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Reparations African Americans
Public Forum August 2015
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay
reparations to African Americans.
Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans................... 2
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 3
United States Government ............................................................................................................................... 5
Ought to ............................................................................................................................................................ 7
Pay .................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Reparations....................................................................................................................................................... 9
African-Americans .......................................................................................................................................... 10
Pro ...................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Contention 1—Tangible Costs ........................................................................................................................ 12
Contention 2—Racial discourse...................................................................................................................... 15
Reparations are good for the economy.......................................................................................................... 17
Reparations are morally necessary ................................................................................................................ 19
Reparations key to reconciliation ................................................................................................................... 20
American wealth is built on black exploitation .............................................................................................. 21
Reparations are legally necessary .................................................................................................................. 24
Answer to debt has been paid ........................................................................................................................ 29
Answer to no recent victims ........................................................................................................................... 30
Answer to African-American privilege............................................................................................................ 31
Services reparations are needed .................................................................................................................... 32
Con ...................................................................................................................................................................... 34
Contention 1—Logistics .................................................................................................................................. 35
Contention 2—Black Economies .................................................................................................................... 37
Reparations aren’t owed ................................................................................................................................ 39
Reparations won’t make up for slavery.......................................................................................................... 41
Reparations won’t help black economies....................................................................................................... 42
Reparations hurt race relations ...................................................................................................................... 47
Reparations deny black agency ...................................................................................................................... 52
Answer to American wealth built on slavery.................................................................................................. 53
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Introduction
This month’s topic is simultaneously timely and timeless. Reparations for the hardships suffered by AfricanAmericans were promised at the end of the Civil War over 150 years ago and remain a contentious issue
today. While the debate has been largely academic and removed from legitimate public policy circles, the
increased acceptance of white and government culpability as well as the influx of media images depicting
police violence and mistreatment of black people have hastened calls for reform. While reparations still
represent an abstract and politically difficult policy goal, many scholars believe a public discussion is the
starting point of a more concrete solution.
The terms “reparations” and “African-American” are potential sources of contention. While some will define
reparations as a strictly referring to cash payments, most acknowledge and accept that reparations could
take the form of investment in social programs, tax cuts or non-traditional payments like land or favorable
college admission. While some negatives will attempt to restrict the affirmative to direct monetary payments
alone, indirect payments through services should be included as long as they are explicitly based on race. The
definition of African-American is a question of historical significant; not all black Americans are the
descendants of slaves (some are from families that migrated more recently) and not all blacks lived in areas
affected by Jim Crow.
Some opponents of reparations use this as a way of decrying the racial divisiveness and imprecise allocation
of such a system. Jim Crow reparations present a range of distinct legal and political options that are in
contrast to claims made in the lawsuits focusing on slavery claims. Many of the differences are obvious and
perhaps explain the greater level of public and scholarly support for one form of reparations litigation over
another. In contrast to the slavery reparations context, Jim Crow litigation usually includes a more readily
identifiable set of harms, plaintiffs, and defendants. However, the racist and oppressive “one-drop” rule that
the government applied for more than a century, which implied that any individual able to trace their
ancestry to an black person was considered black, was a tool of oppression to deny rights. It seems fighting
that such a rule would ensure broad payouts to confront a broad issue of racial inequality.
The affirmative has a wealth of economic and ethical reasons to support a system of formal reparations.
Many scholars have noted that the economic strength of the United States and several other western
economies were developed thanks to the institutions of slavery, sharecropping, segregation, redlining and
racial profiling. In this view, reparations aren’t so much a penalty but a distribution of monies owed to
compensate black people for their historical contribution. While not all problems confronting black people
are strictly economic, tax cuts, direct payments and public assistance programs will provide key support that
furthers equality goals. Evidence suggests short-term monetary transfers can have a big impact on local
economies and families. Most Americans admit that slavery was a morally monstrous system that wreaked
severe pain and suffering on America. City councils in Chicago, Dallas, Oakland, and Los Angeles, and other
cities in the past year have passed resolutions supporting a federal commission to study reparations. Also,
there was no national outcry when the U.S. government made special indemnity payments, provided land
and social service benefits to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, Native-Americans for the
theft of lands and mineral rights, and Philippine veterans who fought with the American army during World
War II.
Legal and moral justifications for reparations are plentiful as well. The Takings Clause of the Constitutions,
the United Nations Convention on Genocide, Unjust Enrichment and various local civil rights tort payments
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provide ample legal framework for a reparations system that could address tangible wrongs and provide real
compensation. Even the narrative stories of those who suffered the worst results of slavery, Jim Crow and
white supremacy could be a moving reason for judges to vote Pro, regardless of the economic rationale of
reparations. The issue of race-based reparations concerns a fundamental issue of social justice as well: the
responsibility that the community as a whole shoulders for the enslavement of and continuing discrimination
against African Americans.
The general moral obligation to eradicate racism from our society requires coordinated efforts to work
toward correcting the chronic fragmentation along racial lines that exists in so much of our country today.
The moral force of reparations arguments is simply to suggest that the African American community cannot
shoulder the burden of redeeming American society, as Dr. King put it, on our own. Instead, Dr. King
persuasively argues that all Americans must engage as full participants in a dialogue examining the cost of
repairing our society to make it a place for all citizens to and their home
While the Pro side of the debate may seem to have a monopoly on pathos in this debate, the Con has
significant reasons to oppose reparations. The most common arguments point out the difficulty in attributed
blame for historical abuses of black people, especially the most antiquated abuses like slavery where no
slave-owners are left to hold accountable. With civil rights laws on the books for the last 50 years, very few of
those paying for reparations through taxes ever directly profited from any kind of abuse. This conveniently
goes in hand with the argument that contemporary black people have not experienced the kind of abuses
they would be compensated for.
There are also questions concerning how persistent this debt really is. Ever since the foundation of
government assistance programs in the 1930s, black people have used a disproportionate about of welfare,
social security and public school funding relative to the rest of the population. While this cost may not
alleviate the burdens of historic racism, they do obscure the modern costs owed. And if one argues these
programs did not compensate, it is fair to ask whether any kind of monetary transfer could be more effective.
One of the inherent assumptions of a reparations system is that it would be develop black economies that
have been hit by the worst forms of poverty. The Con can dispute this point by pointing to the lack of
development stemming from welfare and other poverty alleviation programs. Because reparations would
target payments by race rather than economic need, reparations are, at best, an inefficient way of tackling
the issue. At worst, reparations may be cost-prohibitive of these other government assistance programs
while providing nothing more than a short-term boost in spending money. Data on poverty and AfricanAmericans seems to suggest that sudden cash infusions aren’t typically invested or saved in sustainable ways.
Another compelling line of argument for the Con is to point out the racial divisions imposed by reparations.
Not only would reparations make racial identity a matter of great public importance but it would also exclude
other underprivileged minorities and further issues of inequality. Victimhood and a lack of agency are often
associated with such programs and could have a negative long term effect on the development of black
communities the same way welfare has stunted progress.
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United States Government
United States Government refers to all federal branches and the states
US Legal. No Date. United States Federal Government Law & Legal Definition. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/u/united-states-federal-government/
The United States Federal Government is established by the US Constitution. The Federal Government shares
sovereignty over the United Sates with the individual governments of the States of US. The Federal
government has three branches: i) the legislature, which is the US Congress, ii) Executive, comprised of the
President and Vice president of the US and iii) Judiciary. The US Constitution prescribes a system of
separation of powers and ‘checks and balances’ for the smooth functioning of all the three branches of the
Federal Government. The US Constitution limits the powers of the Federal Government to the powers
assigned to it; all powers not expressly assigned to the Federal Government are reserved to the States or to
the people.
Government is the primary authority in a given area
Merriam-Webster. No Date. Government. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/government
noun, gov·ern·ment often attributive \ˈgə-vər(n)-mənt, -və-mənt; ˈgə-bəm-ənt, -vəm-\ : the group of people
who control and make decisions for a country, state, etc. : a particular system used for controlling a country,
state, etc. : the process or manner of controlling a country, state, etc.
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Government refers to all institutions with legal authority
Oxford English. No Date. Federal government. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/federal-government
(in the US) the system of government as defined in the Constitution which is based on the separation of
powers among three branches: the executive, the legislative and the judicial. This system provides a series of
checks and balances because each branch is able to limit the power of the others. The executive branch
consists of the President and Vice-President, based in the White House in Washington, DC, and government
departments and agencies. The President can approve or stop laws proposed by Congress, appoints senior
officials, such as heads of government departments and federal judges, and is also Commander-in-Chief of
the military forces. There are 15 government departments, the heads of which make up the Cabinet which
meets regularly to discuss current affairs and advise the President. The legislative branch is the Congress
which is made up of the two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives which both meet in the
Capitol Building in Washington, DC. The main job of Congress is to make laws, but its other responsibilities
include establishing federal courts, setting taxes and, if necessary, declaring war. The President and members
of Congress are chosen in separate elections. The Senate has 100 members, two from each state, both of
whom represent the whole state and are elected for six years. The House of Representatives has 435
members, who are elected every two years. The number of members from each state depends on the
population of the state, with larger states divided into districts, each with one representative. The judicial
branch of government has three levels: the Supreme Court, 13 courts of appeal and many federal district
courts. The Supreme Court has nine members, called justices who are chosen by the President and headed
by the Chief Justice. The Supreme Court has the power to influence the law through a process called judicial
review.
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Ought to
Ought expresses obligation or advisability
Merriam-Webster. No Date. Ought. Accessed July 20, 2015. http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/ought
Used to express obligation <ought to pay our debts>, advisability <ought to take care of yourself>, natural
expectation <ought to be here by now>, or logical consequence <the result ought to be infinity>.
Ought to expresses an expected action
MacMillan Dictionary. No Date. Ought. Accessed July 20, 2015.
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/ought
Ought is usually followed by “to” and an infinitive: You ought to tell the truth. Sometimes it is used without
“to” or a following infinitive in a formal way: ♦ I don’t practice as often as I ought. It is also used in an
informal way followed by “to” but no following infinitive: ♦ I don’t spend as much time with them as I ought
to. Used for saying what is the right or sensible thing to do, or the right way to behave. Used when you have
strong reasons for believing or expecting something.
Ought expresses a duty
Oxford English Dictionary. No Date. Ought. Accessed July 20, 2015.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/ought
1 Used to indicate duty or correctness, typically when criticizing someone’s actions: they ought to respect the
law it ought not to be allowed 1.1 Used to indicate a desirable or expected state: he ought to be able to take
the initiative 1.2 Used to give or ask advice: you ought to go.
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Pay
Pay refers to the exchange of money
Merriam-Webster. No Date. Pay. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/pay
transitive verb 1 a : to make due return to for services rendered or property delivered b : to engage for
money : hire <you couldn't pay me to do that> 2 a : to give in return for goods or service <pay wages> b : to
discharge indebtedness for : settle <pay a bill> c : to make a disposal or transfer of (money)
Pay is financial restitution
Oxford English. No Date. Pay. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/pay
verb (past and past participle paid) 1 [WITH OBJECT] Give (someone) money that is due for work done, goods
received, or a debt incurred: [WITH OBJECT AND INFINITIVE]: he paid the locals to pick his coffee beans [NO
OBJECT]: TV licenses can be paid for by direct debit MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES SYNONYMS 1.1Give (a sum
of money) in exchange for goods or work done or in discharge of a debt: he paid $1,000 to have it built in
1977 [WITH TWO OBJECTS]: a museum paid him a four-figure sum for it MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
SYNONYMS 1.2Hand over or transfer the amount due of (a debt, wages, etc.) to someone: bonuses were paid
to savers whose policies completed their full term MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES SYNONYMS 1.3(Of work, an
investment, etc.) yield or provide someone with (a specified sum of money): jobs that pay $5 or $6 an hour
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES 1.4 [NO OBJECT] (Of a business or undertaking, or an attitude) be profitable or
advantageous to someone: crime doesn’t pay [WITH INFINITIVE]: it pays to choose varieties carefully MORE
EXAMPLE SENTENCES SYNONYMS
Pay means giving money
Macmillan Dictionary. No Date. Pay. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/pay_1
[INTRANSITIVE/TRANSITIVE] to give money in order to buy something pay for: [INTRANSITIVE/ TRANSITIVE]
to give money to someone who does a job for you [TRANSITIVE] to give someone their salary
[INTRANSITIVE/TRANSITIVE] to give a company, institution, etc. money that you owe them
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Reparations
Reparations are monetary payments that correct mistakes
Merriam-Webster. No Date. Reparation. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/reparation
noun rep·a·ra·tion \ˌre-pə-ˈrā-shən\ reparations : money that a country or group that loses a war pays
because of the damage, injury, deaths, etc., it has caused : something that is done or given as a way of
correcting a mistake that you have made or a bad situation that you have caused
Making amends or compensating
Oxford Dictionaries. No Date. Reparation. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/reparation
1The making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have
been wronged: the courts required a convicted offender to make financial reparation to his victim 1.1
(reparations) The compensation for war damage paid by a defeated state. 2 archaic The action of repairing
something: the old hall was pulled down to avoid the cost of reparation.
