tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/slavery-reparations-70541/articlesSlavery reparations – The Conversation2023-11-28T17:03:44Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2184482023-11-28T17:03:44Z2023-11-28T17:03:44ZLloyds of London archives show how important the City was to transatlantic slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561855/original/file-20231127-23-57fbal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Slave Ship, by William Turner (1840): slavers throw overboard the dead and dying as a typhoon approaches.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Slave-ship.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1783, the City of London was gripped by a court case which symbolised the brutal economics of slavery. Two years previously, the Liverpool <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-shadow-of-slavery-still-hangs-over-global-finance-144826">slave ship Zong</a> had set out from Accra, in present-day Ghana, with 442 men, women and children crammed in its hold. </p>
<p>By November 29 1781, according to the crew, navigational errors sent the ship off course. Fearing low water supplies, captain Luke Collingwood made a cold calculation. Over the course of a few days, he threw 132 enslaved people overboard.</p>
<p>Collingwood was able to jettison what he thought of as his valuable “cargo” because the slave ship investors had an insurance policy. When the ship returned to Britain its syndicate of owners, led by Liverpool slave trader William Gregson, lodged a claim, which was challenged by the insurers. The court case that followed was not a murder trial, but an insurance dispute.</p>
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<p>Insurance products were developed for the traders, to mitigate the dangers posed by sea travel, war, piracy and fire. Insurrection, too, was a threat. As many as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3091760">10% of slaving voyages</a> experienced uprisings by enslaved people. In Lloyds List, a journal of shipping news, an article dated August 28 1750, details how the Anne of Liverpool was “cut off by the Negroes on the Coast of Guiney – The Captain killed on the Spot, and all the Crew wounded”. </p>
<p>In the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/bearing-witness-to-the-history-of-black-lives-in-britain-140776">2020 Black Lives Matter protests</a>, insurance market Lloyds of London apologised for its role in the slave trade and committed to setting up a <a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20210224150241-gh1b4/">research project</a> to uncover what its own archives show about these historic links to slavery. </p>
<p>In November 2023, records documenting Lloyds’ involvement in insuring slave voyages were made public. </p>
<p>The research was undertaken by US scholars Alexandre White and Pyar Seth, who are affiliated with the <a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/06/02/black-beyond-data-jessica-marie-johnson/">Black Beyond Data</a> research centre. White and Seth received no funding from Lloyds and retained full editorial control over the material. They have housed a digital archive of documents and objects from Lloyds’ collection on a new website, <a href="https://underwritingsouls.org/about/">Underwriting Souls</a>. </p>
<p>My work on the <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/">Legacies of British Slavery project</a> traced how the profits of slavery were invested in Britain. Research of this kind raises questions about <a href="https://theconversation.com/slavery-reparations-theres-little-legal-basis-to-make-companies-pay-for-historic-actions-141081">reparations</a> and whether responsibility, today sits with individuals, organisations or the state.</p>
<h2>Repairing the past to repair the future</h2>
<p>White and Seth estimate that in the 1790s, insurance for the slave economy made up <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/6821fdcd6c2747b8a23f0ba42603edd5">41%</a> of the broader marine insurance industry. Until 1824, insurance brokers including Lloyds of London, Royal Exchange Assurance and the London Assurance Company held a monopoly on maritime insurance. Lloyds had a dominant market share of between 75% and 90%.</p>
<p>White and Seth have had relatively few artefacts to work with, to examine how slave-trade insurance functioned. This paucity of material reflects the fact that Lloyds was a marketplace and not a company –- individual brokers and underwriters mostly kept their own records. </p>
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<img alt="An etching depicting people fighting aboard a tall ship." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561862/original/file-20231127-27-boemhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Revolt Aboard Slave Ship, 1787, by Carl B. Wadstrom in An Essay on Colonization, particularly applied to the Western coast of Africa… in Two Parts (London, 1794, 1795).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2060">Carl B. Wadstrom</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>The few surviving documents include the <a href="https://underwritingsouls.org/search-the-risk-books/">risk books</a> – insurance agreement ledgers – of two 18th century underwriters, Horatio Clagett and Solomon D’Aguilar. These shed light on the everyday practices and networks that enabled the trade. Enslaved people were insured as “goods”, which the researchers point to as “evidence of the dehumanising commodification and speculation on the financial value of enslaved lives.” </p>
<p>White and Seth digitised the <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/247667f218eb42bdab3b413fc357756c">Guipúzcoa insurance agreements</a>, named for the slave ship they related to. This enabled them to analyse how an insurance policy worked.</p>
<p>The agreements fix the value of an enslaved person at £45, which works out at £3,454.25 in today’s money. They also feature a clause unique to slaving voyages: underwriters would cover damage to the ship or any devaluation of enslaved people (including death) due to insurrection. </p>
<p>The policy thus both recognises the human agency of enslaved people in potential insurrection and categorises them as chattel.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/media-new/pdfs/angersteinmarine.pdf">John Julius Angerstein</a>, who is known as the “father of Lloyds” and whose art collection formed the <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/people/john-julius-angerstein">basis</a> of the National Gallery, has become a figurehead for institutional connections to slavery. Despite this, concrete evidence of the extent of his connections to the system have proved elusive. </p>
<p>Angerstein was a trustee of a plantation in Grenada and a marine insurance underwriter. It has therefore been assumed that some of his business related to the slave economy. White and Seth’s research places Angerstein in context, providing unequivocal evidence of a network of slave ship captains, West India merchants and slave owners among Lloyds’ subscribers and leading figures. </p>
<p>Nine founding members of Lloyds had ties to slavery. Eleven subscribers received <a href="https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/slavery/the-legacies-of-british-slave-ownership/">slavery compensation payments</a>, awarded by the government following the abolition of slavery in 1834 for the loss of their human “property”.</p>
<p>Among the digitised objects is a <a href="https://underwritingsouls.org/digitized-corpus/portrait-of-joseph-marryat-1757-1824-attributed-to-john-hayes-1786-1866/">portrait</a> of the former Lloyds chairman and slave holder, <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146630485">Joseph Marryat</a> (1757-1824). In <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/810dfff5de884c9d9e8e698e6d452460">presenting this image</a> White and Seth foreground the stories of enslaved people. Before we meet Marryat, we meet his mixed-heritage illegitimate daughter, <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/9216">Ann</a>, whose mother, Fanny, was enslaved by Marryat. Having been freed by her father when he left Grenada, Ann entered a relationship with a planter by whom she had three children. </p>
<p>Ann, herself, became a slave-holder and <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/9216">received slavery compensation</a>. Her story is an example of the complex choices faced by women of colour within a slave society.</p>
<p>Research <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/commercial/">I have contributed to</a> documents how instrumental the City of London’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/15/bank-of-england-owned-599-slaves-in-1770s-new-exhibition-reveals">financial organisations</a> were to the slave economy. The inequalities of what historians refer to as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/hwj/dbac022/6702045">“racial capitalism”</a> today – where racism and capitalism intersect – are rooted in this history. </p>
<p>Slavery reparations can take different forms. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306396818769791#:%7E:text=My%20own%20first%20effort%20to,of%20privilege%20they%2Fwe%20occupied.">Historical repair</a> hinges on the idea that acknowledging history can help to redress past silences. </p>
<p>Lloyds has only just begun this process. Research on its more extensive and lucrative activities, providing insurance for slave-produced commodities, has yet to be done. </p>
<p>The company has drawn some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/08/lloyds-of-london-slavery-review-fails-to-settle-heated-question-of-reparations">criticism</a> for focusing on <a href="https://www.lloyds.com/about-lloyds/culture/lloyds-market/diversity-and-inclusion/inclusive-futures#:%7E:text=In%20November%202023%2C%20Lloyd%27s%20launched,the%20classroom%20to%20the%20boardroom.">internal organisational change</a> and targeted corporate investment. Lloyds has described its initiatives as “shaped in consultation with Black experts and diverse colleagues across our market in order to deliver meaningful, sustainable change towards a more inclusive marketplace and society”.</p>
<p>Inevitably there will be calls to go further. The African Union and Caribbean Community recently agreed to press for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/african-and-caribbean-nations-agree-move-to-seek-reparations-for-slavery">state-to-state reparations</a> from European nations. </p>
<p>Both paths rely on historical evidence. Research of this kind is vital for reparatory justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Donington was on the advisory board for the 'Underwriting Souls' project. She worked on the ESRC-funded 'Legacies of British Slave-ownership' project (2009-2012) and the AHRC/ESRC-funded 'Structure and Significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership, 1763-1833' project (2013-2015).</span></em></p>A new archival study uncovers details about Lloyds of London’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. Whether historical or political, reparatory justice relies on such historical evidence.Katie Donington, Senior Lecturer in Black, Caribbean, and African History, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2124692023-09-01T15:51:39Z2023-09-01T15:51:39ZTory MP’s historic family links to slavery raise questions about Britain’s position on reparations<p>“Reparations have been paid for other wrongs and obviously far more quickly, far more speedily than reparations for what I consider the greatest atrocity and crime in the history of mankind: transatlantic chattel slavery.” So noted the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/uk-cannot-ignore-calls-for-slavery-reparations-says-leading-un-judge-patrick-robinson">eminent Jamaican international jurist Judge Patrick Robinson</a>, when launching the 115-page <a href="https://www.brattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Quantification-of-Reparations-for-Transatlantic-Chattel-Slavery.pdf">Brattle Report</a> in June 2023. </p>
<p>The economic consultancy, The Brattle Group, was asked to draw up a report estimating the scale of reparations that should be paid for the chattel trade between 1510 to 1870, covering 31 countries that engaged in transatlantic slavery. This would include compensation for loss of life and liberty, uncompensated labour, personal injury, mental pain and anguish and gender-based violence. </p>
<p>The Brattle Report estimated that the UK – which was the <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/british-transatlantic-slave-trade-records/">biggest slave trading nation up to 1807</a> and did not abolish slave ownership in the empire <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Slavery-Abolition-Act">until 1834</a> – should pay a reparations bill of £18.5 trillion. To put that into context, the estimated annual GDP for the UK for 2023 is about <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp">£2.5 trillion</a> and the entire worth of the UK – its land, infrastructure and everything in it was estimated by the Office for National Statistics at <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/bulletins/nationalbalancesheet/2021">£10.7 trillion in 2020</a>. </p>
<p>But then centuries of value derived from the trade in human beings produced for Britain an equally unimaginable sum. The British government <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-collection-of-slavery-compensation-1835-43">borrowed £20 million</a> in 1833 to compensate slave owners, which amounted to a massive 40% of the Treasury’s annual income or about 5% of British GDP. According to the Treasury, the loan was only <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/17/government-finished-paying-uks-slavery-debt-2015/">finally paid off in 2015</a>.</p>
<p>The wealth created by the slave trade and the plantations continues to shape British society to this day and, in some cases, remains in the hands of families whose ancestors were involved in buying and selling slaves and running enterprises based on slave labour. One example is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/12/hes-the-mp-with-the-downton-abbey-lifestyle-but-the-shadow-of-slavery-hangs-over-the-gilded-life-of-richard-drax">Drax family of the Charborough Estate</a> in Dorset, which is now owned by Conservative MP, Richard Drax.</p>
<h2>Drax family legacy</h2>
<p>For the past three years I <a href="https://www.city.ac.uk/about/people/academics/paul-lashmar">have been researching</a> – and have just completed – an unauthorised history of the Drax family. The family appears to be unique in having an unbroken history of owning sugar plantations in the Caribbean from their inception until the present day. </p>
<p>Their ancestor James Drax (c.1609-1662) was one of the first settlers in Barbados in 1627 and is credited with inventing the British sugar industry in the 1630s. Around 1640 he developed the integrated sugar plantation. It was a highly efficient industrial process, but required a coordinated workforce working from before sunrise to sunset. </p>
<p>James Drax was the first – or one of the first – planters in the British empire to move to a workforce of enslaved Africans where the children of slaves were held in perpetuity. His descendant – the Conservative MP for South Dorset, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, (who prefers to be known as Richard Drax) heads the family that owns the vast Charborough Estate and the Drax Hall Plantation in Barbados. </p>
<p>Although he is a public figure, Richard Drax and his family are very private, not least about their wealth which is locked into a number of trusts. As head of the family, the MP lives in the <a href="https://www.thedicamillo.com/house/charborough-park/">17th-century grade 1 listed Charborough House</a> with its 1,500 acres of parkland all tucked away behind the three miles of the “Great Wall of Dorset”. </p>
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<img alt="Charborough House in Dorset" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545540/original/file-20230830-17-3otfep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Charborough House in Dorset: the Drax family’s country seat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nirvana/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Writing for The Observer and Sunday Mirror in 2020, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/12/hes-the-mp-with-the-downton-abbey-lifestyle-but-the-shadow-of-slavery-hangs-over-the-gilded-life-of-richard-drax">I and my co-writer revealed</a> that he is the wealthiest landowner in the House of Commons. After detailed research, we were able to estimate that the MP and his family owned at least 15,000 acres of farmland, heathland and woodland in Dorset plus a farming estate and grouse moor in Yorkshire. </p>
<p>We calculated that his 125-plus properties and 23.5 square miles of Dorset land are worth at least £150 million. We also revealed that he had personally inherited the Drax Hall plantation in Barbados, which was valued in 2020 as worth £4.7 million. In April 2023 they cropped sugar there, as they had done since the 1630s.</p>
<p>Richard Drax has resisted engaging with the reparation debate. His “slavery was wrong” comments have not sufficed for the ancestors of people enslaved in Barbados. In 2020 when we raised the question of slavery and his ancestors with him, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/12/wealthy-mp-urged-to-pay-up-for-his-familys-slave-trade-past">he told us</a>: “I am keenly aware of the slave trade in the West Indies, and the role my very distant ancestor played in it is deeply, deeply regrettable, but no one can be held responsible today for what happened many hundreds of years ago. This is a part of the nation’s history, from which we must all learn.”</p>
<p>The distinguished Barbadian historian of slavery, Sir Hilary Beckles (who is also the chair of the <a href="https://caricomreparations.org/">Caribbean Reparations Commission</a> representing 20 countries) <a href="https://caricomreparations.org/caribbean-campaigners-demand-tory-mp-pays-reparations-to-barbados-because-family-plantation-held-slaves-from-1640-to-1836/">told the Sunday Mirror</a>: “It is no answer for Richard Drax to say it has nothing to do with him when he is the owner and the inheritor. They should pay reparations.” </p>
<h2>Mounting pressure for reparations</h2>
<p>In the three years since I first wrote about Richard Drax MP, the call for reparations has gotten much louder. Globally, Drax has come to symbolise those whose families benefited from slavery but rebuff formal apologies and paying reparations.</p>
<p>Pressure has grown on him and in October 2022 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/26/barbados-tory-mp-pay-reparations-family-slave-richard-drax-caribbean-sugar-plantation">he flew to Barbados</a> to meet with the country’s prime minister, Mia Mottley. The Barbados government believes that – as a descendant of a founder plantation owner, a British MP – his wealth and his attitude towards responsibility for reparations symbolises everything that was wrong with the way Britain treated Barbados and the colonies. </p>
<p>In the meeting between Drax and Mia Mottley, he was offered two options, one a package of reparations including all or a substantial part of Drax Hall. If he refused, Mia Mottley said they could take legal action over the issue. Drax himself has declined to comment and his office didn’t return attempts to contact him again this week. Meanwhile, other families such as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/27/british-slave-owners-family-makes-public-apology-in-grenada">Trevelyans</a> and the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-66606975">Gladstones</a> from the <a href="https://www.heirsofslavery.org/">Heirs of Slavery group</a> have come to represent those who recognise where their family wealth came from and feel the need to apologise and make some kind of reparations payment.</p>
