If not slavery, what is reparation for?
I recently asked my ethics students:
Suppose we bracket slavery. Is there still a case for reparations to Black Americans for historic injustice? If so, on what grounds? What would reparations be for?
After 5 minutes of small group discussion (please, teachers, get your students talking in small groups!), I asked them to share their thoughts with the class.
They didn't have much to say. My 80+ class was mostly silent, though some mentioned current racial inequalities. The silence of the large group reflected the struggle I saw in the small group discussions. Some small groups confessed to me, "this is hard; I'm not really sure."
Finally, the answer I was looking for:
Jim Crow.
"In your small groups," I asked, "how many of you brought up Jim Crow as a possible basis for reparations to Black Americans?" A few hands went up.
Look, this wasn't a rigorous way of polling. I can't be sure that all students who thought of Jim Crow were reluctant to raise their hands. I only know this: I thought the answer would be obvious. But the puzzlement seemed more obvious. I doubt this response is unique to my students. For most of my life, it was my response.
Jim Crow.
Here's a conjecture about the way many white Americans conceptualize Jim Crow and reparations. Since Jim Crow was mostly about legal segregation––in the minds of many white Americans––legal intervention achieves remediation. That is, we think the wrong of Jim Crow was the wrong of legal discrimination. But we don't think of Jim Crow as economic devastation. It's not surprising, then, that establishing equality under the law, integrating spaces, and so on, strikes us as adequate for achieving reparative closure. The response fits the wrongdoing. The problem is that we barely know the history, so we don't recognize Jim Crow for what it was. Jim Crow took a toll. It disenfranchised, disempowered, dis-invested, and deprived. There was more to it than separate drinking fountains and segregated spaces. Generations of Black Americans were blocked from channels of wealth building, political access, safety, fair wages, federally subsidized mortgage loans, veterans compensation, and so on.
How we frame the wrong of Jim Crow matters. Beyond framing it as a problem of legal discrimination, we need to frame it as a problem of state-sanctioned economic devastation. If you agree, then how can legal intervention and integration alone satisfy the demands of reparative justice?
So, even if you're suspicious of reparations for slavery––"wasn't it too long ago? How do we know whether slavery is responsible for present-day harms? Who is owed reparations for slavery?"––I suspect many of the reasons for that suspicion will carry less weight, if not dissolve, when we talk about Jim Crow. As Darity and Mullen constantly remind us, Black Baby boomers are the living victims of Jim Crow racism. Temporally, it's not far off. Sociologically, its impact is far easier to discern. Economically, it was devastating. We have the receipts.
For more (including teaching materials), watch/read the following:
- This short interview with Richard Rothstein on residential discrimination in the 20th century.
- This short video on redlining (the Rothstein material fills in the details).
- This interactive resource showing all the redline maps used by the Federal Housing Authority to decide which neighborhoods were worth offering mortgage subsidies to (I have my students look up key cities in the U.S. and discuss their findings).
- This book, From Here to Equality, by Darity and Mullen charting the various wrongs efforts of state and federal agencies to enfranchise whites at the exclusion of Black Americans.
- This book, When Affirmative Action was White, by Ira Katz Nelson exploring the various ways that New Deal era interventions on poverty and joblessness were channeled primarily to the benefit of white Americans.
Maybe they didn't want to answer Jim Crow because slavery is considered to be its progenitor, so they would've thought it counted as slavery.
ReplyDeleteBut technicalities aside, I don't understand this insistence that we just give free money to people, and the logic that this will somehow be helpful.
Look at it this way. Suppose you get in a fight with your brother while playing baseball and you, in a rage, swing the bat at his leg and break it. Now, suppose that someone walks up to you both and says to you "Hey man, you broke his leg and that wasn't cool, I think you owe him a new leg!" Maybe its a robotic leg, or some lab synthesized organic leg, and this person is suggesting you amputate and replace his original leg with a new, working one.
Of course this is a ridiculous suggestion - first, because we don't have the technology to do that. And even if we did, you will actually be depriving your brother of the spiritual trials and riches associated with the healing and re-strengthening of his leg. The proper action is to splint the leg, let it heal, and and then encourage (perhaps with some assistance) your brother to get walking and running again, in order to strengthen the leg. Assistance needed or not, the final goal is to get your brother walking again, on his own. It may be that he will not be able to ever run as fast again, or maybe he will experience some chronic pain in his leg for the rest of his life, or maybe it will be more likely to break again under pressure. But these things don't matter, because this solution is realistic and optimal.