Slavery reparations could be either direct monetary or provided through services
Dr. John Pohnpei. Professor at Howard University. November 2, 2013. Define slavery
reparation in your own words. Should reparations be paid to African... Accessed August 25, 2015.
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/define-slavery-reparation-your-own-words-should-462007
I would define slavery reparations as money paid out to people who have been harmed by slavery. It would
also be possible for the reparations to come in the form of in-kind transfers (like food stamp-type things or
vouchers for tuition in college). Reparations are payments made to the victims of some injustice by the
people who perpetrated and/or benefitted from that injustice.
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African-Americans
The ‘one-drop’ definition was used to maximize the denial rights—should be used to maximize remedies
F James Davis. Writer at PBS Frontline. 2014. Who is Black? One Nation’s Definition. Accessed
August 15, 2015. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html
It should now be apparent that the definition of a black person as one with any trace at all of black African
ancestry is inextricably woven into the history of the United States. It incorporates beliefs once used to justify
slavery and later used to buttress the caste like Jim Crow system of segregation. Developed in the South, the
definition of "Negro" (now black) spread and became the nation's social and legal definition. Because blacks
are defined according to the one-drop rule, they are a socially constructed category in which there is wide
variation in racial traits and therefore not a race group in the scientific sense. However, because that
category has a definite status position in the society it has become a self-conscious social group with an
ethnic identity. The one-drop rule has long been taken for granted throughout the United States by whites
and blacks alike, and the federal courts have taken "judicial notice" of it as being a matter of common
knowledge. State courts have generally upheld the one-drop rule, but some have limited the definition to
one thirty-second or one-sixteenth or one-eighth black ancestry, or made other limited exceptions for
persons with both Indian and black ancestry. Most Americans seem unaware that this definition of blacks is
extremely unusual in other countries, perhaps even unique to the United States, and that Americans define
no other minority group in a similar way.
Any American whose family comes from Africa
MacMillan Dictionary. No Date. African-American. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/african-american_2
1 Someone who is African-American is from the U.S., but their family originally came from Africa 2 Relating to
the culture of African-Americans.
American citizens with origins in Africa
US Legal. No Date. African Americans Law & Legal Definition. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/a/african-americans/
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black
populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial
Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captive Africans who
survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States. There were many events and
issues, both resolved and ongoing, that were faced by African Americans. Some of these were slavery,
reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts
of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans make up the single
largest racial minority in the United States and form the second largest racial group after whites in the United
States. They are also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes.
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Pro
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Contention 1—Tangible Costs
Racist government policy prevented African-Americans from receiving their fair share of the 20th century
economic boom
Jamelle Bouie. Writer at Slate. May 2014. Reparations are owed. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/05/reparations_should_be_paid_to_black_a
mericans_here_is_how_america_should.html
Black families paid taxes and black soldiers fought for democracy in Europe and the Pacific, but—from lowinterest home loans to money for education—they were barred from the benefits of the G.I. Bill. Indeed, the
same federal dollars that built the suburbs were used to keep blacks out of them. It was the federal
government that “pioneered the practice of redlining,” writes Coates, “selectively granting loans and insisting
that any property it insured be covered by a restrictive covenant—a clause in the deed forbidding the sale of
the property to anyone other than whites. Millions of dollars flowed from tax coffers into segregated white
neighborhoods.” At the same time, “legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks, and citizens all colluded to
pin black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged, and undereducated.” The case
for reparations, in short, is straightforward. As a matter of public policy, America stole wealth from black
people, denied them a shot at prosperity, and deprived them of equal citizenship. And that’s just the 20th
century. If you go beyond that—to include all stolen income from the revolution to secession—the balance
falls deep into the red. In 1860, translated to today’s terms, slaves represented a staggering $10 trillion in
wealth, an incredible sum. If you include compound interest—to represent the compounding plunder of the
next century—you are left with an implausibly large amount of money.
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Modern de facto segregation, stemming from 20th century laws, makes blacks targets for predatory lending
Ta-Nehisi Coates. Writer at the Atlantic. June 2014. The Case for Reparations. Accessed August 15,
2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
“High levels of segregation create a natural market for subprime lending,” Rugh and Massey write, “and
cause riskier mortgages, and thus foreclosures, to accumulate disproportionately in racially segregated cities’
minority neighborhoods.” Plunder in the past made plunder in the present efficient. The banks of America
understood this. In 2005, Wells Fargo promoted a series of Wealth Building Strategies seminars. Dubbing
itself “the nation’s leading originator of home loans to ethnic minority customers,” the bank enrolled black
public figures in an ostensible effort to educate blacks on building “generational wealth.” But the “wealth
building” seminars were a front for wealth theft. In 2010, the Justice Department filed a discrimination suit
against Wells Fargo alleging that the bank had shunted blacks into predatory loans regardless of their
creditworthiness. This was not magic or coincidence or misfortune. It was racism reifying itself. According to
The New York Times, affidavits found loan officers referring to their black customers as “mud people” and to
their subprime products as “ghetto loans.” “We just went right after them,” Beth Jacobson, a former Wells
Fargo loan officer, told The Times. “Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically
targeted black churches because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince
congregants to take out subprime loans.” In 2011, Bank of America agreed to pay $355 million to settle
charges of discrimination against its Countrywide unit. The following year, Wells Fargo settled its
discrimination suit for more than $175 million. But the damage had been done. In 2009, half the properties in
Baltimore whose owners had been granted loans by Wells Fargo between 2005 and 2008 were vacant; 71
percent of these properties were in predominantly black neighborhoods.
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The harms of slavery and discrimination are ongoing
Jacqueline Bacon. Scholar at UC San Diego. August 2003. “Reading the Reparations Debate.”
Quarterly Journal of Speech V. 89 N. 3. Accessed August 15, 2015. p. 180.
The ways in which historical events and actors are related to one another in the accounts of reparations
supporters depend on a perspective based on implicature and the rethinking of responsibility for which
Gutie´rrez-Jones calls. Advocates of reparations highlight large, complex economic and power relationships
while downplaying discrete connections such as ownership of slaves or direct financial benefit. Economist
Julianne Malveaux maintains that the recent identification of insurance companies that “collected profits
generated by slavery” is significant because “it rounds out our knowledge about the many sectors of our
society that profited from slavery.” Supporters argue that the benefits of slavery extend through white
privilege to present-day white Americans whose ancestors never owned slaves. “Most living Americans do
have a connection with slavery,” John Hope Franklin asserts. “They have inherited the preferential advantage
if they are white, or the disadvantage if they are black, and those positions are virtually as alive today as they
were in the 19th century.” In these arguments, history cannot be boiled down to categories such as
slaveholder and slave, proslavery and antislavery, even past and present. These narratives challenge the
privatized racial view Gresson describes, used by many contemporary Americans to separate themselves
from the nation’s racial history. Americans, past and present, are implicated in and affected by racial power
and privilege, which complicate concrete notions of guilt, profit, and responsibility.
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Contention 2—Racial discourse
We must acknowledge the economic privilege of contemporary whites as a starting point for this debate
Belinda Cooper. Writer at the Week. September 2, 2014. Why reparations could prevent the next
Ferguson. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://theweek.com/articles/444129/why-reparations-could-preventnext-ferguson
Transitional justice demands recognition that fulfilling responsibilities to the past requires more than merely
lip service from a perpetrator society. Crimes against minority groups in any society bring benefits to the
perpetrator group, and compensating for them can necessitate material sacrifice. But remorse often ends
where personal sacrifice begins. Marco Williams' 2006 documentary, Banished, tells the story of several black
towns in the American South that were ethnically cleansed in the early 20th century. A black family from one
of these towns sought to have a father's remains reburied near their new home and was met with sympathy
from the white residents of the town — until they asked the town to pay the costs. As in Germany, where
polls over the years have shown significant minorities that deny an ongoing financial responsibility towards
the victims of the Holocaust, many fail to see why they should be held individually accountable for the acts of
their parents or grandparents. The benefits accrued through the injustices of the past are not always
apparent. One of the most important aspects of successful transitional justice, therefore, lies in illuminating
not only the victims' suffering, but the ways in which an entire society continues to bear the burdens of
history. This helps elevate an important point: correcting injustice may require affirmative steps. The U.S.
government and society need to recognize — and educate citizens on — the direct connections between
continuing racial disparities in this country and the wrongs that gave rise to them, and to talk far more about
the responsibilities we all share for repairing the damage. Perhaps Ferguson — which has revealed what can
happen when we suppress these conversations — will finally motivate us to think about how to address the
harms, whether through material reparations or otherwise. If we're willing to start talking, we'll find no
shortage of role models for transitional justice throughout the world to help us take the next steps.
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Reparations would create a positive national conversation about race
Angelique M. Davis. Professor at Seattle University. 2014 . Apologies, Reparations, and the
Continuing Legacy of the Slave Trade in the United States. Journal of Black Studies 45(4). Accessed August 15,
2015.15, 2015.
Fraser’s and Tutu’s comments suggest that bringing forth alternatives to traditional perspectives about race
in the public sphere is valuable, even when they are initially subjected to harsh criticism, because the process
has the potential to enhance the national conversation about race. In addition, the aspect of the reparations
debate that makes it so contentious—its position at the intersection of discussions about race and history—
also suggests the power of arguments about reparations ultimately to further discourse about race and racial
relations in the U.S. Many who disagree with reparations do not want to hear challenges to historical
narratives that are comforting and that reinforce and validate existing power relations. Yet the very
arguments that reparations opponents produce to reject alternative historical narratives undermine
traditional views of history. If you argue about history, you admit that history is rhetorical. If you criticize the
historical narratives of others for not promoting unity, you demonstrate that memory is not value-free. If you
are confronted in a debate with stories, evidence, or historical actors that do not fit the frameworks on which
you rely, the hegemony of the structures of memory is undermined. If those who offer these different
historical narratives continue to bring them forward, you cannot forget the past, no matter how much you
want to.
Reparations for the genocidal treatment of blacks must begin on ethical grounds
Allan D. Cooper. Professor at Otterbein University. 2012. From Slavery to Genocide: The Fallacy of
Debt in Reparations Discourse. Journal of Black Studies 43(2). Accessed August 15, 2015. p. 110.
But independent of the legal argument, reparations for genocide poses a much more powerful ethical
argument. Up until now, the fundamental justification for reparations has been economic: African Americans
are owed a debt. Reducing slavery to a cost-benefit analysis connotes that the inherent indignity of being a
slave is merely a matter of unfair compensation for labor performed. If this was all it was, then the entire
working class of America could demand reparations for their lack of fair pay. But slavery was about much
more than economic hardship; slavery related to an assault on the humanity and dignity of African
Americans. Robert S. Browne (1972) offers this insight: It is doubtful if one can meaningfully discuss the
reparations concept solely within an economic context, in isolation from the associated moral and political
considerations which are inseparable from a reparations demand. Conceivably, one might successfully
demonstrate the Pareto optimality of a capital transfer of a specified size to the black community, perhaps by
demonstrating that failure to make such a transfer might result in an economic wastage of even larger
magnitude. But to label such a capital transfer as “reparations,” and to justify it solely on the basis of
economic efficiency while ignoring the myriad equity considerations which the term reparations implies
would be so sterile and mechanistic as to constitute a near insult to the black community’s humanity. (p. 39)
Zack (2003) simplifies the argument: “Slavery would be wrong if the labor extracted from slaves had no value
and never profited those who extracted it” (p. 140). In short, the fundamental flaw in the “reparations-asdebt” argument, espoused by Randall Robinson and most of the recent proponents for reparations, is that it
focuses attention on the net worth of a slave rather than the crime against humanity committed by the
perpetrator.
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Reparations are good for the economy
Direct payments would rejuvenate struggling economies while limiting the need for long-term government
assistance
Alan Gray. Writer at News Blaze. August 5, 2015. Could Granting Blacks Reparations For Slavery
Boost America's Economy? Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://newsblaze.com/story/20150805193134nnnn.nb/topstory.html
It would be in America's best interest to support this cause because of the economic benefits alone. And I'm
fairly sure blacks actually love America, they just hate not having the money to live the way they desire and
enjoy the finer things in life. It is Muhammad's theory that his ancestors who were brought to the U.S. as
slaves, were more valuable than we have been led to believe. And with some support, blacks will have access
to historical records that could prove that fact. They could then legally force Africa to return their inheritance
that was unjustly taken from their ancestors (i.e. Reparations). In this, America as a whole would benefit
greatly - financially - because the reparations revenue would flow from generation to generation. It would
never take from America's economy, but instead would add to it. Paying Down America's Debt The masses of
poor blacks could very well become the saviors of the faltering economy and this would eliminate their
dependence on government assistance. Next, the government money that blacks wouldn't need anymore
could be diverted into paying off America's growing debts, thanks to the president and Congress. Finally,
America can begin to replenish its savings account (so to speak). So the economists should think this over,
seriously. If they see any logic in it at all, they could construct a detailed outline of what the success of this
endeavor to claim reparations from Africa could do for America's Economy. Then blacks could use that
outline to gain government support, as well as support from the American people (Blacks and Whites alike).
