is not just paid by the descendants of slaveholders, and is also paid by corporations and various other entities. Far more of your money goes into the pockets of Daddy Warbucks war-profiteers in one year than would go to your fellow countrymen for reparations.
Blacks won’t become rich off reparations. If you look at monetary settlements various Indian nations have received when they sue over land taken illegally, the court generally finds the value of what the property was worth when it was wrongfully taken, then pays that precise amount in today’s money- they aren’t compensated for being deprived of the property for however many years they should have owned it but didn’t (no interest), they also generally aren’t paid what the property is actually worth today.
Translating that into reparations for blacks- the court or legislature would probably estimate how many ancestors were enslaved, how much they should have been paid for that work, and divide each enslaved person’s wages by how many descendants they have. Alternatively, they may require blacks to prove their lineage and pay them a percentage of their ancestors’ wages in today’s money based on how many enslaved people they can document and how many descendants those ancestors had. That might be difficult, but there are more records than one might expect.
Whether someone is rich has no bearing on whether or not their ancestors were enslaved, so it wouldn’t even be a consideration.
Indian nations were sovereign entities before various governments conquered them. The US has/had no right to strip other countries and unilaterally take them over. If a sovereign nation, albeit a protectorate of the US, wants to have casinos on their lands, they should be allowed. It isn’t a special exemption unless you think the US should be allowed to conquer and destroy any nation they please, in which case perhaps you think that what was once stolen should remain stolen. I don’t think that’s very legitimate. Indian nations also generally have numerous legal agreements (treaties) they can point to that the US broke. The Constitution is still legal after all these years; the government can’t pick and choose which legal agreements it’ll abide by.
Remember that there have been court cases over lost property even hundreds of years after a loss. Whenever treasure hunters find old shipwrecks, if the insurance company that insured the ship/cargo still exists in any form, even if it’s been bought multiple times and goes under a different name, if they still own a policy on the property, they can collect it. If companies can do that, why not people.
And no, I don’t have any black ancestors at least for the last several thousand years. And I’m part Irish.
If you’re bitter about your Irish ancestors being treated poorly when they arrived in the US, do some research. See if the state or federal government where they lived legally permitted it and if you can prove they suffered monetary damage. Take it to court or petition the legislature. I’m sure the other 40 million Irish Americans wouldn’t mind $20 apiece or whatever they’d each end up getting if you could prove something. But it won’t be anything near SLAVERY of multiple generations, so don’t try to compare.
Look, everyone knows what happened during slavery. Blacks don’t even have a museum on the capitol about the robbery of wages of their ancestors for hundreds of years. Sure, we’ll have a Holocaust museum to remember the victims of a crime that happened on another continent, perpetrated by another nation. We need to come to terms with OUR past, a past our GOVERNMENT allowed. Reparations would finally show the US seriously believed slavery was wrong. The intent is so much more than the money, but without the money, it could all be empty words. (And don’t try the old ‘what about the civil war’…most of those people weren’t fighting to free blacks from bondage but for their “lifestyle” or their “state” or the “union”.)
I’d love to hear the arguments against Holocaust reparations from anyone who opposes reparations for black Americans.
Comment by Marie — August 15, 2006 @ 4:23 am
Auguste,
Thank you for proving the point I was trying to make, which is that your side doesn’t have any legitimate arugment for reparations (or amnesty for that matter)–only the ability to call names: racist, bigot, etc. Here are some questions
1) How do you determine the amount of one’s claim from their ethnicity? Does a person with 2 black parents get more than a person with 1 black parent and 1 white parent? Also, how do you determine which black people had ancestors here when slavery existed and which ones didn’t? Would black people who came here after slavery was abolished be entitled to reparations?
2) Would the reparations be based on a person’s current income status? Black people that have made it and been quite successful in society obviously don’t need measely handouts. So do you support taking money away from middle and lower-class non-blacks (whites, asians, hispanics, etc) to give to rich blacks who already have more money than these people? Or better yet, where is the money going to come from? Some sort of tax dollars I would imagine.
3) Would you require all people to pay reparations or only white people? How are you going to determine which people had ancestors here during slavery and profited from it as compared to those who may have come here in the last 50-100 years (many years after slavery was abolished)?
