Pro
Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
My partner and I are Resolved: The USFG ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
We will show that there is a systematic need for the collective improvement of voting for
African Americans. They have been historically oppressed and that oppression has spiraled
into current institutional decay.
POINT 1: AFRICAN AMERICANS HAVE HISTORICALLY BEEN TREATED
POORLY EVEN WHILE FREE
Turner, James. "Callie House: the pursuit of reparations as a means for social justice." The
Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 305+.
After the Civil War, these formerly enslaved African Americans were poor and landless; Callie
House described them as "bare-footed and naked." Though unschooled and given nothing with
which to start a new life, these people constructed reparations as a principle of social justice.
Moreover, black workers were not passive about the injustices, and they demanded land,
instruments to cultivate it, and compensation for their stolen labor. The injustices were
aggravated further by the blatant racism of the military officials in the postbellum federal
government. For the most part, white Civil War veterans were given financial grants and
monthly pensions for military service. Black soldiers were denied equal treatment; in fact, their
petitions for pensions were often rejected. Harriett Tubman, who willingly risked her life on
numerous occasions in service of the Union Army, was likewise refused a pension by the USFG.
As you can see from this point, there is a historical pattern to the mistreatment of African
Americans. While some might claim that these issues have been addressed in current culture, the
fact remains that the system has neglected this segment of the population in vital areas.
POINT 2: REPARATION IS NEEDED TO REPAIR VOTING EQUALITY
There is no mistake. The violence against blacks continued after slavery, driven by greedy money
lenders, and cheating traders. The cumulative affect of “250 years of slaver, 90 years of Jim Crow, 60
years of separate but equal, 35 years of racist housing policy,” have robbed African-Americans AS A
CLASS of millions and often fatally crushed many spirits, as Ta-Nehesi Coateshas made famously clear
in his 2014 Atlantic article. The root cause of this damage are the unjust laws that allowed unfair loan
rules, unfair voting districts, and a whole host of ways voting by African-Aericans has been discouraged.
Targeting voting as a way to repair these injustices—perhaps as candidate Clinton urges with multiple
voting days, a ban on voting IDs, transportation passes—would fundamentally repair our diluted
democracy. And this repair would benefit more than just African-Americans who struggle to overcome
voting obstacles. In Oregon, when automatic voter registration was enacted, streamlining the complex
and sometimes costly process, 300,000 voters were added to their roles overnight, according to a report
in The Atlantic (March 2015, Berman)
The former national NAACP leader Ben Jealous, (Senior fellow at the Center for American Progress) said
there are 37 million unregistered blacks and 4 million unregistered Hispanics and Asian Americans in the “Black
Belt” region of the American South. Jealous underscored in his report this year that this “black
belt” once registered, are far more consistent voters than any other group, as he based from
findings since his 2012 presidential election door-to-door voter registration campaign, the largest
in this nation’s history.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
Pro
Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
And progressive candidates were generally favored by communities of color rarely win statewide
office without this needed voting base.
Until we get to the root cause of our broken democracy—unequal voices from voters--discrimination will not truly cease.
Full voting by under-registered blacks will help repair and reverse the unfair policies and
discriminatory leaders that have been in power.
POINT 3: COLLECTIVE REPARATION IS NEEDED
Daniels, Ron. "Seizing the moment to galvanize the U.S. and global reparations movement."
Journal of Pan African Studies 8.2 (2015): 338+
There is also a need to discuss the collective versus individual payment of reparations. This often
comes up as a question when arguing the case for reparations. While one could make an
argument for both, I am hopeful that a consensus will emerge in favor of collective
developmental assistance. The chronic wealth gap and state of emergency in America's dark
ghettos are a direct consequence of generations of exploitation and oppression which should be
addressed in terms of compensation that will be used to end the underdevelopment of the
National Black Community. Individuals in the Black community would benefit from increased
opportunities resulting from developmental assistance for the group/collective.
As you can see, we have demonstrated that the need for large scale, collective reparation is
greatly needed in order to address the past injustices suffered by slaves in the US. While many
see reparation as unnecessary due to the times, we have shown that slavery and the subsequent
treatment of ex-slaves and their descendants was unjust and has led to poor and unequal living
conditions for those descendants today. For these reasons we can see no other than a vote for the
Pro in today’s debate. Thank you.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Pro
Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
ABUSES TO DECENDANTS OF SLAVES IS WELL DOCUMENTED
Hine, Darlene Clark. "From the margins to the center: Callie House and the Ex-Slave Pension
Movement." The Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 311+.
Berry artfully pieces together documentary fragments of House's existence to craft a coherent
and illuminating biography. In chapter four, "Voices of the Ex-Slaves," Berry marshals quotes
from the Works Projects Administration oral interviews from the 1930s to allow those who
experienced slavery to speak their truths and to counter claims that slavery was not so bad, and
that the enslaved were treated as part of a patriarchal family. In their own authorial voice, the exslave subjects provide an historical record and argument, always refusing to soften the horror,
describing the dehumanization and humiliation that accompanied the theft of their labor and
freedom. In the three closing chapters, Berry judiciously mines court records and government
documents to chronicle the successful efforts of federal and local officials (the Pension Bureau
and the postmaster general) to destroy House and to discredit the fledgling reparations
movement. It is a masterful work that shatters the epistemological assumptions of a white
supremacist historical narrative that has long denigrated the efficacy of African American
women's intellectual work, identity, culture, and politics.
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
The massive reparations demanded by the BEDC never materialized, although several projects
were funded by church agencies, the discussion of which is beyond the scope of this article. But
the reparations campaign added a significant element to the growing spectrum of Black Power
initiatives and revolutionary advocacy that flourished in Detroit during the immediate
postrebellion/postriot era. Like the 1967 rebellion, the Black Manifesto found area residents
divided and unprepared for extreme demands. Moreover, as the discourse of Black Power
matured among its advocates, the manifesto sought to combine compensation for past and
present racial oppression with ideas of "political revolution and independence" and fed both into
the post-civil-rights lexicon of liberation struggle. Though never implemented, the reparations
idea has, arguably, proven to be one of the more enduring elements of this ideological mixture.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
EX-SLAVES FELT A NEED FOR REPARATION
Hine, Darlene Clark. "From the margins to the center: Callie House and the Ex-Slave Pension
Movement." The Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 311+.
As House declared in 1899, "If the Government had the right to free us, she had a right to make
some provision for us; and since she did not make it soon after Emancipation, she ought to make
it now." House was clear about the rationale for their demands. "We deserve for the government
to pay us as an indemnity for the work we and our foreparents was rob[bed] of from the
Declaration of Independ[ence] down to the Emancipation."
Hine, Darlene Clark. "From the margins to the center: Callie House and the Ex-Slave Pension
Movement." The Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 311+.
In 1890 Walter R. Vaughn, former editor of the Daily Democrat in Omaha, Nebraska, first
proposed the idea of ex-slave pensions and persuaded his congressman, Republican William J.
