<p>In light of the book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: the Re-enlavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, the topic of reparations has resurfaced. Is it your opinion that these revelations demand concrete amends (cash, free education at any college of one’s choice – supposing preparation for that college – etc.)?</p>
<p>This would not belong on PF in any case, but I don’t open it as a referendum on the never-ending AA debate on CC. I just throw it out there to open discussion on reparations in general, as well as specifically in this case. Is there merit to cash compensation? What is the price of enslavement, a price that could theoretically be financially compensated? Personally, I think the possibility is fraught with problems as to accountability and reach. When an innocent man (or woman) is wrongly imprisoned, do we reward that released prisoner with cash to equal his lost years of freedom? Yet it seems to me there’s a parallel there.</p>
<p>I do not think we do a good job as a country acknowledging past injustices, on either a small or large scale, yet what, if anything, is a just response?</p>
<p>(I have not yet read the book. It has been featured in more than one publication. Hope I’m not duplicating any discussions about it on cc. If so, the mods can close or merge the thread.)</p>
<p>Reparations for slavery? No.
Reparations for Jim Crowe laws? Plausible (but still no).</p>
<p>Honestly, being American citizens is reparations enough. Millions currently living Africa would spring at the chance of becoming American citizens.</p>
<p>Being American citizens is reparation enough. Mr. Payne, may I assume that your are an American citizen? Is your citizenship reparation? And for what?
Why should citizenship hold different meaning and have different consequences for Americans?</p>
<p>Epiphany: The parallel with prisoners is not correct. In the case of prisoners, wrong was done to those particular prisoners by the society which imprisoned them. In the case of descendents of slaves, they are not slaves any more, and the society that enslaved their ancestors is gone. The society which would be called to make reparations is largely made up of people who had no role in enslaving them or even profiting from slavery.
I agree with Obama that the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow laws should be dealt with by a focus on education and combating poverty. This would benefit not only descendents of slaves but also those who have lived in dire poverty for generations. In other words, a focus on SES rather than on race per se.</p>
<p>I agree that the parallel with individual imprisonment is somewhat flawed, marite. I agree with the middle part of your paragraph (the disappearance of the original persons responsible). I was focusing on the concept of how to compensate, in what form, and how long? (Understanding that there can be no adequate ‘compensation’ for time itself & freedom itself.) Because there is not (and because we’re talking here about descendants, not individuals), should there be anything ‘done,’ and if so, what & how? </p>
<p>“Focusing on education and combating poverty” should be a broad societal goal in the first place, given the ideals of our Constitution. Since the effects of extended slavery (including an add’l 80 years beyond the Civil War) were to create an underclass, educationally & economically, are there measures more particular that are in order?</p>
<p>I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here, because I am very ambivalent about the whole concept of reparations to begin with (Germany, the American Japanese, Native Americans, etc.) – esp. when survivors, not the originally wronged persons, are involved. How does one measure when wrong has been righted, and when survivors need no further compensation? In the latter case, should there be reparations as a symbolic gesture, or is that patronizing (insulting)?</p>
<p>In American civil law, one can be compensated on the basis of ‘promise’ wrongfully robbed by the negligence or malice of another person or persons: money damages paid for loss of future income, etc.</p>
<p>I used to know a third-generation Japane-American woman. Her grandfather had come to the US with nothing. He had built a fortune through hard work and by the time of WWII, he had become a millionaire. He lost all this and was interned. When he came out of the internment camp, he had to start all over again. I think the confiscation of property is something that the original owners should have been compensated for, and they should have been given something to start their lives up again. I don’t know how many generations should be entitled to some form of compensation.
By the way, my friend graduated from Berkeley, so her family managed to pull itself out of the poverty into which it had been plunged.</p>
The question is how slavery has hurt the descendants of slaves. One truly can’t look at that question in a moral sense without looking at how slavery has <em>helped</em> the descendants of slaves. And slavery has helped the descendants of US slaves. In a broad historical sense one simply has to look at the average black person living in Africa and compare that to the average black person in the US.</p>
<p>Why reparations? Simply pay them for the value of their labor, with interest accrued over the generations. That’s how wealth in this country has always been created.</p>
<p>“In light of the book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: the Re-enlavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II…”</p>
<p>This is not new information; in fact, I wrote about it myself in a book published in 2005, but from materials that had long been in public circulation.</p>
<p>The reasons for NOT paying reparations are overwhelming. Perhaps it would be more constructive to prepare a case for why slavery reparations is a good idea. (Oh, and the case should be certainly address issues such as “why reparations for slavery but not for confiscation of indian lands” and “why persons arriving in America next year should be required to contribute to slavery reparations.”)</p>
<p>Great attempt at revising history. For Africans, it is impossible to know how much slavery affected the evolution of Africa by depleting parts of the continent of a large demographic group and making it more vulnerable to colonial conquest.</p>
<p>For African-Americans, the experience of slavery made their trajectory totally different from that of other immigrants. Finally, there is the issue of freedom. Other immigrants came willingly. Slaves did not.</p>
<p>I am a huge fan of reperations. Sure, if you were a slave at some point of your life, demand what you want. Any takers? Seriously, every culture has been opressed by some others at some point. Whites were slaves, Indians were slaves, etc. Are these people also demanding slaves from other Africans? Africans were enslaving each other long long time before America…hell, long time before Vespucci was even born.</p>
<p>I was not aware that “everybody does it” is a good excuse. The question is not about other countries, but THIS country which proclaimed “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”</p>