Published: December 1, 2000
THE
QUESTION OF REPARATIONS TO AFRICAN AMERICANS
By Marie Roberts
Increasingly, the subject of reparations
to African Americans is in the news and I, a white American woman, want
to express my own personal, deeply felt views on this extremely important
matter. In short, I support them passionately and wish to say why.
I also believe that the full and honest
discussion of reparations must include discussion of how we're going to
make restitution to countries in Africa-especially those that were hardest
hit by the shameful trade in "human cargo." As Randall Robinson
writes in The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks:
During the centuries of the Atlantic
slave trade, Africa was denuded of tens of millions of its ablest people,
a massive pillage from which Africa is yet to recover. During the century-long
period of colonial exploitation that followed, Africa saw its theretofore
viable social, political, economic, and agricultural systems destroyed
by the colonizing powers of Western Europe. The magnitude of this long-running
multidimensional human rights crime continues to define not only the crushing
dilemmas of contemporary Africa but the here-and-now burdens borne by
the scattered descendants of her sold-off issue as well.
Reparations for What?
1) the debt owed to blacks for centuries
of unpaid enslaved labor which built America's early economy and
I also believe that there must be restitution
because the enormous wealth that was created--either directly or indirectly--by
the forced labor of enslaved Africans did not go to them, but to white
persons, and this wealth has been passed down generation after generation
by white Americans to our descendants, while most persons of African descent
have had little to pass down to their heirs. Using money that had its
origins in enslaved labor, many European Americans are able to send our
youths to good schools and universities and provide them with the resources
to get a good start in life, whereas African Americans often have to attend
inferior schools, don't get to go to college, and have nothing--not even
the "right" skin color--with which to pull themselves up by
their bootstraps.
What Chattel Slavery Was
We Must Begin with an Apology
However this must be followed up with
reparations, for without that, an apology is nothing more than hollow
words. As we each know from our own life's experience, when we sincerely
regret something we did, we are impelled not only to apologize, but to
do everything in our power to repair the damage we brought about. Any
apology not accompanied by the willingness to make restitution is a fake.
The Opposition to Reparations
And a great deal has been said against
reparations altogether. Several of the arguments and questions frequently
used to oppose it are put forth in a Washington Post article by Kevin
Merida:
Why should American taxpayers, who
never owned slaves, pay for the sins of ancestors they don't even know?
And what about those whose ancestors arrived here long after slavery ended?
How do you put a price tag on 2 1/2 centuries of legalized inhumanity?
In what form would reparations be paid? How would you establish who's
a descendant?
Yet in the face of every argument--including
that slavery took place too long ago for us to do anything about it now--heart
and soul, I can't help but feel it was a crime of such monstrous proportions
that a way must be found to make restitution--and, to use the old cliche,
"Where there's a will, there's a way." Any injustice, personal
or international, which has been committed against anyone must be seen
for what it is and regretted. It cannot be lied about, smoothed over,
or swept under the rug as though it's no longer important--whether it
happened three days ago, three years ago, or three centuries ago. If it
was wrong, it is wrong, and it still must be looked at honestly and sincerely
revoked! That's the only way we will ever put an end to the brutal and
insidious institutionalized racism--the aftermath of slavery--that continues
to plague our country even now at the beginning of the 21st century.
Others Have Suffered, Too
There have also been--and unfortunately
still are--terrific atrocities committed against just about every new
immigrant group that has come to this country--the Irish, Italians, Jews,
Asians, Latinos. But the fact remains that these persons came here of
their own free will in the hope of making a better life for themselves.
Africans are the only persons who were captured and brought here in chains
against their will to be auctioned off, like pieces of merchandise, to
the highest bidder.
The two places in our country's history
where I see the greatest similarity to what was done to African persons
is what we did to Mexico and to the indigenous persons of this land. When
Mexico refused to sell us Texas, California and New Mexico, the United
States government forced it into a war that was enthusiastically supported
by those who wanted to extend the slave-holding territory. This war was
unjust--a big bully attacking a smaller victim. For one thing, the US
knew that Mexico, torn by civil strife, was in no condition to face an
invader. We won an easy victory; Mexico had to cede to the US 2/5th of
its territory in return for a piddling $15 million--and we've been taking
advantage of and exploiting its people shamelessly ever since.
As to the indigenous persons who once
lived freely in this vast expanse now called America, they were overrun,
slaughtered, and had their land stolen from them by European settlers.
Thank God in the 1980s our government was forced to pay out millions of
dollars to their descendants. I believe that what we've done to rectify
our injustice is still woefully inadequate when you look at the massive
horrors we committed-and there can also be large questions about how efficient
these reparations have been--but it is an important step in the right
direction. It also points the way towards what should be as to African
Americans as well.
The Aftermath of Slavery
Legal slavery was outlawed more
than 130 years ago, but the ideology of white racism is still powerful
today....Slavery is dead, but the crime of institutionalized racism still
exists. The 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery, did little
to eradicate racism or the exploitation of African Americans. The Civil
Rights Movement a century later gave us access to public accommodations
and the right to vote, but did not overturn the pernicious pattern of
poverty, unemployment, and inferior treatment which still stratifies our
society.
As the noted historian Herbert Aptheker
makes clear in his book, Abolitionism: A Revolutionary Movement, the revenues
generated by the unholy institution of slavery literally formed the basis
of the early American economy, in the North as well as the South, and
to go against slavery was seen as an attack on the very foundation of
our country's social and economic system. It's inaccurate to think that
only slave owners reaped the financial rewards of slavery: practically
every white American citizen benefited from it in some way--even those
who seemed to have nothing at all to do with slavery. It can be compared
to today: even if you yourself are poor and don't engage in exploiting
sweatshop labor, it's impossible to avoid benefiting, even if you don't
want to, from exploitation by others--practically every time you buy an
article of clothing, for example.
In an interview Randall Robinson said:
The US Government Profited from
Slavery
Cotton was the principal export crop
of the United States. It earned more in foreign revenue than all other
exports put together. The revenues to the treasury were major.
However, as he says in his book about
the people who grew and harvested the cotton:
Black people worked long, hard, killing
days, years, centuries--and they were never paid. The value of their labor
went into others' pockets-plantation owners, northern entrepreneurs, state
treasuries, the US government....There is a debt here. I know of no statute
of limitations either legally or morally that would extinguish it.
I agree with Randall Robinson--and
in the future shall give some of my ideas about how reparations can be
paid by our government, and also by private estates, companies and industries
which profited most from the unpaid labor of enslaved Africans.
You
can contact Marie Roberts at mrobertsusa@yahoo.com
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