Connell, to introduce the legislation that established the formula later used by the National ExSlave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association. Berry noted that Vaughn "wanted to help
blacks primarily in order to revive the southern economy." (3) Vaughn moved to Kentucky in
1897 to build electric street railways. Black Republican Congressmen Henry P. Cheatham of
North Carolina, Thomas E. Miller of South Carolina, and John Mercer Langston of Virginia, as
well as many black newspaper publishers refused to support the pension bill. They had their own
agenda and they desired greater protection for the right to vote and more funding for public
schooling. They "thought education and voting rights were the only routes to empowerment for
African Americans." Callie House and Isaiah Dickerson, former agent for Vaughan, school
teacher, and minister in Rutherford County, established the headquarters for the National ExSlave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1898.
Dickerson worked through the many contacts he had made while in the employ of Vaughan.
Together, House and Dickerson traveled and organized chapters of the Association, which was a
combination mutual aid, medical insurance, and burial assistance program. Subsequently, state
chapters organized local lodges and councils.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS TRIED TO SUPPRESS
REPARATION EFFORTS
Hine, Darlene Clark. "From the margins to the center: Callie House and the Ex-Slave Pension
Movement." The Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 311+.
The Association began being harassed by the U.S. Postal Service as early as 1899, and in April
the widespread warning of the press both white and colored," wrote Cooper, "there are still some
people foolish enough to pay over their hard cash to sundry confidence sharks who run up and
down the country pretending that Congress is about to grant pensions to the ex-slaves. No such
thing will be done in this or any other generation and whoever assets to the contrary is a knave, a
humbug or worse."
Hine, Darlene Clark. "From the margins to the center: Callie House and the Ex-Slave Pension
Movement." The Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 311+.
Unfortunately, the federal government was not interested in making provisions for ex-slaves, and
powerful officials were determined to punish House for her audacious beliefs and relentless
organizing of black southerners. Mary Frances Berry puts its succinctly: [T]he government
began an almost twenty-year campaign to end the pension movement, and it targeted House, a
thirty-three-year-old seamstress and laundress with no right to vote but the capacity to become
the de facto leader of a movement strong enough to pose a threat to powerful national officials.
Despite the government's threats, she was determined to organize the ex-slaves."
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
RACE IS AN EVER PRESENT FACTOR
Janis, Michael. "Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and
Culture 11.2 (2009).
"It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I
sought in myself; the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela" (Obama, Dreams
220), writes US-America's first African American president in his "story of race and
inheritance." While the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama sparked numerous
debates on the concept of "race," including the notion of the "post-racial," scant attention has
been paid to Obama's possible treatment of the tragic history of relations between the West and
Africa. The lack of any serious engagement with reparations for slavery and colonialism on the
part of the U.S. and most West European governments is arguably an all too often
unacknowledged sign of the ubiquitous persistence of racism and an obstacle blocking the way to
a vision beyond race. If Obama has only just begun to formulate his views on reparations and has
just begun to implement foreign policy that would encompass a long view of Africa and the
diaspora, he already has an important, complex relationship to Africa--a profound understanding
of Maafa (African Holocaust), as well as of the contemporary dynamics of neocolonialism--that
merits investigation into the possibilities an internationalist, even pan-Africanist, ethos would
bring to the White House.
Janis, Michael. "Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and
Culture 11.2 (2009).
While the U.S. media was locked in debates about the presidential candidates, significant
historical issues on the subject remained at the margins of political discourse. Because of the
history of racism and the hegemonial status of the U.S., the victory of Barack Obama was
without question one of the most important signs of social progress in modern times not only for
the U.S. but also globally. At the same time, from a contemporary perspective, US-Americans
remained mesmerized by a myth, which James Baldwin saw all too well as the midpoint of the
"Reagan Revolution"--the first simulacral US-American regime--when he quipped that "As long
as you think you're white, there's no hope for you" (90). Today, both the sciences and humanities
have discredited the very concept of race--from the mapping of the genome, which demonstrates
genetic variation is superficial and common variations are transracial, to the academic
institutionalization of critical race theory and postcolonial theory; however, although it is widely
recognized that the world's distinct cultures, not races, are responsible for difference and
diversity, we are surrounded by social and political conflicts that are based on race, or the guise
of race.
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
Janis, Michael. "Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and
Culture 11.2 (2009).
What, then, is "race"? An extrapolation of a worldview based on the superficial differences
found across all human cultures, race is a myth that is both ancient and modern. There is much
evidence to suggest that the ancient Mediterranean world may not have held the same prejudices
against Africans, as Frank Snowden demonstrates. From Hume and Kant to Hegel, the antiAfrican, or anti-black racism of European philosophers reflects the enigmatic and multifarious
presence of psychopathology in Western thought (on this, see, e.g., Eze). As Eric Williams
argues in Capitalism and Slavery, Enlightenment-era trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism were
the very conditions of possibility for the modern world-system of European and Euro-American
capitalist exploitation; slavery built commercial capitalism and the end of slavery became the
impetus for formal colonialism during industrial capitalism. Walter Rodney's How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa reveals the processes of development in pre-colonial African and the
processes of underdevelopment in Africa wrought by slavery and colonialism. Most African
nations have not yet had independence from official colonial rule for fifty years.
Janis, Michael. "Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and
Culture 11.2 (2009).
The modern history of racism, from the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans to the
slaver labor of Chinese in the U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century, from the Jewish
Holocaust to Bosnia and Rwanda, is not behind us. Obama makes this point in his Speech on
Race: "As William Faulkner once wrote, 'The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even
past.' We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need
to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community
today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered
under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow" (Obama, "Obama's Speech" 5). Obama's
reading of history translates into a new vision, for the US-American government, of the
historicity of race. Even his choice of the words of Faulkner is significant. The southern Nobel
Laureate was resistant to desegregation, yet Faulkner authored novels that reflect the subtleties of
race relations in the south. Embedded in Obama's words is a critique not only of the tension
between the races in the U.S., but also of the tension between US-American mythology and
history, part of the hermeneutic excavation of the racial palimpsest.
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
REPARATIONS ARE A POLITICAL ISSUE
Janis, Michael. "Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and
Culture 11.2 (2009).
