I could have called this blog Reparations but I didn’t, fearing that even enlightened readers might click delete. Few subjects are more touchy in our country than talking about what might be owed to descendants of the formerly enslaved. Even liberals quake at the enormity and complexity of the issue. The usual reasons that shut down any discussion of reparations go something like this. 

 

You mean you’re going to ask Americans whose ancestors never were enslavers to part with their hard-earned money  to give every descendant of a slave a handout?

 

You are going to open up a Pandora’s box and further divide the nation racially. 

 

The country abolished slavery over 150 years ago and now you want to dig up the past? 

 

 Aren’t we paying reparations already, what with the billions of dollars for federal and state programs that are supposed to lift up poor people, most of  whom are Black?  

 

I’m sure you can think of other reasons to avoid this issue. I doubt the consideration of reparations will become a major topic in our country during my own rapidly dwindling lifetime. But I think it should be. 

 

Blacks in America today earn on average 60 percent of what Whites earn. That alone is bad enough. But Black wealth per capita is only 15 percent of White wealth per capita according to the Brookings Institute. In 2022 Black wealth per household averaged $44,890 while White wealth per household averaged $285,000. This wealth gap is still growing and it didn’t happen by accident. 

 

Intentional government policies around housing account for a large portion of the wealth gap. Post World War II housing programs to assist returning soldiers were segregated by race. Local officials who administered those programs did so in a racially discriminatory way. White projects tended to be suburban while Black projects tended to be urban. When industry left the inner cities for more rural locations, Blacks living in urban housing were left with less opportunity for employment and the housing stock deteriorated as a result. I recently listened to a lecture by Professor Richard Rothstein on YouTube. It was entitled The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. If you have any nagging doubt that segregation was a government policy well into the mid 20th century, listen to Professor Rothstein’s lecture. Intentional policies by our government, mainly in the area of housing, are responsible to a great degree for the enormous wealth gap between Whites and Blacks.

 

It is a myth that the playing field for Black wealth accumulation was leveled in 1863. It wasn’t even leveled in 1963 or 2023. Not acknowledging the reasons why is almost amoral. The impediments to Black wealth accumulation post-emancipation are reason enough to thoughtfully discuss strategies for reparations. 

 

There’s another, equally important reason, to talk about reparations: It would force a process of re-education, especially in the South. I well remember going through a period of 2-3 years when I read all sorts of books about the Holocaust and the ancient roots of anti-semitism. When I finished, I felt that every student in the country should be required to read at least one book on the subject. It’s only by understanding the past that one can deal with the present fairly and rationally. Those who think anti-semitism ended when Nazis were defeated and Israel was established ignore history. They are ill-equipped to recognize anti-semitism where it exists today. Likewise, those who think descendants of the formerly enslaved got a fair shake after emancipation or after Jim Crow or, even after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 simply don’t know history. They can’t constructively discuss racial justice in this country.

 

Any discussion of reparations demands, as a prerequisite, re-educating ourselves about history. I recently experienced my own re-education and in some ways it was jarring. My blog of May 31, 2023 discussed it. Here’s the link. 

 

https://thequixoticdeacon.com/uncategorized/revisiting-my-southern-education/

 

There’s yet a third reason for advocating for a national discussion of reparations.  We would learn that reparations programs have worked before. According to the US State Department, Germany paid Israel $86.8 billion between 1945 and 2018. And today, Germany pays 1.44 billion Euros annually in pension and care costs for victims of Nazi persecution. After World War II, Germany negotiated with international Jewish organizations and later with Israel to reach an agreement on reparations. Certainly it didn’t erase the horror of the Holocaust but it did force a discussion of what actually happened and who was responsible. 

 

Closer to home, Evanston, Illinois launched its own reparations project. The payments, at first, were restricted to Black homeowners and were funded by a tax on cannabis sales and a real estate transfer tax. Black homeowners received payments of $25,000 that they could use for home improvements or mortgage reduction. The program is an outgrowth of the city’s Reparations Commission that studied how to implement reparations before recommending specific actions to the city. If you have 8 minutes, you can get a flavor for what the program entails and how it has been received by clicking on the link below. 

 

  https://www.pbs.org/video/reparations-1687466985/

 

Would  discussing injustices visited on Blacks since the founding of our country change the past? Of course not. But could it bring about some degree of reconciliation? I think so. And if even a modicum of concrete actions to repair the damage was the result, would that be a bad thing?

 

A bill in the House of Representatives (HR 40) was passed out of the Judiciary Committee in 2021 but never made it to the House floor. The innocuous measure would only have established a commission to study slavery, its legacy, proposals for reparations, and issue recommendations. It didn’t ask for a dime for cash reparations. Many major national organizations supported the bill, including the Episcopal Church, I’m proud to report. Realistically it stands little chance of coming up again as long as MAGAs control the House.

