Major Issues on Black Reparations - Essay Example

Black Reparations The historical foundation of the reparations movement is foremost the of slavery. Slavery was not marginal to, or an aberration in, the formation of the United States. During the colonial period, a racialised social order evolved, as did codified slave laws and institutionalised slave practices at the level of everyday life. Constitutionally inscribed and morally and forcibly sanctioned slavery lasted in the republic until 1865. What followed slavery was a century of segregation, exploitation and deprivation--the social and economic consequences of which continue to affect the life chances of African Americans adversely. The central claims and organising and legal principles of the reparations movement are laid out in the Black Manifesto. The Manifesto is premised on the historical fact that the United States was constitutionally founded on slavery and that the persistence of racial inequality and injustice in American society is derived from slavery. The Manifesto articulates the legal principle for reparations for African Americans. According to Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, this principle affirms that for every wrong there is a remedy, and ... that remedy is not extinguished by time itself, particularly when the manifestations of the problem are current day and visible to all1. Judiciously, the Manifesto does not specify how to assess the damage for reparations, calling for congressional hearings to determine the basis for compensation. While the Manifesto implicates the US government as a principal benefactor and enforcer of slavery, it intentionally does not specify the form or forms of reparations, except to call for the establishment of a 'private trust', which may imply financial as well as other forms of restitution. Mazrui has delineated three categories of reparations considered during his membership of the Group of Eminent Persons. The Group was established by the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) in 1992 to address reparations in the larger context of African slavery and colonisation. The categories, broadly defined, are 'capital transfer', 'skill transfer' and 'empowerment'. The first of the three is self-evident, implying financial compensation; the second concerns the acquisition of skills and presumably knowledge to compensate for the deprivation and underdevelopment caused by slavery and colonisation; the third, 'empowerment', calls for the apportionment to Africa of 'out of proportion power' in institutions like the World Bank and for veto authority in the Security Council of the United Nations. Within these three categories, reparations can take several forms. Historical context The call for reparations in the US is not of recent vintage. On his match through Confederate territory in 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 on 16 January which reserved land largely in the Sea Islands and on the South Carolina and Georgia coasts for the settlement of freed blacks. That year, nearly 40,000 former slaves settled on 400,000 acres in the 'Sherman Reservation ( Levitt, 1997). Although Sherman (and his contemporaries who advocated land distribution) did not define this as reparations, he ordered that each family of ex-slaves be given not more than forty acres of tillable land' and 'subject to the approval of the President of the United States, a possessory title in writing ( Matsuda, 1987). However, the terms of the land distribution were unclear. Was the federal government leasing or giving title of the land to the ex-slaves When the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Land (aka the Freedmen's Bureau) was established in March 1865, Congress authorised it to lease confiscated or abandoned lands to former slaves who would have the option to 'purchase the land and receive such titles thereto as the United States can convey'. But President Johnson undermined the Bureau's efforts by ordering the restoration of property to the former Confederates he had pardoned. In 1866, Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act. Eighty-acre plots were set aside in five southern states for former slaves to purchase. The land, however, was of poor quality and blacks lacked the capital to purchase farm implements. By 1876, Congress repealed the Southern Homestead Act and, with this, ushered in the demise of Reconstruction federal land distribution policies. During the civil rights struggle in the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr, in a speech at the 1963 convocation in Washington, declared Sherman's march 'a check which has come back marked insufficient funds'. Black nationalists, among them the Nation of Islam, the Malcolm X Society and the Black Panther Party, demanded a black 'homeland' in a partitioned US2. For black separatists, the 'land question' constituted, in part, a form of reparations in lieu of financial restitution. The 'homeland' or 'nation' was theorised from a model of race and ethnic relations based on the concept of internal colonialism which posited that black--white relations in the US were those of coloniser and colonised. While some separatists endeavoured to establish self-sustaining black enclaves, as a national project this failed amid the severity and pervasiveness of racial conflict during the 1960s. In retrospect, some observers, among them John McWhorter, contend that the welfare and affirmative action policies enacted by the federal government in the mid-1960s constitute a form of reparations that 'acknowledge the legacy of slavery'. Trajectories of today's reparations movement In the contemporary period, the cause of and movement for reparations resonate increasingly among African Americans of all social classes, notwithstanding opposition from conservatives, the disfavour and antagonism of the majority of white Americans and the objections of some prominent black intellectuals. Opponents' arguments vary. Many dehistoricise slavery and disassociate it from the deprivations and lower social status of slave descendants, dismissing the movement's goals as impractical or invoking the national good against African Americans' demands for racial justice. Specifically, opponents assert that slavery's transgressions have no bearing on the living descendants of slaves; that it is impossible to calculate