The political goal of the deconstruction of the myth of race is for diverse constituencies to learn
to resist seeing the U.S., and the world, in black and white terms, as Obama has advocated in his
books and speeches. This turn is a crucial strategy for the oppressed, which must above all create
solidarity among diverse ethnic groups. David Roediger's Towards the Abolition of Whiteness
responds to this persistent need throughout working class history in the U.S. One of the
epigraphs to a section in the book is from The World and Africa in which W.E.B. Du Bois
laments the process of racialization in working class history, the adoption of ideologies of
whiteness of new immigrants in the U.S., which in turn bred contempt for what should have been
their African American comrades in a common struggle. In particular, as Roediger's study shows
through the investigation of historical documents and juridical policy, the Irish, Jews, Italians,
and Greeks were not regarded as "white," but they, among other immigrants of the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, were eventually able to adopt this identity. Malcolm X was also a
keen observer of this process of racialization that led to the insidious spread of white supremacy
among diverse groups. For Roediger, coming to terms with Baldwin's injunction to dismantle the
delusive idea of "whiteness" serves as a point of departure: "To make its fullest possible
contribution to the growth of a new society, activism that draws on ideas regarding the social
construction of race must focus its political energies on exposing, demystifying and demeaning
the particular ideology of whiteness, rather than on calling into question the concept of race
generally ... whiteness is now a particularly brittle and fragile form of social identity and that it
can be fought" (12). Along with the recognition of the strategic necessity of recognizing the
category of race and the social construction of "race," it should be noted that the category (or the
myth) of whiteness is not required to accomplish the important goal of global social justice for
Africa and the diaspora; the West can stand trial regardless of (mis)conceptions of race. Hence
the paradox of "race" today: the post-racial requires the recognition of the history of racism and
the call for reparations.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
Janis, Michael. "Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and
Culture 11.2 (2009).
No president in U.S. history has been prepared like Obama to come to grips with the legacy of
slavery, with postcoloniality, and with the inequities of Western-dominated globalization. In The
Audacity of Hope, in fact, Obama supports affirmative action as a contemporary mode of
understanding African American history. In Dreams from My Father he examines his African
heritage, encounters Africa not just in terms of his personal return to Kenya and the memory of
his father, but on its own terms, demonstrating an historical understanding of what has happened
since revolutions from Kimathi and Mau Mau to the socialism of Nyerere and Nkrumah. He
articulates a postmodern "double consciousness," African and US-American, that takes on an
internationalist perspective, which its theorist, Du Bois, also embraced. Few analysts reinforce
the connection--necessary for the purposes of political solidarity--between slavery and
colonialism and the internal colonialism of the U.S., discussed by critics as diverse as Fred Hord,
Robert Blauner, Cedric Robinson, and bell hooks. Fanon's psychoanalysis of the colonial
situation does not completely apply to the present: Africans and African-descended peoples have
liberated themselves from the paralyzing position in the Hegelian master-slave dialectic, altering
the relevant dynamics of Alexandre Kojeve's analysis of the relationship's ontological
reciprocity, which Fanon applies: "The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved
by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation" (Black Skin 60). The
diseases of inferiority and superiority have not been eradicated; the "racial narcissism" that
pervaded the colonial condition remains as a syndrome, along with global inequities along racial
lines, that calls for the interrogation of the "post" of postcolonial--and begs the question of the
psychology and politics of reparations.
Janis, Michael. "Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and
Culture 11.2 (2009).
It is not yet certain that the election of Obama has sounded a prelude to reparations, but such
assumptions will be made, whether in the name of resentment or in the name of hope. The
groundwork for actual reparations has been theorized but not yet put in place on a grand scale. If
the world were to learn of Obama's interest in such a program, the reactions would be diverse,
without a doubt, and the debates torrid. Reactions to Obama in the African press reveal both a
widespread fervent support for an African American U.S. president and a healthy skepticism
concerning Obama's commitment to foreign policy dedicated to Africana internationalism, as
well as to reparations (see, e.g., Namanya; Katito). In the U.S. and in Africa, Obama is
frequently compared to Martin Luther King, Jr., and it is this linkage that begs the question of the
relationship to King's commitment to nonviolent social change, to his philosophy of intercultural
reciprocity, and to his critique of US-American capitalism and imperialism in his later years. The
political contexts of relations between Africa and the West reflect the historical ethical
impoverishment of the West, which contemporary Western leaders often counter with
accusations of the contemporary ethical impoverishment of African leadership.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
Hamlin's invitation provided Forman with the opportunity to organize and formulate reparations
ideas that were already incubating in his mind as his political philosophy evolved. With the help
of several supporters, whom Hamlin identified as SNCC members, Forman began the process of
creating a fully developed reparations statement as well as a strategy for its implementation
throughout America. The Black Manifesto they created had two parts. Part one, a preamble or
introduction, described African Americans as a "colonized people," who were part of a broader
international collective of oppressed peoples. The statement insisted that this subjugation could
only be ameliorated by a worldwide revolution that would destroy capitalism. African Americans
would lead the way to a socialist America, a step that the writers deemed necessary to eradicate
racism and other forms of exploitation, by implementing the tenets of Black Nationalism, PanAfricanism, and Marxism.
Goldstein, Dana. "Reparations anxiety." The American Prospect 19.1 (2008): 11.
Today the issue has become a sort of litmus test for black politicians, a way of determining if
they are too radical for the white electorate. Last July during the CNN/YouTube Democratic
debate, Barack Obama was asked if African Americans would ever receive slavery reparations.
Clearly prepared to answer this exact question, Obama responded, "I think the reparations we
need right here in South Carolina is investment, for example, in our schools." The crowd
applauded. Given that Obama needed to appeal to the nearly two-thirds of African Americans
who support reparations, as well as the 96 percent of white Americans who oppose them, it was a
skillful pivot.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
EX-SLAVES WERE DENIED PROPER FINANCIAL RESTITUTION
Turner, James. "Callie House: the pursuit of reparations as a means for social justice." The
Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 305+.
After the Civil War, these formerly enslaved African Americans were poor and landless; Callie
House described them as "bare-footed and naked." Though unschooled and given nothing with
which to start a new life, these people constructed reparations as a principle of social justice.
Moreover, black workers were not passive about the injustices, and they demanded land,
instruments to cultivate it, and compensation for their stolen labor. The injustices were
aggravated further by the blatant racism of the military officials in the postbellum federal
government. For the most part, white Civil War veterans were given financial grants and
monthly pensions for military service. Black soldiers were denied equal treatment; in fact, their
petitions for pensions were often rejected. Harriett Tubman, who willingly risked her life on
numerous occasions in service of the Union Army, was likewise refused a pension by the federal
government.
Turner, James. "Callie House: the pursuit of reparations as a means for social justice." The
Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 305+.
Black men and women, most of them free persons numbering in the hundreds of thousands,
volunteered to support the Union war effort and provided the critical balance of force necessary
to defeat the Confederate Army. These gallant fighters in the aftermath of the war were betrayed
by the very government they were willing to sacrifice their lives to preserve. Black soldiers
fought to abolish slavery and were rewarded with racist government policies that enforced a rigid
system of legal segregation, or American apartheid. This is what historian Rayford Logan
referred to as the "The Nadir" in the African American experience during this postReconstruction period.
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
THE REPARATION MOVEMENT HAS STRONG SOCIAL JUSTICE
LEANINGS
Turner, James. "Callie House: the pursuit of reparations as a means for social justice." The
Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 305+.
