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| African-American Reparations |
Reparations for African-Americans is a
topic that, in recent years, has been nationally syndicated news, hotly debated
and surrounded by a high degree of controversy. Did you know that slaves were forced to perform 222,505,049 hours of free labor between 1619 and 1865? Although it seems that the moral
justification of black reparations is embedded in the deepest roots of American
history, ever since the first law was passed in favor of
African-American reparations, the progress for awarding them has been stymied
by right-wing idealogs and hindered by social ignorance. This article will analyze
the historical significance of such pivotal events as the “40 Acres and a Mule
Proclamation”-- originally issued by Gen. William T. Sherman as Special Field Order 15 in
1865-- as well as the recent passing of H.R. 40 Bill in 2010, when
African-Americans were given their first glimmer of hope for receiving reparations.
On one hand, opponents of African-American reparations have been effective at obfuscating the issue and blocking the legal
argument for African-American reparations in the highest courts in America
while the progeny of former slaves continue to suffer the brutalities that are
an inherent attribute of a racist society. Some people may ask how. Police brutality, a judicial system biased towards Caucasians and their interests, a vast number of African-Americans
living in substandard housing, the disproportionate African-American prison
population, the villinaization of
African-Americans by the media, the disproportionate African-American corporate
population, and the substandard schooling and school equipment that
African-Americans in urban neighborhoods have access to are all consequences of
living in today's racist, slanted society.
In
this society, African-American lives are looked on by the white racist majority
as substandard, not worthy of dignity, autonomy, or respect. Despite the
conflicting viewpoints surrounding the issue of African-American reparations,
there is no viable, moral justification concerning the denial of African-American reparations. I will hereby set forth to prove
that African-American reparations are due to the descendants of all
former slaves.
Mark Hollis states, in his article
"A Bill for Reparations," that “[he believes] this bill [H.R. 40] to
be symbolic, as the bill has never actually had any kind of hearing in the
past….” One of the three-dollar words
coined by Republicans who wish to oppose any thought of any special
consideration due minorities in this country is "reverse discrimination."
They have, somehow, convinced us that minorities start with no deficit in our
society and that treating them in any special causes harm to the majority”.
From this analysis, we can see that even as an
opponent to traditional black reparations, Hollis is still profoundly aware of
the slanted, stark opposition for reparations that denies the fact that black reparations are, indeed, a legitimate concern. Denying the existence of an
issue is fundamental for the formation of Republican legislative opposition to this issue.
Finally, Hollis quips that, “Today,
the House Committee that Representative Conyers controls may well discuss his
bill, but if you look at the legislation that the House of Representatives has
to pass this year and if you look at the ethnic background of the US Senate,
you will quickly conclude that such a bill will never see the President’s desk.
I believe the right reparation in our society is best done in one's heart and
mind because Congress cannot legislate and the President cannot enact a change
of heart”.
Mark
Hollis is probably correct when he predicts that Senate Bill H.R. 40 will
probably never
reach the President’s desk. Why? Because despite
the niceties and nimieties (so-called overabundances) that African Americans feel like they enjoy in
this day and age, the poignant fact is that we live in a society that was
created by white people and for white people. And since granting black
reparations is not in the interest of whites, the bill will probably never be passed. To the contrary, it seems that the general consensus of the "conscious citizens" which inhabit this blessed country are much more comfortable with the idea of spending $1.3 trillion to subjugate colored people in Middle Eastern regions than to remunerate the descendants of the slaves who helped build our nation. Consider the mind frame of Thomas Jefferson when he so eloquently bloviates (to
talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way) these
acerbically-racist words: “Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the
expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of color in the
white race, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black that covers all the emotions of the
other race?”
Or,
perhaps we should consider the thoughts of the acclaimed emancipator, Abraham
Lincoln, when he said that “All men are created equal, except Negroes,
foreigners, and Catholics!” In 2009, Joe R. Feagin published Racist America:
Roots, Current Realities and future Reparations Remaking America with
Anti-racist Strategies. In this well-written book, Feagin explains that
systematic racism harms all non-white citizens of America. Feagin writes
“Systematic racism is about everyday experience. People are born, live, and die
within the racist system. This racist system permeates into every orifice of
black thought and culture, preventing the healthy development of a positive community.”
When the Jews were oppressed by systematic
racism, they received remuneration for the crimes of their oppressors, even if
their original oppressors were not alive at the time of compensation. But blacks received their opportunity for reparations through Senate Bill Number
60, and although it passed both Houses on February 10, 1866, President Andrew
Johnson vetoed it. Today, almost 150 years later, the effort to obtain black
reparations has been all but abandoned.
A
more honest reckoning of our history would reveal the difficulty of
transcending race without some attempt to repair the damage done by racial
slavery and the structures of racism erected to justify it. After all,
African-Americans were created in the crucible of slavery and socialized for
centuries by white supremacy. And although most Americans may have had little
to do with the cause of that problem, all of us have a stake in its solution. I
contend that black reparations are due on the basis of the harm argument and
the inheritance argument.
Bernard
Boxill sums the inheritance argument up in a few words: “When people die their
rights to their property are normally passed on to their heirs. The reparation
owed to the freed people was their property; they had rights to it. It was
never in their physical possession [,] of course [,] but it was nevertheless
their property. Neither did they abandon it. It was forcefully kept from them. Consequently it should pass, by right of inheritance, to their descendants, the
present black population.”
Next,
Boxill explains the harm argument: “Slavery involved many transgressions
against the slaves. The slaves were harmed by these transgressions. These harms
initiated an unbroken chain of harms linked as cause and effect that persists
to the present day. Since present day African Americans therefore suffer from
harms caused by the transgressions of slavery it follows from the principles of reparative justice that they deserve reparation for those harms.”
In
response to those who take the position that blacks reparations are not due on
the basis that no single group perpetrated or benefitted from slavery, I
proffer the fact that no single group benefitted from the subjugation of the
American Indians either. To claim that the beneficiaries of stolen wealth have
no moral obligation to recompense the people from whom the wealth was stolen is
both illogical and immoral. African Americans owe no debt of gratitude to a
country that displaced and enslaved them when “freedom” is granted. Although a
limited number of white Americans owned slaves, slavery is much more than whips
and chains. In today’s world, American whites benefit from a system that
retains many of its original provisions that facilitate social and economic
segregation and degradation, while American Blacks suffer from the emotional
and financial impact of slavery to this day. America is indebted to the progeny
of those black men and women who built this country without pay, and it is time
to pay the piper. Reparations are due!
