The Associated Press is carrying an article on the increasing momentum of the slavery reparations movement. The movement seeks acknowledgement from institutions with historical ties to slavery in addition to providing financial compensation to the descendants of slaves.
After thinking about this issue I’m going to depart from my more liberal brethren and come out against paying a sum of money to specific individuals on some arbitrary basis.
Any effort that exposes just how much of our modern society was built on the backs of slaves is a good thing. There are many companies, organizations, churches and state/local governments that financially benefited in some way or another from slavery, and they would arguably be less powerful today had they not had that free labor.
Although wages not paid to slaves may carry a certain price tag, the biggest tragedy of slavery has been in the legacy left in its wake for generations after emancipation: unequal access to education, limited opportunities, racism, poverty, urban blight and flight, and segregation to name a few.
Would paying some amount of money to descendants of long-dead slaves really provide adequate reparation? Would it really redress the magnitude of wrongs suffered in the wake of slavery? Would African Americans as a group benefit from paying this amount of money, which is likely to be small on an individual basis anyway? I think not.
If we as a society, either collectively or in our individual organizations and churches, decide to provide reparations, then let’s do it in a way that will really make a difference for generations to come–not just to African Americans but to all of society. Of all the problems left by slavery’s legacy, unequal access to education is in my view the most outrageous one. Education is the Great Equalizer. It is that which can pull anyone out of poverty and provide a richer more meaningful life for himself and his descendants. Affirmative action notwithstanding, the plight of many urban African Americans is essentially a guaranteed life of limited educational and work opportunites. That greatest of wrongs, then, is the one that should be addressed.
Let us create a charitable education fund, one that can invest a portion of its resources and thus perpetualize its ability to give into the future. Any organization, church, or government entity who decided it should pay reparations could pay into the fund. As far as reparations from the US government is concerned, we should have a national conversation to determine whether that is warranted, and if it is then that too should go into the fund. The fund could be used in a variety of ways, from providing books to underprivileged schools to providing grants to students in need. Individuals and groups applying for aid from the fund would have to have a demonstrable tie to slavery, either through individual racial descent or because a majority population of a school, neighborhood, or organization is of African American origin.
Paying a sum of money to certain individuals does little or nothing to address the real roots of the slavery problem. Having society invest its resources in educating black kids and securing them a better future does address the problem, not just today but forever. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.
If we’re going to pay reparations, let’s do it in a way that makes a difference rather than in a way that may just make us feel better.
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I agree that paying money to individuals doesn’t really help the problem.
Why do so many poor people play the lottery? Because they see that is basically their only way to escape their current lifestyle. We need to find a way to make “the American Dream” a reality for everyone, not just the rich. We need to find a way to have every person in America think that by working hard & studying hard, that they can lift themselves up, not that their only hope is from some random, external event.
Giving money directly to some individuals is just like those individuals winning a lottery. It doesn’t really help everyone.
Totally agree. While individuals might use such money for immediate needs and purposes, once it’s gone it’s gone with no residual benefits left to either that person or her descendants. They could invest it, I suppose…but not as effectively as a managed pool of money, and it would have zero benefit for society as a whole in any event.
I agree with your position on this, but I don’t see this as a non-liberal point of view. Slavery imposed a systemic inequity on an entire class of people. It just seems pragmatic to seek to redress the problem in a systemic manner rather than individual payments.
Funding better educational opportunities strikes me as a smart way to right this wrong, especially since one of the overt manifestations of the harm caused by slavery is the manner in which education was explicitly denied the slaves and their offspring.
I’ve been the recipient of monetary compensation from a class action, but that made sense because I was directly harmed by the entity that was sued. I think it would be absurd if any descendants of that class would think themselves entitled to monetary compensation for harm they did not directly experience. I think taking the same view with slavery is just.
I guess I meant “more conservative” rather than non-liberal, in the sense that some folk on the far left are pushing the financial reparation to individuals.
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