 

Already, though, one state has begun to address the issue. California, of course. There, a commission to study reparations has done its work and recommended actions to the legislature. Passing laws to actualize the recommendations will be difficult, but not impossible. The recommendations bear little resemblance to the caricatures bandied about by those who reject even considering the subject. California’s commission didn’t propose writing checks to poor people, an anathema that in MAGA-speak is called a handout. Rather, the proposals use the fields of education, civil rights laws, criminal justice reform, health, and business to target descendants of the enslaved for benefits. (See the addendum for details.) 

 

I think many White people recoil at the word reparations because a) the issue is huge and complex, and b) the notion that it amounts to a handout. I understand the first reaction — How in the hell will this work? But I feel the second reaction is rooted in ignorance of history and racial stereotyping. 

 

After the Civil War ended President Lincoln initiated a reparations plan —  20 acres and a mule. It was a small gesture of atonement for our national sin and, had it lasted, would have helped create wealth for the recently emancipated. But Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson reneged on the pledge under pressure from his Southern supporters. That promise of 20 acres and a mule was not a handout. It was tiny recompense for what was stolen from the enslaved in the form of 250 years of free labor. 

 

The definition of handout is something given free to a needy person or organization. Why is this word perceived so negatively? Two presidents —  Reagan and Clinton — contributed in different ways to the notion that people on welfare were milking the system to avoid work. That many of them were Black fed into our American model of racial prejudice. Reagan used a notorious welfare fraudster in Chicago to hint at the idea that people were getting rich on welfare. Clinton vowed to end welfare as we know it. His welfare reforms put time limits on payments and established work requirements. His aim was to prevent what he called welfare dependency. So the country came to see welfare payments as something bad, something unearned, something unAmerican. People came to think that being on welfare was simply a choice made by people too lazy to work. That the majority of those on welfare lived in miserable poverty and would do anything to escape it seems not to have registered with those who’d never experienced poverty. 

 

So reparations, when viewed cynically and erroneously as handouts, are frowned upon by most White americans. Our self-image of a nation pulled up by its own bootstraps — our national myth — won’t allow a program of handouts or even a discussion of them. That reparations are not handouts but rather an attempt to repair past damage done to certain groups just doesn’t seem to register. Will it ever?

 

Addendum from California Legislative Black Caucus:

 

CLBC 2024 REPARATIONS LEGISLATIVE PACKAGE

Education

• AB 1929 (McKinnor) – Expand access to career technical education by creating a competitive grant program to increase enrollment of descendants in STEM-related CTE programs at the high school and college levels. *SPOT BILL*
• AB 3131 (McCarty) – Career Education Financial Aid for redlined communities. *Not Introduced*

Civil Rights

• ACA 7 (Jackson) – Amends the California Constitution to allow the State to fund programs for the purpose of increasing the life expectancy of, improving educational outcomes for, or lifting out of poverty specific groups.
• ACR 135 (Weber) – Formally recognizes and accepts responsibility for all of the harms and atrocities committed by representatives of the state who promoted, facilitated, enforced and permitted the institution of chattel slavery.
• AB 1815 (Weber) – Prohibit discrimination based on natural and protective hairstyles in all competitive sports by extending the CROWN Act to explicitly include competitive sports within California.
• SB 1050 (Bradford) – California American Freedmen Affairs Agency: racially motivated eminent domain. Property takings: Restore property taken during race-based uses of eminent domain to its original owners or provide another effective remedy where appropriate, such as restitution or compensation.
• AB 3089 (Jones-Sawyer) – Issues a formal apology for human rights violations and crimes against humanity on African slaves and their descendants.

Criminal Justice Reform

• ACA 8 (Wilson) – Amend the California Constitution to prohibit involuntary servitude for incarcerated persons.
• AB 1986 (Bryan) – Eliminate the CDCR practice of banning books without oversight and review.
• AB 2064 (Jones-Sawyer) – Fund community-driven solutions to decrease community violence at the family, school and neighborhood levels in African-American communities by establishing a state-funded grant program.
• AB 280 (Holden) – Mandela Act: Restricts solitary confinement within CDCR detention facilities.

Health

• AB 1975 (Bonta) – Make medically supportive food and nutrition interventions, when deemed medically necessary by healthcare providers, a permanent part of Medi-Cal benefits in California.
• SB 1089 (Smallwood-Cuevas) – Address food injustice by requiring advance notification to community stakeholders prior to the closure of a grocery store in underserved or at-risk communities. *SPOT BILL*

Business

• AB 2862 (Gipson) – Eliminate barriers to licensure for people with criminal records. Expansion of AB 2138 to prioritize African American applicants seeking occupational licenses, especially those who are descendants.

• Top