The idea of replacing the leg, even if we had the technology and the surgery was risk-free, seems almost unhuman to me. And it's certainly not possible if we don't have the technology.
Not only would you be depriving him of the spiritual lessons learned in the healing process, the challenge of the trials, and the satisfaction of overcoming the trials, it may even be that this unfortunate incident, even at the very moment of its occurrence, becomes an integral and inseparable part of his identity. And perhaps the pain or weakness which lingers in his leg afterwards integrates too. To take that possibility of self-transformation, or the actuality of an identity, away, seems unjust, and in the case of black Americans, a form of theft perhaps even worse than the original theft of their labor.
You speak of economic ramifications and reparations, but what of the spiritual ramifications and reparations? They are not mutually exclusive. Is the path from spiritual brokenness to wholeness paved with handouts, or hard work? Even if we could take away the economic ramifications of slavery or Jim Crow, wouldn't that just be another form of denial, an attempt to erase history, to erase our ancestor's crimes?
A better analogy: You're married and a man comes and kills your wife. Does it make sense to demand of him to produce a new wife for you? Is she that easily replaceable?
DeleteHi JL. Thanks for the comments. You write:
Delete"But technicalities aside, I don't understand this insistence that we just give free money to people, and the logic that this will somehow be helpful."
Reparationists have defended "portfolios of reparation" that are diversified beyond cash transfers. There is a lot of talk about trust funds for asset-building investments, for example. Others talk about tuition remission, tax credits, healthcare coverage, and so on. Beyond investments into individuals, portfolios of reparation often advocate for investments into Black-led organizations and HBCUs. These endowments and investments provide valuable resources for community empowerment and give greater oversight to communities rather than individuals. All this to say: cash transfers are almost always a subset of what reparation would involve. I don't know if that shifts your thinking about whether reparation is helpful or not, but I hope it shows that the discussion about reparation's helpfulness/unhelpfulness shouldn't get stuck on the issue of cash transfers. Thoughts?
JL, you write:
Delete"Not only would you be depriving him of the spiritual lessons learned in the healing process, the challenge of the trials, and the satisfaction of overcoming the trials, it may even be that this unfortunate incident, even at the very moment of its occurrence, becomes an integral and inseparable part of his identity. "
I'm not sure I get the point about learning spiritual lessons. It seems problematically paternalistic for me to withhold compensation owed on the basis that the aggrieved could learn some spiritual lesson without it. If I maliciously break your window, I owe you compensation––period––whether or not you will grow spiritually from having to fix the situation on your own.
Also, I'm not sure that compensation necessarily undermines the identity one has formed as a result of experiencing injustice. Plus, I'm not totally sure what kind of identity you have in mind.
JL, you write:
Delete"You speak of economic ramifications and reparations, but what of the spiritual ramifications and reparations? They are not mutually exclusive. Is the path from spiritual brokenness to wholeness paved with handouts, or hard work?"
1. I think we stand to gain many "spiritual" fruits by giving reparation to whom it is owed. In the U.S.'s case, reparation could be the very thing that sows seeds of healing, dignity, and reconciliation. In fact, I think it is plausible that the failure to make reparation is partly to blame for why our nation suffers from various vices and relational maladies––beyond the economic and material maladies left in place by the U.S.'s history of un-repaired injustice.
2. Reparations ≠ handouts. Just consider: paying back debt is not a hand out. Arguably, reparations is better modeled by a debt framework than a handout framework.
3. I want to resist the implication that reparations undermines hard work. Why think that? Reparation is part of the picture, anyway. It isn't the complete solution to racial healing. But I also want to resit the implication that the hard work of healing is only something that Black Americans must face. White Americans must embrace a more accurate national narrative about race relations in the U.S., shake off apathy about historic injustice, unlearn their own internalized antipathy and bias, and be prepared to embrace life in the beloved community. That won't be easy, but it will be redemptive. If white Americans do not engage in that project, it will come at cost to their own healing and wholeness. Injustice shatters stuff in all of us, including the privileged.