reparations for slavery essay

reparations for slavery essay

Reparations for Slavery

1. Historical Context

With the weakening of the industrial economy in the US, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the current generation of Black youth to find employment, and we are still provided an inferior quality of education. This has created a situation where many Black people feel that they are worse off than their parents’ generation. It is clear that affirmative action alone is insufficient to fully amend the situation of inequality in this society. A more direct form of addressing the distance created by past and present discrimination is needed to right the situation of inequality that still exists today.

The continued denial of equal opportunity for Black people in the United States has created a situation of inequality in today’s society. While some are quick to point out that slavery occurred long ago and has no relevance to current living Black Americans, the fact remains that the current position of Black people has been greatly influenced by the peonage, sharecropping, and convict lease systems, which continued up until the mid-20th century. Black people were still an exploited labor force and were denied social services available to White people. The civil rights movement may have done away with de jure segregation, but it did not undo de facto segregation and economic divisions between Black and White people.

Wealth is not simply the amount of money one has but a combination of income and resources that can be passed down to one’s children so that they may have a better quality of life. In the United States, two-thirds of all personal wealth is in home equity. Black people were systematically denied access to low-interest FHA loans, which were made available to European immigrants after the Great Depression. This, along with unfair lending practices and housing discrimination, has made it difficult for Black people to purchase homes at a fair rate. The GI Bill also excluded Black people, and when they did move to use their VA home loan from the Bill, they were still denied access in the new suburban housing developments that were popping up across America. This has led to a situation where 70% of Black people today still live in central cities.

Enslaved Africans provided free labor, which laid the foundation for the development of capitalism in the United States. European American immigrants, as well as other minority groups (i.e., Irish, Italians), have all been able to become upwardly mobile in American society, taking advantage of various legislative acts such as the Homestead Act and the GI Bill, granting them access to free land, low-interest loans, and free education. This has allowed them to create a better quality of life for their children. Black people have been systematically denied access to these opportunities, which has resulted in a continued situation of inequality in American society.

The institution of slavery is, in many ways, the root of racism as it has existed in the Western Hemisphere for over 400 years. The European enslavement of millions of Africans created the Atlantic slave trade, which set race-based slavery, capitalism, and colonialism as the economic and social order for the next 300 years. Slavery and the post-slavery colonial economic system in the Americas, especially the United States, created a situation of inequality that Black people have yet to overcome.

2. Arguments for Reparations

The economic viability of this debt repayment plan is not relevant to establishing whether a debt exists. In fact, it is agreed that the United States could not and should not pay the debt in one lump sum. Instead, the best approach would be to have a trust fund for the descendants of slaves that would contribute to American economic development and be ongoing until the debt is paid. This would also be practical, as the full repayment of the debt is likely to take many generations.

The moral argument for reparations is based on the belief that compensation is owed for the grievous injustice of slavery and its legacy. The source of the claim that injustice creates a debt comes from the school of thought in moral philosophy, which holds that moral wrongdoing creates a debt to be repaid to the one who has been wronged. The debt is repaid by compensatory acts which are intended to level the playing field and place the victim in a position they would have been in if the wrong had not been committed. Most simply stated, the case for black reparations is the case that a debt is owed.

In recent years, a handful of cases for reparations have been advanced. In general, these arguments fall into three categories: recompense for past injustices, development of the African American community, and simple monetary compensation.

3. Challenges and Opposition

Another challenge we face is the task of proving a genealogical relation to slavery. This would be the determining factor in whether one would be eligible to receive compensation. Some critics have suggested that all African-Americans should receive reparations, whether they are descendants of slaves or not. But it is likely that that would not be widely accepted by the black community itself. A study on the socio-economic effects of the reparations on different classes of black and white people would be necessary to ensure that the money was going to the appropriate place and not simply lining the pockets of the middle and upper class. This factor would have to be addressed in both houses of Congress before any legislation would be able to pass.

The second and related opposition is that a monetary reparation would not be the right way to address the problem. Many people have suggested that other types of aid could be given to the black community, such as improvements to education or more social service programs. But it is generally agreed upon that these critics represent a government or institutions avoiding having to pay large amounts of money.

The movement towards reparations for slavery has been overwhelmingly difficult in many respects. There are several reasons for this. The foremost reason is the large proportion of people who believe that African-Americans should “just get over it.” This belief is so problematic because it doesn’t allow for any expression of black pain or white responsibility. It only seeks to brush the evils and continued effects of slavery and subsequent segregation under the rug, virtually ignoring all of the benefits derived from the “peculiar institution” by the slaves and their owners. It seeks to minimize the myriad ways in which the legacy of slavery continues to cripple the black community.

4. Potential Approaches

Reparations can take many forms, and the proposed approaches are wide-ranging. Some argue that the only appropriate reparation for descendants of slaves is compensatory payments from the government, government-funded programs that take the specific status of black Americans into account, or the allocation of resources to black communities to improve the social and economic position of black Americans. For example, Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and staunch advocate of reparations, has proposed an educational trust fund in which black college students would receive free or greatly reduced tuition for both undergraduate and professional schools. Others have argued for a Marshall Plan for the cities, a program providing job training, housing, education, and health care. Some proponents argue for black control of these resources, claiming that too often government programs to ameliorate the condition of blacks have been subverted by special interests and not reached their intended beneficiaries. Thus, slave descendants should receive reparations in the form of resources to benefit the community, but take the form of support for specific programs, to prevent opportunistic behavior which would undo any progress resulting from the reparations.

5. Conclusion and Call to Action

There is no doubt that this essay is ultimately a call to action. The need for identity and the knowledge of history is more compelling than ever. A generation of young African Americans is thirsting for knowledge of their past. They are learning that they are no longer solely the descendants of slaves; they are meeting their African relatives for the first time. Black students are studying in Africa for a semester, and the ties with the Black Diaspora are expanding daily. There is a will to know and to contribute to the shaping of a new America. It is time that you support this will.

In conclusion, Americans must work toward building a society that is no longer segregated by race. Reparations can play a significant role in our shared goal of creating a more just society. But the true value of reparations lies in the hope and opportunity it offers. The moral debt of past treatment of African Americans is large and can be repaid only through a focused, coherent program of reparations. This must be the commitment to future generations: that they will know a society without the stark racial divisions that have been its curse for the last three centuries. We cannot know for certain how the present would have been different if reparations had been made immediately after the Civil War, but we can certainly make a difference for the future. A refusal to acknowledge the past or a hesitancy in acknowledging the enormity of the debt poses the risk of another hundred years of racial imprisonment and the denial of opportunities to Black descendants.