And that support will then energize and begin to assemble the minds it would take to present an effective
case that would win in court. New Era Of Racial Peace In America Finally, this age-old discussion would be
closed, and America could begin a new era of peace between the races that many believe will only come
after this issue is settled. There is one other important thing. As the overwhelming majority of blacks love the
democrat way of doing things, they should be happy to pay a large percentage of their windfall profit in
taxes, to support any blacks who are unable to get reparations. They can also support poor white people.
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Short-term money transfers can have a major impact
Joshua Holland. Writer at Bill Moyers. June 4, 2014. The Past Isn’t Past: The Economic Case for
Reparations. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/04/the-past-isnt-past-the-economiccase-for-reparations/
Having some net worth impacts families in several important ways. Wealth provides a cushion against
economic shocks. “It’s a risky economy, and everybody needs a buffer,” says Rachel Black, an expert in assetbuilding at the New America Foundation. “That’s especially true for those living on the financial margins,
where a small dip in their income or an unexpected expense could leave them either making material
sacrifices — like skipping meals — or not being able to repair the car that they need to get to work.” About
one-third of all welfare recipients are African-Americans, a fact that helps perpetuate vicious and bigoted
stereotypes about blacks being lazy and “dependent.” But the reality is that hundreds of years of structural
discrimination have left black families without the same cushion that even poor white households tend to
have, so when things go wrong they’re less likely to be able to get by without turning to public assistance. But
the most important way that a family’s wealth affects kids’ chances of getting ahead is through what’s known
as “intergenerational assistance.” “Wealth matters in terms of passing on a family business or helping your
offspring with a down payment on a home or financing a job search,” says Dalton Conley. “Simply paying for
college is a big part of it — if you have a buffer and don’t have to work two jobs to pay for college, you’re
much more likely to graduate in four years.” Because chances for young African-Americans to get their
degrees diminish without such a buffer, most of today’s proposals for reparations include some sort of
college fund to give young blacks the same opportunity to get an education that many white people take for
granted.
Reparations would help the economy
Michael Maiello. Writer at Reuters. June 4, 2014. Why reparations for slavery could help boost the
economy. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/06/04/why-reparationsfor-slavery-could-help-boost-the-economy/
Today reparations would affect 44.5 million Americans, most of whom are in a position, or could eventually
be in a position, to do far more than spend. The stimulus would lead to both entrepreneurship and
investment and potential direct poverty alleviation for 3.2 percent of the total population, assuming that
cash-based reparations payments would be large enough to lift even the poorest recipient above the poverty
line. This would affect the roughly 27 percent of African-Americans who were below the poverty line in 2012.
Put those elements together and there is a prime case for stimulus that would both alleviate poverty directly,
and provide payments to people who can either grow their investments or start or expand businesses. Any
reasonable program would start with direct cash payments of sufficient largess that it should be able to
eliminate any reasonable consumer debts and allow the recipient access to retail banking services (the poor
are notoriously under served by financial institutions). This assistance could immediately affect more than 30
percent of the participants in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, boosting them in such a
way that they no longer need to receive benefits, according to figures from the Urban Institute. The
payments would be a huge boon for the states who administer the block grants behind these programs.
Imagine similar reductions in the number of users of food stamps and medical programs.
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Reparations are morally necessary
The moral imperative is strong enough to justify reparations and must be discussed separately from
economic costs
Lonnie Bunch. Writer at Smithsonian. June 6, 2014. The director of the National Museum of African
American History and Culture joins the discussion around "The Case for Reparations." Accessed August 15,
2015. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-moral-debt-african-americans-180951675/?no-ist
While the conversation with scholars and ordinary citizens often centers on financial payment, I’m
emphasizing that the moral debt is more important. While fairness would dictate that the descendants of the
Tulsa Riots of 1921 to see the goal of their reparations campaign be finalized with some remunerations. Yet
the moral debate is equally owed. The current discussion of reparations has made me consider how relevant
the question remains, given the success and prosperity of the 21st Century. Honestly, we are still grappling
with one of the unsolved issues that started the day a handful of Africans stepped onto the shores of
Jamestown in 1619. How can America repay those bent backs and calloused hands for their slave labor, and
satisfy the descendants that all the chatteled years have value? In his essay, Coates presents us with a clear
roadmap on how we got to this point. Maya Angelou, the wise writer, bequeathed us this philosophy:
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived
again.” In so many ways, the American experience is the African American experience. In every development
of our country’s history, every step that has made America better is tied to African American lives, patriotism
and sacrifice. Indeed, profits from slavery provided a reservoir of capital that allowed America to grow into a
world power. The image of America as a just society is stained by the lack of moral reparations and fair
treatment for a group of its earliest and most loyal laborers and residents. What we will have in the National
Museum of African American History and Culture is a place for dialogue and the exploration of historical
movements.
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Reparations key to reconciliation
Reparations are key to racial reconciliation
Jacqueline Bacon. Scholar at UC San Diego. August 2003. “Reading the Reparations Debate.”
Quarterly Journal of Speech V. 89 N. 3. Accessed August 15, 2015. p. 179.
Advocates of reparations, for example, base their arguments on the notion that past and present are
intimately connected. At a round table discussion in January 2000, reparations supporter Randall Robinson
argued: [M]illions of blacks … remain economically and socially disabled by the long, cruel promise of
American slavery and the century of government-embraced racial discrimination that followed it … . A
yawning gap was opened. It has been a static gap since the Emancipation Proclamation … . We’re here today
to discuss this gap and the lasting social penalties of slavery and how they might be addressed once and for
all. There are, for Robinson, no clearly separated before and after categories. The Emancipation Proclamation
is not a transitional motif that signals fundamental change; to borrow Hayden White’s terms, there is no
dismantling of oppression or recoding of the nation’s fundamentally racist orientation. For Robinson and
other reparations supporters, U.S. racial history is still unfolding; a psychological and political burden weighs
on the nation that must be lifted if it is ever to achieve reconciliation. This interpretation of the past presents
a challenge to the master narrative that Nathan Huggins describes, in which slavery and oppression are
“historical accidents to be corrected” and progress is the ultimate motion of U.S. history.
Supporting reparations is a vital way to oppose a whitewashed history that continues to drive racial
discrimination.
Jacqueline Bacon. Scholar at UC San Diego. August 2003. “Reading the Reparations Debate.”
Quarterly Journal of Speech V. 89 N. 3. Accessed August 15, 2015. p. 190-1
Why, then, do reparations supporters have so much faith in debate itself, even contending that a central
aspect of what they seek is to bring the issue into the public arena and provoke debate? Recall Randall
Robinson’s assertion that one of the goals of the reparations movement can be accomplished by “simply
raising the issue and provoking public discussion.” Manning Marable similarly notes, “I would argue that the
demand for reparations is fundamentally not about the money. The money is secondary. The primary reason
is for the truth to be told.” In a letter to the editor of Newsday, the Reverend John Magisano explains, “I do
not see the concept of reparations as being about a placing a dollar figure on the lives stolen for slavery,
though that is useful information in quantifying the damage done. I feel that it is about finally getting white
America to take responsibility for the institution of slavery.” Various commentators have echoed these views,
arguing that the reparations debate will be productive for racial discourse in this country. Mark Brown, who
acknowledges that the reparations issue “stirs a negative reaction” in him, nonetheless believes that “what
we really need is some sort of national sensitivity training, which the reparations debate could provide.”
Journalism professor Vivian Martin argues, “As the discussion evolves, people’s views about the issue will
too. Anyone who encounters pieces of the debate and doesn’t walk away a little more educated about the
past or see the issue as more complex than he [or she] originally thought isn’t thinking.”
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American wealth is built on black exploitation
Determining responsibility is key to addressing economic debts
Angelique M. Davis. Professor at Seattle University. 2014 . Apologies, Reparations, and the
Continuing Legacy of the Slave Trade in the United States. Journal of Black Studies 45(4). Accessed August 15,
2015.
Finally, by minimizing the continuing legacy of the European Slave Trade and slavery in the United States and
thwarting concrete remedial measures including reparations claims, the resolutions serve to absolve White
Americans, state governments, and the federal government for their role in these horrors and allow them to
continue to benefit from systemic racial inequality in the United States. Some argue that although financial
reparations could never compensate for the genocide perpetrated by the enslavement of African Americans,
it would be symbolically significant (Cooper, 2012). The question of whether these apologies will lead to
tangible benefits for African Americans or serve as a form of interest convergence (Bell, 1980) that ultimately
benefits the majority remains. There does not appear, however, to be much political will to address this issue
as public reaction to these apology resolutions reveals that vigorous debate remains surrounding whether or
not present-day racial inequalities are linked to slavery and if government bodies and individuals today have
any responsibility for it.
Slavery and Jim Crow have a direct impact on contemporary economic problems
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor at University of Dayton. June 2011. Slavery Developing Legal
Strategies to Advance Reparations. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara39.htm
In the case of slavery, the taking has led to institutionalized racism, causing harm to subsequent generations
of African-Americans. According to recent census figures, 24.3% of Blacks lived in poverty in 2003, compared
with 10.3% of Whites. Education statistics show that where only 78.7% of Blacks have a high school diploma,
88.7% of Whites have obtained this level of minimal achievement. Likewise, only 17% of Blacks have
obtained a bachelor's degree or more, compared to 29.4% of Whites. Black per-capita income in 2001 was a
mere $14,953 compared with $24,127 for Whites. The percent of Blacks below the poverty level has more
than doubled that of Whites for the last 26 years. As would be expected given the previous numbers, the
percentage of unemployed Blacks more than doubles that of Whites. More telling, however, is the difference
between those who do and do not own homes. In 2002, 47.3% of Blacks owned their own homes. This does
not begin to compare to the 74.5% of Whites who owned their own homes. Yet more disturbing are the
incarceration statistics. As of the year 2000, there were only 132 more Black males in college than in prison.
While the number of Black males attending college has risen only slightly, the number going to prison has
increased dramatically over the years. In addition, Black males are more than six times more likely than
White males to go to prison. The Department of Justice notes that in 2000, Blacks had a 18.6% chance of
going to prison, compared with a 3.4% chance for Whites. Blacks trail Whites with regard to every social
yardstick including education, life expectancy, income, and homeownership. These disparities are linked to
the legacy of slavery. It is of no consequence to argue which came first, slavery or racism. The result has been
the reinforced presumption that African-Americans are inferior, unintelligent, and prone to violence and
crime. These disparities stem from the original taking.
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Page 22
Western wealth is largely owed to slave labor
Eric Williams. Professor at University of Massachusetts. June 2012 . Ten Reasons: A Response to
David Horowitz by Robert Chrisman and Ernest Allen, Jr. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.umass.edu/afroam/hor.html
But such sophistry evades the basic issue: who benefited primarily from slavery? Those who were
responsible for the institutionalized enslavement of people of African descent also received the primary
benefits from such actions. New England slave traders, merchants, bankers, and insurance companies all
profited from the slave trade, which required a wide variety of commodities ranging from sails, chandlery,
foodstuffs, and guns, to cloth goods and other items for trading purposes. Both prior to and after the
American Revolution, slaveholding was a principal path for white upward mobility in the South. The white
native-born as well as immigrant groups such as Germans, Scots-Irish, and the like participated. In 1860,
cotton was the country's largest single export. As Eric Williams and C.L.R. James have demonstrated, the free
labor provided by slavery was central to the growth of industry in western Europe and the United States;
simultaneously, as Walter Rodney has argued, slavery depressed and destabilized the economies of African
states. Slaveholders benefited primarily from the institution, of course, and generally in proportion to the
number of slaves which they held. But the sharing of the proceeds of slave exploitation spilled across class
lines within white communities as well. As historian John Hope Franklin recently affirmed in a rebuttal to
Horowitz's claims: "All whites and no slaves benefited from American slavery. All blacks had no rights that
they could claim as their own. All whites, including the vast majority who had no slaves, were not only
encouraged but authorized to exercise dominion over all slaves, thereby adding strength to the system of
control. "
The wealth gap necessitates a monetary transfer
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor at University of Dayton. June 2012 . Slavery Segregation and
Reparation. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara29c.htm
The wealth gap holds down entire neighborhoods. Ta-Nehisi Coates told Bill Moyers that a black family “that
has an income of $100,000 a year, on average, actually lives in a neighborhood that’s comparable to a white
family that makes $30,000 a year.” That’s another manifestation of the black-white wealth gap. Even after
the crash in the housing market, most American families hold the lion’s share of their wealth in housing.
