So, should the US offer reparations to the descendents of slaves?
This was the topic for a couple of classes this week, and I thought I would send the question out into the internet to see what everyone else thought.
Now, reparations come in many forms. One suggestion for reparations was building a Slavery Memorial, much like we have a Holocaust Memorial. The idea being, of course, remember what happened so it won't happen again. Another suggestion was to create trust funds (funded by the govt..), for the next 5 or 10 years, for each new baby born to those African Americans who were the descendants of slaves. A third idea was an outright payment, much like America did to the Japanese Americans who suffered in the internment camps.
So what do people think? Are any of these appropriate? Should reparations be offered?
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My thoughts:
First, who would be paid? Just African-Americans who are descended? what about those of other ethnic backgrounds? if they can trace their history back to slaves, why shouldn't they get money too? And what about those people who have descended from slaves of the Caribbean? If they live here now, but their ancestors were slaves in the caribbean, do we pay them? And what about the descendants of slaves who were freed and sent to Africa? They were slaves in America, but then were sent to another continent to live. Should they be included?
Further, what are we reparating? Is it the fact that the slaves were made to suffer? or that they were degraded by the majority? If either of those is correct, then don't we owe money to the descendants of immigrants? After all, immigrants were made to suffer also, and were degraded by the majority.
So next, how many people would be eligible for reparations? If we go by descendants of slaves, what is the percentage of ancestry one would need to claim money? As long as one ancestor was a slave do you get money? And what if you thought you were descended form slaves, but had no proof? after all, geneology is a difficult thing to pin down.
If we're just talking about descendants of slaves, I wonder how many people we are talking about. 1 million? 10 million? And then if you include the descendants of Caribbean slaves? The number probably doubles. And then if you include the descendants who live abroad, especially in Africa, how many now? 50 million? 100 million? Finally, if you include the descendants of immigrants, then how many? 125 million?
Finally, we get to the money. How much would be sufficient to reparate people? 100 dollars? 1 thousand dollars? How much is it worth? Then multiply that number by the number of people who are getting money. And remember who is footing the bill. Not a collection of nations, but just America. Do we have 12.5 billion dolars extra laying around that we don't use? And that's assuming that we only pay out 100 dollars per person.
So where does the money come from for reparations? Well, it comes from taxes. So these descendants would be paying themselves reparations. And further, where will the money go once it's been paid? If 50 million in the US get 1 thousand dollars extra, you know what will happen? not much. If the money that the consumer is willing to spend goes up, the cost of the product goes up too. I am not an economist, but if we all get 1000 dollars, suppliers are going to raise prices, right? So 1000 dollars won't even be worth as much anymore. In real spendable dollars, the reparation amount went from 1000 dollar each down to a lesser number.
In the end, the numbers don't support any sort of payment that would assuage people while not bankrupting the US economy further. The idea of monetary reparations seems unsupportable, and further, financially irresponsible. But that's just my opinion.
** the numbers I was throwing around in my analysis were, as you suspected, pulled from my butt. I couldn't find any source that gave any kind of firm number of descendants of slaves living today. If you find some numbers, please comment with them so as to make this discussion more accurate...
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3 comments:
I think that paying any slave decendants is out of the question. I also don't think a monument/memorial is going to appease the masses.
Many slave owners did not keep registries or notes or anything at all. So most slaves will have born, lived and died in obscurety. This doesn't even touch on the slaves that died on ships who are nothing but a number such as '150 slaves died in the hull today'.
There is just simple no way to identify most of the slaves that were present. If you can't identify the majority of those people who were wronged, how can you pay their decendants? Its not fair to pay the occasional (1/10,000) person who happened to get his great great great great ... grandmothers journal prooving she was a slave.
Paying decendants is just as logical as punishing families who owned slaves. Perhaps the Wentzells of old did have slavs, but you never did. You have commited no wrong, your ancestors did. The same goes for a decendant of a slave, they have not been slaves, their ancestors were. They have not been wronged personally or directly, they don't deserve money.
If decendants of slavery think that they need a memorial look all across the nation. They are scattered everywhere, monuments to slave rebellions, pieces of the underground railroad, journals, plantations, museums, everything. Our own history books now go into great depth as to how wrong the 'sin of slavey' was.
I think the vast majority of America thinks slavery is wrong, very wrong. I don't think we need a memorial to remind us that it is wrong, we are surrounded by historical memorials to slaves that remind us how wrong it really was. One more memorial will only be lost in the thousands we already have. One more museum or statue to add to the many.
But if the voices cried out and demanded a slave memorial it would have to be one that listed not one name and depeicted a person of no gender and no race.
If you can't even come close to listing all the names, then none should be listed. We should not glorify the few that left behind evidance, they are just as wronged as those who died nameless victims.
If you can't depict every race that was enslaved then none should be depicted. We enslaved many races, people from across the globe. If a white slave exsisted they shouldn't be excluded, they were a slave.
If the importance is truely slavery, and not race, or gender or religion then it should not matter. So if this generic monument was erected, with no names, no races, just a symbol of slavery and how wrong it was, would this appease the masses?
We cannot dwell on mistakes in the past, only learn from them. Money will not change the past and a memorial/monument may help us remember but it is not as good as education. I think people often push the 'slave topic' to promote a different agenda. If you want to ensure that this never happens again, educate. It is the most powerful tool.
I'll refrain from posting my previous statement, since apparantly it's in my best interest to keep in mind that things I put on the interwebs might come back to haunt me someday. Instead, I leave you with this summation:
Didn't we learn anything from the Saved By the Bell episode where Jessie finds out her ancestors were slave-owners and Lisa's ancestors were slaves? I, honestly, don't remember what the point of the episode was, but it was definitely a message of forgiveness and tolerance with a heaping dose of "I didn't own you, my 3xgreat-grandfather owned your 3xgreat-grandfather, and that's their deal, not ours."
As far as being the several-generations-later descendant of someone who was wronged by someone else and expecting something to be done about it... sure, have a monument... have a month dedicated to celebrating how your people have overcome their opression and become productive members of society... have laws in place that prevent something like that from happening again, and have systems in place so that everyone else's descendants are aware of how wrong their ancestors were.
Somehow I think we, in modern day America, would still be facing problems like this even if the slaves all had their 40 acres and a mule.
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I think the point is whether or not our past actions are still having an effect on African Americans today. If so, and I am readily willing to concede this point as African Americans are one of few immigration groups that have had a difficult time succeeding over an extensive period of being in America, we need to do something.
Now, what to do? I don't believe in reparations. If I did I would be completely confused about my own identity. I would probably break even as I have ancestors who are Gypsies (a group more persecuted throughout hundreds of years than just about any other group) and Vikings (a group who persecuted just about anyone they could).
Also, most of my family was not in America during slavery and was instead in Denmark. Would that mean I need to take a lesser share of the responsibility?
Instead, I am a huge fan of education. If our past bad actions are having an effect on today's children we SHOULD take responsibility, not for our ancestors but for ourselves. If we do not, we are merely continuing the cycle and are just as irresponsible to the effect of our actions as our ancestors. So, in short, I say work at improving those things which continue to be problematic among African Americans (such as inner-city schools, lack of health care, etc.).
It isn't a perfect solution but it takes responsibility for how we currently act and what we currently stand for as a generation.
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