The Insufficiency of Reparations… The Case For A Better Way

Reparations for slavery is often defined as financial compensation to be paid to the descendants of slaves. If we accept reparations in that manner, I would contend that reparations are inappropriate, insufficient and dangerous.

Inappropriate, because it suggests that a check, regardless of the amount, is an adequate response to the enslavement and enduring abuse of an entire population of American citizens.  

It is not.

Insufficient, because the concept falsely implies that the damage done by centuries of endemic racism has been limited to slavery and its specific victims. 

It has not.

Dangerous, because it provides an excuse for white America to consider its obligation to the repair of what it has broken to be complete. 

It must not.

The arguments on behalf of reparations have been largely limited to the economics related to the forced labors of enslaved Africans in America. Scholars have gone to great lengths to compute equitable compensation for those labors, and to translate their calculations into present day currencies. Their formulations have led to a broad range of numbers, varying mechanisms for distributions and debates over what constitutes a descendant.

In this regard, reparations are a bandaid over a deeply infected wound. It solves none of the systemic problems or resulting deficits, while creating the appearance of a cure. It is a placebo that will lead to the disease metastasizing in the body of this nation. 

At the root of slavery was a specific conceit: that Black men and women were somehow less human than their white counterparts, not entitled to what were already understood by the founding fathers (and those before them) as the God-given rights of freedom and self-determination. The very act of enslavement, the predation of bondage, could not have existed without this fallacy being endorsed. It was this deceit that was the original sin; slavery was a grievous but almost inevitable derivative of that delusion. 

True reparations, if we redefine the term to mean making amends for past transgressions, requires a far more comprehensive and inclusive response. The average Black family has one-tenth the net worth of the average white family, a product of the forced absence of trans-generational wealth and historical denial of opportunity and stability. Systemic health disparities have been thrust into public awareness by the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Social justice inequalities have resulted in the incarceration of vast numbers of Black Americans, serving as a functional perpetuation of slavery in an altered form. Access to quality opportunities in education, employment and representation lag demonstrably behind those afforded white Americans. 

We must first accept that the result of that disbelief in a shared humanity has been the endemic plague of racism, a condition that did not begin with slavery, nor end with its abolition. The laws of this country, along with its societal constructs and extralegal perversions, have not asked for the origin stories of Black Americans, just the color of their skin in order to deprive them of their share of the nation’s protections and bounties. Therefore, true reparations must provide a present redress for generational deprivations.

Too many of the victims of systemic and legally sanctioned racism are beyond our ability to comfort. We cannot travel back in time and institute equality and humanity. What we have left to address are the present and future generations of Black Americans, fully one eighth of our country, who are constrained by the outcomes of those prejudices and impositions. If we seek true racial justice and equality, we must first replace and correct what endemic racism has taken away, and establish specific guardrails against future leanings to crawl back to that depravity.

We can understand and calculate the cost of the past to the present generations. The markers that remain are clear and painfully apparent. The disparities inherent in Black America include entrenched deficits in health, wealth and opportunity, among many others.  

There should be no difficulty in drawing a straight line from early slavery to the present systemic racism, and in informing a relevant and defined response. Adequate compensating cannot be accomplished by the present definition of reparations, as much as the simplicity and cleanliness of issuing a check would be a likely relief to white America; a financial resolution would serve as a present day form of the indulgences in the Catholic faith, where sinners were absolved of their acts by the payment of money to the church.  

True restitution requires the acceptance of responsibility, the will to make appropriate amends, and the political commitment to institutionalize the process.

There is a particular irony in the aversion to working towards equality among a shocking percentage of white Americans. In constraining the potential and productivity of fully an eighth of the country, this nation has traveled its singular path with one hand tied behind its back; no diner ever made money by denying a meal to a paying customer, no company ever profited by rejecting the best candidate to meet its needs. Righteous civil unrest forces this country to defend itself from an indefensible position. Racism has always been a crime that cripples its victims while diminishing its perpetrators.

A nation forging a path towards equality and justice is not a weaker country, but a stronger and more productive one. It is an America that approaches its best case scenario, one that can assert its global leadership and export its values without the corrosive burden of hypocrisy. It is a country that can present not merely a great but a good nation to the world, to its own citizenry and into the future. 

 America is perched on the precipice of an extraordinary collection of critical challenges, internal, external and in many ways existential. The response to those problems requires the accumulated dedication of every individual talent, every ounce of the nation’s energy and attention. It is only through the repudiation of racism and the resolution of its prior and present impacts that America can emerge as its best, its most prosperous and engaged.

Rhetoric and aspiration are insufficient for the coming moment; rather, we must embrace this growing awareness, and the exposed choice to actively create the nation that leads us into our tumultuous future…

 What we no longer can cling to is the pretense that where we go from this point forward is not a choice.

Please note: My new book on this topic “The Insufficiency of Reparations” is now available on Amazon and for Kindle.