<p>The Brattle report is an important waymark in making the case for reparations, as it is described as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/aug/21/dont-listen-to-the-critics-reparations-for-slavery-will-right-historical-wrongs">most comprehensive</a> financial analysis of transatlantic slavery. It estimates that the 31 enslaving countries procured 801.58 million life years of free labour on which they were able to prosper. </p>
<p>The momentum for reparations grows. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/uk-cannot-ignore-calls-for-slavery-reparations-says-leading-un-judge-patrick-robinson">Judge Robinson says</a> that the UK government needs change from its position of refusing to apologise. “I believe that the United Kingdom will not be able to resist this movement towards the payment of reparations: it is required by history and it is required by law.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Lashmar is a member of the Labour Party </span></em></p>Some UK families whose wealth largely derives from the transatlantic slave trade have agreed to pay reparations.Paul Lashmar, Reader in Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1623342021-09-03T12:37:44Z2021-09-03T12:37:44ZSlavery was the ultimate labor distortion – empowering workers today would be a form of reparations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418876/original/file-20210901-16-nd6f8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4308%2C2360&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labor violations disproportionately affect Black Americans.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/labor-groups-and-workers-including-john-beard-with-the-la-news-photo/567385215?adppopup=true">Katie Falkenberg/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The conversation about reparations for slavery entered a new stage earlier in 2021, with the U.S. House Judiciary Committee <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/14/986853285/house-lawmakers-advance-historic-bill-to-form-reparations-commission">voting for the creation of a commission</a> to address the matter.</p>
<p>The bill, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/40">H.R. 40</a>, has been introduced every Congress since 1989 by Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and John Conyers, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/10/27/773919009/john-conyers-jr-who-represented-michigan-for-5-decades-dies-at-90">until his death in 2019</a>. But this year marks the first time that its request to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans has cleared the committee stage. </p>
<p>Calls to redress the lasting impact of slavery and racial discrimination have been amplified recently following further evidence of the impact of systemic racism – both through the <a href="https://covidtracking.com/race">disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the Black community</a> and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others at the hands of U.S. police.</p>
<h2>Disruption of labor relations</h2>
<p>To many, the question going forward is not so much whether or not reparations are in order, but what kinds of reparations might be appropriate.</p>
<p>Most of the conversation to date has focused on reparations in terms of payouts of some form. Prominent author <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">Ta-Nehisi Coates</a>, in a powerful argument for reparations, said payments must be made by white America to Black America – much as <a href="https://qz.com/1915185/how-germany-paid-reparations-for-the-holocaust/">Germany started paying Israel in 1952</a> to compensate for the persecution of Jews by the Nazis.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/people/bio/joerg-rieger">scholar who has written on economic justice and the labor movement</a>, I agree that reparations must have economic substance, because the impact of racism is inherently linked with power and money. But my <a href="https://chalicepress.com/products/unified-we-are-a-force">research suggests another model</a> for reparations: If one of the most significant aspects of slavery – even if not the only one – was a massive disruption of labor relations, then a crucial part in the reparations discussion could involve reshaping the labor relationship between employers and employees today. </p>
<p>I believe such a reshaping of the labor relationship would substantially benefit the descendants of enslaved people in the United States. Labor, as my research has argued, has implications for all aspects of life and labor reform would, I believe, address many of the problems of structural racism as well. In addition, reshaping the labor relationship would also have positive effects for all working people, <a href="https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/country-studies/united-states/">including those who still experience enslavement today</a>. </p>
<h2>Growing racial wage gap</h2>
<p>Labor relations can be considered “distorted” when one party profits disproportionally at the expense of another. In other words, it is a departure from a “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26159/26159-h/26159-h.htm">fair day’s pay for a fair days’s work</a>” – a concept that forms a bedrock demand of the labor movement, alongside good working conditions.</p>
<p>This is not just a matter of money but also of power. Under the conditions of slavery, the distortion of labor relations was nearly complete. Slave owners pocketed the profits and claimed absolute power, while slaves had to obey and risk life and limb for no compensation.</p>
<p>Black Americans continue to be disadvantaged in the labor market today. As CEO compensation <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-surged-14-in-2019-to-21-3-million-ceos-now-earn-320-times-as-much-as-a-typical-worker/">soars</a>, the number of Black CEOs remains remarkably low – there were just <a href="https://fortune.com/longform/fortune-500-black-ceos-business-history/">four Black CEOs at Fortune 500 companies</a> as of March 2021. In general, the wage gap between Black and white employees <a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/black-white-wage-gaps-are-worse-today-than-in-2000/">has grown in recent years</a>. Fueling these disparities, as well as building on them, is the structural racism that reparations could be designed to address.</p>
<p>Unionization can be a tool to rebalance labor relations and can <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4300995/">diminish this racial gap</a>, <a href="https://cepr.net/report/black-workers-unions-and-inequality/#five">studies have shown</a>. But union membership in general – and among Black workers in particular – has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/01/22/workers-are-fired-up-union-participation-is-still-decline-new-statistics-show/">declined in recent decades</a>. And a weaker labor movement is associated, studies show, with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/663673">greater racial wage disparity</a>. </p>
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<img alt="Black members of the Domestic Workers Union Members march down a road in protest." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Unionization can help reduce the racial wage gap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/domestic-workers-union-members-picketing-news-photo/534275792?adppopup=true">Joseph Schwartz/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Another tool to rebalance labor relations is worker-owned cooperatives, which have a <a href="http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/newsroom/7396.php">long tradition in African American communities</a> as <a href="https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/jessica-gordon-nembhard">economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard</a> has noted. From early on, she points out, “African Americans realized that without economic justice – without economic equality, independence and stability … social and political rights were hollow, or actually not achievable.” Gordon Nembhard’s work also shows that such cooperatives were often fought and ultimately destroyed because they were so successful in empowering African American communities. </p>
<h2>A ‘more permanent’ solution</h2>
<p>Some in the labor movement are beginning to link reparations with union rights. Labor <a href="https://dsgchicago.com/">lawyer Thomas Geoghegan</a> has suggested that the proposed Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill before Congress that would strengthen workers’ rights and weaken anti-union right-to-work laws, should be viewed as “a practical form of Black reparations.” He argued in <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/160530/labor-law-reform-racial-equality-protecting-right-organize-act">an article for The New Republic</a> that wealth redistribution through union membership is “more permanent and lasting than a check written out as Black reparations, however much deserved, and far more likely to get a return over time.”</p>
<p>While there is considerable disagreement about the profits employers should be able to make from the labor of their employees, there is little disagreement about the wrongness of practices like outright <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/">wage theft</a> – which today takes the form of employers not paying part or all promised wages or paying less than mandated minimum wage. Even those who rarely worry about employers making too much profit would for the most part likely agree that wage theft is wrong. Agreement on this matter takes us back to slavery, which might be considered the ultimate wage theft.</p>
<p>Addressing the ongoing legacy of slavery and systemic racism requires not only economic solutions but also improving labor relations and protecting workers against wage discrimination, disempowerment at work, and violations such as wage theft that <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/">disproportionately affect workers of color</a>.</p>
<p>Reparations that fail to pay attention to improving labor relations may not achieve economic equality. The reparations paid to Israel by Germany, for instance, have not helped to achieve economic equality – the Israeli economy is still, alongside the U.S.’s, among the <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2015/05/21/news/economy/worst-inequality-countries-oecd/">most unequal in the developed world</a>, with the richest 10% of each country’s population earning more than 15 times that of the poorest.</p>
<p>Simple monetary payouts are not, I believe, sufficient to solve the problem of racial inequality. Wage theft can again serve as the example here. While repaying stolen wages – as <a href="https://apnews.com/article/76a9403fe9dc4c2daf8a52c38e16284c">New York state did in 2018</a> by returning $35 million to workers – is commendable, repaying stolen wages does not in itself change the skewed relationships between employer and employee that enable wage theft in the first place. Greater empowerment of working people is needed to do that.</p>
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<h2>Benefiting others as well</h2>
<p>So while redistributing money can be part of the solution, it may not go far enough.</p>
<p>Tying reparations to the improvement of labor relations – which can happen through the empowerment of working people or the promotion of <a href="http://www.usworker.coop/home">worker-owned cooperatives</a> – would not only help those most affected by wealth and employment gaps, Black Americans, it would also <a href="http://www.co-opsnow.org">benefit others who have traditionally been discriminated against</a> in employment, such as women, immigrants and many other working people. </p>
<p>Improving labor relations would address systemic racial discrimination where it is often most destructive and painful: at work, where people spend the bulk of their waking hours, and where the economic well-being of families and by extension entire communities can be decided.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.ats.edu/">Vanderbilt Divinity School is a member of the Association of Theological Schools.</a></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joerg Rieger is supporting the work of worker cooperatives, including the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development, which is hyperlinked at the end of the piece. He is not on any of their boards and he is not receiving any remuneration.</span></em></p>Rebalancing labor relations so that workers are empowered would be an effective way to address racial wealth disparities and atone for the legacy of slavery, a scholar argues.Joerg Rieger, Professor of Theology, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1644782021-08-11T14:57:57Z2021-08-11T14:57:57ZHolocaust victims got reparations, so why not descendants of trans-Atlantic slavery?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415243/original/file-20210809-27-6iqi74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=760%2C0%2C4415%2C3453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Forty statues represent the children of a former plantation in the 'Children of Whitney' installation in Edgard, Louisiana. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jewish survivors of the Holocaust have received reparations, but African descendants of victims of the slave trade have not — even though it’s a moral responsibility of the nations who benefited from slavery to provide them.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-west-is-morally-bound-to-offer-reparations-for-slavery-153544">Why the West is morally bound to offer reparations for slavery</a>
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<p>Some have pointed to <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/04/05/germany-reparations-holocaust-racism-us-240294">Holocaust reparations</a> as inspiration for those <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-07-19/reparations-germany-hr40-holocaust-slavery">advocating the same for slavery descendants</a>.</p>
<p>But in my book <a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Reparations_to_Africa/_FpB0PkbDTYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover"><em>Reparations to Africa</em></a>, I explain that one reason for the difference lies in the considerable obstacles confronting those of us calling for slave trade reparations. </p>
<p>My research for the book found it’s easier to obtain reparations when the event occurred within living historical memory. It’s also easier when there are only a few identifiable perpetrators. And it is still easier when there is a limited number of victims, and the event occurred within a short period of time. </p>
<p>What’s more, the monetary amount claimed must not seem unreasonable to the people expected to pay the reparations. Finally, the support of a powerful nation is helpful to those seeking reparations.</p>
<h2>Within living memory</h2>
<p>Much of this helped those seeking Holocaust reparations. Some survivors of the Holocaust are still alive, so the event is within living historical memory. The main perpetrator, Germany’s Nazi regime, is known. Approximately six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, which took place over a short period of time, between about 1933 and 1945. And after the Second World War, <a href="https://www.claimscon.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2020.9.23-The-U.S.-Role-in-Holocaust-Compensation-.pdf">the United States pressured Germany to pay reparations</a>.</p>
<p>By 2020, the German government <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/news/worldwide/106077/">had paid about $70 billion</a> to people who suffered from the Holocaust. </p>
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<img alt="The words 'Nazi Holocaust' on a concrete section of a former Nazi concentration camp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415268/original/file-20210809-17-cic5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415268/original/file-20210809-17-cic5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415268/original/file-20210809-17-cic5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415268/original/file-20210809-17-cic5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415268/original/file-20210809-17-cic5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415268/original/file-20210809-17-cic5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415268/original/file-20210809-17-cic5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The words ‘Nazi Holocaust’ are seen at the site of a former Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald near Weimar, Germany. In 1945, the U.S. Army liberated the camp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)</span></span>
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<p>By contrast, the claim for reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade is much more difficult. Approximately 12.5 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over more than 300 years, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/">of whom 10.7 million survived and actually landed in the Americas</a>. </p>
<p>If you add people killed within Africa due to the slave trade, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/newsevents/pages/slaveryinternationalday.aspx">that figure could reach 30 million</a>. And the number of descendants may well be in the hundreds of millions.</p>
<p>What’s more, none of the direct victims of the slave trade are still alive. Particularly for the descendants of the perpetrators of slavery, the historical memory is much more distant than the Holocaust.</p>
<h2>Slave trade’s end</h2>
<p>The legal and illegal trans-Atlantic slave trades lasted <a href="http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0002">from the 15th to mid-19th centuries, ending about 150 years ago</a>. The length of time since the trade ended makes it harder to persuade governments whose predecessors supported the trade that they should pay reparations to victims’ descendants. </p>
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<img alt="Waves are seen crashing at the base of the Cape Coast Castle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415262/original/file-20210809-13-e2wvr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415262/original/file-20210809-13-e2wvr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415262/original/file-20210809-13-e2wvr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415262/original/file-20210809-13-e2wvr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415262/original/file-20210809-13-e2wvr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415262/original/file-20210809-13-e2wvr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415262/original/file-20210809-13-e2wvr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Cape Coast Castle in Ghana in October 2018. It was a slave castle used in the trans-Atlantic slave trade for more than 100 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)</span></span>
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<p>There were many perpetrators of the slave trade. They included private slave traders and the governments of all the countries that both supported the slave trade and legally backed slavery. <a href="http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/african_participation_and_resi">Some Africans were also implicated as sellers of slaves, attracted by payments offered by Western buyers.</a> This makes it more difficult than it was for Jewish Holocaust victims to identify who should pay them reparations. </p>
<p>Finally, some activists claim as much as US$100 trillion dollars <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002193470003000304">in reparations for the slave trade</a>. This is a difficult figure for any government to accept. The United States GDP, for example, <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=US">is currently at about US$21 trillion</a>. </p>
<p>There’s also no world power agitating for reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.</p>
<h2>Centuries of atrocities</h2>
<p>An accurate comparison of crimes against Jews to crimes against Africans would have to cover eight centuries of European history. For example, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item103483.html">Jews were expelled from Britain in 1290 and could not return until 1656</a>.
