Almost 250 years of slavery, 100 years of legal segregation and discrimination and over 50 years of redlining and other forms of institutional racism beyond that. All of these factors have led to the disproportionate poverty found in black communities in the United States, and all of them are cause for the need for reparations.
This idea is not without precedent: in 1952, Israel and West Germany signed an agreement that West Germany would pay reparations to Jewish people from Germany in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Reparations are not unheard of even within the context of the United States. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 compensated all survivors of the Japanese-American internment camps with $20,000 each. But despite over 400 years of oppression, the black community in the United States has never received reparations for the damages done to them. Given the existing precedents, it is not unreasonable for reparations to be demanded.
So, who would receive these reparations? Well, William Darity, a public policy professor at Duke University, and Dania Francis, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, proposed two requirements for eligibility: “First, an individual would have to provide reasonable documentation that they had at least one ancestor who was enslaved in the United States, and, second, an individual would have to demonstrate that at least ten years before the onset of the reparations program, they self-identified as black, African American, colored or Negro on a legal document.” This is only one of many possibilities.
How much is owed in reparations? Well, if we take into consideration all slave labor from the late 1700s to 1865, the black American community would be owed $6.4 trillion in 2015 dollars. That calculation is courtesy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., by the way, who advocated for reparations for slavery in his 1963 book, “Why We Can’t Wait.” These calculations do not take into account other forms of legal oppression since that time.
It must be admitted that this is most certainly a hefty sum, and certainly one which the United States government could not pay off all at once. An immediate lump-sum payment to each individual is probably not the ideal form of compensation in this case. So, how would reparations be implemented then? The best solution to this problem might be the creation of a series of programs designed to bolster the black American community. These could include a fund to provide scholarships to prospective black college students, low-interest loans for black-owned businesses and a small universal pension for black Americans, all of which would be put in place for several decades.
Needless to say, reparations aren’t going to happen soon. Every two years since 1989, Representative John Conyers has introduced House Resolution 40, which only would create a commission to investigate how, potentially, some form of remedy for the damages caused by slavery might be implemented. Every time it has been introduced, the bill has stalled. Congress remains so firmly opposed to reparations that it refuses to even investigate the possibility of reparations.
These reparations would go a long way to improving conditions for the black American community — but even then, it’s not a cure-all. Alleviating the economic effects of centuries of oppression does not prevent future economic oppression, nor does it do anything to alleviate other forms of systemic prejudice and discrimination. Just as important as material solutions to the effects of racism is sustained work in advancing anti-racist education and activism. It is imperative that people recognize and work to dismantle and destroy systems of oppression in this country and worldwide.
