On Reparations.
So first of all, what are reparations? The basic idea is that some form of compensation for slavery and discrimination should be made to black Americans, particularly those who are descendants of slaves. Some people propose a direct payment from the government, and/or from private institutions who were involved in oppressing black Americans. While others call for things such as no cost, tax free education, healthcare, and legal aid things like that. This has been proposed, if not demanded, in several countries, but I’m going to speak mostly from a United States perspective.
This has been proposed, if not demanded, in
several countries, but I’m going to speak
Some people talk about reparations as if it’s some kind of impractical fantasy, but there are precedents. For example, In 1988, the United States granted $20,000 in compensation to each surviving Japanese-American who had been held in an internment camp during World War 2. And Germany continues to this day to pay reparations to survivors of the Holocaust. A lot of times people frame this as “reparations for slavery”, but it should be made clear that slavery is just one of the offenses. Black Americans have had to endure Jim Crow laws, police brutality and other kinds of legalized violence, redlining leading to lower standards of education and housing, and suppression of voting rights and free expression, government experiments like Operation LAC, being excluded from the GI Bill, loss of land among many other forms of systemic oppression, the effects of which still persist. So the debate about reparations for black Americans is in some ways very simple but in other ways very complex. I say simple, because a lot of the people who outright oppose any kind of reparations are people who deny the still existing legacy of racism and discrimination in America. So, essentially, people who are either ignorant or in disbelief of verifiable data about social and economic disparity when it comes to race.
So, essentially, people who are either ignorant
or in disbelief of verifiable data about social
Or put more bluntly, people that don’t believe facts. So in that way, it’s kind of like people who oppose vaccination because they don’t believe that vaccines actually prevent diseases. It would be kind of a waste of time, in my opinion, to initiate a discussion about reparations, if half the people involved don’t even believe the facts surrounding the issue. So assuming that you understand that black Americans and their ancestors lived through centuries of slavery, followed by decades of legal systemic oppression, followed by even more decades of technically illegal but still very much present oppression, that, although we have made progress, still continues to this day, Unless you’re an awful person, you probably agree that if there’s something that can be done to make up for all that, we should probably do it. But that’s when things start getting complicated. Because when we’re talking about reparations, we need to decide who will receive reparations, who will pay reparations, and how much they’ll pay. You could make a very solid argument that slavery is at the very root of systemic racism against black people, even though it was abolished a long time ago. It established the precedent of black people being less human, and thus less worthy of respect and trust than white people, which is a sentiment that carried on through history and one that I’d argue still persist. This is one reason why many discussions about reparations focus on slavery. So in order to provide fair reparations for slavery specifically, potential recipients would have to prove they were in fact a descendant of an African slave, which, I’m not sure is even possible for some people, depending on what records are available.
So in order to provide fair reparations for
slavery specifically, potential recipients
And that kind of thing usually isn’t free anyway. Although I guess whomever is providing the reparations, could, as part of the compensation hire professional genealogists to work with people. But that brings up the matter of who is to actually pay the reparations. The easiest answer is the government, but one could argue that the United States government shouldn’t be totally on the hook for paying reparations, because they didn’t implement slavery, and in fact did not exist for most of it. Although it’s not like the slavery industry slowed down after the Declaration of Independence was signed. In fact, quite the opposite. It’s also true that many non-government organizations and individuals contributed to and profited from slavery, for example some banks used to accept slaves as collateral for loans. A couple of those banks were absorbed into what is now JP Morgan Chase, who apologized for this in 2005. So if we’re going to be fair, we’re gonna have to find a way to account for all of that as well. And as you know, if the government is paying for something, that essentially means that taxpayers are paying for it, and one might argue that it is unfair to place the burden of paying reparations on people who had nothing to do with slavery. And then of course there is the question of how much will be paid. In 2000, Harper’s Magazine estimated that between the years of 1619 and 1865 slaves were subjected to approximately 222 million hours of forced, unpaid labor, which they figured with compounding interest would come out to about $100 trillion in owed wages. Which, if you don’t know, is more money than there is in the world. Gonna be pretty tough to pay that one out.
Gonna be pretty tough to pay that one out.
