It has been more than a century since General William Tecumseh Sherman ordered that all of the lands confiscated in the Civil War be divided into 40-acre plots and distributed to thousands of former slaves. However, after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated President Andrew Johnson rescinded this order and took back all of the land that had been distributed. Since then, the idea of African Americans being compensated for two and a half centuries of slavery has hovered in the background, far from reality. But now, the idea of reparations, or the making of amends for a wrong or injury is gaining a lot of steam. However, Americans still remain divided over whether or not the government should be compelled to pay African Americans reparations.
Supporters of the reparations movement have cited several precedents that have been used as examples to support their claim for reparations. One of the claims that is frequently being used to form their case is the fact that the United States government has made reparations payments to Japanese Americans that were placed in internment camps
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during WWI (Balan 1). Another citation that has been often cited is the payments from the European government to survivors of the Holocaust. According to Randall Robinson, author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, the legal argument of reparations to blacks is very compelling. Robinson’s argument states that “when government participates in a crime against humanity and then benefits from it, then the government is under the law obliged to make the victims whole” (Robinson1). Robinson also asserts that “no race, ethnic, or religious group has suffered as much over a long span as blacks have and do still, at the hands of those who benefited from slavery, and the century of legal racism that followed it is a prime example of the government’s hand in racism” (Robinson1). The demand for reparations can not be easily dismissed. The idea of reparations, according to supporters is a basic moral value (Fullinwinder 3). Reparations are also thought to be a principle in the sense that in one form or another, the idea of granting oppressed people reparations is an idea that is present in every mature moral and legal system in the world (Fullinwinder 2). According to Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan), the reparations movement is not game of who did what to whom. However, according to Randall Robinson, the institution of slavery and its results came from a government and therefore, the government should have to pay. Also, according to Robinson, the results of slavery are being felt even today. According to Robinson, blacks die sooner than whites due to the legacy of poverty that they are forced to live in, and that black SAT and IQ scores are lower due to the fact that slaves weren’t able to read or write, and that those negative impacts are carried on today (Robinson). According to Alderman Dorothy Tillman, who is the author of the Chicago City Council Resolution on
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Reparations, these factors and negative impacts have left permanent scars that have been identified as “Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome” (Tillman 4). Based on these factors and other research slavery not only dehumanized Blacks, but it also produced benefits that enriched whites as a class, as well as the government, at the expense of slaves. For example, slaves were used to build public works buildings, such as the state capital, and their masters were paid considerable sums of money, while the slaves were often overworked and mistreated (Robinson). With all of these factors in mind, many people return back to the Old Testament, which states that “you must make good the wrongs you do” (Fullinwinder2).
However, no matter how compelling the arguments may be for African Americans to receive reparations, the arguments will never be convincing enough to produce a payment. This statement is true for several reasons. First of all, although whites as a whole may have benefited from slavery, so did the Africans. The main proprietors of the transatlantic slave trade were Africans, who sold other Africans into slavery for a huge and overwhelming profit (Horowitz 1). Also, in African society, slavery has taken place on many social levels, and the idea of slavery was looked at as a way of life. Although those seekers of reparations stress that reparations have been paid to others for their suffering, what they fail to recognize, is that these reparations have been paid directly to the survivors, and not to relatives of the survivors many generations removed (Fullinwinder 9). Blacks as a whole are not in the same category as Jews who received compensation from the German government, or the Japanese-Americans who received compensation from the United States government. Those groups that did
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receive reparations received them for specific injustices done to them by the government that they, not their ancestors, suffered (Ogletree 5). In the case of slavery, both the victims and the victimizers are long dead (Balan 2). Besides the questionability of who would be paid under these questions, another reason for not paying reparations is the idea that African Americans have already been paid for their suffering. The United States has paid its debt to African Americans for the atrocity of slavery many times over. Since the Civil Rights Acts of 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African Americans have been made (Horowitz 2). These payments have been made in the form of increased welfare benefits to African Americans, as well as the idea of racial preferences in the workplace (affirmative action), all in the name of righting the wrongs that happened so very long ago (Horowitz 3). However, the most compelling reason not to grant these reparations is the idea of most African Americans that “they owe us.” This statement confirms the idea that the object of most of those who seek reparations is that of a free payout to those who never experienced slavery from those who never had anything to do with it (Ogletree 1). Besides the questionability of recipients and who is eligible for payments, there is a more important reason for not granting reparations: it is economically infeasible. For instance, if the United States gave $1,000 to each black person, for their suffering, that would yield a sum of $34,658,190,000 (Balan 2).
No one is denying the fact that slavery was and is the black eye on the humanity of the United States. Moreover, the consensus is that no matter what the decision may be regarding the granting or not granting of reparations will cause problems that may set race relations in the United States back many generations. However, African Americans
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as a whole need to come together and create ideas that will help stop the problems that still persist in many black communities, such as inadequate healthcare, poverty, unfair imprisonment, and poor education; instead of laying the blame upon someone else’s shoulders. The reparations movement, no matter what way it goes, is just a lingering reminder of the indiscretions in the American government’s past that need to be dealt with in order for us all to move on.
















Works Consulted

1. Balan, Gerald. “Sins of the Fathers.” The Primary Source. June 10, 2002. [Last update]. www.primarysource.com
2. Conyers, Robinson, Tillman. “The Case for Reparations: Why? How Much? When?”. Ebony Magazine. Vol. 55 Issue 10. August 2000
3. Fullinwinder, Robert. “The Case for Reparations”. IPPP. 8 Jan 2003. [Last update]. www.puaf.umd.edu
4. Horowitz, David. “Ten reasons why reparations for blacks is a bad idea for blacks and racist too”. Front Page Magazine. 3 January 2003. [Last update]. www.frontpagemagazine.com
5. Ogletree Jr., Charles J. “Does America Owe Us?”. Essence Magazine. Vol. 33. Issue 10. Feb 2003

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