What’s more, home values are a good indicator of the quality of the local schools. That’s a result of a virtuous
cycle — neighborhoods with more expensive real estate have healthier tax bases to fund their schools.
Excellent schools then attract buyers and drive up home values. The fact that poorer neighborhoods tend to
have worse schools is yet another way that the black-white wealth gap creates an uneven playing field. A
modern reparations scheme could help level it. Coates makes an historical and moral case for reparations.
The wealth gap is the basis for a practical, unsentimental one. “Even if you could wave a magic wand and
make all other forms of inequality disappear today,” says Conley, “it would take a very long time for that
wealth inequality to naturally dissolve.” Of course, we see legislatures, even courts, acting on ideas of general
culpability in many places. There are many crimes committed by government officials that lead the entire
community to be liable for the actions of those officials. After Rodney King obtained a damages verdict, that
verdict was satisfied by the taxpayers of Los Angeles. Very few taxpayers were actually responsible for the
crime, but they had to pay for the crime. Perhaps many antireparationists will object to that example.
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Page 23
The economy’s strength is built on black exploitation
Robert Westley. Professor at Boston College. August 2008. MANY BILLIONS GONE: IS IT TIME TO
RECONSIDER THE CASE FOR BLACK REPARATIONS? Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara02b.htm
Just as there can be no doubt that such interracial disparities weigh most heavily upon the underclass, there
can be no doubt that the persistence of those disparities is due in large measure to legally enforced
exploitation of Blacks and socially widespread anti-Black racism. The achievements of Blacks who have
prevailed against racist odds to improve their economic condition should not be minimized, but neither
should the impact of the history and perdurance of racism on Black economic opportunity be trivialized.
Despite well-publicized success cases like Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan, and
others, Blacks as a group have not reached anything approaching economic equality or equality of
opportunity with whites. Given the glacial and limited nature of economic reform, this is unsurprising.
Because racism, in addition to its psychological aspects, is a structural feature of the U.S. political economy, it
produces intergenerational effects. Highlighting the intergenerational effects of structural racism in the
United States political economy, Thomas Pettigrew notes that three useful generalizations can be made
about the current situation of Black Americans. First, current statistics on Blacks, when compared to earlier
data, show substantial improvement in Black living conditions. However, these same statistics pale when
compared to current data on whites. Second, most of the "progress" of the past twenty years reflects the
establishment of a solid, sizable, and skilled Black middle class which, crucially, is able to pass on its human
capital to its children. Conversely, the most bleak statistics reflect the desperate situation of the unskilled
Black poor or underclass. Third, modern forms of racism, to a greater extent than in the past, have become
more subtle, indirect, procedural, and ostensibly nonracial. Pettigrew focuses on the analysis of traditional
inequality factors, such as income, education, housing, employment patterns, and so forth, and how these
factors operate in the context of the new racism. However, the burden of the reparations argument, for
which material inequality may serve as a first predicate, is to show that current disparities in material
resources are causally linked to unjust and unremedied actions in the past. Rather than merely highlighting
intergenerational effects based on traditional inequality factors assumed to be causally linked to past racial
discrimination against Blacks, the following discussion seeks to elucidate a key causal element in the
maintenance of structural racism: the economic determinant of wealth.
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Page 24
Reparations are legally necessary
The Jim Crow Era represents a clear breach of the UN Genocide Convention.
Allan D. Cooper. Professor at Otterbein University. 2012. From Slavery to Genocide: The Fallacy of
Debt in Reparations Discourse. Journal of Black Studies 43(2). Accessed August 15, 2015. p. 110.
Still the question remains: Did U.S. government actions after 1948 affect the African American community in
a manner justifying a claim of genocide? The question itself requires that we ignore slavery altogether and
focus instead on the application of the Jim Crow era of American apartheid. There is already a large literature
detailing the atrocities and humiliations of the Jim Crow era in the United States (e.g., Woodward, 2001;
Packard, 2003; Wormser, 2003). President Bill Clinton apologized for one of the policies targeted at the
African American community that occurred during this time, the Tuskegee experiments that forced nearly
400 African American men to be subjected to syphilis without medical treatment. These experiments began
in the 1930s and continued until 1972; one third of the victims died from the program organized by the U.S.
Public Health Service (Cooper, 2008, p. 191). Causing serious bodily harm to members of a group constitutes
a criterion for genocide identified in the UN Genocide Convention. The bottom line is that from the 1948
Genocide Convention to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, African Americans were subjected to governmental policies
that denied them basic civil rights and permitted discrimination in all facets of social and economic life. As a
result, the community suffered disproportionate harm in terms of employment opportunities, median
income compared to Whites, families living in poverty, incarceration rates, and corporal punishment in public
schools as well as disparate access to public facilities ranging from restaurants to lodging to entertainment
venues. Hate crimes against African Americans were epidemic; in 2005, the U.S. Senate went so far as to
issue an official apology for failing to criminalize lynching during the Jim Crow era, acknowledging that [at]
least 4,742 African Americans had been lynched by domestic terrorists (Stolberg, 2005). These lynchings
continued through 1968 (Brophy, 2006, p. 29).
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Page 25
Statute of limitations is not a constraint on reparations claims
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor at University of Dayton. June 2008. The Case for Black Reparations. Accessed
August 15, 2015. http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara38.htm
Unfortunately, this pattern of racial violence, and the concomitant denial of a legal remedy, has repeated
itself in communities throughout the United States. The Tulsa case is just one example of governmentsanctioned collective violence going unpunished because of a procedural hurdle--the statute of limitations.
Japanese Americans interned during World War II and Jewish survivors of the Holocaust have also struggled
to clear this hurdle. Despite the history of government-sanctioned violence, courts reject reparations claims;
and many Americans support these decisions. People are incredulous and unsympathetic to the notion that
African-Americans could present claims and seek relief for events that took place decades ago, if not longer.
The courts--expressed recently in the Tulsa case--routinely dismiss such claims despite the ability to exercise
their discretion otherwise. Reparations litigation is at a critical juncture; the viability of a reparations lawsuit
has once again become the focus of intense and serious debate. There is no dearth of scholarship on the
broad issue of reparations, but little has been written on the narrow but essential question of whether, as a
matter of current public policy, it is legitimate to apply outmoded notions of the statute of limitations to such
litigation while simultaneously refusing to consider modern bases for expanding permissible exceptions to
the application of statutes of limitations. This Article fills that void, focusing on the limitations issues within
the reparations debate. Some limited work has been done on both sides.
Reparations have a firm legal foundation in unjust enrichment
Joe Feagin. Writer at Time. May 28, 2014. A Legal and Moral Basis for Reparations. Accessed August
15, 2015. http://time.com/132034/a-legal-and-moral-basis-for-reparations/
A legal basis for reparations could rest in the concept of unjust enrichment, an idea traditionally associated
with relationships between individuals. Unjust enrichment involves circumstances that “give rise to the
obligation of restitution, that is, the receiving and retention of property, money, or benefits which in justice
and equity belong to another,” according to Ballentine’s Law Dictionary. One can extend the idea of
restitution for unjust enrichment to the conditions of large-scale group oppression. Implicit in the idea of
unjust enrichment is the counterpart idea of unjust impoverishment, the condition of those suffering at the
hands of those unfairly enriched. From the 1700s to the mid-1800s, white families and communities were
enriched directly, or by means of economic multiplier effects, by slave plantations and related economic
enterprises. Economist James Marketti once estimated that the labor stolen from enslaved African Americans
from 1790 to 1860 was worth in the range of $2.1 to $4.7 trillion (in 1983 dollars), after taking into account
lost interest. Those who have attacked the idea of owing back wages to African Americans, arguing those are
too-distant debts, ignore the huge damages done to African Americans during the century of near-slavery
during Jim Crow segregation. Millions alive today suffered severe losses under Jim Crow and can actually
name who did much of that discrimination and unjust impoverishing. The current worth of all black labor
stolen by whites through the means of slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination (plus interest) is estimated by
some economists in the range of $6 to $24 trillion. And this figure doesn’t include compensation for great
physical and mental suffering and millions of untimely deaths.
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There is a firm constitutional foundation for reparations in the Takings Clause
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor at University of Dayton. June 2011. Slavery Developing Legal
Strategies to Advance Reparations. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara39.htm
Frank Michelman has argued that the Takings Clause offers a way to adjust transactions that increase societal
wealth but decrease the wealth of particular parties, creating transactions that benefit all parties. He argues
that takings should be evaluated under a utility or a fairness analysis, both of which support compensation
for slavery. a. Fairness Compensation for the involuntary transfer of property is appropriate if redistribution
is unfair. Michelman suggests that compensation is required to achieve fairness under certain circumstances,
including ones in which one party suffers an unusually great harm. This analysis dictates that compensation is
appropriate where a societal taking has unequally impaired liberties, where harm is disproportionately
focused on certain individuals or where "visible reciprocities of burden and benefit" are not present. Slavery
meets each of these compensable alternatives. The taking of the slaves' property interest in their selfownership concentrated harm (loss of identity, decision-making power, lack of physical mobility) on certain
individuals (African-Americans) with no reciprocity (uncompensated labor). The benefits accrued affected
only one group (the slave owner and arguably, Whites generally), while the other suffered immense harms.
The result has been long term inequities, including the impairment of liberties with respect to education,
property ownership, and employment opportunities. The fairness analysis therefore provides a takings claim
for slavery. b. Utility Under Michelman's utilitarian analysis, compensation is appropriate where the negative
effect of an action is greater than the cost of compensation. Michelman argues that it is just to compensate
victims because the risk of exploitation by the majority creates a greater disincentive for minority parties to
contribute to society. This compensation is due where societal actions cause disproportionate burdens to fall
on particular parties, where actions tend to channel benefits and burdens to different groups, and where
there has been capricious behavior on the part of the majority. Slaves, in the sense that they were a
powerless minority, had their self-ownership confiscated by the exploitive majority. This confiscation of
property caused a disproportionate burden to fall on this particular group of people. Once confiscated, this
property created benefits to one group, the slave traders and slave owners, while harming another group.
The fact that the slaves were grouped together and identified as aninferior race is evidence of the majority's
capricious behavior. The utilitarian analysis, like the fairness analysis, also provides for takings compensation
for slavery.
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Reparations for contemporary crimes against blacks provides a template for increased payments
Kirsten West Savali. Writer at the Root. May 8, 2015. Chicago’s Reparations for Police Torture
Victims Offer a Glimpse of the Power of #BlackLivesMatter. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/05/chicago_s_reparations_to_black_victims_of_police_tortu
re_offer_a_glimpse.1.html
In an unprecedented move, Chicago’s City Council unanimously passed a reparations package (pdf) on
Wednesday that includes a $5.5 million fund for African Americans who were tortured in police custody
under the misleadership of former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge. Between the years 1972 and 1991, an
estimated 120 black men were brutalized. According to Amnesty International, they endured “electric shocks
to the genitals and other body parts, suffocation, mock executions and beatings—all of which often
accompanied by racial slurs, hurled by all white detectives.” In addition to a formal apology, each person
eligible for reparations could receive up to $100,000 in compensation, as well as counseling services to deal
with the post-traumatic stress that their abuse left behind. Some of the men were in attendance at the
council meeting, and as their names were called, they and their families stood to a standing ovation. While a
round of applause for surviving state-sanctioned torture is not progress by any definition of the word,
accolades and money aren’t the extent of the reparations ordinance. Chicago public schools will also be
required to incorporate the police-brutality cases into history classes, survivors will be offered free
enrollment at Chicago city colleges, and a public monument will be created for the survivors. The
whitewashing of U.S. history and disparities in educational opportunities have played huge roles in sustaining
white supremacy and pathologizing African-American communities. The announcement from Chicago comes
on the heels of Newark, N.J., Mayor Ras Baraka’s announcement of the creation of the city’s first-ever citizen
complaint review board, an 11-member panel that will oversee a police department known for brutalizing
citizens and violating their constitutional rights. This reparations ordinance is a solid step toward rectifying
that. The voices of the marginalized have been heard despite blatant efforts to silence them and soften
messages written in despair and rage that span generations.
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Tort liability provides a basis for reparations
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor at University of Dayton. June 2012 . Slavery Segregation and
Reparation. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara29c.htm
Corporations, which are really a collection of individual shareholders, are liable for the acts of their
employees. In cases of environmental pollution, companies (meaning their shareholders) are frequently held
liable for decades following the pollution. For example, in 1994, Mobile Oil Company was held liable for
polluting the waters of the little town of Cyril, Oklahoma, as early as the 1940s. It is likely that none of
Mobile's shareholders had any direct culpability for the actions of the company's officers who decided to
pollute in the 1940s. Yet the shareholders had to pay. Corporate liability is premised on the idea that
shareholders, even those who had no direct influence on the decisions, have to pay. In the United States,
culpability attaches even without fault in many instances. It is natural to expect that corporations, or
government bodies, will have liability for the decisions they made, sometimes decades ago. Reparationists
have two responses. First, that governmental bodies, like corporations, have a continuing existence.