All of this is to say, I don’t think there’s any practical way to tackle the subject of reparations for slavery by just handing out checks to black people who are descendants of slaves. It’s something that should have been done very soon after slavery was actually abolished, but now it’s just completely unfeasible. There are too many factors involved that will make the whole process impossible to carry out in a fair and efficient way. And keep in mind, thus far, I’ve focused on compensation for slavery. But as I said, black people have been subjected to over a century of discrimination and marginalization, even after slavery was abolished. A lot of people scoff at the idea of reparations, because it sounds like people asking for a handout. I scoff at the idea because there will probably never be enough money in the world to make up for the atrocities that black Americans have had to face in this country. And this is the thing that I hesitate to say sometimes, because I know it sounds like an exaggeration to some people. This is actually one of the problems you get when you're trying to talk about issues that face marginalized groups. It’s hard to talk about real stuff without sounding alarmist or sensationalist or being perceived as the stereotypical “angry black person.” But I mean like, it’s true though. Racism infects virtually every American institution. This entire country was built on the backs of slaves. Some of our grandparents were alive for Jim Crow. Getting a million dollar check would be cool for a generation or two, but it wouldn’t fix systemic racism, so it wouldn’t solve the problem. It would do little to combat the enduring racism within our institutions, which is the true cause of social and economic disparity. But I’m not arguing that nothing should be done. One cool thing many states and localities did was pass “disclosure legislation” which required businesses to research and disclose their historical ties to racism and slavery, and publicly report on their efforts to reverse the effects. In fact that's exactly what happened with JP Morgan Chase, and in response, they set up a $5 million dollar scholarship for students in the area affected by the banks involved. Now that’s a small step for a company that large, but I’d like to see more things like that. In reality, there’s no one lump sum that will suffice to tackle this problem. It’s much more likely that each institution, each organization, and each individual will have to personally take stock of how much they or those before them contributed to and benefited from a legacy of racism in America, and then take steps to start compensating for that in the way that makes sense for them. This can be forced to some extent through legislation or judicial actions, and in the cases where it can be I fully support that.
cases where it can be I fully support that.
For example, I support financial reparations for the families of black people who were unjustly murdered by police. But you can’t legislate away the negative stereotypes and unconscious biases that led to the killings in the first place. The reparations that I want is a pledge from the people and organizations that matter in this country, including the government, that they will make a conscious attempt to research and learn how they can help compensate for and reverse the effects of systemic racism, and then I want them to actually start doing it. And I don’t think that’s an impractical fantasy. I think it's something that could happen. But, I’m also not holding my breath. That’s just me tho. What do you think? How many are going to actually read this and not go immediately to the easiest incautious answers.
This has been proposed, if not demanded, in
several countries, but I’m going to speak
Some people talk about reparations as if it’s some kind of impractical fantasy, but there are precedents. For example, In 1988, the United States granted $20,000 in compensation to each surviving Japanese-American who had been held in an internment camp during World War 2. And Germany continues to this day to pay reparations to survivors of the Holocaust. A lot of times people frame this as “reparations for slavery”, but it should be made clear that slavery is just one of the offenses. Black Americans have had to endure Jim Crow laws, police brutality and other kinds of legalized violence, redlining leading to lower standards of education and housing, and suppression of voting rights and free expression, government experiments like Operation LAC, being excluded from the GI Bill, loss of land among many other forms of systemic oppression, the effects of which still persist. So the debate about reparations for black Americans is in some ways very simple but in other ways very complex. I say simple, because a lot of the people who outright oppose any kind of reparations are people who deny the still existing legacy of racism and discrimination in America. So, essentially, people who are either ignorant or in disbelief of verifiable data about social and economic disparity when it comes to race.
So, essentially, people who are either ignorant
or in disbelief of verifiable data about social
Or put more bluntly, people that don’t believe facts. So in that way, it’s kind of like people who oppose vaccination because they don’t believe that vaccines actually prevent diseases. It would be kind of a waste of time, in my opinion, to initiate a discussion about reparations, if half the people involved don’t even believe the facts surrounding the issue. So assuming that you understand that black Americans and their ancestors lived through centuries of slavery, followed by decades of legal systemic oppression, followed by even more decades of technically illegal but still very much present oppression, that, although we have made progress, still continues to this day, Unless you’re an awful person, you probably agree that if there’s something that can be done to make up for all that, we should probably do it. But that’s when things start getting complicated. Because when we’re talking about reparations, we need to decide who will receive reparations, who will pay reparations, and how much they’ll pay. You could make a very solid argument that slavery is at the very root of systemic racism against black people, even though it was abolished a long time ago. It established the precedent of black people being less human, and thus less worthy of respect and trust than white people, which is a sentiment that carried on through history and one that I’d argue still persist. This is one reason why many discussions about reparations focus on slavery. So in order to provide fair reparations for slavery specifically, potential recipients would have to prove they were in fact a descendant of an African slave, which, I’m not sure is even possible for some people, depending on what records are available.
