“IN ORDER TO SOLVE A PROBLEM, you’ve got to admit you’ve got a problem,” says [activist-attorney Adjoa A.] Aiyetoro, who for the past 14 years as cofounder and legal consultant for the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) has been on a grass-roots campaign to make America do just that. “We need you to embrace our strategy.”
Well ... no. I cannot possibly embrace that strategy. I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not. This particular strategy strikes me as one of the most wrongheaded things to emerge from American politics in quite some time, which is saying something.
In California, a new law requires all insurers doing business in the state to disclose whether they sold any slave- owner policies prior to emancipation; this followed a probe triggering an embarrassing public admission by Aetna last year that it had insured slaves like property.
And what good will this do? Will the state refuse to work with insurers which have been relatively good corporate citizens since the Civil War over what they did 150-200 years ago? Will they demand that the insurers offer coverage in areas and to people they have previously refused? If they certify that they have covered slaves as property, what happens next? (And it's a nonsense law in any case; with relatively few exceptions, most insurance companies didn't even exist that long ago. It's just another odious paperwork requirement.)
I dare say that most federal courts will dismiss reparations cases as moot when they arrive on their doorsteps; I'm mildly surprised that the government allowed the lawsuits to be filed. (It always amuses me that you need the government's permission to sue the government ... but I digress.)
The other model is the Japanese-American reparations payment for the World War II internment camps and loss of confiscated property. The problem with using the Japanese-American reparations bill as a model is the fact that many of the people who had been directly wronged were still alive; they directly experienced the wrong for which they were being recompensed. In addition, there was a direct property component; they lost lands, houses, goods, all sorts of things on which monetary value actually can be placed. I don't deny that most blacks have been wronged by racism resulting from slavery -- in fact, I don't deny that most minorities have experienced one sort of racism or another in their lives; that would be foolish. What disturbs me is the concept that somehow, you can set a global value on it: "Your great-great-great grandparents were slaves. Therefore, your family history is worth $80,000. Would you like that in education vouchers?"
Unlike Shelby Steele, I know for a fact that my mother's great-grandparents were born into slavery. They were alive during my mother's lifetime, and talked to her about it. (Very briefly, and as little as they could manage.) I don't necessarily agree with him on anything else (which is good for my sanity, thanks), but I do agree with him that reparations are an extraordinarily bad idea. I don't know if I agree that reparations are "trading honour for dollars". I do think that it's not really possible to compensate for slavery at this late date. And I do think that there's a great chance that society will then say, "We've paid you, now shut up. We don't care if things are happening to you only because of the color of your skin. We've paid you and you should just deal with it." (Which, you know, is what most of us do anyway; we just deal with it. I don't see how reparations could possibly change that aspect of society.)
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!