Governments are liable for the judgments issued against them and, unfortunately, they have to satisfy those
judgments using taxpayer money. The new immigrants take their new government subject to the liability
existing at the time. We all take America with the good and the bad at the same time. There are a lot of
opportunities here; there are also some disadvantages. Reparationists' second response is more general. It
denies that the people who are claiming innocence actually are innocent. As Professor Ogletree has recently
phrased it, "while black folks were sitting at the back of the bus; generations of white immigrants got to go
straight to the front." It is debatable how much privilege some immigrants, particularly those from southern
Europe, Asia, and the Spanish Americas, received. But the point is important and worthy of significantly more
study. For if currently living whites are the beneficiaries of past discrimination against blacks, then the claims
of innocence are harder to make convincingly.
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Answer to debt has been paid
Investing in schools and affirmative action are window dressing—direct economic empowerment is key to
reverse disparities
Tressie McMillan Cottom. Writer at Washington Post. May 29, 2014. No, college isn’t the
answer. Reparations are. Accessed August 15, 2015.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/05/29/no-college-isnt-the-answer-reparationsare/
No matter what black college grads do, as a group they are the most sensitive to every negative macro labor
market trend. (The report has comparative data.) They are more likely to be unemployed, underemployed,
and hold low quality jobs even when they have STEM degrees. I point out that last bit because apparently
STEM will save us all or something. How can I revere education as I do and refuse to accept it as the gospel
that will save us from persistent, intractable inequality?Actually, it is precisely because I revere education—
formal and informal—that I refuse to sell it as a cure for all that ails us.Degrees cannot fix the cumulative
effect of structural racism. In fact, over five decades of social science research shows that education
reproduces inequality. At every level of schooling, classrooms, schools, and districts reward wealth and
privilege. That does not end at college admissions, which is when all that cumulative disadvantage may be its
most acute. Going to college not only requires know how that changes from institution to institution and
year to year, but it also requires capital. There’s the money to take standardized tests and mail applications
and make tuition deposits. But there’s also the money that levels differences in individual ability. An
unimpressive wealthy student can pay for test prep, admissions coaches, and campus visits that increases
one’s shot at going to the most selective college possible. If education reinforces the salience of money to
opportunity, it is money and only money that can make educational “opportunity” a vehicle for justice.
Reparations can do what education cannot do. When we allow education to be sold as a fix for wealth
inequality, we set a public good up to fail and black folks who do everything “right” to take the blame when it
goes “wrong.”
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Answer to no recent victims
Reparations to descendants of victims can be effective
Eric Williams. Professor at University of Massachusetts. June 2012 . Ten Reasons: A Response to
David Horowitz by Robert Chrisman and Ernest Allen, Jr. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.umass.edu/afroam/hor.html
Most Americans today were not alive during World War II. Yet reparations to Japanese Americans for their
internment in concentration camps during the war was paid out of current government sources contributed
to by contemporary Americans. Passage of time does not negate the responsibility of government in crimes
against humanity. Similarly, German corporations are not the "same" corporations that supported the
Holocaust; their personnel and policies today belong to generations removed from their earlier criminal
behavior. Yet, these corporations are being successfully sued by Jews for their past actions. In the same vein,
the U.S. government is not the same government as it was in the pre-civil war era, yet its debts and
obligations from the past are no less relevant today. 5. The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The
Reparations Claim Do Not Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury As noted in our response to
"Reason 4," the historical precedents for the reparations claims of African Americans are fully consistent with
restitution accorded other historical groups for atrocities committed against them. Second, the injury in
question--that of slavery--was inflicted upon a people designated as a race. The descendants of that people-still socially constructed as a race today--continue to suffer the institutional legacies of slavery some one
hundred thirty-five years after its demise. To attempt to separate the issue of so-called race from that of
injury in this instance is pure sophistry. For example, the criminal (in)justice system today largely continues to
operate as it did under slavery--for the protection of white citizens against black "outsiders." Although no
longer inscribed in law, this very attitude is implicit to processes of law enforcement, prosecution, and
incarceration, guiding the behavior of police, prosecutors, judges, juries, wardens, and parole boards. Hence,
African Americans continue to experience higher rates of incarceration than do whites charged with similar
crimes, endure longer sentences for the same classes of crimes perpetrated by whites, and, compared to
white inmates, receive far less consideration by parole boards when being considered for release. Slavery
was an institution sanctioned by the highest laws of the land with a degree of support from the Constitution
itself.
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Answer to African-American privilege
African-Americans shouldn’t be compared to international blacks but to European immigrants—the
disadvantage is clear
Jamelle Bouie. Writer at Slate. May 2014. Reparations are owed. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/05/reparations_should_be_paid_to_black_a
mericans_here_is_how_america_should.html
One of the great principles of American law is the equal protection principle, which requires that similarly
situated people be treated alike. Have people who are making reparations claims been treated differently
and worse than others? If there has been unequal treatment, then that may be a separate basis for
reparations. The issue ought not to be how people would be living if their ancestors had not been brought to
the United States or freely immigrated but how they are treated relative to other people here. While David
Horowitz is fond of pointing out that the average annual income of residents in Benin is less than one
thousand dollars, that has little relevance to how people are treated in the United States. Life is better than it
would be in another country, but the relevant comparison group is other citizens of the United States. The
fact that voting rights are denied to serfs in Russia does not mean that people of Russian descent in the
United States are not entitled to vote, or do not have a claim if they are denied the right to vote. There are
other ways of paying the debt, though, besides cash payments. Part of the argument that reparations have
been paid is the assertion that the Civil War paid that debt. Lincoln scholars are particularly active in
advancing the argument that the Civil War was part of abolishing the debt to African Americans. David
Horowitz' formulation is that white Christians began the antislavery movement, which ended more than two
millennia of slavery. That interpretation leaves a great deal out of the historical record, of course. The
Christian nations of Western Europe and North America contributed to the market for slaves; they provided
an incentive for African nations to enslave Africans and then those western countries participated in "one of
the greatest crimes in history." To credit the United States with abolishing slavery does not quite wipe the
slate clean. For there would have been no need for abolition of slavery in the United States unless it had
been imposed by law here. Even if we say that the United States fought a war to free slaves, which only
begins to describe the process of the Civil War, we cannot ignore the reasons why that war was necessary.
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Services reparations are needed
Reparations are needed for health disparities
Vernellia R. Randall. Professor at University of Dayton. November 2007 . Using Reparations to
Repair Black Health. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://academic.udayton.edu/health/01status/status07.htm
But a livable wage is not enough also needed is the elimination of racism. Racism in American society effects
socio-economic status, education, health care, employment, . . everything. One place that is particularly
important for health is the location of environmental hazards and toxic dumps in Black communities, the
workplace hazards and the hazards in the home. Studies have documented that hazardous waste landfills are
disproportionately placed in African American communities while poor communities are not disparately
burdened. In fact, studies have concluded that race more than poverty, land values, or home ownership is a
predictor as to the location of hazardous facilities. Race is independent of class in the distribution of air
pollution, contaminated fish consumption, location of municipal landfills and incinerators, abandoned toxic
waste dumps, cleanup of superfund sites, lead poisoning in children, and asthma.
African-Americans are uniquely exposed to harms that could be reduced with reparations
Vernellia R. Randall. Professor at University of Dayton. November 2007 . Using Reparations to
Repair Black Health. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://academic.udayton.edu/health/01status/status07.htm
In addition, African Americans are disproportionately represented in jobs with the highest environmental
hazards, such as fast food and pesticide-intensive farm labor, rubber making, coke production, battery
manufacturing, lead plating and smelting, and industrial laundering. . African-American men have a 27%
greater chance than white men of facing safety hazards and a 60% greater chance of facing health hazards in
the workplace. In fact, even when you control for the level of job training and education, African-Americans
find themselves in substantially more dangerous occupations than whites. Finally, for African American
children, lead poisoning in the home is a significant health issue. The blood lead levels in urban AfricanAmerican children under the age of five significantly exceed the levels found in white children of the same
age living in the same cities. This disparity persisted across income levels. Thus, for families with incomes less
than $6000, 68% of black children compared to 36% of white children had unsafe blood levels. In families
earning more than $15,000, 38% of black children and 12% of white children had excess levels of lead. Given
the above, reparations could be used to remove toxic dumps and landfills from African American
communities or completely relocate the communities to safe environment; to make workplace safer and to
eliminate lead paint from housing. Such actions will have a significant effect in removing the health deficit.
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Reparations could be used to build health facilities in black neighborhoods
Vernellia R. Randall. Professor at University of Dayton. November 2007 . Using Reparations to
Repair Black Health. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://academic.udayton.edu/health/01status/status07.htm
If African-Americans fail to seek early health care, they are more likely to be sicker when they do enter the
system; and the cost for the patient to receive service and for the system to provide services at that point is
likely to be greater than at an earlier state. Therefore, not only does the loss of services significantly increase
health care costs to African-Americans, but also, it increases health care costs to the society in general.
Another devastating trend that affects the access of African-Americans to health care is the privatization of
public hospitals. Quite a few hospitals (public and non-profit) have elected to restructure as private, forprofit corporations. As public hospitals, many were obligated to provide uncompensated care under the HillBurton Act. As private hospitals, these institutions are most likely to discontinue providing general health
services to the indigent populations, and essential primary health care services to serve African-American
communities. The problem of limited resources is not new and has plagued the African-American community
since slavery. Historically, African-American communities attempted to address the problem by establishing
African-American hospitals. At one point more than 200 hospitals were located in predominately black
communities. African-Americans relied on these institutions to "heal and save their lives." Now, these
institutions are almost non-existent. By the 1960s, only 90 African-American hospitals remained. Between
1961 and 1988, 57 African- American hospitals closed and 14 others either merged, converted or
consolidated. By 1991, only 12 hospitals continued to "struggle daily just to keep their doors open". As a
result of closures, relocations, and privatization, many African-Americans are left with limited, and difficult
access to hospitals. Thus, reparations would provide for hospitals, clinics, alcohol and Drug Detox centers,
dental health clinics and mental health clinics in the African American community.
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Con
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Page 35
Contention 1—Logistics
Determining who gets paid will require a form of antiquated racial categorization
Foundation for Economic Education. June 30, 2010. What’s Wrong with Reparations for Slavery.
Accessed August 15, 2015. http://fee.org/freeman/whats-wrong-with-reparations-for-slavery/
If the proponents of reparations take to the courts, it will be interesting to see their principle for determining
who is entitled to what. For many reasons that will be a Herculean task. Because of centuries of migration,
conquests, and intermixing, racial purity is more of a social construct than a biological fact. Intermarriage
between whites and blacks in America over the past two centuries has produced a large population of
individuals who defy the stark dichotomy. Racially mixed populations in other parts of the world, such as in
Latin America, have created classifications to describe themselves based on racial portions as small as an
eighth. However, the practice of racial classification has evolved differently in the United States. In an effort
to deny inheritance rights to illegitimate progeny born by slave women, racist plantation owners in the
antebellum South created the dreaded “one-drop rule” to discourage the courts from calling their
miscegenational offspring anything but Negro. The nomenclature of this racist practice has survived to this
day and is embraced by both blacks and whites, who for the most part are unaware of its discriminatory
beginnings. Consider how Vanessa Williams and Colin Powell are labeled black despite their interracial
heritage. With so much racial intermixture, will those who dole out the potential reparations demand
certificates of racial purity? The thought is preposterous.
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Some African-American subgroups are privileged over other minorities
John Hawkins. Writer at Town Hall. July 26, 2014. Reasons Reparations For Slavery Are A Bad Idea.
Accessed August 15, 2015. http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2014/07/26/5-reasons-reparationsfor-slavery-are-a-bad-idea-n1867139/page/full
On the other hand, if you fast forward to today, it’s extraordinarily difficult to show that anybody’s problems
were caused by something that happened almost 150 years ago. Keep in mind that there were white
indentured servants forced to work alongside slaves back then. There were white Americans who were
kidnapped and enslaved by the Barbary pirates. There were Japanese and Italian Americans who were forced
into internment camps during WWII and many of them actually had their property confiscated and sold. The
relatives of many Jewish Holocaust survivors live in America as well. So while black Americans have been
treated worse than any other group in America, there are a lot of other groups that have seemingly bounced
back with little damage from how they’ve been treated in the past. Additionally, while black Americans are
indisputably doing worse than most other groups in America, there are certain subsets of African-Americans
that are doing just fine. For example, black female college graduates make 102% of what white female
college graduates earn. African immigrants also outperform black Americans who were born here in a
number of ways. A new paper (pdf) from University of Chicago PhD candidate Alison Rauh finds that black
immigrants tend to be more successful than black Americans. They out-earn black natives (after accounting
for age) and are more likely to be employed. This is not surprising; white immigrant groups outperform their
native cohort too. But what’s most intriguing is how their children fare. The children of black immigrants are
more likely to go to and complete college than native blacks (and whites) and are less likely to drop out of
high school. The children of black immigrants also earn more than native blacks or first generation
immigrants. If there are certain subsets of black Americans who are doing well, that suggests that there is no
one universal factor like slavery that can be blamed for the difficulties black Americans face.
