Debatable: Should blacks receive reparations for past slavery?

Journal Times Online, WI ^ | 2/12/04 | Phyllis Sides

[schaketo]

Should blacks in America receive reparations for slavery? That's the issue Professor Manning Marable will address Wednesday at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Marable is a history professor at Columbia University of New York and director of its Institute for Research in African-American Studies.

Marable believes that every black family in the United States should receive reparations, which he calls "compensatory justice," for losses their ancestors sustained as the result of slavery.

He says fair compensation for African Americans would involve a "civic restitution fund" and reparations would not come in the form of direct cash payments, but rather the use of tax money to fund social services for black Americans and scholarships for African-American students and historically black colleges.

Marable concedes that white Americans today are not guilty of enslaving anyone. However, they are the beneficiaries of racism, and as such they have a moral and political responsibility to bear its burden. The historical justifications for providing compensation to the American descendants of black slaves can be traced to the period immediately following the Civil War. The compensation that was promised to ex-slaves was never delivered. They never received their 40 acres and a mule.

African-American historian John Hope Franklin wrote, "Most living Americans do have a connection with slavery. They have inherited the preferential advantage, if they are white, or the loathsome disadvantage, if they are Black; and those positions are virtually as alive today as they were in the 19th century."

Marable points to the Holocaust lawsuits and the restitution Japanese-Americans received as a result of their internment in World War II as models for reparations.

However, people opposed to reparations say America

wasn't solely responsible for slavery nor did it invent slavery. They also say slavery didn't create the socioeconomic gap between blacks and whites.

Attempts have been made to bridge the gap, says Lindsey Scherer, founder of the conservative Web site, "The Right View: Nothing but right." Scherer says the United States has attempted to close the gap "by creating welfare programs, `cultural approaches to education,' and affirmative-action programs, just to name a few, and the end result has only been a decrease in the incentive to work, stigmatized learning, and a decrease in the incentive to excel in the truly bright and talented."

Anti-reparationists also say correlations can't be drawn between Japanese-American and African-American demands for reparations.

Scherer says Japanese Americans suffered direct financial losses because they were interned in concentration camps and couldn't work. Japanese-American internment was different from slavery in the sense that the descendants of the slaves didn't lose money directly because of their ancestors' enslavement, according to Scherer.

[mtbopfuyn]

Throughout the history of mankind there have been slaves. My family has been enslaved, your family has been enslaved, and everyone's ancestor at one time or another has been enslaved. I'm not running to the decendants of American slaves for reparations from centuries ago and will agree to call it a wash. Even Steven. Be done with it. They aren't currently slaves, they're parents weren't, nor were their grandparents or great grandparents, so get over it already.

[mtbopfuyn]

I haven't benefitted from racism, I've suffered. I can't get hired to certain positions because I don't help to fulfill a quota.

Same here. I applied for a dream job but after being hired by the district office, the head office denied it because the job had to go to a minority. Never mind a minority hadn't applied and never mind that after another 4 years a minority still hadn't applied.

[cyborg]

I don't know any who want one.

[mtbopfuyn]

the use of tax money to fund social services for black Americans and scholarships for African-American students and historically black colleges.

Funny, I don't recall hearing of the National Association of White People, the White College Fund, or the White History Month.

[Dante3]

This is a nonsense issue, not even a debatable. None of the slaves are alive. And there are statues of limitations for a good reason. Next are we to turn over this country to the Indians? Some might well argue the case.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Question: "Debatable: Should blacks receive reparations for past slavery?"

Response: There is no debate. There are no different points of view. There is no room at the table. The big tent has been folded. In other words-no!

[cyborg]

There is such an organization but there are not nice people, run by David Duke and all. There's nothing stopping white people from applying to any historically black college. People forget WHY blacks had to start their own colleges in the first place, because they were not allowed to attend the regular institutions.

[mtbopfuyn]

Not to mention that many Blacks are descended from people who enslaved other Blacks shipped over here. Any reparations scheme would have to involve those Blacks paying the ancestors of the other Blacks for this conduct.

Let's not forget that most Blacks who were here before the Civil War have white blood somewhere down the line. Thomas Jefferson's and Sallie Hemmings' decendants are a perfect example.

[cyborg]

Beyond the financial, just look through this thread. Reparations will cause more problems than they're worth in terms of resentment and the like.

[mtbopfuyn]

Try telling my daughter, who is currently filling out scholarship applications for next school year, that she has a "preferential advantage." She is acutely aware of the fact that if her skin was black or brown instead of white, she wouldn't be strapped with thousands of dollars in student loans to pay back after she graduates. White, middle class kids need not apply.

A-men!

[cyborg]

She ought not to fill out any ethnic/racial categories in the first place. They have nothing to do with education. If everyone did that then universities would get the message.

[Dante3]

Exactly.

[mtbopfuyn]

I think that the advantage of having American citizenship instead of being stuck in Africa outweighs the disadvantage of past slavery.

Whoopi Goldberg said she isn't an African American but an American. She'd been to Africa and didn't like it.

[mtbopfuyn]

David Duke runs the KKK, not the White organization of the NAACP.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I was stuck in Monrovia, Liberia because of airplane problems. I met a man whose ancestors were from the
USA and he was sad they had been returned to Africa.
He said that living conditions in Liberia were worse
for the middle class then the poor in America.

[spodefly]

A reparation plan I can go along with.

[cyborg]

He was the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People. NAACP is not the organization it was years ago. IMHO, it's closer to be racialist like NAAWP. Does the average person take them (NAACP) seriously? I had someone threaten to report me to the NAACP for playing Rush Limbaugh at my job. I took it as a compliment.

[DustyMoment]

"Should blacks in America receive reparations for slavery?"

NO!!! Not unless they are ready and willing to see the dissolution of the United States and another Civil War.

[jart]

while we are discussing reps, i want reps from mongolia
for the treatment of my hungarian ancestors who were
victimized by the mongols, essentially they were slaves.

HUNGARIAN AMERICANS DEMAND REPARATIONS FROM
THE MONGOLIAN GOVERNMENT NOW!!