The initial base of support was in the black churches; however, as the Association developed into
a dynamic social movement, the group rented meeting spaces, and some local chapters purchased
their own facilities. Members paid an initial twenty-five cents membership fee and ten cents
monthly dues. The membership came from the poorest sector of the black community at that
time, which is often ignored in published accounts of African American history. In her analysis
of the membership, Berry found that large numbers were unlettered; nonetheless, they sustained
the largest black mass movement for over twenty years. The U.S. government intelligence
officers estimated membership at 300,000 at the turn of the 20th century. That is simply
extraordinary, but there are sources that suggest the actual figures were higher by tens of
thousands. Berry's account is provocative in its challenge to traditional African American
historiography, and raises questions about the nature of African American political culture. Was
the political ferment of the last third of the 19th century a residual of modes of resistance and
identity that were fashioned during the era of enslavement? Was the sense of common cause and
mutual interest and support that propelled this social movement an expression of a "national"
black consciousness? What role did "class solidarity" play in the development of this
consciousness?
Turner, James. "Callie House: the pursuit of reparations as a means for social justice." The
Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 305+.
What is absolutely remarkable about Callie House's leadership is that she organized a popular
social movement through the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association
during a period that was characterized by the worst racial violence since the end of slavery.
Lynching, beatings, burning, and mob violence against African Americans and their property and
possessions were almost daily occurrences. In the face of brutal racist attacks, African
Americans organized a major protest/claims movement directed at the federal government,
demanding monetary compensation for their stolen and abused labor. The U.S. government
collectively was accused of facilitating the theft of black people's labor. Reparations became the
principle for the restoration of justice and represented a strong "race" position; it was a claim of
justice for all black people equally. Justice is not divisible; it is comprehensive for all at the same
time, and equally administered. Moreover, justice is time-less; there is no statute of limitation on
the administration of justice. This was a political position that would not concede the
significance of the crimes of history in structuring "unfreedom" and the perpetuation of the
inequalities in society from which African Americans suffered most. It was a defiant and
demanding movement. Berry quoted one middle-aged black male who declared, "If America
Debate Doctors 2015
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
doesn't pay us a dime, she will still owe us." Where is there similar sentiment among African
Americans currently?
THE REPARATION MOVEMENT HAS STRONG SOCIAL JUSTICE
LEANINGS
Turner, James. "Callie House: the pursuit of reparations as a means for social justice." The
Journal of African American History 91.3 (2006): 305+.
The increasing success of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association,
and its expanding influence and support for reparations, attracted the worrisome attention of the
federal government. The Association leaders were harassed and threatened with arrest as a means
of intimidation in a concerted effort to destabilize the organization. The prime target was usually
Callie House. The U.S. Postmaster General restricted the Association from the use of the postal
services to communicate with its membership, or to solicit and receive applications for new
members. For almost twenty years the federal government waged a vicious, unconstitutional
campaign to destroy the group. As the government pressure mounted, the support strengthened
as new members were recruited.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
DECENDANTS OF SLAVES SEE A NEED FOR REPARATION
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
From April 25 to April 27, 1969, the National Black Economic Development Conference
(NBEDC) met in Detroit, Michigan, working to develop an agenda for African American
economic self-determination. The meeting was organized by the Interreligious Foundation for
Community Organization (IFCO), a coalition of Christian and Jewish institutions that funded
social-justice projects in impoverished communities. Urged by its executive director, the
Reverend Lucius Walker, Jr., the IFCO-sponsored event also sought to construct communitybased economic-development projects as alternatives to the "Black Capitalism" promoted by
Richard Nixon, the newly elected president of the United States. The conference would never
realize its potential, however; on the second day the proceedings were unexpectedly
commandeered by James Forman, a leader of the Student National Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) and a minority contingent of the six hundred to eight hundred mostly African American
attendees. (1) The Forman-led group then issued a "Black Manifesto" demanding $500 million
(later raised to $3 billion) in reparations it said white Christian churches and Jewish synagogues
owed to African Americans. (Forman's group then adopted the conference's name as its own
organization's title [NBEDC, later dropping the NJ.) The Black Manifesto came some three years
after activists Willie Ricks and Stokely Carmichael issued their famous call for "Black Power" in
1966--a slogan that signaled new directions within the African American freedom movement. (2)
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
DECENDANTS OF SLAVES SEE A NEED FOR REPARATION
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
Forman's daring alteration of the conference proceedings was consistent with his record of
activism in the black freedom movement. His harsh exposure to racism as a boy growing up in
Chicago (he was born there in 1928), on family visits to the South, and especially during time
spent in Fayette, Mississippi, had developed in him an acute sensitivity to the plight of African
Americans, which also included an antipathy toward Christianity. By the fall of 1957, while he
was a student at Boston University, Forman was pondering how to create liberation tactics in
response to white violence against black students integrating Central High School in Little Rock,
Arkansas. In his autobiography Forman wrote: "I became convinced that we needed a mass
movement of blacks, a popular movement that would awaken our people, show them that
'niggers' can get together and create a desire to go to the next step." (3) Forman's next step led
him to an intensive study of Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of independent Ghana;
Mahatma Gandhi; and psychiatrist and revolutionary writer Frantz Fanon among other political
leaders and theorists. Later on, Forman became a key organizer for SNCC, often working in rural
communities and small cities in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Following a trip to Africa in
September 1964, Forman successfully argued that SNCC should link the African American
struggle with African freedom movements, convincing the organization to establish an
International Affairs Commission, which Forman headed until 1969. As the civil rights
movement was eclipsed by Black Power advocates, Forman abandoned nonviolence as a viable
tactic for social change and argued that a revolutionary upsurge in America and the world was a
precondition for African American liberation. After a brief cooling-off period that followed a
contentious and short-lived alliance between SNCC and the Black Panther Party, Forman
reemerged onto the political scene, meeting with Detroit activists and others about plans for a
Black Manifesto. (4)
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
Events in Detroit had already prepared the city's residents for the Black Manifesto prior to the
black economic conference in April 1969. The 1967 Detroit uprising helped foster a climate
supportive of rebellion among African American residents, as many were drawn to the promises
of revolutionary change by charismatic leaders such as Bobby Seale and Huey Newton of the
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Black Nationalist preacher, the Reverend Albert B.