Assigning responsibility and injury will be impossible
Allan D. Cooper. Professor at Otterbein University. 2012. From Slavery to Genocide: The Fallacy of
Debt in Reparations Discourse. Journal of Black Studies 43(2). Accessed August 15, 2015. p. 110.
To reiterate, reparations have been justified because slavery constituted an exploitative theft of the value of
African American workers. The descendants of these slaves have been denied the inheritance that the
current generation of White Americans has enjoyed from their respective ancestors. Be that as it may, U.S.
courts have consistently ruled that the descendants of slaves have yet to demonstrate “standing” (they have
not demonstrated that the defendants personally injured them) and that these descendants have taken too
long to file their claims. Opponents to reparations have a legitimate case when they assert that (a) there is no
single group responsible for the crime of slavery; (b) there is no single group that benefitted exclusively from
slavery; (c) only a minority of White Americans owned slaves, whereas others gave their lives to free them;
(d) most living Americans have no connection (direct or indirect) to slavery; (e) the historical precedents used
to justify the reparations claim do not apply, and the claim itself is based on race not injury; and (f) the
reparations argument is based on the unsubstantiated claim that all African Americans suffer from the
economic consequences of slavery (Horowitz, 2002, pp. 12-15). In short, the economic basis of the
reparations claim is highly problematic and has failed to earn the minimum standard for standing in the
American judicial system.
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Contention 2—Black Economies
Reparations won’t be effectively invested for a lasting impact
Kyle Smith. Writer at Forbes. June 19, 2014. Why Reparations Wouldn’t Work. Accessed August 15,
2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2014/06/19/why-reparations-wouldnt-work/
Investing preferences would also play a major role in the capital accumulation that might follow reparations
payments. A 1999 paper by economists Yaw A. Badua, Kenneth N. Daniels and Daniel P. Salandro found that
black investors are more risk-averse and focused on safety than white investors, and perhaps consequently
place a higher percentage of their assets in property than do whites. They predicted that these preferences
would cause an increase in the wealth gap between whites and blacks. So it has come to pass. In 1990,
median household net worth among black Americans was about $4,418 — one-tenth of the same figure for
whites. Two decades later, that figure had reached only $4,955. Yet among white households, median net
worth skyrocketed from $45,740 to $110,729 in the same period. Black America missed out almost entirely
on the massive stock market boom of the past quarter-century. “If particular population subgroups tend to
be more risk averse in their asset and liability choices, their long-term wealth will be expected to be less than
households who choose to be less risk averse,” wrote the economists. “For instance, households that
preclude stocks from their portfolio will undoubtedly have less wealth over the long run, because the long
term return on common stock investments are higher than the long term return on less volatile investment
opportunities.”
Reparations might affect the flow of other assistance programs which have a more sustainable impact
Noah Millman. Writer at American Conservative Magazine. June 8, 2014 . Reparations Could
Widen, Rather Than Heal, Racial Rifts. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/08/are-reparations-due-to-africanamericans/reparations-could-widen-rather-than-heal-racial-rifts
Reparations for slavery are often analogized to reparations for the Holocaust – and prima facie the
comparison is quite strong. But Holocaust reparations were negotiated between two distinct political
communities, West Germany and the State of Israel. Reparations for slavery would, by contrast, be paid by
the United States government to the individual descendants of former slaves. The formal distinction between
citizens that reparations would require would inevitably clash with the ultimate political goal of the
movement: political reconciliation based on a shared understanding of history. The push for reparations
might stiffen opposition to programs designed to address disparities and become the basis for further
conflict. This is the most serious problem with the reparations movement. The practical objections, by
contrast, are more readily addressed. It is true that establishing the liability of specific individuals or
institutions is impossible at this late date; that’s one reason why lawsuits related to the harms of slavery have
not fared well at trial. But slavery could not have persisted without state protection, and nothing prevents
the federal government from simply assuming the liability for the institution as a whole. A proper accounting
of the cost of slavery could run into the tens of trillions of dollars, but so does the value of federal assets like
mineral and energy rights. If reparations were structured as ownership of a securitized pool of these assets,
financing would not prove an insurmountable challenge.
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Page 38
Determining payments by racial category rather than examining all factors of marginalization will only
worsen inequality
Jonathan Blanks. Writer at Rare US. July 19, 2014. America owes black people more than it has
given—but reparations aren’t the answer. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://rare.us/story/america-owesblack-people-more-than-it-has-given-but-reparations-arent-the-answer/
While reparations are about injustice and atonement, any program aimed at black America ought to look to
ameliorate the problems currently faced by black folks—particularly the most marginalized. That means,
inter alia, fixing a system in which blacks have a harder time finding work and continue to live in fear of the
police. There is a very real danger that any reparative program would disproportionately benefit those of us
who, while not far removed from slavery, have made it to the middle class (or higher) while further
marginalizing those who have suffered the most over the years. To wit, if the widespread socio-political
mobilization Coates has supported in subsequent interviews is to be most effective in combating today’s
societal ills, it would best be aimed not at remuneration for black folks, but for correcting the ills that
currently afflict them. Indeed, if the solution to cyclical poverty were simply a matter of an infusion of cash,
the government should just give $100,000 to every person under a certain income level and destroy (or, at
least, reset) the social safety net regardless of race or history. But I sincerely doubt the problems attendant
to cyclical poverty would be solved by such an infusion and thus I find reparations an inadequate approach to
dealing with American racism, let alone the related but broader problem of poverty. This, I think, is where I
depart most sharply from Coates. One of the problems with any top-down social program is the unintended
consequences on the margins. Whether intentionally or not, policies with the best intentions may exacerbate
some of the very problems they mean to address. Take, for example, the recent proposed minimum wage
increase. The proposal, according to the CBO, would raise many wages not only for minimum wage earners,
but many already making above the minimum who would likely see a pay raise. However, this benefit for
several millions comes at the estimated permanent job loss of 500,000 positions.
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Reparations aren’t owed
African-Americans are privileged over all other black people
Foundation for Economic Education. June 30, 2010. What’s Wrong with Reparations for Slavery.
Accessed August 15, 2015. http://fee.org/freeman/whats-wrong-with-reparations-for-slavery/
Part of the problem is the perception that “black” and “poor” are synonymous. In the 1960s it was politically
expedient to associate the state of being poor, uneducated, and oppressed with being black. The civil rights
establishment found this association rhetorically necessary to focus public attention on the plight of southern
blacks and to engage the emotions of the white majority against overt southern racism. However, this
political strategy had an unexpected impact on the emerging black middle class. According to the blackequals poor logic, when the black middle class achieved more opportunity and became more educated and
affluent, it essentially became less “black.” This perhaps explains the black establishment’s attitude toward
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Essentially, black
identity was hijacked and frozen during the 1960s. Is there a legacy from slavery that has hindered the
economic progress of blacks today? Let’s consider the numbers. Major marketers have long constructed a
black “gross national product” (GNP) from government statistics to gauge the financial power of black
Americans. This is actually a misnomer since it tries to measure the total products and services consumed,
not produced, by the black community. This statistic is often cited by black political leaders to persuade
corporate America to produce more goods suited to the preferences of blacks. It turns out that if black
Americans constituted their own country, they would have the 11th largest economy in the world. In
addition to being a wealthy demographic group (richer than 90 percent of the people in the world), blacks in
America have a longer life expectancy than African and Caribbean blacks, as well as whites in many parts of
Eastern Europe and Latin America. Black Americans have higher rates of literacy and achieve more
postsecondary degrees as a percentage of the population than blacks in Africa. Black Americans’ upward
mobility from Reconstruction to the present is a testament to their creativity and ability to adapt.
Reparations are not only unnecessary as a financial corrective, but they would also be an insult to the
multitudes of successful black Americans who lifted themselves out of poverty before and after the civil
rights movement.
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Failing to account for black privilege represents a binary approach racial identity
Kevin D Williamson. Writer at National Review. May 24, 2014. The Case against Reparations.
Accessed August 15, 2015. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/378737/case-against-reparations-kevind-williamson
But dealing with that reality inescapably entails treating people as individuals, and treating people as
individuals makes reparations morally and intellectually impossible — even if we accept in toto Mr. Coates’s
argument that the brutal imposition of white-supremacist policies is the entire basis for the relative social
positions of blacks and whites in the United States in 2014. Which is to say: Even if we accept the facts of
aggregate advantage and disadvantage with their roots in historical injustice, the aggregate cannot be
converted into the collective inasmuch as neither advantage nor disadvantage is universal on either side nor
linked to a straightforward chain of causality. Some blacks are born into college-educated, well-off
households, and some whites are born to heroin-addicted single mothers, and even the totality of racial
crimes throughout American history does not mean that one of these things matters and one does not. Once
that fact is acknowledged, then the case for reparations is only moral primitivism: My interests are
inextricably linked to my own kin group and directly rivalrous with yours, i.e., the very racism that this
program is in theory intended to redress.
American whites already paid a heavy price in the civil war
Daniel J Berger. Professor at Louisiana State University. 2014. Reparations for Slavery: They have
already been paid. Accessed August 15, 2015. https://www.bluffton.edu/~bergerd/essays/reparations.html
About 11% of the total population (counting men, women and children) of the 1860 United States was in
military service for some portion of the war; from the Confederate States considered separately, about 13%
of the total population was enrolled. Of those enrolled in military service, the vast majority were White and
all were male. (3) Of the (overwhelmingly White) men enrolled in military units, Union and Confederate, 14%
died of their wounds or of disease; another 11% were wounded but survived. (4) In Confederate units, deaths
approached 19% of the men enrolled, an order of magnitude higher than the death rate in any other
American war. This amounted to an aggregate 550,000 dead and more than 400,000 wounded from military
units alone. Civilian casualties are unknown, but were certainly very much lighter than in 20th-Century wars.
Nevertheless, it is worth repeating that more Americans died in the Civil War than in all other wars the
United States has fought, combined. Even if one leaves Confederates out of the total, the number of U.S.
soldiers who died closely approaches the total of U.S. deaths in the Second World War--out of a population
1/6 as large. The monetary cost of the Civil War, North and South, is estimated at $44.4 billion in 1990
dollars. This breaks down to Union costs of more than $1000 (1990 dollars) for every man, woman and child
in the Union; and Confederate costs of well over $2000 for every man, woman and child in the Confederacy.
This is only the direct, billed cost of military pay and supplies, excluding veterans' pensions which typically
add a threefold increase. Nor does it include the many millions (in 1864 dollars) of damage done to the
infrastructure of the Confederacy--and of Union border states--during the war; each million amounts to
about $9 million in 1990 dollars. We could conservatively estimate that the total monetary cost of the Civil
War was on the order of $200-500 billion in 1990 dollars, and perhaps as high as one or two trillion dollars.
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Reparations won’t make up for slavery
Making white people pay generalizes participation in slavery—very few profited
John Hawkins. Writer at Town Hall. July 26, 2014. Reasons Reparations For Slavery Are A Bad Idea.
Accessed August 15, 2015. http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2014/07/26/5-reasons-reparationsfor-slavery-are-a-bad-idea-n1867139/page/full
The Civil War ended in 1865; so all the slaves and slave masters are all long dead. Moreover, even in the
South, depending on which numbers you believe, somewhere between 80-95% of white Americans never
owned slaves. There were also several thousand BLACK AMERICANS who owned slaves -- yes, really. Certainly
they would be more responsible for slavery than a white man who didn't own slaves, right? Getting beyond
the South, why would a white northerner from a state that didn't have slaves owe "reparations" for slavery?
For example, what wrong would a Republican abolitionist -- who hated slavery, voted for Abe Lincoln, and
fought in the Civil War -- have done that would require "reparations?" We don't hold people responsible for
what their ancestors did and even if we did, most white Americans, even in the South, didn't own slaves. So
149 years after the Civil War ended, there simply is no way to hold the people responsible for slavery
accountable for what they did. Victimizing people who did nothing wrong today to make up for a wrong that
was done 150 years ago wouldn't make anything right.