<a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms">The mass murders of Jews, known as pogroms, were common</a> in Russia and eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. <a href="https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/this-week-in-jewish-history--dozens-of-polish-jews-massacred-in-kielce-pogrom">The last pogrom took place in Kielce, Poland</a> in 1946, after the Second World War, perpetrated by native Poles.</p>
<p>There’s little doubt the Jewish community would also experience great difficulty seeking reparations for all these atrocities over so many centuries by so many people; the Holocaust allowed them a specific focus.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there have been some successful movements for reparations to Africans for crimes committed during the colonial period. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/German-Herero-conflict-of-1904-1907">The Herero are an ethnic group living in southwest Africa</a>, now Namibia, which was once colonized by Germany. From 1904 to 1905, about 60,000 Herero were massacred by Germans who wanted their land. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/germany-officially-calls-colonial-era-killings-namibia-genocide-2021-05-28/">The German government apologized for this genocide in 2021 and agreed to fund $1.3 billion worth of reconstruction and development projects in Namibia</a>. </p>
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<img alt="Skulls are seen in a glass case with people in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415436/original/file-20210810-25-18mt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415436/original/file-20210810-25-18mt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415436/original/file-20210810-25-18mt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415436/original/file-20210810-25-18mt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415436/original/file-20210810-25-18mt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415436/original/file-20210810-25-18mt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415436/original/file-20210810-25-18mt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Skulls of Herero people are displayed during an event attended by representatives of the tribe from Namibia in Berlin after Germany reached an agreement with Namibia to pay reparations for genocide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Michael Sohn)</span></span>
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<p>The social movement for reparations in this instance succeeded because there were comparatively few Herero victims. When the campaign started, the massacre was still within living memory. There was one known perpetrator, the German government. And the massacre took place within a short period of time. </p>
<p>The Herero situation was also similar to the Holocaust. Having accepted responsibility for the Holocaust, Germany could hardly deny it for the Herero massacre. </p>
<p>The descendants of the African slave trade absolutely deserve reparations. </p>
<p>But there are major obstacles facing the social movement for reparations for the slave trade. Those reparations are a moral imperative, but politically, successfully obtaining them will be extremely difficult.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164478/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities research Council of Canada for research on her book, Reparations to Africa, and related scholarly articles, on which some of this article is based. </span></em></p>There are major obstacles in confronting the social movement for reparations for the slave trade. Such reparations are a moral imperative, but politically, successfully obtaining them will be hard.Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1519722021-03-04T13:14:43Z2021-03-04T13:14:43ZRevisiting reparations: Is it time for the US to pay its debt for the legacy of slavery?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387595/original/file-20210303-13-1dqs0oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C5100%2C3387&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is spearheading fresh efforts in Congress to address reparations.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/subcommittee-chair-sheila-jackson-lee-arrives-during-a-news-photo/1231362365?adppopup=true">Al Drago/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some 156 years after the end of the Civil War and the official abolition of slavery through the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiii">13th Amendment</a>, the idea of reparations is gaining currency in Washington.</p>
<p>On March 1, Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, suggested the White House could “<a href="https://news.yahoo.com/biden-top-aide-says-white-223154235.html">start acting now</a>” <a href="https://www.axios.com/biden-cedric-richmond-reparations-f4984eab-18fd-4f4b-ad14-4cd10c54a18a.html">on the issue</a>. The comment comes just weeks after a House committee chaired by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, <a href="https://ibw21.org/reparations/021721-congress-hearing-on-reparations-bill-hr-40/">heard testimony</a> on H.R. 40, a bill that would establish a commission on the legacy of slavery that would look at possible payments for descendants of enslaved people of African descent.</p>
<p>Having <a href="https://annecbailey.net/">researched slavery</a> for the past three decades, I have concluded that there are many rationales for reparations. There has never been a leveling of the playing field, or payments for the debt of unpaid labor over 250 years of slavery. Furthermore, <a href="https://theconversation.com/slave-built-infrastructure-still-creates-wealth-in-us-suggesting-reparations-should-cover-past-harms-and-current-value-of-slavery-153969">Black contribution to the wealth of America</a> has not been acknowledged or given its due, in spite of the fact that the Southern planters and Northern manufacturers who helped shape the nation were made rich by turning raw commodities harvested by enslaved people into commercial empires.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Joe Biden takes part in a virtual event for Black History Month" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387592/original/file-20210303-17-b2hjzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C11%2C3958%2C2646&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387592/original/file-20210303-17-b2hjzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387592/original/file-20210303-17-b2hjzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387592/original/file-20210303-17-b2hjzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387592/original/file-20210303-17-b2hjzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387592/original/file-20210303-17-b2hjzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387592/original/file-20210303-17-b2hjzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Joe Biden be the president to usher through reparations for slavery?.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-participates-in-a-virtual-roundtable-news-photo/1303728263?adppopup=true">Pete Marovich/Pool via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But there is an additional reason that looking at reparations now makes sense. At a time when <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/19/969196055/biden-takes-his-americas-back-message-to-the-world-in-munich-speech">Biden is trying to rebuild America’s image overseas</a>, reparations for this unpaid debt could, I believe, drastically improve the United States’ international standing and serve as an example to other nations on how to deal with past inequities.</p>
<h2>A promise never delivered</h2>
<p>Campaigns for reparations have a long history. President Abraham Lincoln, who was known as “The Great Emancipator” in large part because he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/02/14/frederick-douglass-needed-to-see-lincoln-would-the-president-meet-with-a-former-slave/">heeded the calls of Black abolitionists like ex-slave Frederick Douglass</a> and signed the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation#:%7E:text=President%20Abraham%20Lincoln%20issued%20the,and%20henceforward%20shall%20be%20free.%22">Emancipation Proclamation in 1863</a>, was also a key advocate for a form of reparations.</p>
<p>Under <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/">Special Field Order No. 15</a>, issued with Lincoln’s blessing in 1865, newly emancipated slaves were to receive “forty acres and a mule.” </p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.nacsw.org/Convention/Proceedings2017/BridgemanPReparationsFINAL.pdf">freed slaves had already received their 40 acres</a> at the time Congress passed the bill.</p>
<p>But this promise was not kept. After Lincoln was assassinated, President Andrew Johnson <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-07-10-9707100158-story.html#:%7E:text=Sherman%20ordered%20that%20each%20former,vetoed%20by%20President%20Andrew%20Johnson">promptly vetoed the bill</a>. According to <a href="https://sanford.duke.edu/people/faculty/darity-jr-william">noted economist William Darity</a>, the cost of reneging on the promise to Black Americans was land worth more than <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2008.00555.x">US$1.3 trillion in today’s dollars</a>. </p>
<p>While efforts to compensate Black former slaves were thwarted, remarkably, some white slave owners seeking compensation for the end of slavery were more successful. Through <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/civil_war/DCEmancipationAct_FeaturedDoc.htm#:%7E:text=On%20April%2016%2C%201862%2C%20the,to%20%24300%20for%20each%20freeperson.">1862’s District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act</a>, slave owners were paid for their lost “property.”</p>
<h2>Debt compounded</h2>
<p>After the reversal of early efforts to compensate people of African descent, Southern states continued to put in place policies to maintain white supremacy.</p>
<p>What followed were <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575769/stony-the-road-by-henry-louis-gates-jr/">decades of institutional marginalization</a> under <a href="https://onlinellm.usc.edu/a-brief-history-of-jim-crow-laws/">Jim Crow segregation</a> that further impeded Black progress. <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/housing-discrimination-in-the-jim-crow-us/">Racist housing policies</a>, <a href="https://www.history.com/news/last-hired-first-fired-how-the-great-depression-affected-african-americans">employment practices</a> and <a href="https://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/summer-2004/jim-crows-schools">inequitable education</a> made it harder for Black Americans to accrue wealth.</p>
<p>During this period, calls for reparations continued. Ex-slave <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/callie-house-c-1861-1928/">Callie House</a> of Nashville, Tennessee, launched an ambitious reparations campaign in the 1890s <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/12958/my-face-is-black-is-true-by-mary-frances-berry/">calling on the government to pay pensions to formerly enslaved people</a>.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/summer/slave-pension.html">1915 lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury</a> calling for $68 million to be paid to former slaves for unpaid labor was dismissed on the grounds of “sovereign immunity,” under which a state is immune from civil action. And <a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/garvey.htm">political activist Marcus Garvey</a> in the 1920s made <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591719897569">reparations central</a> to his Universal Negro Improvement Association movement.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387588/original/file-20210303-15-1poykqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387588/original/file-20210303-15-1poykqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387588/original/file-20210303-15-1poykqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387588/original/file-20210303-15-1poykqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387588/original/file-20210303-15-1poykqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387588/original/file-20210303-15-1poykqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387588/original/file-20210303-15-1poykqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387588/original/file-20210303-15-1poykqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marcus Garvey made reparations central to his campaigning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/garvey-marcus-politiker-schwarznationalistischer-prophet-news-photo/537147825?adppopup=true">Ullstein bild via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the debt to Black Americans for the uncompensated labor of their ancestors was not paid. Moreover, the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2741797">economic outcomes of sanctioned racism</a> under Jim Crow meant that this debt only increased.</p>
<p>The protests and advocacy of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s bore great fruits, but no reparations.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=97">Civil Rights Act of 1964</a> and the <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=100">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a> were hard-fought milestones.</p>
<p>But inequities persisted, and, with them, the debt owed. Black and brown bodies were – and still are – <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/11/12/black-people-are-still-seeking-racial-justice-why-and-what-to-do-about-it/">disproportionately caught up in the criminal justice system</a>; <a href="https://usafacts.org/articles/homeownership-rates-by-race/">Black families are less likely to own their own homes</a>; and <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/schools-are-still-segregated-and-black-children-are-paying-a-price/">public education has failed far too many Black youths</a> – all of which has far-reaching ramifications for employment, career success and accumulating wealth. Again, the original unpaid debt has been compounded. </p>
<p>But calls for reparations never went away. In October 1962, the pioneering civil rights activist <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/audley-moore-and-the-modern-reparations-movement/">Queen Mother Moore</a> helped draft a “<a href="https://www.forreparations.org/timeline/in-1962-queen-mother-audley-moores-reparations-committee-of-descendants-of-united-states-slaves-files-a-claim-in-california/">Resolution for Reparations</a>” that was promoted in the U.S. and around the world.</p>
<p>The organization <a href="https://www.ncobraonline.org/">N'COBRA</a> has, since the 1980s, been campaigning for reparations. More recently there has been author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 article “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">The Case for Reparations</a>” and calls from groups such as the <a href="https://reparationscomm.org/">National African American Reparations Commission</a> along with <a href="https://ibw21.org/reparations/black-christian-leaders-push-for-slavery-reparations/">some Black church leaders</a>. There has been <a href="https://www.ashevillenc.gov/news/asheville-reparations-resolution-is-designed-to-help-black-community-access-to-the-opportunity-to-build-wealth/">some success on a local level</a>, but no action on a federal one.</p>
<h2>Not too late</h2>
<p>Another campaign for reparations has been successful – the one for <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-japanese-americans-received-reparations-and-african-americans-are-still-waiting-119580">the Japanese American citizens</a> interned during World War II.</p>
<p>After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation">sent tens of thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps</a>. In the years after the war, advocates, including the children and descendants of those interred, launched a lengthy campaign, ending with President Ronald Reagan’s making a formal apology and signing <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-bill/442">1988’s Civil Liberties Act</a>, through which each survivor was paid $20,000 each, around $44,000 in today’s money.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Congressmen surround President Ronald Reagan." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387590/original/file-20210303-15-wkjcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387590/original/file-20210303-15-wkjcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387590/original/file-20210303-15-wkjcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387590/original/file-20210303-15-wkjcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387590/original/file-20210303-15-wkjcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387590/original/file-20210303-15-wkjcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387590/original/file-20210303-15-wkjcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 could serve as an example.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/congressmen-surround-president-ronald-reagan-as-he-signs-news-photo/595717514?adppopup=true">Wally McNamee/Corbis Historical via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The campaign for reparations for people of African descent could proceed similarly: a bill, a formal apology and compensation, which could include measures aside from just payment checks – such as education and housing funds, or reforms in the criminal justice system. </p>
<p>The renewed focus on reparations comes at a pivotal time in recent U.S. history. Long considered, rightly or wrongly, as a beacon of democracy and freedom, the U.S. has in the past four years presented a different face to the world amid a retreat into “<a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-foreign-policy-is-still-america-first-what-does-that-mean-exactly-144841">America first</a>” policy.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the recent <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/insurrection-at-the-capitol">attack on the Capitol</a>, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html">killing of George Floyd</a> at the hands of police and <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/01/919063734/senate-democrats-call-on-congress-to-fix-racial-disparities-in-health-care">racial disparities highlighted in the pandemic</a> have raised concerns about the fragility of American democracy and have put the lasting legacies of structural racism in the U.S. on full display.</p>