Cleage, Jr., of the Central Congregational Church (later renamed the Shrine of the Black
Madonna) as well as the militants in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The manifesto
seized the attention of a city whose consciousness was already aroused by Black Power
advocates' agitation against discriminatory practices and deteriorating conditions in the African
American community. By the beginning of 1969, 70 percent of African Americans lived in the
poorest sections of Detroit; 60 percent were renters with low-paying jobs and limited
opportunities for advancement.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
DECENDANTS OF SLAVES SEE A NEED FOR REPARATION
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that a reparations movement gained traction in
Detroit, where "Black Power" already inspired much activism. The Black Panther Party for SelfDefense and the RNA, both of which had strong followings in Detroit, had already voiced
similar demands for compensation. Along with Cleage, members of the Nation of Islam helped
expand the religious perspectives of many of the city's African American residents. African
American activist and factory worker James Boggs, and his equally involved Chinese wife Grace
Lee Boggs, were considered two of Detroit's leading intellectuals, and their writings helped stir
the pot, raising residents' consciousness of Black Power. Then in late 1968 Mike Hamlin, a
Detroit cofounder of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a radical African American
workers group that united several similar, but smaller, auto-plant organizations, contacted
Forman and convinced him to come to Detroit to observe league activities and share his ideas on
the black freedom struggle.
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
A call for reparations comprised the second portion of the Black Manifesto and was conceived as
the first step in the process of transforming America. The demands included establishing a
southern land bank, creating major media institutions, building an infrastructure to aid in
developing research skills, as well as establishing job-training centers, providing assistance to
welfare recipients, endowing a labor strike fund, setting up cooperative businesses in Africa to be
funded by an International Black Appeal, launching a new black university, and providing funds
for the NBEDC. Also included was a twelve-point plan for social and political action by African
American and white supporters to force implementation of the manifesto. This involved mass
public education, disruption of selected church-sponsored agencies throughout America and the
world, sit-ins at church services and seizure of facilities, tolerance of these actions by Christians
and Jews, a "Black Anti-Defamation League" to counter negative press about Africa, the
participation of skilled African Americans to implement the manifesto, and the establishment of
an uncompromising leadership cadre.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
DECENDANTS OF SLAVES SEE A NEED FOR REPARATION
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
After the children in the congregation were taken to special classes, Watson read the complete
manifesto. Among other points he noted the "old pattern" of churches donating money to
conservative African American groups partly in order to prevent militant black youths from
pursuing "complete liberation." The black economic conference would demand an end to this
pattern, which, Watson continued, had benefited white churches more than African Americans.
After declaring that $60 million in reparations was "owed" by the national Episcopalian Church,
Watson added that the BEDC had determined Christ Church Cranbrook's part of this debt to be
$100,000 of which $10,000 was due immediately, "as a payment of good faith." The church
reportedly had a $400,000 annual budget. Watson exhorted the congregation to accept what he
called its "obligation" to "a civilized twentieth-century." Religion, he said, could not serve as a
"cloak" for the continued oppression of African Americans: "You have no choice. You must
accept the legitimate demands of the Black people for reparations in this country and you must
act to see that those demands are met immediately."
Debate Doctors 2015
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
CHURCHES HOLD RESPONSIBILITY FOR REPARATION
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
As manifesto activism increased in June, so did Cleage's defense of reparations. Throughout his
commentary Cleage maintained that the manifesto was correct in every aspect and that the
rationale for the debt owed to African Americans by churches and synagogues was indisputable:
They "cannot deny their guilt," since "they have profited from the very system which destroys
Black people." In his second column during this period, Cleage chastised these institutions for
"feeble" gestures of brotherhood that failed to display the will and provide the necessary
resources to initiate change in African Americans' circumstances. Opposition to the manifesto
stemmed from white inattentiveness to the polite demands of "house niggers" (accommodating
African Americans), which triggered a response from "field niggers" (rebellious African
Americans) who threatened the total destruction of the United States.
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
Cleage's June 28 column returned to an examination of white religious leaders' opposition to the
manifesto. Here Cleage reprinted an article titled "Reparation Now!" by the Chicago-based
religious writer Stephen C. Rose. The proper church response, according to Rose, would present
a "painful prelude" to "something new in America." In view of the nation's failure to compensate
African Americans for centuries of oppression and white society's failure "to repair the damage it
[was] doing to blacks in the cities" it was now "the missionary task of the church ... to do what
the society leaves undone," not to "substitute for the government, but rather to point the way
ahead for the world." The beginning of this restructuring would require total support for the
Black Manifesto. Churches would have to set the example for America and "there can be no
alternative but [a] positive response."
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
REPARATION IS NEEDED TO IMPROVE EDUCATION
Franklin, V.P. "Commentary: reparations for educational malfeasance." The Journal of African
American History 94.2 (2009): 149+.
There is a long and unfortunate history of educational researchers proclaiming that they do not
know how to teach disadvantaged children to read or achieve academically; or declaring that
only highly specialized and costly programs have been able to produce academic achievement in
"disadvantaged children," i.e., poor children of color. This "research assessment" has been used
in the past to justify the diversion of school funding away from African American and other
"disadvantaged students," and into public and other schools designated for white students. This
assessment was carried out by white officials in state departments of education and school
districts who sometimes believed it would be "a waste of good tax payer money" (even African
American taxpayers?) to spend equal amounts of funding on the public schooling of white and
"colored" children. We will be documenting these practices in the pages of The Journal of
African American History (see Call for Papers published in this issue). Educational researchers
and school district officials participated in these practices, governmental and philanthropic
agencies financed them, and class-action lawsuits will be filed demanding reparations for
African American children. Educational malfeasance is claimed not merely on the basis of the
seven decades of misappropriation of federal and philanthropic funds by state departments of
education and school districts, but also on the basis of the educational research establishment's
failure to protect African American and other children of color from those individuals and
companies that receive huge sums of money to demonstrate that skin color is destiny, and
children of color do not deserve to have the same educational resources as whites.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
REPARATION IS NEEDED TO IMPROVE EDUCATION
Franklin, V.P. "Commentary: reparations for educational malfeasance." The Journal of African
American History 94.2 (2009): 149+.
Educational researchers and their sponsors consistently engaged in cultural practices to
rationalize and implement educational programs not merely to ensure the racial status quo, but to
place children of European descent in an advantaged position over children of African, Mexican,
and Native American backgrounds. Beginning with the introduction of the "Binet-Simon
Intelligence Test" by psychologist Henry Goddard in 1910, educational researchers used various
"mental tests" to justify the opening of separate public schools for African American and other
children of color, and the introduction of an "industrial education" curriculum in those
segregated schools. While few would quarrel with the use of tests to measure and evaluate
student achievement in content or subject areas, it is the widespread use of the tests to segregate
and disadvantage black and brown children that calls into question the entire raison d'etre for the
testing regimen and industry. But the use of these mental tests is a cultural practice and the
testers at various levels have preconceived notions about the outcomes. As documented in my
own research and that of others (see The Journal of Negro Education, 76, Summer 2007, 216229), test results have been used historically to label and disadvantage African American and
other children of color in the public schools. Some states and school districts historically have
worse records than others of using "intelligence" and psychological test results to disadvantage
African American children, and lawsuits to seek reparations will be filed.
Franklin, V.P. "Commentary: reparations for educational malfeasance." The Journal of African
American History 94.2 (2009): 149+.
