Will the House of Representatives’ Apology for Slavery Open Door for Reparations?
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Will the House of Representatives’ Apology for Slavery Open the Door for Potential Reparations?
By: Sherrel Wheeler Stewart,
BlackAmericaWeb. com
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday’s apology for slavery and Jim Crow segregation from the U.S. House of Representatives is a necessary step toward healing some of America’s racial ills and could open the door for serious dialogue on reparations, some observers say. “When you admit to guilt, the next thing people say is, ‘what are you going to do to make it right?’” Syracuse University professor Boyce Watkins told BlackAmericaWeb. com. “If you admit something was stolen, you have to give something back. It opens the door for additional conversation about reparations. " “The U.S. House deserves credit for taking this step, but the proof is in the potato salad,” he said. “If you don’t follow the apology with action, talk is cheap. Talk is less expensive than reparations.”
The move toward slavery apologies in several instances in recent months have been accompanied by initiatives to benefit blacks whose families were harmed by slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws. JP Morgan’s top officers in 2005 -- William B. Harrison Jr. and Jamie Dimon -- wrote a letter apologizing to the descendents of slaves. The company pledged to set up a $5 million scholarship fund for blacks. In 2007, Brown University pledged to raise $10 million for local public school and also give free tuition to black graduate students after a report showed that slave labor was used in the university’s early years.
Watkins says it is programs and initiatives that help build institutions and wealth in the black community that bring the most benefit. “I am not a fan of everybody getting a check. That doesn’t make much sense. I would favor engaging in specific policies that would lead to the restructuring of communities that have been devastated by segregation. Also, more focus on programs such as Head Start and more efforts to make inner city schools just as good as the schools in the suburbs,” Watkins said. Sen. Barack Obama, speaking at the UNITY convention Sunday, said he has little interest in an official government apology for slavery or reparations for descendants of slaves. The government's focus, he said, should be on providing jobs, education and health for people still struggling today.
James Taylor, a University of San Francisco political science professor who has worked with several government bodies to create slavery disclosure ordinances, said the most effective forms of reparations will come through local governments and businesses. “Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, South Carolina and others all have apologized for slavery within the last year. The Senate apologized for lynching last year. But that’s all much ado about nothing unless there are concrete policy outcomes attached to these otherwise symbolic gestures that are way too late,” Taylor told BlackAmericaWeb. com. “It’s about 230 years too late.”
The impact of slavery lingered into Reconstruction and on into the 20th century, Taylor said. “Black Americans were deeply harmed not only by 400 years of slavery, but also there are black people who are 60, 70, and 85 whose development and potential were retarded by decades of legal segregation,” Taylor said. He favors slavery disclosure ordinances that require companies doing business with a government to disclose their past ties to slavery, followed by plans to impact the harm done by the institution. Chicago passed such a law in 2002. The states of Iowa and California have drafted similar ordinances, so have Richmond, California and Oakland, California, Taylor said. “I don’t think the strategy for reparations will be a national level. The Southern states would block it. They blocked (Bill) Clinton’s attempt to apologize for slavery after John Hope Franklin’s National Dialogue on Race in the 1990s," said Taylor.
There is, Taylor says, precedent for various forms of reparations in America. “We know about the reparations granted in 1989 to the Japanese by former President Bush,” he said. “In California, many viewed the Indian gaming ballot initiatives as a soft way of conceding reparations to modern day Native Americans.” Tuesday’s apology was approved on a voice vote in a resolution sponsored U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Jewish man representing a majority black Memphis District. The 42 members of the Congressional Black Caucus were co-sponsors of the resolution. “We will now see more dialogue, and there will be more pressure on politicians to bring change,” Watkins said. "We will get a chance to move closer to Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream -- making things right and having racial harmony in this country."
Articles on our site
The case for Reparations
http://horte.over-blog.fr/article-16593507.html
Further reading
Why reparations
http://socialjustice.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/index.php/Why_Reparations%3F