<p>Paying reparations to Americans of African descent could, I believe, help the U.S. reclaim some moral leadership on the global stage. The U.S. is not the only country in the world with human rights abuses then or now, but it can be one of the few countries in the world that truly addresses these wrongs.</p>
<p>In other words, the U.S. can lead by example.</p>
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<p><em>This article has been updated to clarify that it was President Andrew Johnson who vetoed a bill handing land to former enslaved people.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne C. Bailey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Former enslaved persons never got ‘forty acres and a mule,’ and their descendants have been denied reparations for the legacy of slavery. Will Joe Biden be the president to change that?Anne C. Bailey, Professor of History, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1525222021-02-26T13:26:34Z2021-02-26T13:26:34ZThere was a time reparations were actually paid out – just not to formerly enslaved people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386544/original/file-20210225-17-1di91zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C60%2C5071%2C3581&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">No guessing who in this 1864 depiction may have been compensated after slavery ended.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/propri%C3%A9taire-dune-plantation-avec-leurs-esclaves-aux-etats-news-photo/840481568?adppopup=true">API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The cost of slavery and its legacy of systemic racism to generations of Black Americans has been clear over the past year – seen in both <a href="https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/08/us-blacks-3-times-more-likely-whites-get-covid-19">the racial disparities of the pandemic</a> and widespread protests over <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/29/us-police-brutality-protest">police brutality</a>.</p>
<p>Yet whenever calls for reparations are made – as <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/17/slavery-reparations-house-committee-debates-commission-study/6768395002/">they are again now</a> – opponents counter that it would be unfair to saddle a debt on those not personally responsible. In <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/politics/mitch-mcconnell-opposes-reparations-slavery/index.html">the words of</a> then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking on <a href="https://theconversation.com/juneteenth-freedoms-promise-is-still-denied-to-thousands-of-blacks-unable-to-make-bail-98530">Juneteenth</a> – the day Black Americans celebrate as marking emancipation – in 2019, “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea.” </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://dpp.uconn.edu/person/thomas-craemer/">professor of public policy</a> who has studied reparations, I acknowledge that the figures involved are large – I conservatively estimate the losses from unpaid wages and lost inheritances to Black descendants of the enslaved at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12151">around US$20 trillion in 2021 dollars</a>.</p>
<p>But what often gets forgotten by those who oppose reparations is that payouts for slavery have been made before – numerous times, in fact. And few at the time complained that it was unfair to saddle generations of people with a debt for which they were not personally responsible.</p>
<p>There is an important caveat in these cases of reparations though: The payments went to former slave owners and their descendants, not the enslaved or their legal heirs.</p>
<h2>Extorting Haiti</h2>
<p>A prominent example is the so-called “Haitian Independence Debt” that saddled revolutionary Haiti with reparation <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-france-extorted-haiti-the-greatest-heist-in-history-137949">payments to former slave owners in France</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A 1791 depiction of fighting between French troops and Haitian revolutionaries." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Haitians had to pay for their independence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/combat-entre-les-esclaves-et-larm%C3%A9e-fran%C3%A7aise-lors-de-la-news-photo/1291357942?adppopup=true">API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Haiti <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/haitian-revolution-1791-1804/#:%7E:text=On%20January%201%2C%201804%2C%20Dessalines,nation%20to%20recognize%20its%20independence.">declared independence from France in 1804</a>, but the former colonial power refused to acknowledge the fact for another 20 years. Then in 1825, King Charles X decreed that he would recognize independence, but at a cost. The price tag would be 150 million francs – more than 10 years of the Haitian government’s entire revenue. The money, the French said, was needed to compensate former slave owners for the loss of what was deemed their property.</p>
<p>By 1883, Haiti had paid off some 90 million francs in reparations. But to finance such huge payments, Haiti <a href="https://canada-haiti.ca/sites/default/files/Haiti,%20France%20and%20the%20Independence%20Debt%20of%201825_0.pdf">had to borrow 166 million francs</a> with <a href="https://history.wisc.edu/publications/haiti-and-the-great-powers-1902-1915/">the French banks</a> Ternaux Grandolpe et Cie and Lafitte Rothschild Lapanonze. Loan interests and fees added to the overall sum owed to France.</p>
<p>The payments ran for a <a href="https://canada-haiti.ca/sites/default/files/Haiti,%20France%20and%20the%20Independence%20Debt%20of%201825_0.pdf">total of 122 years from 1825 to 1947</a>, with the money going to more than 7,900 former slave owners and their descendants in France. By the time the payments ended, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12151">none of the originally enslaved or enslavers were still alive</a>.</p>
<h2>British ‘reparations’</h2>
<p>French slave owners weren’t the only ones to receive payment for lost revenue, their British counterparts did too – but this time from their own government.</p>
<p>The British government paid reparations totaling £20 million (equivalent to some £300 billion in 2018) to slave owners when it abolished slavery in 1833. Banking magnates Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore arranged for a loan to the government of $15 million to cover the vast sum – which represented almost half of the U.K. governent’s annual expenditure.</p>
<p>The U.K. serviced those loans <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/29/slavery-abolition-compensation-when-will-britain-face-up-to-its-crimes-against-humanity">for 182 years from 1833 to 2015</a>. The authors of the British reparations program saddled many generations of British people with a reparations debt for which they were not personally responsible.</p>
<h2>Paying for freedom</h2>
<p>In the United States, reparations to slave owners in Washington, D.C., were paid at the height of the Civil War. On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/37th-congress/session-2/c37s2ch54.pdf">Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor within the District of Columbia</a>” into law.</p>
<p>It gave former slave owners $300 per enslaved person set free. More than <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/299814">3,100 enslaved people</a> saw their freedom paid for in this way, for a total cost in excess of $930,000 – almost $25 million in today’s money.</p>
<p>In contrast, the formerly enslaved received nothing if they decided to stay in the United States. The act provided for an emigration incentive of $100 – around $2,683 in 2021 dollars – if the former enslaved <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/299814">agreed to permanently leave the United States</a>.</p>
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<p>Similar examples of reparations going to individual slave owners can be found in the records of countries including Denmark, <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A1567C">the Netherlands</a> and <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112046472657&view=1up&seq=1">Sweden</a>, as well as <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/004005870">Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela</a>, <a href="https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/173/">Peru</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com.pr/books?id=pRFQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Brazil</a>.</p>
<p>The French government even set an example on how the government can conduct genealogical research to determine eligible recipients. It compiled a massive six-volume compendium in 1828, listing some 7,900 original <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12151">slave owners in Saint Domingue and their French descendants</a>.</p>
<h2>Reparations, this time the other way round …</h2>
<p>Blessed with detailed U.S. Census records and local archives, I believe the government could do the same for the Black descendants of enslaved Americans. </p>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/overview/1860.html">1860 census</a>, the last one before the Civil War, the government counted 3,853,760 enslaved people in the United States. Their direct descendants live among close to <a href="https://blackdemographics.com/">50 million Black residents in the United States</a> today.</p>
<p>Using historic census records to estimate the number of man-, woman-, and child-hours available to slave owners from 1776 to 1860, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12151">I estimated how much money</a> the enslaved lost considering the meager wages for unskilled labor at the time, which ranged from 2 cents in 1790 to 8 cents in 1860. At a very moderate interest rate of 3%, I arrived at an estimate of $20.3 trillion in 2021 dollars for the total losses to Black descendants of enslaved Americans living today. </p>
<p>It is a huge sum – roughly one year’s worth of the <a href="https://www.bea.gov/news/2021/gross-domestic-product-fourth-quarter-and-year-2020-second-estimate">U.S.’s GDP</a> – but a figure that would comfortably close the racial wealth gap. The difference is, in contrast to historical precedents, this time the benefits would go to the Black descendants of the enslaved, not to enslavers and their offspring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152522/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Craemer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History is full of examples of nations paying out to compensate for slavery. But the money never went to those who suffered under the system, only those who profited.Thomas Craemer, Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539812021-01-28T09:09:49Z2021-01-28T09:09:49ZHow former president Rawlings pioneered heritage tourism in Ghana – in his own words<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380970/original/file-20210127-19-1bx9ucu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tourists pose for pictures at the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NATALIJA GORMALOVA/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1980s, Flight Lieutenant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/13/jerry-rawlings-obituary">Jerry John Rawlings</a> launched heritage tourism as a means to economic development in Ghana. Under his initiative, Ghana’s forts and castles – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-slavery-journey-widerimage-idUSKCN1UR4JV">where</a> enslaved Africans were forcibly put on slave ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean into slavery in the Americas – were turned into heritage sites for tourism. It united Africans and African descendant people living in the disapora.</p>
<p>Rawlings was Ghana’s youngest and longest-serving post-independence leader. He led military uprisings in 1979 and 1981 and served as elected president from 1992 to 2000. When Rawlings came to power in 1981, Ghana faced numerous <a href="https://asq.africa.ufl.edu/files/Adedeji-Vol-5-Issue-2.pdf">challenges</a>. Food was scarce, medicines unavailable, over a million Ghanaians were deported from Nigeria, and the economy was almost bankrupt. Rawlings understood the capital investment necessary to rebuild the economy. </p>
<p>However, Ghana’s 1979 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Ghana-1982-1992-Revolution-Democracy/dp/9988786816">revolution</a> had criticised the former regime’s ties to the West and Western imperialism, so private investment dried up. Eastern bloc nations gave minimal support. Rawlings was compelled to secure World Bank and International Monetary Fund assistance, a tactical acquiescence that proved pivotal for heritage.</p>
<p>Rawlings rarely gave interviews. This abbreviated <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1743873X.2020.1817929">interview</a> with him was the first time he spoke publicly on heritage tourism and development. It comprises several conversations in 2018 and 2019. </p>
<hr>
<h2>How did you arrive at this innovative idea – using cultural heritage tourism for development?</h2>
<p>I was always interested in culture and art. (He shows me his childhood artwork.) As a child, I was an artist. </p>
<p>At that time (in the 1980s), Ghana was politically stable. Cocoa, gold and timber were our major commodities. The tourism idea was unplanned. But I worked with many progressive-minded people. For instance, Valerie Sackey (Ministry of Communications) and Dr Ben Abdallah (Minister of Culture and Tourism) who approached me with the idea. They targeted cultural heritage, such as the forts and castles, natural heritage, performance and arts – for example <a href="https://panafestghana.org/">Panafest</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in an overall and shades reads a placard that says, 'Do Not Mind Foreign Intervention', a crowd of peoplein the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rawlings reading a placard at a 1981 demonstration in Nicholson Stadium, Accra.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Rawlings Archival Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quite frankly, I was surprised by the response. I remember, when I was young, <a href="https://theconversation.com/kwame-nkrumah-why-every-now-and-then-his-legacy-is-questioned-120790">(Kwame) Nkrumah</a> was the star of Africa, and black Africa at that. I was acquainted with African Americans coming to Ghana. We had personalities such as <a href="https://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/Who%20We%20Are/who-was-george-padmore">George Padmore</a> and <a href="https://duboiscentreghana.org/">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. I was familiar with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/books/malcolm-x-a-life-of-reinvention-by-manning-marable-review.html">Malcolm X</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther-King-Jr">Martin Luther King</a>. I expected those who visited would want to know Africa better. After all, I was a young student when <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muhammad-Ali-boxer">Muhammad Ali</a> came to my school. Consequently, I saw all of this as part of a natural flow of events – even if it also brought some resentment. Many had a complex relationship with Ghana. After I left school, I observed this first-hand, when I used to ‘be-bop’ around town. African Americans struggled to come to terms with the fact that Africans participated in the transatlantic slave trade and sold their ancestors into slavery. It was a very mixed response. </p>
<p>So, when I was in office, I did not think African Americans travelling to Ghana was something to be revived. I left the matter to those who championed heritage tourism and the various ministries.</p>
<h2>Is it possible to describe you as a pragmatist, for trying to reconcile the revolution with ‘real world’ demands?</h2>
<p>We had little money to invest in what was important to provide stability – a stable climate, water, roads. But we did well, as tourism became our third largest foreign exchange earner – though we didn’t invest in tourism per se. Ghana was seen as a place where the black man had reason to feel proud and was not exploited by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/neocolonialism">neocolonialism</a>, so that was something in and of itself. The 1979 revolution also restored justice and respect… In our case, this pilgrimage … was a connection to blackness, to ‘Africanness’. </p>
<h2>Were there any challenges?</h2>
<p>Sure. The African diasporan presence raised the subject of citizenship and nationality. This created issues, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-west-is-morally-bound-to-offer-reparations-for-slavery-153544">reparations</a> for the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, which also created a polarisation between our own people and African descendants. Still, I would like to mention something interesting. Gradually, African Americans won recognition in various arenas, for example, sports and entertainment. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, several were so disgusted at their treatment by the United States government that they offered to participate in the Olympics on Ghana’s ‘ticket.’</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A greying man with a beard and sunglasses sits in a brown chair looking ahead intently." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rawlings later in life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alhassan Idrissu/Courtesy the Rawlings Archival Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, soon after, African American perceptions of Africa altered with the <a href="https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/1980s-ethiopia-famine-facts">Ethiopian famine</a>. Whereas previously, they sympathised with Africa’s struggles and, in a defiant move, wanted to identify with the continent, that sentiment suddenly collapsed. Horrible scenes on the television – overwhelming images of Ethiopians covered in flies, with bloated stomachs, dissuaded lots of African Americans from identifying with Africa. </p>
<h2>As head of state, you worked and lived at Osu Castle. What was that like?</h2>