The impact of slavery specifically disappeared long ago
Peter Flaherty and John Carlisle. Researchers at National Legal and Policy Center. 2013 . The
Case Against Slave Reparations. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://nlpc.org/sites/default/files/Reparationsbook.pdf
Sacerdote finds that the economic disparities between the descendants of former slaves and the
descendants of free blacks (pre- 1865) largely disappeared within just two generations following
emancipation. Thus, the injustices visited upon one generation seem to have little if any harmful effect on
that generation’s grandsons and granddaughters. “The rich existing literature on social mobility and income
mobility would suggest that such convergence (i.e. recovery from slavery) may take place rather rapidly,”
writes Sacerdote.68 Sacerdote studied the matter by comparing outcomes for former slaves and their
children and grandchildren, to outcomes for free blacks and their children and grandchildren. The study takes
into account literacy, schooling status, occupation and socioeconomic status. Sacerdote used census data
from 1880 and 1920, grouping people into three generations to examine outcomes for those born before
1865 and their children and grandchildren. He found that in 1880 there was a huge literacy gap between
former slaves and free-born blacks, but that the gap narrowed considerably over the next two generations. In
a similar vein, children of former slaves were less likely to be enrolled in school than children of free blacks in
1880, but by 1920 the gap largely disappeared among grandchildren of blacks born into slavery and the
grandchildren of free-born blacks. Grandchildren of slaves were 6 percent less likely to be enrolled in school
than grandchildren of free blacks, but this effect goes away completely after controlling for region. Regarding
income, former slaves—not surprisingly—worked in occupations with lower median income than those of
blacks born free. But between 1880 and 1920, the income gap had substantially narrowed. The literacy gap
between blacks and whites also substantially narrowed from the first generation of children born after the
Civil War to the next generation. By 1920, the effect of slavery status on literacy disappears completely.
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Reparations won’t help black economies
The distinction between poverty and racism proves that monetary payments are ill-suited
Kevin D Williamson. Writer at National Review. May 24, 2014. The Case against Reparations.
Accessed August 15, 2015. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/378737/case-against-reparations-kevind-williamson
If the enduring disparities in economic outcomes were the only concern, or even the main concern, at issue
here, then our policy menu would be relatively straightforward. Blacks are disproportionately poor, and
policies that encourage economic growth and robust employment, which is the only meaningful long-term
anti-poverty program, should benefit blacks with roughly the same disproportion. Indeed, that has been the
case for some periods in the past: Black households saw stronger income growth than did white households
during the Reagan boom, and from 1990 to 2000, Census figures report aggregate growth in the black
median household almost twice that of white households, 23 percent in constant dollars for blacks vs. 12
percent for whites. Had those trends continued, the racial difference in median income would have been
wiped out in about 40 years. But if there were a policy or a set of policies that could be enacted guaranteeing
the economic growth of that unusual decade, then they already would have been made permanent. The path
from policy to outcome is a crooked one. It is true, as Mr. Coates argues, citing Lyndon Johnson, that “Negro
poverty is not white poverty,” at least as measured by many critical metrics — concentration, mobility,
various life outcomes controlled for income, etc.
Direct cash payments fail—welfare proves
John Hawkins. Writer at Town Hall. July 26, 2014. Reasons Reparations For Slavery Are A Bad Idea.
Accessed August 15, 2015. http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2014/07/26/5-reasons-reparationsfor-slavery-are-a-bad-idea-n1867139/page/full
Just giving people money seldom helps to fix their problem. That’s why America’s “war on poverty” has been
an utter and complete failure. After doling out more than 21 trillion dollars over the last 50 years, we’ve done
nothing to reduce the poverty rate. Shortly after the War on Poverty got rolling (1967), about 27% of
Americans lived in poverty. In 2012, the last year for which data is available, the number was about 29%.’ In
fact, it’s entirely possible that the poverty rate would be LOWER today if there had never been a “war on
poverty.” You can see this same dynamic with aid to Africa. After handing out more than a trillion dollars,
much of the continent has gone BACKWARDS over the last 10-15 years. Even winning the lottery doesn’t tend
to make a generational impact. A paper by economists Hoyt Bleakley and Joseph Ferrie traced the results of
the Georgia land lottery down the generations. They found that, “one generation after the distribution of the
Georgia land, sons of winners have no better adult outcomes (wealth, income, literacy) than the sons of nonwinners, and winners’ grandchildren do not have higher literacy or school attendance than non-winners’
grandchildren.”
Lottery-style payments, the predominate suggested plan, will not have a sustainable economic impact
Kyle Smith. Writer at Forbes. June 19, 2014. Why Reparations Wouldn’t Work. Accessed August 15,
2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2014/06/19/why-reparations-wouldnt-work/
The reparations plans that have been suggested, however, would work a lot like lotteries. Coates suggests a
large lump sum distributed to a single generation over a period of “a decade or two.” Slate’s Jamelle Bouie
suggests either a cash boost for existing government social-welfare and infrastructure projects (which might
sound too indirect to count as reparations, at least to the average American) or “baby bonds” which black
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Americans, who have been given low-yield government-guaranteed savings funds at birth, would be able to
cash in for perhaps a $60,000 lump sum at age 18. Both of these ideas sound like lotteries. What happens to
lottery winners? Do they and their descendants go on to a permanently higher socioeconomic bracket? A
survey of Florida lottery winners shows that this group is twice as likely to go bankrupt as others. The primary
difference between winners of large sums and those who won smaller prizes is that the winners of large
sums isn’t in bankruptcy rates but in timing: big winners took a bit longer to go bust. Lottery winners
(contrary to myth) are actually older and more affluent than the typical American, but The Wall Street
Journal summarized the research as follows: “Sudden wealth only exaggerates your current situation. If
you’re unhappy, bad with money and surrounded by people you don’t trust, money will make those
problems worse. If you’re fulfilled, careful with money and enjoy a life of strong relationships, the lottery
could make those strengths better.” Economists often cite the study of the Georgia land lottery of 1832, in
which hugely valuable parcels of land were distributed randomly. What happened to the descendants of
these fortunate few? Are they the richest families in Georgia? No. A paper by economists Hoyt Bleakley and
Joseph Ferrie traced the results of the Georgia land lottery down the generations. They found that, “one
generation after the distribution of the Georgia land, sons of winners have no better adult outcomes (wealth,
income, literacy) than the sons of non-winners, and winners’ grandchildren do not have higher literacy or
school attendance than non-winners’ grandchildren.” Bleakley believed that a large sum of literal capital was,
across generations, less relevant than human capital in the building of wealth: “We see a really huge change
in the wealth of the individuals, but we don’t see any difference in human capital,” he noted. “We don’t see
that the children are going to school more.”
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Most impoverished people mismanage money when they get a large cash influx
Noah Millman. Writer at American Conservative Magazine. June 8, 2014 . Reparations Could
Widen, Rather Than Heal, Racial Rifts. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/08/are-reparations-due-to-africanamericans/reparations-could-widen-rather-than-heal-racial-rifts
In the first place, cash reparations in the form of a single windfall payment could be disastrous for some.
Whether the payment is modest—say, $10,000 per black adult—or much larger, the potential for waste,
fraud, and victimization is extraordinarily high. Look no further than the world of professional athletics: as
record breaking contracts continue to get headlines in sports media, more former athletes than not are flat
broke two to five years after retirement. Rock stars, lottery winners, and other instant entrants into the socalled One Percent—irrespective of class and race—mismanage their money and find themselves broke in a
short amount of time. Many of the most disadvantaged black folks could be busted after a temporary boom,
and still without the jobs or skills that could lead to greater long-term prosperity. It’s not enough to wonder
whether moving heaven and earth to get a payment would be “worth it.” Rather, advocates should consider
whether or not such a payment by itself could ultimately do more harm to the intended beneficiaries.
Reparations as smaller annuity or monthly payments presumably would be less likely to create the windfall
problems, though certainly poor investment decisions—such as trading rights to those payments in exchange
for a lump sum from a third party—would likely occur. However, payments such as these may, without
change to older law, disrupt public assistance outlays or perhaps housing for the neediest black Americans.
Such payments would unlikely be enough to live on by themselves, thus trading welfare for reparation
payments is unlikely to substantively improve life for those whose life could be most improved by additional
income.
Focus on race ignores the historical underpinnings of capital – examining class division must precede
examining racism
Byron Ofari. President of Cal State Black Student Union and Writer at Black Liberation.
2014. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://archive.lib.msu.edu/AFS/dmc/radicalism/public/all/blackliberation/AAN.html
Revolutionary nationalism, both in theory and practice, is a far reaching variant on the traditional concept of
black nationalism. Revolutionary nationalist, unlike cultural nationalists, recognize that it is impossible to
resolve the problems of black people under the structure of American Capitalism. This has led Huey Newton
to correctly point out that one who adheres to the philosophy of revolutionary nationalism must of necessity
be a socialist. For revolutionary nationalists, by and large, take the position that in order to oppose capitalism
it is mandatory that one adopt an outlook of international working class solidarity with particular emphasis
on the struggles of Third World people against Imperialism. Generally speaking, cultural nationalists have a
one-sided view of American society. The struggle for black liberation to them would be won if only white
racism were eliminated. Such a view is absurd. Revolutionary nationalists have clearly seen that white racism
is only a convenient tool used by the corporate power structure to divide the working masses in America
while maximizing profits. Cultural nationalists also tend to identify only with the liberation struggles on the
African continent rather than to see the need for a total world revolution.
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There are too many issues to be covered in a single payment scheme—future movements may meet less
support
Jonathan Blanks. Writer at Rare US. July 19, 2014. America owes black people more than it has
given—but reparations aren’t the answer. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://rare.us/story/america-owesblack-people-more-than-it-has-given-but-reparations-arent-the-answer/
I would argue that reparative payments would effectively signal that ‘The Debt’ America owed to its black
citizens will have been paid and any further complaints or need of assistance will be met with contempt and
rejected. Such a debt is moral in nature and thus should not be reduced to a financial sum to be haggled
over. That amount will never be enough, and without systemic change, any payment may be detrimental to
societal changes we need. Take police misconduct. Historical, anecdotal, and statistical evidence strongly
suggest that blacks, particularly poor blacks, have and continue to disproportionately suffer from police
brutality and aggressive (and often, illegal) tactics. In recent years, primarily through the drug war, these
behaviors—once primarily limited to inner cities and black neighborhoods—have bled into white enclaves
and onto college campuses. Given the statistical correlation between first contact with the court system and
future socio-economic outcomes, particularly among people of color, a serious rethink of our current law
enforcement regimes—from laws to funding to procedures governing police contact with the general
public—is among the most pressing issues facing young black men in America today. To me, this is of far
more pressing importance to American blacks than whether Coates and I each receive a check from the
government for the past disadvantages inflicted upon our families. This isn’t about “white backlash”—it’s
coalition building. Everyone should benefit from criminal justice reform. All people in poverty should benefit
from economic reform. All children should benefit from education reform.
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Reparations won’t be translated to sustainable economic success
William Darity, Bidisha Lahiri and Dania V Francis. Professor at University of Alabama. May
2010. Reparations for African-Americans as a Transfer Problem: A Cautionary Tale. Review of Development
Economics. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/227376841_Reparations_for_AfricanAmericans_as_a_Transfer_Problem_A_Cautionary_Tale
Second, and perhaps more important, this model provides a cautionary note towards the design of a
reparations plan. If one believes that one important purpose of repa-rations is to bridge the income and/or
wealth gap between blacks and nonblacks, then the way in which reparations are financed and carried out,
as well as the economic conditions at the time of the payment, greatly affect success in achieving the goal.
We have shown that if blacks do not have productive capacity in place prior to the repa-rations payment,
there will be no ultimate effect on black income.We also have shown that reparations payment that either
mandate or provide incentives for blacks to use the payment towards goods and services produced by
nonblacks will increase the income of nonblacks while possibly decreasing the income of blacks. Both of
these results run counter to the goal of closing the racial income gap. Black income will rise under a
reparations program designed to induce blacks to spend largely on black commodities, while inducing
nonblacks to finance the repara-tions payment primarily by reducing consumption of nonblack commodities.
A reparations policy designed to improve the productive capacity of blacks also would increase the relative
income of blacks but would impose a secondary burden or adverse terms-of-trade effect on blacks. Unless
the latter effect is unusually large the net consequence of this type of program would be to close the gap.
Thus, our paper uncovers some of the complexities of the effects of a reparations program and under-scores
the importance of carefully considering the form reparations should take in order to achieve a narrowing of
racial income or wealth disparities in America.
