Ta-Nehisi Coates made the argument back in 2014 that the United States owes reparations to the descendants of American slaves for slavery and for denial of basic rights continuing into the second half of the 20th century.
Since reparations has become an issue in the 2020 Presidential campaign, it’s time to take another look at his argument
Coates pointed out that even after slavery was theoretically ended, the Jim Crow system subjected black people in the South to a system in which their property, their freedom and their lives could be taken from them at any time.
When black people moved to the North, they were still refused jobs and credit based on their race.
This meant that, unlike all other ethnic groups in American history, they were unable to build up through wealth generation by generation.
Coates said reparations is not a claim against individual white people for what their ancestors may or may not have done. The claim for reparations is against the government of the United States for what the nation has done.
When Union Carbide was sued and forced to pay damages to victims of the Bhopal, India, chemical plant disaster in 1984, the executives, employees and stockholders at the time of payout in 1999 were not all the same individuals as when the disaster occurred. Claims are still being made, including claims against Dow Chemical, which became a part-owner of the plant in 2001.
The idea is that a corporation is a continuing enterprise, separate from the individuals who own and run it. The present-day executives and stockholders benefit from the profits earned by those who came before. They also inherit the claims and liabilities incurred by those who came before.
When nations pay reparations, it is based on the same idea. A nation is a continuing entity. All Americans, whether they were naturalized last week or trace American ancestors back to 1776 and before, are heirs of what their nation has done in the past, both good and bad.
Reparations will not get rid of racist thinking, racial prejudice or racial discrimination. That is not the purpose. The purpose is compensation for a wrong.
Do people in the present still suffer from the effects of slavery? Maybe they wouldn’t if African-American slaves had been given full citizenship rights after the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted. But they weren’t.
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