<p>Often, I was too busy to give thought to the (slave trade and colonial) past. I saw my fellow black man suffering. When I travelled up north, I saw my people did not have water to flush their toilets and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/guineaworm/index.html">Guinea worm</a> was everywhere. The pressure of economic and social injustice was on me! Don’t forget that I was not always at the castle. I was always on the move. So was (my wife) Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. I had water, electricity and a bed to sleep on. What more could I have asked for? Why would I spend money on renovating the castle? Many Ghanaians did not have basic necessities. I did not even have the money to buy bullets for my soldiers in Liberia, or to protect people during the violence in the north.</p>
<h2>How do you see the heritage tourism and development initiative today?</h2>
<p>As for Ghana, we receive people well. Over the years, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-year-of-return-2019-traveler-tourist-or-pilgrim-121891">the ‘return’</a> has become increasingly known. Ghana has enjoyed a unique position because of our history, independence, Nkrumah, the assertion of black people in Africa’s liberation struggle and black people generally.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-year-of-return-2019-traveler-tourist-or-pilgrim-121891">Ghana's Year of Return 2019: traveler, tourist or pilgrim?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We are aware of our responsibilities to ourselves, our fellow Africans, and those in the diaspora. I am not enthusiastic about (financial) reparations. Those taken during the transatlantic slave trade must decide. If they return, we should offer them land and dual citizenship as restorative and social justice … As for diasporans and development … they do not have the money to develop us in Africa. Let us give them the respect that they want, that is due. That is the beginning of it all. Then other things will follow. This way, they can also fight for the continent … help us gain access to what the continent deserves. You see? This is how it should be. </p>
<p><em>Postscript: President Rawlings passed away as this article was to go to press. It is published with support from the Rawlings family. Thanks to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjht20/current">Journal of Heritage Tourism</a> for permission to republish.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a rare series of interviews, the late Ghanaian leader spoke of how the country’s slave trade was revisited as a vehicle for economic development.Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Director of Christiansborg Archaeological Heritage Project, Associate Professor at Africa Institute Sharjah & Associate Graduate Faculty, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1447082020-09-10T11:47:07Z2020-09-10T11:47:07ZCommunity land trusts could help heal segregated cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355598/original/file-20200831-22-1t2intn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C0%2C3882%2C2627&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Efforts to build wealth for Black Americans could focus on property ownership.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/resident-tiffany-jessup-poses-for-a-portrait-at-savannah-news-photo/1173047316">Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>American cities represent part of the nation’s long and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/24/magazine/reparations-slavery.html">grim history of discrimination and oppression</a> against Black people. They can also be part of the recovery from all that harm.</p>
<p>Some cities’ work can be symbolically important, such as removing public monuments that honor oppression. But as professors of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HSr3W8AAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">urban sustainability</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=aSSRcJkAAAAJ">community development</a> at Arizona State University, we see that <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/toward-sustainable-communities-solutions-for-citizens-and-their-governments/oclc/782101048">cities can do much more</a> to address inequality, starting with an area that was key to past discrimination: how land is used.</p>
<p>Zoning rules, including requirements that prohibit duplexes or anything other than <a href="https://www.shareable.net/zoned-apart-how-the-us-failed-to-share-land-but-should-start-today/">single-family homes on residential lots</a>, have helped maintain class and racial segregation. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144203029004002">Lending practices</a> like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0096144203029004002">redlining</a> that discriminate mostly against people of color in specific urban neighborhoods have <a href="https://upittpress.org/books/9780822959397/">entrenched poverty and inequality</a> in U.S. cities. </p>
<p>One result is that the average Black family with children in the U.S. has just <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2378023120916616">one cent of wealth for every dollar</a> held by the average white family with children.</p>
<p>Some calls to resolve these inequalities have <a href="https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/proposal-for-a-black-commons/">raised an idea</a> with century-old roots: community land trusts to assemble land for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/land-loss-has-plagued-black-america-since-emancipation-is-it-time-to-look-again-at-black-commons-and-collective-ownership-140514">benefit of Black Americans</a>.</p>
<h2>Cities consider compensation</h2>
<p>Some cities are already looking at ways to promote racial equality. In July, the Asheville, North Carolina, city council <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/07/15/891700076/asheville-n-c-approves-steps-toward-reparations-for-black-residents">unanimously passed</a> a resolution directing the city manager “to <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/468725433/Reparations-for-Black-Asheville">boost economic mobility and opportunity</a> in the Black community.”</p>
<p>Also in July, the <a href="https://www.providenceri.gov/mayor-jorge-elorza-announces-truth-telling-reconciliation-municipal-reparations-process/">mayor of Providence, Rhode Island</a> issued an executive order “<a href="https://www.providenceri.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Mayors-Executive-Order-2020-13-1.pdf">committing the City to a process of truth, reconciliation and municipal reparations</a> for Black, Indigenous (Indian) People, and People of Color in Providence.”</p>
<p>To carry out these lofty goals, they could take a page from history.</p>
<h2>A new kind of land ownership</h2>
<p>In the 1960s, civil rights organizers recognized that denying property rights was a key method of reinforcing white supremacy in the U.S., blocking people from putting down roots in a community, limiting their political power as well as wealth.</p>
<p>They devised a system called a “<a href="http://cltroots.org">community land trust</a>” as a way for <a href="https://community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/clts/index.html">African American farmers to work rural land</a> for their own benefit. This was in stark contrast to the sharecropping system prevalent after the Civil War, where black families would rent small plots of land, or shares, to work themselves and in return give a <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/sharecropping">portion of their crop to the landowner</a> at the end of the year. </p>
<p>The first community land trust in rural Georgia in 1970 was established on land purchased by a small group of individuals with some federal grant assistance and became <a href="https://www.newcommunitiesinc.com/about.html">the largest single piece of land in the country owned by African Americans</a>, who got to keep all the proceeds from their labor. Although the trust, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/alternative-homeownership-land-trusts-and-co-ops">New Communities Inc.</a>, was beset by drought and discrimination from the start and was forced to close by the late 1980s, it helped inspire people to create similar organizations across the country.</p>
<p>Community land trusts today are more often focused on housing. They are <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/alternative-homeownership-land-trusts-and-co-ops">community-run, nonprofit landholding organizations</a> that aim to help low-income buyers obtain homes. Trust land can be purchased or donated. The model allows community ownership of the land with individual ownership of houses. </p>
<p>With this model, a buyer can get into a home for less money than elsewhere in the local market, because they aren’t paying for the land – just the building. This makes homes more affordable, especially for low-income families who often can get down-payment assistance and low-interest mortgages from the trust as well. </p>
<p>The residents, who become members of the trust, elect board members to govern the organization and guide its development and investments to meet community needs and priorities.</p>
<p>Community land trusts are a form of <a href="http://www.smallhousingbc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/PAH-report_final.pdf">permanently affordable housing</a> based on <a href="https://groundedsolutions.org/shared-equity-housing-numbers">shared equity</a>. The trust retains ownership of the land and maintains it for the benefit of homeowners present and future and the community as a whole. The homeowner leases the land but owns the building and pays for improvements. </p>
<p>The land lease sets out terms for any future sale of the property, letting the homeowner build equity through appreciation in value, while <a href="https://www.houstonclt.org/">ensuring the home remains affordable for future limited-income buyers</a>. This sort of shared-equity model may not appeal to people who can afford open-market housing. But for those otherwise priced out of the housing market, it is an opportunity to build equity and wealth, and establish credit and financial stability.</p>
<p>These <a href="https://housingmatters.urban.org/articles/three-ways-community-land-trusts-support-renters">trusts also serve renters</a> by providing long-term leases with limits on rent prices, as well as by investing in housing in communities where others won’t. They also can give a more formal voice to tenants, who otherwise are often ignored by local officials.</p>
<p>There are now between 225 and 280 community land trusts in the U.S., which together have <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/alternative-homeownership-land-trusts-and-co-ops">around 15,000 home ownership units and 20,000 rental units</a>. </p>
<p>To encourage more of this type of development, <a href="https://citylimits.org/2017/12/20/council-to-vote-on-key-housing-bills-at-busy-last-meeting/">New York City passed a bill</a> in 2017 exempting community land trusts from certain taxes. <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/City-plan-to-expand-affordable-housing-will-rely-13656027.php">Houston</a> in 2019 announced a plan to use a <a href="https://www.houstonclt.org/">community land trust</a> to develop 1,000 affordable units.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355603/original/file-20200831-16-1bec9e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Seattle's Fire Station 6" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355603/original/file-20200831-16-1bec9e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355603/original/file-20200831-16-1bec9e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355603/original/file-20200831-16-1bec9e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355603/original/file-20200831-16-1bec9e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355603/original/file-20200831-16-1bec9e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355603/original/file-20200831-16-1bec9e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355603/original/file-20200831-16-1bec9e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This decommissioned fire station in central Seattle is slated to be turned over to a community land trust to benefit people of African descent in the area.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://frontporch.seattle.gov/2020/06/12/city-of-seattle-will-transfer-fire-station-6-to-community/">Joe Mabel/City of Seattle</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A history of working together</h2>
<p>Local governments have formed several kinds of partnerships with community land trusts. In June, the city of Seattle announced it would transfer a decommissioned fire station to the Africatown Community Land Trust, saying “<a href="https://frontporch.seattle.gov/2020/06/12/city-of-seattle-will-transfer-fire-station-6-to-community/">we understand the urgency behind making bold investments in the Black community</a> and increasing community ownership of land.” Community members hope the site will play a key role in a <a href="http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/OPCD/OngoingInitiatives/SeattlesComprehensivePlan/EDIImpPlan042916final.pdf">city development plan that highlights Black entrepreneurs</a>. It’s one of several proposals in the region for <a href="https://www.kingcountyequitynow.com">Black-led community organizations to acquire underutilized public property</a>.</p>
<p>Cities have also used municipal zoning powers to require larger developers to donate a portion of new development to community land trusts or related entities such as <a href="https://www.localhousingsolutions.org/act/housing-policy-library/housing-trust-funds-overview/housing-trust-funds/">housing trust funds</a> for permanently affordable housing.</p>
<p>Partnerships between cities and community land trusts are a promising way to provide affordable housing and help low-income and minority families. As cities reflect on their roles in perpetuating institutional racism and what they can do to relieve it, they can use their zoning laws and negotiating power to support community land trusts, as one way to keep housing affordable and benefit minority communities.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144708/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Roseland has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada. He is affiliated with the American Planning Association, the Canadian Institute of Planners, and RAIL Community Development Corporation in Mesa, Arizona. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Boone receives funding from the US National Science Foundation and the Wells Fargo Foundation. He is affiliated with the Global Consortium for Science and the Environment and the Alliance of Sustainability and Environmental Academic Leaders. </span></em></p>Some calls to resolve racial inequities in the US have raised an idea with roots more than a century old: community land trusts to assemble property for the benefit of Black Americans.Mark Roseland, Professor of Community Resources and Development, Arizona State UniversityChristopher Boone, Dean and Professor of Sustainability, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1396842020-06-09T12:10:47Z2020-06-09T12:10:47ZWhy calls for reparations from China for coronavirus are an unfeasible distraction<p>There have been increasing demands for reparations from China for the harm caused by COVID-19. President Donald Trump called for compensation from China for the <a href="https://fortune.com/2020/05/07/trump-china-pay-coronavirus-reparations/">economic costs</a> of the virus. Some reports suggest US officials are also discussing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/30/trump-china-coronavirus-retaliation/">whether families of victims</a> could sue China. Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former World Bank vice president, has called on China to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/16/china-must-pay-reparations-africa-its-coronavirus-failures/">pay reparations to African countries</a>. </p>
<p>In one case in the US state of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-lawsuit/in-a-first-missouri-sues-china-over-coronavirus-economic-losses-idUSKCN2232US">Missouri</a>, the attorney general, Eric Schmitt, filed a legal claim in federal court in April seeking cash compensation from China. The civil claim alleges that China responded slowly to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, which led to billions of dollars of damages to the economy. Mississippi <a href="https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Attorney-General-Fitch-Prepares-to-Sue-China-on-Behalf-of-Mississippians.html?soid=1133764077238&aid=nc8uasIN3f0">announced plans</a> to bring a similar claim. China has <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1286568/China-reparations-coronavirus-legal-action-money-cost-of-crisis-reaction">dismissed these</a> out of hand as “absurd”.</p>
<p>Reparations have long been a means to remedy wrongdoing in international law. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the first world war is a common example, but in the past century reparations have been used for a range of violations of international and domestic law. These include for Iraq’s invasion of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-kuwait-un/iraq-resumes-payments-of-gulf-war-reparations-to-kuwait-idUSKBN1HR26Q">Kuwait</a>, payments to <a href="https://choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/692376994/holocaust-survivors-and-victims-families-receive-millions-in-reparations-from-fr">Holocaust victims</a>, to <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/openglobalrights-openpage/imagining-justice-for-ethnic-communities-in-colombia/">indigenous</a> communities who lost their land, and pay outs by churches for <a href="http://www.irishnews.com/paywall/tsb/irishnews/irishnews/irishnews//news/northernirelandnews/2020/03/31/news/historic-abuse-compensation-scheme-opens-for-applications-1885564/content.html">institutional abuse</a>. </p>