While a case may have to be made in calling for reparations for the existence of a public-schoolto-prison pipeline, there is little debate, even among many educators in the field itself, that there
has existed historically and to this day a "special-education-to-prison pipeline" for African
American boys and other children of color. The disproportionate representation of African
American children, especially young black boys, in special education classes in urban school
districts throughout the country is a well-known statistic publicized recently in the Harvard Civil
Rights Project's Racial Inequity in Special Education (2002), edited by Daniel Losen and Gary
Orfield. In some states African American boys are four to six times as likely to be placed in
special education classes than their white counterparts.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
REPARATION IS NEEDED TO IMPROVE EDUCATION
Goldstein, Dana. "Reparations anxiety." The American Prospect 19.1 (2008): 11.
Nevertheless, the failure of America's urban public schools certainly should be understood as a
legacy of discrimination. Three-quarters of children in the Providence schools live in poverty.
Rhode Island ranks among the top three states dependent on municipal property taxes to fund
education, a regressive system that disadvantages city schools. The Brown endowment is
expected to eventually yield an annual payout of $500,000. But the uncomfortable truth is that
while increased funding for urban districts is crucial, it isn't enough. To truly repair the
educational legacy of slavery, we must integrate our public school system.
Goldstein, Dana. "Reparations anxiety." The American Prospect 19.1 (2008): 11.
Hartford has the potential to become a national model. No Child Left Behind allows students
from failing schools to transfer within their district, but with so many families living in cities
where almost every school is low-performing, it's no surprise that few take advantage of the
option. NCLB does nothing to equalize state funding between urban and suburban schools, or to
encourage districting that brings children together across lines of race and class. Congress was
supposed to reform the troubled NCLB last year, but amid controversy over teacher merit pay
and high-stakes testing, Democrats hushed the final debate into 2008. The extra time gives
Congress and the presidential candidates an opportunity to grapple with an important, yet mostly
unspoken truth: Segregated schools weren't good enough during Jim Crow, and segregated
schools aren't good enough today. That's a simple message sorely missing from our national
education debate. Until we learn it, reparations through education reform will be nothing but a
talking point.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
AMERICA IS NOT POST-RACIAL
Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in 'post-racial America'." Journal of Gender,
Race and Justice Summer 2011: 665+.
I wish to challenge this view of contemporary America and, in so doing, make the case for the
necessity of the U.S. government's atonement for slavery and Jim Crow. (4) In spite of President
Obama's election, there is in my view a very good reason why the federal government should
atone--by which I mean apologize and provide reparations (5)--for slavery and Jim Crow: living
victims. Beyond the obvious fact that many African Americans (including myself) lived during
portions of Jim Crow, the great majority of blacks today, including those who were born after the
Jim Crow Era, are victims of both slavery and Jim Crow. Hence, even the victims of slavery are
not all dead. (6)
Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in 'post-racial America'." Journal of Gender,
Race and Justice Summer 2011: 665+.
Blacks have succeeded individually not only in politics but in other areas of American life as
well, including higher education, (10) law, (11) and big business. These racial achievements
have not, however, been experienced across the board. Black society as a whole continues to
experience racial privation. For example, African Americans as a group lag far behind whites in
the area of infant mortality. "Nationwide for 2007, according to the latest federal data, infant
mortality was 6 per 1,000 for whites and 13 for blacks." (13) Considerable racial disparity also
exists in net family wealth, which is the net value of bank accounts, stocks, bonds, real estate,
and other financial assets held by a family. (14) The median net worth of white families is ten
times greater than that of black families.
Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in 'post-racial America'." Journal of Gender,
Race and Justice Summer 2011: 665+.
Most significantly, the disadvantages are not ad hoc or simply statistical snapshots. They are
systemic and continuous since the end of Jim Crow. African Americans as a group have
experienced capital deficiencies--financial, (16) human, (17) and social (18)--not for one, five,
ten, fifteen, twenty-five, or even thirty years, but for some forty-years continuously--the entire
post-Civil Rights period. (19) Racial disparities created during slavery and perpetuated during
Jim Crow did not, in other words, end with the death of Jim Crow in the early 1970s. There was
no falloff of capital deficiencies in African American society at the end of the Civil Rights
Movement and the beginning of the post-Civil Rights period. Society never repaired the damage
of slavery and Jim Crow. It is the continuing racial harm that largely defines the problem of race
in our society today.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
AMERICA IS NOT POST-RACIAL
Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in 'post-racial America'." Journal of Gender,
Race and Justice Summer 2011: 665+.
The election of the nation's first black president and the singular achievements of other black
individuals do not mean that our country has moved beyond race and suddenly become postracial. (60) To the contrary, the great majority of African Americans are beset by a dearth of
financial-, human-, and social-capital deficiencies inherited from slavery and the Jim Crow Era.
(61) These deficiencies are the present-day embodiment of slavery and Jim Crow. African
Americans today (some of whom have lived through part of the Jim Crow Era) are, therefore,
living victims of these past atrocities. (62) Although the existence of living victims is not a
requirement for the federal government's atonement (63)--defined as an apology plus reparations
(64)--this condition certainly enhances the case for atonement. The only question remaining, in
my view, is the form of reparations. What reparations are due to the living victims of slavery and
Jim Crow to concretize the apology? My answer is that reparations should be rehabilitative
(asset-building) rather than compensatory (a personal check). A black GI Bill fits this bill.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
REPARATION IS NEEDED TO FIX SYSTEMATIC INJUSTICE
Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in 'post-racial America'." Journal of Gender,
Race and Justice Summer 2011: 665+.
Another important factor that affects black poverty much more than it affects Hispanic poverty is
the disproportionately high incarceration rate for black males. For example, the combined prison
and jail incarceration rate for blacks between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine nationwide
is 12%, compared to 3.9% for Hispanics and 1.6% for whites. (29) This contributing factor to
black poverty is rooted in Jim Crow. The large-scale incarceration of black men began
immediately after the Civil War with the enactment of Black Codes in the South. These laws
"sought to reduce blacks to a condition resembling that of slavery." (30) As a consequence, black
men, who were "idle" for long stretches of time because they could not find jobs due to racial
discrimination, were often "arrested under local vagrancy and peonage laws, and then hired out
by the sheriff."
Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in 'post-racial America'." Journal of Gender,
Race and Justice Summer 2011: 665+.
Poverty was but one of the racial disparities created during slavery and perpetuated during Jim
Crow that continues to frame the lives of most African Americans. (32) While other racial
groups, such as Hispanics, experience similar levels of poverty, the connection between such
poverty and slavery or Jim Crow is less robust than that between black poverty and these prior
systems of racial subordination. African Americans were the main targets of slavery and Jim
Crow. Much of Hispanic poverty is caused or sustained by post-Jim Crow conditions, such as
immigration. (33) African Americans, in short, have a unique connection to slavery and Jim
Crow, the present embodiment of which is very much evident. This establishes a moral predicate
for the government's atonement for slavery and Jim Crow.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF REPARATION
Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in 'post-racial America'." Journal of Gender,
Race and Justice Summer 2011: 665+.