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Reparations hurt race relations
Legal remedies will promote cultural blindness and academic elitism
Kimberly Wedeven Segall. Professor at Seattle Pacific University. 2002 . Postcolonial
Performatives of Victimization. Public Culture, 14(3). Accessed August 15, 2015. p. 617-8
Law complicates postcolonial identifications. As recent criticisms of the U.S. court system reveal, legal
language and narratives, as cultural constructs, influence national history and constructions of identity. In
postcolonial states, the globalization of legal systems closely follows the development of nation-states,
international trading demands, and government transitions after civil war. The constitution of courts in
postcolonial and postwar societies begets transitional amnesties, reparations, or silent amnesia, and public
hearings and mandates inaugurate forums for testimony that have powerful effects on the way stories of the
past will be reconstructed or obliterated. Indeed, these postcolonial legal narratives and identities set
precedents for national identifications and bolster the central democratic state. The conventions of legal
discourse and procedure also constrain subject narratives—through, for example, the imposition of time
constraints, formalized qualifications for benefits, codified identifying language as deployed in legal
mandates, and narrative formulas that require condensed beginnings and conclusions, not to mention the
hermeneutics of audience expectation and media interpretation. To ignore the cultural invasion of legal
forms and local adaptations to them—as exemplified in the operations of the postcolonial performative of
victimization—thus courts the charge of a cultural blindness, an academic imperialism.
Reparations accentuate racial divisions and obscure contemporary problems
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor of Law at University of Alabama. Spring 2004 . The Arguments
Against Reparations. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara29d.htm
But there are significant costs to reparations. They may tend to divide people along racial lines, for recalling
past tragedies are, indeed, painful. Even more than recalling the past tragedies, however, reparations will
require the government to draw further lines on the basis of race. For many reparationists see reparations
not as a way of achieving integration and a color-blind society; they see it as a way of achieving further raceconscious action. Eric Yamamoto is one of the rare reparationists who takes seriously the disadvantages of
reparations. He acknowledges the potential of reparations to lead to feelings of victimology and political
backlash. Victimhood is not just a mind set, however. There are other problems with it. Reparations talk can
be distracting. Reparations may cause people to focus on past injustice, at a time when the energy should be
focused somewhere else.
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Discourse over of racism is more significant—it would be curtailed by reparations
Kimberly Wedeven Segall. Professor at Seattle Pacific University. 2002 . Postcolonial
Performatives of Victimization. Public Culture, 14(3). Accessed August 15, 2015. p. 617-8
The cursory narrative structures and victim identifications of a legal ritual such as that inaugurated in South
Africa provide an overt way to speak of the tragedy of the past, often for the first time in public. Law thus
structures a space for the marginalized to speak and augments acceptance for these tragic tales, breaking the
silence often surrounding atrocity. However, these public spaces and processes, frequently marked by
implicit performance and language demands, select for specific victim-acts. The complexity of postcolonial
acts resides in temporality. While the term victim may capture the helpless psychological position of a
subject during the moment of torture and terror, the second performance of identity under the structure of
law enforces a continued victimization role. Public performers, Erving Goffman argues, must maintain a
group identity for staking convincing claims, as in the case of reparation. This second “staging” of
victimization resubjects the individual to feelings of helplessness, feelings that may only be altered in legal,
local, or artistic settings if the subject is given the agency to perform complex roles—not just “victim,” in
other words, but “fighter,” “survivor,” “healer,” “community member.” While law establishes a precedent of
relating injury, artistic performances can trace unfinished traumatic hauntings, the ghostly memories not yet
put to rest by the state-sponsored forum. Because of the paradoxical nature of trauma, which is virtually
unspeakable because of the shocking nature of its originary event and which, when spoken, must be
approached through continually changing and revised memory forms to avoid reentering shock, traumatic
narratives challenge law’s desire for stasis and reflect both the influence of and resistance to postcolonial
victim-acts. Trauma attains permanence, Mbembe argues, through embodied memory, as made evident in
Africa’s fractured countries and wounded bodies. Yet cultural contestation over the interpretation of injury,
and trauma itself, presents a site for possible resistance and change.
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Reparations are so divisive that they could only be paid unwillingly, defeating any chance at reconciliation
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor of Law at University of Alabama. Spring 2004 . What's at Stake?
Why Are Reparations Controversial? Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara29d.htm
Reparations payments--even apologies--are deeply controversial. When the Mobile Register polled Alabama
citizens on the issue of reparations in the summer of 2002, it found that the question of reparations was the
most racially divisive issue since it began polling. (See Table 1.) The differences between whites and blacks
outstripped even the gap seen during the civil rights struggle over integration. Why is it that only five percent
of white Alabamians support reparations for slavery, while sixty-seven percent of black Alabamians support
them? Why did some whites become so enraged at the mere suggestion of reparations that they could not
complete the survey? Lest one think that Alabama is out-of-step with attitudes in the United States, that
racial gap is fairly constant nationwide. According to a study by Harvard University and the University of
Chicago that researchers reported in the spring of 2003, only four percent of whites support reparations
payments. (See Table 2.) The opposition even to apologies, which are free from financial obligation, suggests
that something very important is at stake--it is how we view ourselves and our place in the world. It is, in
short, about what is known as the culture wars--a conflict between liberals and conservatives over how they
view issues as diverse as abortion, religion's role in public life, affirmative action, and the United States's
culpability for racism. Reparations touch on these issues in several places. Reparations relate to how we view
the United States's history--is it a narrative of the United States as a place of opportunity or oppression? They
also relate to how we view the legacy of slavery and what we should do about it now. Reparations are more
controversial--that is, more people oppose them--than most issues in the culture war. There is some basic
parity in many issues relating to the culture war. With reparations, at least judging by public opinion right
now, there is little parity. Reparations are simply viewed with disdain by many. What else is it? It is a conflict
that appears frequently when race enters political discussion--of fear of issues of group identity and group
liability. So frequently, group members see themselves as being asked to pay more than their fair share. And
group members think that they are receiving less than they deserve. Those sentiments are heightened when
one deals with racial group identity.
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Reparations will complicate race relations and prevent collective action to help the most disadvantaged
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor of Law at University of Alabama. Spring 2004 . The Cultural War
over Reparations for Slavery , 53 DePaul Law Review. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara29d.htm
Reparations may also lead to an increased division in society. At a time when many people think we ought to
be moving in the direction of a colorblind society, reparations talk makes that difficult. Or at least it raises the
prospect of continued focus on race. At the same time, two groups of commentators, reparationists and
some conservatives, see reparations as a way of ending the significance of race. For reparationists like
Rhonda Magee-Andrews, the author of one of the most important articles ever written on reparations, the
prospects of reparations offer the hope of someday, perhaps someday soon, ending the legal significance of
race. We may be able to get to the point at which the damage has been repaired. Then, as Magee-Andrews
argues in a recent pathbreaking article, "The Third Reconstruction," maybe then we can move on to a focus
on helping those in the community who need help the most. The central element of attention will be need.
There are also conservatives, with whom Magee-Andrews shares little in philosophy, who see reparations as
a way to end the focus on race. Once there is a reckoning, the reparations can be paid and the government
will stop paying attention to race. There will be no more affirmative action or other race-conscious action.
However appealing such a world may appear, as a simple solution to age-old problems, it is unlikely that
reparations offer that kind of closure. Difficulties of racial equality are unlikely to be solved overnight. The
reparations movement may end with some further recognition of the role of slavery and Jim Crow in
American history. There may also be payments to a limited class of identifiable victims and perhaps
payments to aid those most in need. There may never be a complete accounting of the costs imposed by
hundreds of years of forced labor and decades of gross discrimination in voting rights, education, and
employment.
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Reparations will forestall racial conciliation
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor of Law at University of Alabama. Spring 2004 . What's at Stake?
Why Are Reparations Controversial? Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara29d.htmThe third subcategory is that reparations talk
divides people along racial lines. It makes blacks think that whites as a group are their oppressors; it makes
whites who have no responsibility for the sins of the past feel like oppressors and plays on feelings of guilt.
That division falsely (in the minds of reparations opponents) continues the harmful focus on race. At a time
when the government and everyone else should be moving toward a colorblind society, reparations talk
reemphasizes race. It reestablishes racial divisions that we are eliminating (or at least ought to be
eliminating). All of this leads up to the cultural war at stake over reparations. Reparations are not just about
redistribution of wealth, though they certainly are controversial for that reason alone. Reparations, and the
apologies that surely precede them, are about a microcosm of how we view United States history. Do we see
the United States as a place of plentiful opportunity, where people can go as far as their ability and energy
will take them, or as a haunted landscape full of oppression? Do we view the chasm between black and white
wealth in this country as the fault of blacks and the Great Society, which intervened in the mid-1960s, to
destroy the black families and the economic progress they were about to make? Or do we view it as a legacy
of past state-sponsored discrimination and racial crimes? That self-image, and the accompanying narratives
we tell ourselves about how we view our own accomplishments carry powerful weight: I'm wealthy and welleducated because of my merit, not because of the fortunate circumstances of my birth, or I'm poor and
poorly educated because of a racist society, not because of my lack of ability or motivation.
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Reparations deny black agency
Defining the African-American experience through suffering denies agency
Marybeth Gasman. Professor at University of Pennsylvania. 2006. The Journal of Higher
Education 77.2. Accessed August 15, 2015. 317-352
In many ways, Jencks and Riesman followed a long line of research (including the Moynihan Report) by
generally liberal thinkers who did a disservice to Blacks by attributing all of their current problems to the
legacy of slavery—thereby denying them agency and overlooking Black accomplishments since slavery
(Moynihan, 1965; Stuckey, 1987). 8 The problem with this understanding is it has a tendency to see Uncle
Tom–like behavior (and other forms of self-hatred) in current Black leadership: hence Jencks and Riesman's
mischaracterization of Black colleges as not being incubators of civil rights protest. This understanding also
tends to ignore the contemporary context—that is, the effect of recent history, and the role that Blacks
played in these events. This is not to say that Blacks did not suffer debilitating effects, both from slavery and
segregation. Nor is it to say that Blacks have only themselves to blame for current troubles. But to
characterize these problems as an unchanging holdover from a time long passed is to deal African Americans
a double blow: first, to depict them as putty in the hands of an oppressor, then to deny them the ability to
grow and adapt to freedom. For a fuller understanding of Black agency, researchers must look at the
situation from multiple perspectives.
Reparations mark blacks as victims and discourage community development
Alfred L. Brophy. Professor of Law at University of Alabama. Spring 2004 . What's at Stake?
Why Are Reparations Controversial? Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara29d.htm
Despite the marked socioeconomic progress black Americans have made in this country over the past half
century, the reparations movement, at bottom, encourages minorities to believe that they are really lost
souls. The leaders of this movement do not talk about how such a distant crime has led to specific damages
in present lives of most minorities. For them, feelings of victimization in general, not damages in the specific,
are the point. So they fervently maintain that all full-grown, capable minorities ought to blame the missed
opportunities of their lives on the slavery that transpired centuries ago as though their pains were
interchangeable with those endured by slaves. The final group of arguments are at the center of the culture
war. They revolve around a consideration that reparations talk divides the country along racial lines. By
talking about the past and by focusing on past injustices, blacks alienate themselves from the rest of the
country. Reparations talk leads blacks to see themselves as victims who deserve government payments.
Within the genre of "reparations are divisive," there are several subcategories. First, that blacks have a cult of
victimhood. Perhaps the best-known proponent of that cult of victimhood is Professor John McWhorter of
the University of California at Berkeley. Even talk of reparations or the sins of the past causes African
Americans to focus improperly on the task at hand: gaining an education and rising economically. The second
subcategory is that focusing on the injustices of the past alienates blacks from American society, at a time
when they should be focusing on the benefits that American society has to offer.
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Answer to American wealth built on slavery
Slavery was a strain on the economy and didn’t contribute to contemporary wealth
Peter Flaherty and John Carlisle. Researchers at National Legal and Policy Center. 2013 . The
Case Against Slave Reparations. Accessed August 15, 2015.
http://nlpc.org/sites/default/files/Reparationsbook.pdf
Slavery absorbed southern savings, preventing the accumulation of non-human capital and holding back the
growth of manufacturing. More specifically, historians contend that capital was “frozen” in the form of slave
labor, making it unavailable for other forms of investment. Half of the South’s assessed worth was tied up in
slaves and close to half in land itself. Although the South earned as much as $60 million a year in the 1850s
from cotton, tobacco and rice exports, almost all investment went back into slaves and land, leaving little for
manufacturing.79 A poor transportation network also hindered southern modernization. There was a distinct
lack of main lines connecting cities to markets in the West, and the manufacturing base was very small
compared with that of the North. In A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia
Before the Civil War, historian John Majewski writes that the central problem was Virginia’s slave economy.
The slave system discouraged the growth of an investor class that could provide funds for transportation
projects, or the growth of a consumer class to provide passengers for such projects.80 This was far different
from the situation in the North. For example, in Pennsylvania in the 1830s and afterward, financiers from
Philadelphia funded enormous railway projects that extended far into the Midwest. This gave entrepreneurs
access to new markets, leading to selfreinforcing growth.81 Bateman and Weiss observe that the industrial
output of the West (the modern-day Midwest) was growing rapidly, which indicated that industrialization
was progressing from East to West (where slavery did not exist) rather than from North to South. The
Northeast and West were “uniting economically into a system markedly unlike that of the South—an
inwardly directed manufacturing economy inimical to the economic interests of the export-oriented, slavebased, agrarian system.”82
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