<p>In the US, longstanding claims by African Americans for reparations for slavery and racism have become more pronounced following the killing of <a href="https://www.record-bee.com/2020/06/02/what-happens-after-george-floyd-california-looks-to-reparations/">George Floyd</a>. This has been best argued by the writer <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">Ta-Nehisi Coates</a> who explains how historical injustices continue to manifest themselves in everyday racism and structural inequalities. The claim for reparations for African Americans is the claim for victims to be recognised as human beings and to be treated as citizens with equal rights and dignity. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/RemedyAndReparation.aspx">Reparations</a> are now understood to go beyond just compensation or money, and also include restitution of property, rehabilitation, <a href="https://aidsmemorial.org/theaidsquilt-learnmore/">memorials</a>, apologies and institutional reform.</p>
<h2>No legal basis</h2>
<p>In the case of coronavirus, there is unlikely to be a strong legal basis to claim reparations from China under <a href="https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/04/devashsish-giri-china-covid19-reparations/">international law</a>. Despite calls by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2fbusiness%2f2020%2f04%2f30%2ftrump-china-coronavirus-retaliation%2f">US politicians</a> for victims to sue China, the chances of claiming reparations in the courts of other countries is generally not allowed under the international legal rules of sovereign state <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290888">immunity</a>.</p>
<p>And even if there were a legal basis or political reason to do so, reparations could be difficult to implement. Compensation for the financial loss or the deaths of now hundreds of thousands of people would likely put the sum in the trillions of dollars. Some countries have suggested a payment for those who have died from the virus, prioritising <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2fhealth%2fcovid-19-hits-doctors-nurses-emts-threatening-health-system%2f2020%2f03%2f17%2ff21147e8-67aa-11ea-b313-df458622c2cc_story.html">healthcare</a> workers, particularly ethnic minorities who have a <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30228-9/fulltext">disproportionately</a> higher death toll. But this will be a matter for domestic governments and courts, rather than international arbitration. </p>
<h2>Deflecting attention</h2>
<p>Reparations are often used as a means of making claims about the past. In one way this is a means for those making the claims to lay blame at the feet of those seen as responsible for their suffering. A good example are reparations claims made by Colombian victims against the company <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/05/31/colombia.chiquita.lawsuits/index.html">Chiquita</a> after it admitted funding paramilitary and guerrilla groups, who killed local civilians, so that it could protect its banana plantations. Some of the legal claims <a href="https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/chiquita-lawsuits-re-colombia">are still ongoing</a>. </p>
<p>But claiming reparations against a particular organisation and not others can also be a cynical way to deflect attention from the responsibility of those making the claim. A good example are the claims by white nationalists that Irish emigrants to America were also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/us/irish-slaves-myth.html">slaves</a>, so as to undermine claims for <a href="https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/154492922/Final_Reparations_for_the_Transatlantic_Slave_Trade.pdf">reparations</a> by African Americans for centuries of systemic racism and marginalisation.</p>
<p>In the case of the US, its slow response to the pandemic in light of warnings from its own <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273">intelligence services</a> about the risks of the virus and alerts by the World Health Organization, have aggravated the impact of the virus – as have the government’s own <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/14/trump-coronavirus-alerts-disinformation-timeline">mixed messages</a> about the seriousness of COVID-19. </p>
<p>Yet by claiming reparations from China, the US is laying the blame for all the harm that has been caused by coronavirus at China’s door – with some dangerous consequences. Framing blame for the pandemic on China has also seen increasing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/chinese-coronavirus-racist-attacks.html">attacks</a> on Chinese people in the US and other countries, fuelling xenophobia and nationalism. </p>
<h2>Only so far</h2>
<p>Reparations only get us so far. They cannot solve all suffering or structural inequalities. They can provide a set of values for claiming accountability in the face of injustices of the past. However, other social movements, protests and cultural shifts such as the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337607394_Black_Lives_Matter_as_Resistance_to_Systemic_Anti-Black_Violence">Black Lives Matter protests</a> may be a more effective means of social transformation through resistance and the awakening of public consciousness to tackle institutional and social racism as well as health inequalities.</p>
<p>Blaming one country for the virus is a distraction from more fundamental shifts happening around the world, such as increasing right-wing populism, excessive use of draconian powers and the degradation of the environment that threaten to undermine <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/COVID-19.aspx">human rights</a> today and for generations to come. </p>
<p>All of <a href="https://www.blueprint.ng/covid-19-compensation-claim-betrays-our-humanity/">humanity</a> is affected. Rather than states turning against each other, we should rethink how we can rebuild, together, in the aftermath of this virus.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139684/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Moffett receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for research on reparations. </span></em></p>There is unlikely to be a strong legal claim for reparations from China for COVID-19.Luke Moffett, Senior Law Lecturer in Transitional Justice and Human Rights, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1305462020-01-26T09:15:43Z2020-01-26T09:15:43ZSurviving genocide: a voice from colonial Namibia at the turn of the last century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311811/original/file-20200124-81369-1gzexmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A human skull on display in Berlin in 2018. Germany handed back human remains seized during the Namibia genocide from 1904 to 1908.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Hayoung Jeon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Germany committed genocide in Africa 40 years before the <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/what-was-the-holocaust/">Holocaust</a> of the European Jews. In 1904 and 1905 the Ovaherero and Nama people of central and southern Namibia rose up against colonial rule and dispossession in what was then called German South West Africa. The revolt was brutally crushed. By 1908, 80% of the Ovaherero and 50% of the Nama <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/herero-people-south-west-africa-now-namibia-begin-uprising">had died</a> of starvation and thirst, overwork and exposure to harsh climates. </p>
<p>The army drove survivors into the waterless Omaheke desert. Thousands more died in <a href="http://en.rfi.fr/Paris-exhibition-20th-centurys-first-genocide-massacre-Namibias-Herero-and-Nama">concentration camps</a>. </p>
<p>For <a href="https://books.google.de/books/about/The_Kaiser_s_Holocaust.html?id=CSqc0CsnL-AC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">many historians</a> this first genocide committed by Germany provided the template for the horrors that were to come 40 years later during the Holocaust of the European Jews. The <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/">philosopher Hannah Arendt</a>, herself a Holocaust refugee from Germany, <a href="https://koneensaatio.fi/en/hannah-arendt-the-origins-and-consequences-of-ideological-racism/">explained</a> in 1951 that European imperialism played a crucial role in the development of Nazi totalitarianism and associated genocides.</p>
<p>We know very little about the experience of those who lived through this first systematic mass extinction of the 20th century. Forty-seven testimonies were recorded and published in 1918 in a scathing official British report about German colonial rule in Namibia, known as the Blue Book. One eyewitness <a href="https://www.ascleiden.nl/publications/words-cannot-be-found-german-colonial-rule-namibia-annotated-reprint-1918-blue-book">remarked</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Words cannot be found to relate what happened; it was too terrible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Following on an earlier <a href="https://bokbyenforlag.no/butikk/fakta/debatt-politikk-og-samfunn/mama-penee-jenta-som-gjennomskuet-folkemordet/">Norwegian edition</a>, a new book, Mama Penee: Transcending the Genocide, by Uazuvara Ewald Kapombo Katjivena, to be published by <a href="http://www.unam.edu.na/unam-press/publishers-welcome">UNAM Press</a> in Windhoek in February, makes an extraordinary attempt to present the lived experience of the genocide. </p>
<h2>Surviving a genocide</h2>
<p>Based on oral and family history, Katjivena, a former exiled liberation Namibian fighter until the country’s independence from South Africa <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/namibian-struggle-independence-1966-1990-historical-background">in 1990</a>, tells his grandmother’s story in a biography deeply infused with family and oral history. His grandmother, Jahohora, survived the genocide as an 11-year-old girl. </p>
<p>In the book’s opening scene young Jahohora witnesses her parents’ murder at the hands of German colonial troops in 1904. Following this traumatic experience, she wanders into the veld. The young girl survives on her own, using skills that her mother had imparted to her, to scavenge from the environment. She traps rabbits and birds, eats berries and wild honey, and occasionally feasts on an ostrich egg.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312033/original/file-20200127-81341-1gzpnqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312033/original/file-20200127-81341-1gzpnqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312033/original/file-20200127-81341-1gzpnqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312033/original/file-20200127-81341-1gzpnqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312033/original/file-20200127-81341-1gzpnqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312033/original/file-20200127-81341-1gzpnqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312033/original/file-20200127-81341-1gzpnqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>The remaining connection with her parents is cruelly cut after she is caught and forced to work for a German farmer. During the “civilising” washing and changing of her attire, her ceremonial Ovaherero headgear is cut into pieces and burnt by the farmer’s wife. </p>
<p>The headgear was her mother’s significant gift for the growing daughter just before the start of the hostilities in early 1904. Jahohora suffers deeply humiliating experiences.</p>
<p>Katjivena’s grandmother was a remarkable woman of deep thought, insight, and immense resolve. Her parents and grandparents belonged to a section of the Ovaherero called the Ovatjurure. They played a significant role in their communities by helping to maintain peace among families in the nearby homesteads and in the neighbouring villages.</p>
<p>Their daughter passed on this remarkable tradition to the children and grandchildren she brought up during Namibia’s colonial era under Germany and South Africa.</p>
<h2>Regaining agency</h2>
<p>Katjivena intersperses Jahohora’s personal perspective with historical facts. We read a detailed, chilling account of General Lothar von Trotha’s <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/general-lothar-von-trotha-extermination-order-against-herero">extermination order of 2 October 1904</a>. The oral history telling, however, also indicates instances of humanity during an entirely inhumane era. </p>
<p>Who were these white people, the survivor wondered. Why had some German soldiers saved her from certain death and given her a chance of life while their fellows had mercilessly killed her parents? As Jahohora meets other survivors and hears their stories, she begins to understand the genocide and especially the role of Von Trotha, who is locally known as omuzepe (the killer).</p>
<p>Katjivena’s story looks simple, yet it exudes deep meaning. It turns the gaze onto the oppressors. The resisting gaze of the colonised, the cultural theorist Elizabeth Baer <a href="http://www.unam.edu.na/news/unam-press-latest-book-confronts-genocide">writes</a>, is an act of self-creation. It “begins to recognize and restore agency to the victims of imperialism”.</p>
<h2>Transcending the genocide</h2>
<p>The subtitle of Katjivena’s book is Transcending the Genocide. It adds a tremendous living voice to the symbolic commemorations of Germany’s African genocide that have taken place over the past few years. </p>
<p>Importantly, human remains of genocide victims were repatriated from Germany to Namibia in 2011, 2014 and 2018. These had been shipped to academic and medical institutions in Germany, and had remained there <a href="https://theconversation.com/namibian-genocide-victims-remains-are-home-but-germany-still-has-work-to-do-102655">until recently</a>. </p>
<p>In 2019 some significant items of cultural memory, which had been stolen during colonial conquest, were <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/namibia-dispute-over-return-of-the-witbooi-bible/a-47712784">returned to Namibia </a> from the Linden Museum in Stuttgart. These included the slain Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi’s Bible and his riding whip.</p>
<p>In Windhoek a Genocide Memorial, built in 2014, signifies a noteworthy shift in post-colonial Namibian memory politics. The statue’s North Korean aesthetics and symbolism <a href="https://www.njas.fi/njas/article/view/266/250">remain controversial</a>. That aside, the new monument shows that the genocide of the Ovaherero and Nama has belatedly entered the public history narrative of Namibian nationhood. This would have been impossible a <a href="https://www.njas.fi/njas/article/view/266/250">few years earlier</a>.</p>
<h2>Reconciliation and reparations</h2>
<p>On the political level, the German government finally acknowledged the colonial genocide <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-the-relationship-between-namibia-and-germany-sunk-to-a-new-low-121329">in 2015</a>. Ever since, Namibian and German envoys have been talking about an official apology by Germany. </p>
<p>Most controversial have been negotiations about <a href="https://theconversation.com/namibian-traditional-leaders-haul-germany-before-us-court-in-genocide-test-case-71222">reparations</a>. Also controversial has been the role of the Ovaherero and Nama communities that were directly affected by the genocide. But in January 2020 Germany’s new ambassador to Namibia, Herbert Beck, hinted that important political developments might be <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/87306/read/Aid-no-compromise-for-reparations?fbclid=IwAR3C7KiUAnOK1ZABLJoRjt0jRB3Y4w-U2vhX7u20gtKW1nQTTGG00vQb8Ww#close">about to happen</a>. </p>
<p>It is not clear yet where the complicated process of post-colonial reconciliation is going. Yet, with stories such as Katjivena’s remarkable biography of his grandmother, the dead and the survivors of the colonial genocide are finally given a face.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heike Becker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An oral history based biography of a survivor of colonial genocide in Namibia indicates instances of humanity during an entirely inhumane era.Heike Becker, Professor of Anthropology, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1113202019-12-05T19:55:21Z2019-12-05T19:55:21ZReparations for slavery and genocide should be used to address health inequities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305259/original/file-20191204-70105-1ujjsan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=118%2C88%2C4815%2C2943&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Health justice funds could be used to support Black and Indigenous health initiatives and provide mental and physical health services to deal with the impact of transgenerational trauma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As soon as I entered <a href="https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/elmina-castle-and-its-dark-history-enslavement-torture-and-death-003450">Elmina Castle (the dungeons) in Cape Coast in Ghana</a>, I felt haunted by over 400 years of brutality and the enslavement and genocide of millions of African and Indigenous peoples. That violence still <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-legacy-of-slavery-affects-the-mental-health-of-black-americans-today-44642">impacts the health of Black</a> <a href="http://fnn.criaw-icref.ca/images/userfiles/files/LWM3_ColonialismImpacts.pdf">and Indigenous folks</a> today. </p>
<p>The literal branding of Black people through mostly European <a href="http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_40.html">state-sanctioned chattel transatlantic slavery</a> by the Portuguese, British, French, Swedish, Dutch and Danish among others, haunted me in those dungeons. Colonialists <a href="https://www.pcusa.org/news/2013/5/10/how-could-slave-traders-pray-chapel-built-over-dun/">built churches on top and below prisons, chambers, pits and caves where my ancestors were chained, branded, raped, killed and violated</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.un.org/en/events/africandescentdecade/">international decade for people of African descent (2015-24)</a>, the “year of return,” encourages Africans living in the diaspora to travel back to Ghana (formerly known as the Gold Coast) to embrace their African heritage and ancestry. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://theconversation.com/ca/topics/focus-truth-and-reconciliation-in-canada-77341">Click here for more articles in our ongoing series about the TRC Calls to Action.</a></span>
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<p>As a descendant of enslaved Africans via the Caribbean, living in colonial Canada (Turtle island), and a human rights health scholar, my trip to Ghana this summer during the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-year-of-return-2019-traveler-tourist-or-pilgrim-121891">year of return</a>” was significant. </p>