But what reparations are due to the victims to concretize the apology? (41) Narrowly tailored to
redress specific past atrocities, reparations can come in many forms. They need not be directed
toward the victims personally nor involve cash payments. Indeed, when one looks at the ways in
which governments have responded to atrocities committed under their authority, a pattern
begins to emerge. (42) A basic distinction exists between what can be called compensatory and
rehabilitative reparations. The government directs compensatory reparations toward the
individual victim or the victim's family. They are intended to be compensatory, but only in a
symbolic sense; for nothing can undo the past or truly return the victim to the status quo ante. In
contrast, the government directs rehabilitative reparations toward the victim's group or
community. They are designed to benefit the victim's group, to nurture the group's selfempowerment, and, thus, to aid in the nation's social and cultural transformation. (43)
Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in 'post-racial America'." Journal of Gender,
Race and Justice Summer 2011: 665+.
Whether compensatory or rehabilitative, reparations can come in monetary or nonmonetary
forms. Unrestricted cash payments (such as personal checks) or restricted cash payments (such as
scholarship funds) given directly to the victims or their immediate families are monetary
compensatory reparations. (44) In contrast, unrestricted or restricted cash payments (such as
scholarship funds or an atonement trust fund) that provide money for educational purposes or
venture capital to eligible members of the victim's group are examples of monetary rehabilitative
reparations. (45) Although nonmonetary reparations can be compensatory, such as a statue
commemorating a family member, they are more likely to be rehabilitative. Affirmative action
for the victim's group and a museum memorializing slaves and educating the public about
slavery's contribution to our nation are all examples of nonmonetary rehabilitative reparations.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF REPARATION
Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in 'post-racial America'." Journal of Gender,
Race and Justice Summer 2011: 665+.
The reparation I propose, then, would simply give African Americans what was denied to them
but given to whites. Beneficiaries of the black GI Bill, (58) like white veterans who benefitted
from the GI Bill, could use the bill to build financial, human, and social capital in black
communities, leaving a collective estate from which black children and grandchildren could
benefit in the future. Like the GI Bill, the black GI Bill would also benefit the nation as a whole.
It would bring prosperity to many depressed communities and help ensure that the United States
remains a leader on the world stage. More than that, a GI Bill for blacks would elevate the
United States' moral profile in a world that often questions our government's morality.
Atonement, in other words, is as much for the perpetrator as it is for the victims of an atrocity, as
it enables the perpetrator to reclaim its moral character in an atrocity's aftermath. A black GI Bill
would concretize the government's apology for slavery and Jim Crow, not only giving the
apology real meaning, but also making it believable. Simply saying "I'm sorry" is not enough-not even in "post-racial America."
Daniels, Ron. "Seizing the moment to galvanize the U.S. and global reparations movement."
Journal of Pan African Studies 8.2 (2015): 338+
First, as I have written recently, the courageous decision by the heads of state of nations in the
Caribbean to demand reparations from the former European colonialists for Native Genocide and
African enslavement and the formation of a CARICOM Reparations Commission has captured
the imagination of reparations activists in the U.S. and the Pan African world. It is one thing for
scholars and activists to advocate for reparations, it is quite another for the leaders of nations
who are still in the neo-colonial clutches of the former colonial powers to make such a bold
demand. By doing so, they risk economic and political retaliation. No doubt the dismal
conditions of the masses of their people and the pressure from civil society organizations
influenced their decision, but there is no belittling the fact that the demand for reparations was/is
a gutsy decision!
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF REPARATION
Daniels, Ron. "Seizing the moment to galvanize the U.S. and global reparations movement."
Journal of Pan African Studies 8.2 (2015): 338+
Second, the brilliant essay "The Case for Reparations" by Ta-nehisi Coates published in the
Atlantic Magazine, has electrified a new generation of Black people who were largely unfamiliar
with reparations or unconvinced of its validity and value as a goal. While a dedicated core of true
believers have kept the issue of reparations alive, for the movement to grow it must be embraced
by a new generation of potential advocates who, like Brother Coates, can be converted to the
cause. Moreover, we need a moment when the movement can be broadened to form a critical
mass, a formidable force to advance the demand for reparations. That moment may be at hand.
Indeed, Queen Mother Moore would be excited to learn that a National African American
Reparations Commission (NAARC) has been established in her memory! [visit the website
www.ibw21.org for list of members]. Inspired by the CARICOM Reparations Commission and
designed to function as a parallel body, NAARC's primary mission is to develop a preliminary
Reparations Program/Agenda as part of an education and advocacy process to expand the
Reparations Movement in the U.S. Ultimately, NAARC will develop a final Reparations
Program/Agenda as an outgrowth of input from a series of regional community-based hearings
and town hall meetings across the country.
Daniels, Ron. "Seizing the moment to galvanize the U.S. and global reparations movement."
Journal of Pan African Studies 8.2 (2015): 338+
There is also a need to discuss the collective versus individual payment of reparations. This often
comes up as a question when arguing the case for reparations. While one could make an
argument for both, I am hopeful that a consensus will emerge in favor of collective
developmental assistance. The chronic wealth gap and state of emergency in America's dark
ghettos are a direct consequence of generations of exploitation and oppression which should be
addressed in terms of compensation that will be used to end the underdevelopment of the
National Black Community. Individuals in the Black community would benefit from increased
opportunities resulting from developmental assistance for the group/collective.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF REPARATION
Daniels, Ron. "Seizing the moment to galvanize the U.S. and global reparations movement."
Journal of Pan African Studies 8.2 (2015): 338+
Consistent with the concept of collective developmental assistance, it would also be useful to
develop a consensus for a Reparations Trust Fund or similar structure to administer the various
types of compensation that might be received from the federal government, state and local
governments, corporations/businesses and institutions like universities, implicated in
enslavement or other damaging policies and practices inflicted in other eras. Such a Trust Fund
would be governed by a Board comprised of a cross-section of credible Black leaders and
organizations that would receive various forms of compensation and allocate resources in
accordance with a strategic development plan. As an aside, I have a particular interest in
demanding that federal lands be transferred to a Trust fund with the same kind of sovereignty
and rights eventually granted Native Americans for the criminal dispossession of their lands.
Debate Doctors 2015
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
INSTITUTIONS NEED TO EMBRACE REPARATION
Werf, Van Der Martin. "Brown U. Documents Ties to Slavery, but Does Not Apologize." The
Chronicle of Higher Education 53.10 (2006).