the debt owed to them; that the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution addressed and compensated blacks for the deprivations endured under slavery; and that litigation for reparations would 'pour salt in the American wound of the past'. Others argue that reparations should be paid only to the survivors, say, of the Holocaust and not their descendants, categorically disqualifying the living descendants of slaves from compensation. Another assertion is that not all blacks were slaves and that immigrants who arrived in the US after slavery experienced discrimination as well. Some critics have invoked economic comparisons between blacks in the US and abroad, claiming that 'African-Americans are the best educated, wealthiest blacks on the planet' or, when US complicity in the slave trade is acknowledged, they apportion more blame to African complicity. African American economist Walter E. Williams argues: If the government got the money from the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, that'd be great. But the government has to take the money from citizens, and there are no citizens alive today who were responsible for slavery (Browne, 1972). Stuart E. Eizenstat, another critic of reparations and a former official in the Clinton administration who negotiated settlements on behalf of Holocaust victims, asserts: 'For slavery qua slavery, I think the appropriate remedy is affirmative government action in general, rather than reparations International perspectives The revival of the reparations movement in the US has also been energised by recent developments in the international sphere. Germany's compensation to Holocaust and slave labourers in the second world war, the Vatican's apology 'for its misdeeds of the past' and Swiss banks' 'atonement for appropriating the accounts of Holocaust victims' have established, among other claims, precedents for reparations to the survivors (or their living heirs) of genocide and violations of human rights. In addition, during the 1990s, certain developments in Africa revived and internationalised the movement for reparations, beginning with the First International Conference on Reparations held in Lagos in December 1990, following which the Group of Eminent Persons was set up by the OAU in 1992. Mandated to explore 'the logistics of crusading for reparations for African peoples worldwide', the Group, co-chaired by Chief Mushuda Bula and Mahtar M'Bow, former Director-General of UNESCO, became, however, 'basically incapacitated', according to Mazrui, when Bula withdrew to pursue presidential politics in Nigeria. Despite the Group's inactivity, the OAU's mandate established, in the principle of reparations for all 'African peoples', the legitimacy of a transnational movement for reparations. A second conference on reparations occurred a year later (1993) in Abuja, Nigeria. The conference declaration, the Abuja Proclamation, called for the creation of an internationalcommittee for Africa and the diaspora. In the United Kingdom, the Africa reparations Movement was formed in 1993 in response to the Proclamation. The reparations movement in the US is becoming a prominent part of this expanding network while continuing the struggle begun during the Civil War and by nationalists and civil rights organisations in the 1960s. Both in Africa and the US, the 1990s marked a watershed in revitalised efforts for reparations.It is not a coincidence that the resurgence of the movement in the 1990s occurred precisely when the Cold War/East-West conflict declined in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and 'minority rights', and North/South issues resumed centre stage in world affairs. Similar to the broad array of concerns addressed by the global alliance, reparations is, asserts Muntu, 'a civil rights issue and a human rights issue ... there's a direct relationship--an inextricable link--between civil rights and human rights; and reparations encompasses both of them'. For activist Sam Anderson, reparations is 'a political movement, and in that context, we see the impending war [against Iraq] in the Middle East as something that, as reparationists, we're in opposition to'. And for Yusuf Nuruddin, reparations has a 'proletarian character'; he argues that reparations in the US 'is really a working-class agenda and ... the Left in general--white or black--should support reparations ( Sebok, 2000). In agreement with Nuruddin, the BRC proclaims reparations working-class orientation as a fundamental principle of its organising strategy. Through efforts to broaden its agenda and constituencies as well as to mobilise support for reparations, TransAfrica Forum, too, is 'partnering with youth and students, labor organizations, academics, community activists, and individuals whose interests converge with TransAfrica's'. In conlusion I would like to say that by establishing a direct relationship between race and the class character of reparations in the US (and internationally), several critical issues are addressed but not resolved. First, it gives greater specificity to the group on whose behalf reparations are championed. Second, in this, reparations are distinguished as a site for black working-class agency. Third, this approach invites progressive groups and organisations to support the reparations movement on the basis of class rather than racial solidarity, avoiding, in theory, the historical problems associated with identity politics. Bibliography: 1. Angela Doland, France Nears Agreement on Holocaust Reparations, JERUSALEM POST, Jan. 10, 2001, at 6. 2. Browne, Robert. The Economic Basis for Reparations to Black America. Economy of Black Reparations 67, 72-73 (1972). 3. Imari A., Reparations Now! A Suggestion Toward the Framework of a Reparations Demand and a Set of Legal Underpinnings, 5 N.Y.L. SCH. J. HUM. RTS. 369, 394 (1988). 4. Levitt, Jeremy. Black African Reparations Making a Claim for Enslavement and Systematic De Jure Segregation and Racial Discrimination Under American and International Law, 25 S.U.L. Rev. 1, 27 (1997) 5. Matsuda, Mari J.. Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations, 22 HARV. C.R.-C.L.L. REV. 323, 380 n.31 (1987). 6. Sebok, Anthony. A New Dream Team Intends to Seek Reparations for Slavery (Nov. 20, 2000), at http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/sebok/20001120.html. Read More