<p>We are often asked to forget or minimize our enslavement histories through <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/historical-amnesia-about-slavery-is-a-tool-of-white-supremacy/">forced amnesia</a>. But the smells of blood, sweat, terror and bones haunted me as I explored the impact of transgenerational trauma on myself and communities. These are the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/200-years-a-slave-the-dark-history-of-captivity-in-canada/article17178374/">roots of anti-Black racism and white supremacy</a>. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303894/original/file-20191127-112531-16y6nng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303894/original/file-20191127-112531-16y6nng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303894/original/file-20191127-112531-16y6nng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303894/original/file-20191127-112531-16y6nng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303894/original/file-20191127-112531-16y6nng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303894/original/file-20191127-112531-16y6nng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303894/original/file-20191127-112531-16y6nng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Former governor general of Canada Michaëlle Jean leaves a room at Elmina Castle in Ghana, on Nov. 29, 2006. African slaves passed through here before they were loaded onto slave ships.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand)</span></span>
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<p>Presently, in the United States, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/11/18246741/reparations-democrats-2020-inequality-warren-harris-castro">presidential candidates are discussing reparations</a> for the descendants of enslaved men and women. The proposal to research reparations for African descendants, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/40/text">H.R. 40</a>, has been presented to Congress.</p>
<p>In Canada, health justice reparations would support the implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s Calls to Action and other Indigenous redress initiatives. For instance, <a href="https://www.healthcarecan.ca/wp-content/themes/camyno/assets/document/IssueBriefs/2016/EN/TRCC_EN.pdf">recommendation No. 21</a> calls upon the federal government to provide sustainable funding for existing and new Indigenous healing centres to address the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual harms caused by residential schools, and to ensure that the funding of healing centres in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories is a priority.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-knowledge-is-the-solution-to-canadas-health-inequities-106226">Indigenous knowledge is the solution to Canada's health inequities</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Reparations and justice</h2>
<p>Health justice reparation is a call for returns to past and present-day countries that benefited from the exploitation of African and Indigenous peoples and our resources. Health justice reparations are for Africans who were forcefully taken away and for those who stayed on the continent, both living through the anguish of family separation, grief and loss. </p>
<p>Health justice reparations need to be discussed in local, national and transnational contexts, and among non-governmental, private and governmental organizations. </p>
<p>Reparations have been discussed by African descendants in our communities since at least the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Slavery-Abolition-Act">abolition of the slave trade in 1833</a> in Britain. </p>
<p>Some scholars wrote about reparations starting in 1949 after the Second World War as the International Court of Justice heard the case “<a href="http://www.worldcourts.com/icj/eng/decisions/1949.04.11_reparation_for_injuries.htm">Injuries Suffered in Service of the United Nations</a>.” Survivors of the Holocaust <a href="https://qz.com/1680558/for-slavery-reparations-the-us-can-look-to-post-holocaust-germany/">received reparations</a> through funds given to Israel and the World Jewish Congress shortly after. </p>
<p>Although there have been <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/19/house-committee-examines-slavery-reparations/1497953001/">many discussions on reparations for African descendants by Black politicians and legal experts</a>, official redress for slavery and its associated atrocities before the Second World War for predominantly African populations have not been significantly considered. </p>
<h2>Human rights compensations</h2>
<p>Health justice funds could be used to support Black health initiatives and provide mental and physical health services to deal with the impact of transgenerational trauma. Health justice reparations could be used to educate the public and historicize the voices of Africans and Indigenous Peoples experiencing health inequity (violence). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304827/original/file-20191202-66982-a0g9qz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304827/original/file-20191202-66982-a0g9qz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304827/original/file-20191202-66982-a0g9qz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304827/original/file-20191202-66982-a0g9qz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304827/original/file-20191202-66982-a0g9qz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304827/original/file-20191202-66982-a0g9qz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304827/original/file-20191202-66982-a0g9qz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., left, talks with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, right, as he waits to testify about reparation for the descendants of slaves during a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., June 19, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Health justice reparations could also be used to support Indigenous Peoples living in the Americas who have suffered horrendous genocide and deal with continued health struggles because of it. </p>
<p>Reparations should be looked at globally <a href="http://caricomreparations.org/the-global-reparations-movement/">as a way for African and Indigenous communities</a> to address state-sanctioned violence and trauma against our communities transnationally. </p>
<p>African and Indigenous peoples living in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/424984.stm">Africa</a>, the <a href="http://caricomreparations.org/caricom/caricoms-10-point-reparation-plan/">Caribbean</a>, <a href="https://www.dailybreeze.com/2018/08/03/the-us-should-welcome-central-americans-as-a-form-of-reparations/">Central America</a>, <a href="https://blackwomenofbrazil.co/the-controversial-debate-over-reparations-for-slavery-in-brazil/">South America</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-02/stolen-generations-to-get-$73-million-compensation-package-nsw/8086126">Australia</a>, <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/2881/reviews/32109/michelakos-beckles-britains-black-debt-reparations-slavery-and-native">Europe</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/20/california-native-americans-governor-apology-reparations">North America</a>, including <a href="https://ricochet.media/en/2554/whats-wrong-with-a-cheque-a-call-for-slavery-reparations-in-canada">Canada</a>, are demanding redress for continued harm, loss and violence experienced. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-inuit-approach-to-cancer-care-promotes-self-determination-and-reconciliation-116900">An Inuit approach to cancer care promotes self-determination and reconciliation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Health justice reparations include compensation and amends for mental, emotional, physical, social, cultural, spiritual and financial harms. The impact of cultural genocide by forcing the enslaved to speak the languages of the colonizer and to be re-named by those colonizers needs to be addressed. </p>
<p>Transnational Indigenous languages need to be taught everywhere.</p>
<h2>Collect more data</h2>
<p>Collecting race and intersectional-based statistics <a href="http://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2019.0100">is critical</a> to <a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2017/03/07/ontario-releases-anti-racism-strategy-includes-collecting-race-based-data/">addressing the health disparities</a> in Canada and globally. The often missing data, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/health-data-black-canadians-racism-****study-breast-cervical-cancer-1.5366638">if collected, can be used to support life-saving health research and programs</a>. </p>
<p>Transgenerational health trauma is directly connected to present-day health inequities and health disparities. Addressing health disparities in Black and Indigenous communities must include ways to deal with ongoing transgenerational trauma as a direct result of colonial violence. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-impacts-your-health-84112">Racism impacts your health</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Health justice reparation requires recognition of the impact of violence on long-term health. Historical and contemporary anti-Black racist policies and practices need to be addressed with apologies and new policy implementation. </p>
<p>Structural violence inflicted on Black and Indigenous Peoples’ lives <a href="http://www.oacas.org/2016/10/one-vision-one-voice-launches-practice-framework-aimed-at-supporting-better-outcomes-for-african-canadians-in-child-welfare/">by state institutions</a> such as the Children’s Aid Society, prison systems, <a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/12/04/canada-healthcare-system-john-river/">hospitals</a>, schools and public housing needs to be addressed for its impact on health.</p>
<p>Addressing health violence must include transnational Indigenous knowledge and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418787214">anti-colonial research ethics.</a></p>
<p>The western medical model — linked to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/disturbing-resilience-scientific-racism-180972243/">scientific racism</a> and other forms of discrimination — must be challenged. This model has lead to cultural biases and stigma-based scientific inquiry that has <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4354806/">created biased health research</a>.</p>
<p>Health justice reparations must include debt forgiveness to countries and community members of African ancestry for transgenerational trauma. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/aug/20/past.hearafrica05">Debt forgiveness</a> can put back money into struggling health-care systems and communities globally that were forced to cut social service spending.</p>
<p>Our conversations need not be about the impossibility of reparations. Health justice reparations is about life and death, it is about our past, present and future.</p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111320/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roberta K. Timothy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the United States, presidential candidates are discussing reparations for the descendants of enslaved men and women.Roberta K. Timothy, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Social and Behavioural Health Science, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1231382019-09-17T12:48:56Z2019-09-17T12:48:56ZReparations are essential to eliminating the substantial wealth gap between black and white Americans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292683/original/file-20190916-19068-igbrok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are among the 2020 presidential hopefuls in favor of reparations. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Election-2020-Debate/7d9da05d13d740eeaeb36b1586b95984/134/0">AP Photo/David J. Phillip</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Four hundred years ago, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html">America’s first enslaved Africans arrived</a> in Virginia. </p>
<p>Centuries later, black Americans have managed to accumulate some wealth, but it still pales in comparison to that of whites. This racial wealth gap is a result not only of the horrors of slavery but also policies – such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/jim-crow-18120">Jim Crow laws</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-wealth-equality-remains-out-of-reach-for-black-americans-111483">redlining</a> and <a href="https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/">modern-day mass incarceration</a> – that followed. </p>
<p>The average white family with at least one working adult over 25 years old owned more than <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality">nine times as much total wealth</a> as a black one in 2016. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xhht0KcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholar of wealth inequality</a> and its causes, I believe the promise of equal opportunity for all remains unfulfilled as long as this massive gulf persists. A <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/11/20690710/pete-buttigieg-douglass-plan-systemic-racism-black-voters">variety of proposals have been suggested</a> by Democratic candidates for president and others to close this gap, such as eliminating housing discrimination and making college free for all. </p>
<p>Two colleagues and I <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473117/simulating-progressive-proposals-affect-racial-wealth-gap/">created an economic simulator</a> to model the impact of five of the most ambitious proposals. Our results show why reparations that directly target African Americans are likely the only way to eliminate it. </p>
<h2>Why wealth matters</h2>
<p>This wealth gap matters a lot because it means African Americans have far fewer opportunities to get ahead and less economic security. </p>
<p>Wealth is what allows families to start a business, send their children to college, switch jobs when new opportunities arise, buy a house and retire comfortably. It’s also what helps people get through unexpected financial hits, such as a layoff, medical emergency or simply a leaky roof. </p>
<p>Although whites generally have more wealth than every other racial and ethnic group, the gap between them and African Americans is particularly large. </p>
<p>For example, the average white family had <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/">US$935,584 in wealth in 2016</a>, compared with $102,477 for blacks and <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/12/05/461823/job-not-enough/">$176,635 for Latino households</a>. </p>
<p><iframe id="Ptmg4" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Ptmg4/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Importantly, this gap between African Americans and whites persists <a href="https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-of-wealth.aspx">even when we account for education</a>. And the <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/">gap worsens with age</a>. African Americans are much worse prepared for retirement, for instance, than whites are.</p>
<h2>Five proposals to reduce the gap</h2>
<p>My colleagues <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/about/staff/solomon-danyelle/bio/">Danyelle Solomon</a>, <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/about/staff/maxwell-connor/bio/">Connor Maxwell</a> and I put together a <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473117/simulating-progressive-proposals-affect-racial-wealth-gap/">simulation model</a> to examine the effectiveness of five proposals offered by <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/11/20690710/pete-buttigieg-douglass-plan-systemic-racism-black-voters">Democratic candidates</a> and <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ext/2016/01/28/130136/improving-americans-retirement-outcomes-through-the-national-savings-plan/">progressive experts</a> to close the racial wealth gap. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>The creation of “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cory-booker-wants-a-baby-bond-for-every-us-child-would-it-work/2019/08/15/35003f16-b88b-11e9-bad6-609f75bfd97f_story.html">baby bonds</a>,” which involve the government opening an interest-bearing account for every child born in the U.S. and adding new funds annually until the age of 18</p></li>
<li><p>Elimination of housing segregation and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/06/politics/kamala-harris-black-homeownership-plan-racial-wealth-gap/index.html">mortgage market discrimination</a> such as redlining</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/22/18509196/elizabeth-warren-debt-free-college">Making college tuition free</a> for everyone and eliminating existing student debt</p></li>
<li><p>Creating universal <a href="https://www.edd.ca.gov/employers/calsavers.htm">retirement savings plans</a> that are low cost and low risk, which would disproportionately benefit families of color </p></li>
<li><p>Effective enforcement of <a href="https://consumerfed.org/press_release/consumer-advocates-from-around-the-nation-to-meet-today-congress-to-urge-stronger-consumer-financial-protections/">consumer finance regulations</a> to eliminate predatory interest rates and fees, and ensure <a href="https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/wall-street/?mkwid=so1a1I3xB%7Cpcrid%7C367767426195%7Cpkw%7Celizabeth%20warren%7Cpmt%7Cp%7Cpdv%7Cc%7Cslid%7C%7Cproduct%7C%7Cpgrid%7C71352540229%7Cptaid%7Ckwd-171777258%7C&pgrid=71352540229&ptaid=kwd-171777258&source=WFP2019-LB-GS-NAT&subsource=71352540229-elizabeth%20warren-p-367767426195&refcode=WFP2019-LB-GS-NAT&refcode2=71352540229-elizabeth%20warren-p-367767426195&utm_source=Google&utm_campaign=WFP2019-LB-GS-NAT&utm_term=elizabeth%20warren-367767426195&utm_medium=Search&gclid=CjwKCAjw5fzrBRASEiwAD2OSV9YLfobSgW2yMqkCaSQ9Z_kxMp_uvmT0c18_N1dG3Hf-qFB1z0u6sBoCzcYQAvD_BwE">equal access to affordable</a> financial products. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>We modeled how each plan would affect the earnings and savings of people starting out their careers in 2020, at age 25, until retirement 40 years later. Importantly, we used the broadest possible versions of these proposals in our model, which meant that the impact on the racial wealth gap would likely be larger than the actual plans put forth by the politicians. </p>