Brown University issued an exhaustive documentation last week of its founders' role in the slave
trade, and recommended setting up a memorial on its campus in Providence, R.I., and
establishing a center for the continuing study of slavery and justice. Coming after three years of
meetings, however, the report -- by a 16-member Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice -may be more notable for what it doesn't do: It falls short of offering an institutional apology, and
while it discusses the issue of reparations at length, it makes no recommendation on whether to
offer such payments to the descendants of slaves. While many people had written to the
committee suggesting that Brown set up additional scholarships for African-American students,
the committee said it could not recommend doing so because the university is "need blind" in
admission decisions. Brown commits to providing whatever financial aid the students it accepts
might require, the report explains, but does not offer assistance on any basis other than need.
Werf, Van Der Martin. "Brown U. Documents Ties to Slavery, but Does Not Apologize." The
Chronicle of Higher Education 53.10 (2006).
The university is named for Nicholas Brown Jr., a scion of a prominent mercantile family
instrumental in the early industrial development of Providence. The Browns were slave owners,
the report says, although it adds, "by the standards of Rhode Island's mercantile elite, the Browns
were not major slave traders." However, several members of the university's governing board at
the time had greater slave holdings, and their donations led to the building of the institution. The
report delves at length into the history and politics of public apologies and the paying of
reparations, but offers no conclusions about either. "Every recommendation in the report forms a
sort of reparation," said the committee's chairman, James T. Campbell, an associate professor of
American civilization, Africana studies, and history. The report says that Ms. Simmons stressed
to the committee that it was not to determine "whether or how Brown might pay monetary
reparations." "The most important contribution of this report is broadening the discussion of
these issues." He said there were some members of the committee who favored issuing an
apology, as some other institutions have done. But no consensus was reached. The committee
agreed, at a minimum, the report says, "to acknowledge formally and publicly the participation
of many of Brown's founders and benefactors in the institution of slavery and the trans-Atlantic
slave trade, as well as the benefits the university derived from them."
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
Werf, Van Der Martin. "Brown U. Documents Ties to Slavery, but Does Not Apologize." The
Chronicle of Higher Education 53.10 (2006).
The report also recommends that the university make a discussion of its ties to slavery a part of
its future freshman-orientation programs, issue a revised version of the institution's history, offer
its assistance to other universities making similar inquiries into their historical ties to the slave
industry, and establish an annual day of remembrance. Mr. Horowitz, who perhaps sparked the
debate, was relieved to hear that Brown would not commit to reparations. "It tears the
community apart over something that happened very long ago," he said. He described Ms.
Simmons as a "very cagey" and "very intelligent" person who may not have wanted to offend
potential donors by including a commitment to paying reparations. Ms. Simmons sent an e-mail
message to all students and employees, urging them to continue to discuss the issues raised.
"When it is appropriate to do so," she wrote, "I will issue a university response to the
recommendations and suggest what we might do with regard to the findings."
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
CON SPEECH
My partner and I reject the proposition that: The United States Federal Government ought to pay
reparations to African Americans
We will contend that in this particular case, standards for reparation are too difficult to establish.
While we do not reject the idea that the African American population has suffered injustice and
is the victim of systematic abuses, it would be ill advised to try to fix these issues under the guise
of “reparations.”
POINT 1: IT IS HARD TO ESTABLISH GUIDELINES FOR REPARATION
Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda E. "Getting to reparations: Japanese Americans and African
Americans *." Social Forces 83.2 (2004): 823+.
A nascent social movement for reparations to African Americans began in the U.S. during the
last two decades of the twentieth century. (1) The moral case for such reparations seems
unassailable. The horrors of slavery, the appalling segregation and violence of the Jim Crow era,
and the continued discrimination since the 1964 Civil Rights Act are well known. One might ask
why, if the facts are known, cannot African Americans receive reparations? After all, Japanese
Americans received reparations for their internment during the Second World War, a much
shorter period of oppression with effects that, however tragic and immoral, affected far fewer
people and to a much less harmful degree. It is, however, much easier to obtain reparations when
facts are about recent events, and apply to a finite number of living, identifiable individuals, with
names, photographs, and individual stories, than to obtain reparations when the facts are about a
seemingly infinite number of unknown people, many generations of whom are long dead.
The fact is that there are no more living ex-slaves today. While the argument can be made to that
their dcendants suffer from those abuses, is that any less true for anyone else? How do we
establish the extent of suffering caused? How do we attempt to compare it to other cases for
different peoples? Let’s refer to our second point.
POINT 2: THE CAUSAL CHAIN OF EVENTS IS TOO COMPLEX TO FOLLOW
Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda E. "Getting to reparations: Japanese Americans and African
Americans *." Social Forces 83.2 (2004): 823+.
The African American claim faces two major difficulties. First, it is difficult to frame the call for
reparations in a convincing manner because many of the victims are long since dead, there are
too many of them, and they cannot easily be identified. Second, the causal chain between past
harms and present victims is too long and too complex, with too many actors and events
implicated. By contrast, the Japanese American claim for reparations was easily framed. Both
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
victims and perpetrators were easily identifiable, and the event took place over a short, finite
period. The harm was clear, and the causal chain was short and lacking in complexity.
Again, while injustice has been perpetrated, there is simply no way to identify the extent that it
affects everyone in a social grouping. Too many actors and event have influenced the system we
currently reside in and to try to reduce the importance of that reduces the importance of those
affected.
POINT 3: NEED IS EVIDENT BUT METHODS ARE FLAWED
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
A Detroit News editorial called the BEDC's incursion at Christ Church Cranbrook, the reading of
the manifesto, and the document's monetary claims a "curious demand." It denounced reparations
to African Americans as without historical merit because slavery had also existed in other lands.
The editorial asserted that this negated bondage as solely a black experience. Moreover, the
editorial challenged the Black Manifesto on other points. It said the proposal did not include
feasibility studies to determine the amount of capital needed to finance successful ventures, "or is
the figure part of a numbers game with rules stacked to favor militant blacks over cowed and
guilt-ridden whites?" The editorial asked whether the language of revolution would enable
African Americans to compete in society on their own terms or whether it was mere extortion. It
went on to argue that although African American economic development was surely needed, the
BEDC's hostile tactics were unlikely to produce any positive response.
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
Since we have established a need, have the efforts been enough? From our last point it appears
that they have not. Due to the nebulous nature of establishing guidelines for reparations in the
first place, methods and efforts to fix systematic abuses have been flawed. We contend that it
might be more beneficial to approach issues such as poverty and education from a standpoint of
societal unity rather than repayment. Of course that is not the topic per-se but the link is clear.
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Reparing Past Wrongs
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
Dye, Keith. "The Black Manifesto for reparations in Detroit: challenge and response, 1969."
Michigan Historical Review 35.2 (2009): 53+.
We have established the impracticality of reparations to the African American community from
the federal government of the US. We contend that because of complexity of defining and
establishing guidelines for these reparations, the resolution should be rejected in favor of more
beneficial efforts. For all these reasons we can see no other than a vote for the Con in today’s
debate. Thank you.
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
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