Member-only story
Reparations and the Black Reformation
It may be too late for reparations, but it’s about time for a reformation
A debate over reparations for the African-American descendants of slaves has gained momentum over the last two years. Arguments for reparations focus on how 250 years of slavery shaped the first generations of African-Americans, as well as the continuing impact of its legacy on today’s generation. It is a call for some form of direct payment by the government in recognition of the long-term and systematic denial of equal economic, social, and political opportunities to African-Americans. There have been some serious looks at plans for reparations and they tend to conclude with a focus on the moral imperative to do something overriding the practical difficulties of implementation.
Arguments against reparations take a variety of forms but rest on the basic belief that slavery was so long ago that it is impossible to make reparations now. A dominant perspective is that it would punish white Americans who had nothing to do with slavery and pay African-Americans whose ancestors might not have been slaves. Any attempt to compensate African-Americans for slavery would be racially divisive, financially impossible, and a generally unwanted opening of old wounds. While the primary difficulty for the pro-reparations arguments are implementation, the anti-reparations arguments continue to face…