So in order to provide fair reparations for
slavery specifically, potential recipients
And that kind of thing usually isn’t free anyway. Although I guess whomever is providing the reparations, could, as part of the compensation hire professional genealogists to work with people. But that brings up the matter of who is to actually pay the reparations. The easiest answer is the government, but one could argue that the United States government shouldn’t be totally on the hook for paying reparations, because they didn’t implement slavery, and in fact did not exist for most of it. Although it’s not like the slavery industry slowed down after the Declaration of Independence was signed. In fact, quite the opposite. It’s also true that many non-government organizations and individuals contributed to and profited from slavery, for example some banks used to accept slaves as collateral for loans. A couple of those banks were absorbed into what is now JP Morgan Chase, who apologized for this in 2005. So if we’re going to be fair, we’re gonna have to find a way to account for all of that as well. And as you know, if the government is paying for something, that essentially means that taxpayers are paying for it, and one might argue that it is unfair to place the burden of paying reparations on people who had nothing to do with slavery. And then of course there is the question of how much will be paid. In 2000, Harper’s Magazine estimated that between the years of 1619 and 1865 slaves were subjected to approximately 222 million hours of forced, unpaid labor, which they figured with compounding interest would come out to about $100 trillion in owed wages. Which, if you don’t know, is more money than there is in the world. Gonna be pretty tough to pay that one out.
Gonna be pretty tough to pay that one out.
All of this is to say, I don’t think there’s any practical way to tackle the subject of reparations for slavery by just handing out checks to black people who are descendants of slaves. It’s something that should have been done very soon after slavery was actually abolished, but now it’s just completely unfeasible. There are too many factors involved that will make the whole process impossible to carry out in a fair and efficient way. And keep in mind, thus far, I’ve focused on compensation for slavery. But as I said, black people have been subjected to over a century of discrimination and marginalization, even after slavery was abolished. A lot of people scoff at the idea of reparations, because it sounds like people asking for a handout. I scoff at the idea because there will probably never be enough money in the world to make up for the atrocities that black Americans have had to face in this country. And this is the thing that I hesitate to say sometimes, because I know it sounds like an exaggeration to some people. This is actually one of the problems you get when you're trying to talk about issues that face marginalized groups. It’s hard to talk about real stuff without sounding alarmist or sensationalist or being perceived as the stereotypical “angry black person.” But I mean like, it’s true though. Racism infects virtually every American institution. This entire country was built on the backs of slaves. Some of our grandparents were alive for Jim Crow. Getting a million dollar check would be cool for a generation or two, but it wouldn’t fix systemic racism, so it wouldn’t solve the problem. It would do little to combat the enduring racism within our institutions, which is the true cause of social and economic disparity. But I’m not arguing that nothing should be done. One cool thing many states and localities did was pass “disclosure legislation” which required businesses to research and disclose their historical ties to racism and slavery, and publicly report on their efforts to reverse the effects. In fact that's exactly what happened with JP Morgan Chase, and in response, they set up a $5 million dollar scholarship for students in the area affected by the banks involved. Now that’s a small step for a company that large, but I’d like to see more things like that. In reality, there’s no one lump sum that will suffice to tackle this problem. It’s much more likely that each institution, each organization, and each individual will have to personally take stock of how much they or those before them contributed to and benefited from a legacy of racism in America, and then take steps to start compensating for that in the way that makes sense for them. This can be forced to some extent through legislation or judicial actions, and in the cases where it can be I fully support that.
cases where it can be I fully support that.
For example, I support financial reparations for the families of black people who were unjustly murdered by police. But you can’t legislate away the negative stereotypes and unconscious biases that led to the killings in the first place. The reparations that I want is a pledge from the people and organizations that matter in this country, including the government, that they will make a conscious attempt to research and learn how they can help compensate for and reverse the effects of systemic racism, and then I want them to actually start doing it. And I don’t think that’s an impractical fantasy. I think it's something that could happen. But, I’m also not holding my breath. That’s just me tho. What do you think? How many are going to actually read this and not go immediately to the easiest incautious answers.