On a side note, I find it hillarious that Ryan who constantly offends people by describing them as being racist or bigoted, now demands that one of them stop posting here because he is offended. Seriously, do you guys know what a hypocrite is??
Comment by truthmattersfa — August 16, 2006 @ 11:33 pm
What an awesome argument.
Comment by bvac — August 17, 2006 @ 12:51 am
TMFA,
First of all, I stand by my assertions that phrases like “100% negroid” are bigoted. So, too, is equating slavery with wage slavery.
And your counterarguments imply that some sort of definition of reparations has been reached for the purposes of this discussion. In response to #1 and #2, for example, where in this thread was “reparations” defined as “individual cash payments to individual african americans”? As for #3, you seem to be assuming again - that reparations would take the form of a somebody showing up at your (as a white person) door to collect. My assumption would be that reparations would come from taxes - maybe in the form of the surplus. Oh wait, we don’t have it anymore.
As for your final paragraph, I’m not even going to respond to that gibberish. Calling a racist a racist is not offensive.
Comment by Auguste — August 17, 2006 @ 1:40 am
The argument for reparations always seems to picture slavery as this sort-of vastly successful scam that made the whole country wealthy, even for hundreds of years after slavery was abolished, at the expense of otherwise prosperous slaves. You wouldn’t think from listening to reparatins advocates that the non-slave states even had an economy. What if menial farm labor would have been performed anyway with the laborers barely being paid subsistence wages? What if slavery was a bad economic institution all around and what if its perpetuation hindered economic development?
Comment by Yitzchak Goodman — August 22, 2006 @ 2:46 pm
Firstly as has been pointed out there were non-slave states. Why should they have to pay reparations. Also the non-slave states fought a civil war to free blacks. A war in which a large number of lives were lost and an enormous amount of money was spent. I argue based on this that blacks actually owe the Union States reparations and an extremely large debt.
Secondly what infrastructure did the slaves create? The Northern economy was fully industrial and was mostly based on wage labour. Most of the infrastructure actually used by Irish immigrants and Italians was in the Northern States. There weren’t too many immigrants in the South. If anything the South is much less developed economically than the South. So why do Irish owe anything to Blacks at all. In fact I would argue that the North and South were essentially separate Nations until the Civil war. They had separate and parallel economies and they may have traded but so what, many foreign nations traded with the South. Also the North had very few blacks. So the North is completely outside the whole issue.
The only area that should have to pay reparations is the Southern Slave States. I would also argue that Blacks should have to pay reparations to the North for freeing them from slavery. Anyways overall I think the whole idea is stupid. I also think that fear of stupid ideas like this is what keeps people voting for Republicans. I hate the Iraq war and George Bush but I hate the idea of reparations almost as much.
Comment by assman — November 20, 2006 @ 5:08 am
Lets not talk to deep into reparations. I am more interested in the generations of poverty since slavery. People are still counting and spending money from slave times. They say they can’t blame what their grandfather did but they are spending his money and living in the exclusive neighborhoods. We have 100’s of years of poverty. They have hundreds of years of college graduates and wealth being inherited. Inherited wealth makes you a competitor in this world. No wealth makes you a burden and poverty is inherited. 50 years ago schools were still segreagted meaning education wasn’t equal. All I say is if things were on equal terms it wouldn’t be a race or an economical issue amongst the races in this country. Some cheated to get ahead and some loss and are still losing the race in the present. It isn’t all abput slavery. These arguments can go both ways. 400 years of being educated made the white race where they are today. If blacks were reaping the same benefits where would we be today. Not asking for a damn thing because we weren’t cheated.
Comment by Mike — January 25, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
Its not true that reparations were never paid. Lincoln did make moves to pay reparations for the losses suffered during slavery. Lincoln moved to pay indemnity to..slave owners! for their loss of “property” -and opportunity to make future profits. It was amazing how quickly legislation translated into action -as slave owners summed up their losses for claims. Its a good indication of the moral level of the nation. Someone said it well -slavery was “one of the most heinous sins for which I believe god will one day bring it to judgement.”
Comment by john — August 31, 2009 @ 6:34 pm