What should reparations look like?
Following the recent events surrounding systemic racism and racial inequity, the issue of reparations for slavery has resurfaced. Just last month, a House committee voted to advance a bill that would create a national commission for reparations. But are reparations for slavery really a good thing, and are they even possible?
The answer to the first question is much simpler than the second. There are thankfully very few people in today’s society who don’t agree that slavery was America’s “original sin.” In addition, there is undeniably a racial wealth gap in America today—the average white family has 10 times more wealth than an average Black family, and college-educated whites are making on average 7 times more than Black college graduates. Based solely on this reality, reparations are definitely needed to create a more equitable society. However, this is where the second question—are reparations even possible—comes into play.
For starters, it is almost impossible to determine the exact value of reparations owed. Estimations from historians range from 17 billion to 5 trillion. Moreover, nobody alive today took part in slavery, which makes it hard to ask them to pay for something they did not do. Another challenge facing the implementation of reparations is determining who should receive them. There are plenty of descendants of slaves who are well above the poverty line, a point made by Bill Maher when talking about reparations with Charlamagne Tha God. Additionally, opponents argue that African-Americans who immigrated to the U.S. following the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, and therefore don’t deserve reparations. All of these arguments make implementing reparations a difficult task.
In conclusion, reparations should happen, but with a few modifications. Paying cash directly to African-Americans would prove too difficult to enact, due to the difficulty of determining who should receive the money and who should pay. However, in order to atone for slavery, reparations should come in the form of government investment in education, housing, and economic development for African-Americans. There is already an example of this form of reparations: Asheville, North Carolina began implementing these investments instead of mandating direct cash payments in July 2020. In an era of drastic racial reform, reparations for slavery should definitely happen, but in the form that makes the most logical sense, and at the end of the day, will have the most positive impact on African-Americans.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/us/politics/reparations-slavery-house.html?searchResultPosition=2
https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/why-we-need-reparations-for-black-americans/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/15/us/slavery-reparations-explanation-trnd/index.html
This is a great post, Jack. You have looked at this issue from all sides, and the sources you’ve linked to are helpful. While I agree with you that reparations would be really difficult to implement, to push the logic of your argument a little bit, WHY would it be too difficult to figure out who should receive the money and who should pay? Imagine a reparations program that just laid out a date, e.g., 1965 before which if you or your descendants were in this country, you qualify. Why would that be so hard? Obviously, there’s the troubling reality that many Black people do not have much knowledge about their own family history, since slavery and Jim Crow basically erased that history, but a year like 1965, for example, is not so far away that it would exclude a majority of Black people, and it would also have the added effect of partially answering the question of what to do about more recent immigration. (Remember, we had quotas from 1924-1965 that placed heavy restrictions on immigration from everywhere, including African countries.) In any case, given that we live in a multiracial, immigrant society today, it probably makes more sense, as you have argued, rather than try to determine who specifically has to pay/who gets the money, to make major investments in housing, healthcare, education and economic opportunity in historically Black communities and in poor urban neighborhoods. When you look at how much money we spend on other things like defense, the argument that this kind of investment is politically impossible makes no sense.