<p>We found that baby bonds led to the single largest effect. They would close 24% of the gap by the time people retire. The other policies had much more modest effects, with effective financial regulation having the smallest impact. It would only shrink the gap by 1.5%. </p>
<p>Even if all five proposals were enacted next year, blacks would still possess just 52% of the wealth owned by whites by by 2060, leaving a gap of more than $1 million.</p>
<p><iframe id="tsIL4" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tsIL4/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>A 400-year head start</h2>
<p>The proposals we simulated are progressive and disproportionately help African Americans, and there are good reasons to pursue each policy to help close the black-white wealth gap. </p>
<p>But every one of them also offers assistance to white families, who have a 400-year head start building wealth in America. Our research suggests to eliminate the gap altogether requires <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/business/economy/reparations-slavery.html">pursuing policies</a> that exclusively target African Americans and help them build up enough wealth to match that of whites. </p>
<p>In other words, some form of reparations – whether in the form of lump sum transfers or <a href="http://cas2.umkc.edu/ECON/economics/faculty/Forstater/688/Reading/Black%20Political%20Economy/EconomicsReparations.pdf">creating funds</a> that help blacks buy homes or start a business – needs to be part of the debate. </p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian Weller is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, which published the simulation discussed in this article. </span></em></p>Several presidential hopefuls have offered proposals to close the racial wealth gap, from baby bonds to reparations. A simulation suggests policies short of direct aid to blacks won’t do the trick.Christian Weller, Professor of Public Policy and Public Affairs, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1195052019-07-31T15:29:05Z2019-07-31T15:29:05ZIf Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286479/original/file-20190731-186809-75qwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Slavery is not so far removed. Anderson and Minerva Edwards met in the 1860s as enslaved laborers in Texas, had 16 children and lived into their 90s in a cabin a few miles from the plantations they once worked. They are photographed here in 1937.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsc.01097/">U.S. Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of paying reparations for slavery is gaining momentum in the United States, despite being long derided as an unrealistic plan, to compensate for state violence <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/09/politics/mitch-mcconnell-obama-reparations/index.html">committed by and against people long dead</a>.</p>
<p>The topic saw substantive debate in the July 30 Democratic primary debate, with candidate Marianne Williamson calling slavery “<a href="https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/marianne-williamson-democratic-debate-reparations.html">a debt that is owed</a>.” Some Democratic congressional representatives are also <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6892403/Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez-calls-agenda-reparations.html">pushing for financial recompense for the descendants of enslaved people</a>. </p>
<p>Calls for reparations in the U.S. are generally met with <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/07/09/mcconnells-opposition-to-reparations-under-new-scrutiny-after-report-reveals-ancestors-owned-slaves/">skepticism</a>: What would reparations achieve? Who should receive them, and under what conditions?</p>
<p>Other countries have tackled these questions. In 1995, South Africa established its <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/1995/12/truth-commission-south-africa">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> and paid reparations to the victims of apartheid. Eight years before, the United States apologized to 82,000 Japanese Americans unduly imprisoned during World War II and <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-102/pdf/STATUTE-102-Pg903.pdf">paid them US$20,000 each</a> to compensate for their suffering. </p>
<p>Even Germany, birthplace of the worst racism ever institutionalized and elevated to official policy, has some lessons for the United States as it considers reparations.</p>
<h2>Compensating victims of Nazi enslavement</h2>
<p>I am a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pGUCXiUAAAAJ&hl=en">professor of political science</a> who studies the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_Reiter;%20https://berndreiter.academia.edu">relationship between democracy, citizenship and justice</a>. My recent work on Germany examines how the country dealt with the horrors of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Nazi Germany not only killed millions of Jews between 1933 and 1945. It also forced over 20 million people into slave labor, working them to their death in German industries. By 1944, <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PlatoHitler">a quarter of the German workforce was enslaved laborers</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jewish slave laborers at an ammunition factory at Germany’s Dachau concentration camp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/GERMANY-NAZI-LABOR/17b24ae990ab4ab09735cc417999c1a4/87/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After Hitler’s defeat in World War II, the newly democratic government of West Germany knew it had to <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/what-did-germans-know-secret-anti-nazi-diary-gives-voice-to-man-in-the-street/">face the evils</a> of the past. </p>
<p>Nazi industries that used slave labor, such as the steel and artillery producer Krupp, were dismantled. High-ranking Krupp CEOs were judged war criminals at the <a href="https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781616080211/the-nuremberg-trial/">Nuremberg Trials</a> and imprisoned. </p>
<p>Pressured by Israeli leaders David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer agreed to pay <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Germany-and-Israel-Moral-Debt-and-National-Interest-1st-Edition/Lavy/p/book/9781315036335">3 billion German marks in reparations</a> to Israel between 1953 and 1967. Germany also paid <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805066609">450 million German marks to the World Jewish Congress</a>, an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations.</p>
<p>Assuming the midcentury rate of 4 German marks to $1, that’s the equivalent today of $7 billion for Israel and $1 billion for the Jewish Congress. </p>
<p>Some Germans protested against Adenauer’s support for Israel. Their country was just beginning its economic recovery after the war – a process aided, incidentally, by the U.S.-funded <a href="https://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2014/05/Marshall_Plan_1947-1997_A_German_View.pdf">Marshall Plan</a> – and many Germans insisted they had <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623521003633461?journalCode=cjgr20">nothing to do with the persecution of the Jews</a>.</p>
<p>In negotiating the <a href="https://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/collections/personalsites/Israel-Germany/Division-of-Germany/Pages/Reparations-Agreement.aspx">German reparations agreement of 1952</a>, Ben-Gurion invoked the biblical question, from Kings 21:29, “Have you murdered and also inherited?” </p>
<p>Germany’s post-war Chancellor Adenauer knew that, for the German people, the answer was yes.</p>
<p>“In the name of the German people, unspeakable crimes were committed which create a duty of moral and material restitution,” he <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23739770.2010.11446619">said</a>.</p>
<p>By 1956, the German state was supplying <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805066609">87.5%</a> of Israel’s state revenue. The young new country <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/west-german-reparations-to-israel/9780813590912">used the money</a> to buy equipment and raw materials to build up its industry, railways and electrical grid. Mining equipment, irrigation and fuel were also high on the list of Israel’s reparations-fueled development priorities.</p>
<h2>Atonement is a process</h2>
<p>Germany’s efforts to atone for the Holocaust were not limited to money. </p>
<p>To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, the <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/German_Federal_Republic_2012.pdf">1949 German Constitution</a> – as well as the penal and criminal codes of the country – outlaw the use of symbols that incite hatred against any segment of its population. The Constitution also guarantees asylum to political refugees and all people fleeing war.</p>
<p>In 1952 Germany officially apologized for the Nazis’ crimes, at Israel’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23739770.2010.11446619">demand</a>.</p>
<p>“The responsibility rests on the German nation as a whole,” <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137343727_6">replied Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett</a> of making amends for the Holocaust. </p>
<p>Reparations went to individuals, too. In 2000, the German government, together with partner organizations from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, the Czech Republic and the not-for-profit <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/">Jewish Claims Conference</a>, created the <a href="https://www.stiftung-evz.de/eng/the-foundation.html">Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation</a>. </p>
<p>By 2007, the organization had paid a total of <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PlatoHitler">$4.9 billion to 1.66 million people worldwide</a> who’d been forced into labor and servitude by the Nazis, or to their living descendants – their share of the wealth slavery produced for Germany.</p>
<p>Most recently, the German government in 2013 agreed with the Jewish Claims Conference to pay <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-to-pay-772-million-euros-in-reparations-to-holocaust-survivors-a-902528.html">about $1 billion</a> for the home care of all elderly Holocaust survivors.</p>
<p>As a result of the reparations paid, Germany’s open admission of guilt and the policies it put in place to prevent another Holocaust from occurring, German-Jewish relations have largely normalized since World War II. </p>
<p>Germany’s Jewish population has even begun to recover from genocide. With <a href="https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/de">150,000 Jewish residents</a> in 2018, Germany is home to Europe’s fourth-largest Jewish community.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marly Shamir, 98, a Holocaust survivor from Berlin, photographed in 2017. The German government now pays for the care of elderly Holocaust survivors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Israel-Holocaust-Remembrance-Day/11e52b971efe445e803efefcbfa5508e/19/0">AP Photo/Oded Balilty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lessons for the United States</h2>
<p>Instead of seeking to wipe the Holocaust from its history, the German government has worked hard to ensure remembrance, penance, recompense and justice. </p>
<p>The United States, in contrast, has no official policy of atoning for slavery. </p>
<p>While the <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93059465">House of Representatives</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105850676">Senate</a> made separate apologies for slavery in 2008 and 2009, these apologies were never reconciled or signed by President Barack Obama, due to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/opinion/an-apology-for-slavery.html">lack of political support</a>.</p>
<p>Racist symbols are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/local/charlottesville-videos/?utm_term=.aed0c467d932">openly displayed</a> in the United States, protected by the First Amendment. </p>
<p>Nor has there been any financial compensation for the descendants of formerly enslaved Americans, despite President Abraham Lincoln’s famous <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-40-acres-and-a-mule-to-lbj-to-the-2020-election-a-brief-history-of-slavery-reparation-promises-114547">promise of “40 acres and a mule” for all freed black men</a>. </p>
<p>The German experience with reparations is, of course, not directly comparable to that of the United States. </p>
<p>Germany had to lose a devastating war before it compensated the Jewish people. And, as in the case of the Japanese American prisoners of war who received reparations, the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime and their descendants were relatively easy to identify.</p>
<p>The U.S. government paying reparations today for state terror that ended 150 years ago poses numerous practical challenges. They include identifying the rightful recipients and sourcing the money appropriately – whether state-based or federal. </p>
<p>Those who say <a href="https://reason.com/2019/04/05/reparations-likely-to-divide-not-heal/">they did not benefit from slavery</a> must be persuaded that reparations are required to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">right a moral wrong</a>. Polling shows a majority of Americans <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/261722/redress-slavery-americans-oppose-cash-reparations.aspx">oppose cash payments</a> as a redress for slavery.</p>
<p>But old injustices don’t simply disappear with time. Left unaddressed, they fuel the kind of division, shame and resentment that, as America knows well, can divide a nation.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated to correct a figure on the number of people who have received compensation from the Jewish Claims Conference.</em></p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bernd Reiter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Old injustices don’t simply disappear with time – they tear a nation apart.Bernd Reiter, Professor of Political Science, University of South FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1203182019-07-15T20:29:59Z2019-07-15T20:29:59ZWhat Canada and South Africa can teach the U.S. about slavery reparations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284147/original/file-20190715-173370-1gix3h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4954%2C3411&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, left, and actor Danny Glover, right, testify about reparation for the descendants of slaves during a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Capitol Hill on June 19, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>America’s failure to understand, acknowledge and resolve the continuing catastrophe of slavery is holding back the entire nation. </p>
<p>Without broad public recognition that the country’s original wealth was derived unjustly through slavery, and that deliberate <a href="https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation">post-Emancipation</a> efforts perpetuated the social and economic gulf between white and Black America, there can be no justice or healing. </p>
<p>Recently, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/us/ta-nehisi-coates-reparations.html">a group of prominent African-Americans testified before the United States Congress on reparations for the descendants of slaves</a>, reopening a wound that is as old as America itself, and still acutely painful for those who continue to suffer from the very tangible effects of slavery’s racist legacy.</p>
<p>The first congressional hearing in more than a decade on the subject helped educate yet another new generation to the unresolved debate over whether the U.S. should compensate descendants of enslaved Africans. </p>
<p>Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose 2014 essay <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">“The Case for Reparations,”</a> reinvigorated public debate on the issue, argued it’s impossible to untangle the history of America from the legacy of slavery.</p>
<p>The matter of reparations, Coates pointed out, is not only one of “making amends and direct redress but is also a question of citizenship.” </p>
<h2>Polarizing question</h2>
<p>With several <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/reparations-definition-2020-candidates/590863/">Democratic presidential candidates</a> taking positions on the issue, the idea of reparations, always a polarizing question in the United States, may finally become a ballot-box question.</p>
<p>But there is a less political, more productive and more practical way to address the question, and it has been tested already.</p>
<p>Some commentators have rightly pointed out that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/25/what-south-africa-can-teach-us-about-reparations/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bef40bc36abb">Americans can learn from South Africa</a>, which undertook the national, public process of establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address its long history of apartheid, with its legal institutionalized racism.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/do-truth-and-reconciliation-commissions-heal-divided-nations-109925">Do truth and reconciliation commissions heal divided nations?</a>
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<p>The process included heartbreaking televised testimony by victims whose families had been shattered by violence and brutalized by their own government. By bringing the issues into the open, the process allowed South Africa to come face to face with decades of apartheid atrocities and their devastating impact.</p>
<p>But Americans do not need to go as far as South Africa to see how the truth and reconciliation model can work.</p>
<h2>Lessons from Canada?</h2>
<p>Canada established its <a href="http://www.trc.ca/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> in 2008, <a href="https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/archive/dialogue/2_07/articles/246">bucking critics of the restorative justice model</a> and those who claimed that the model was better suited for “Third World” countries with weak political and judicial institutions.</p>
<p>The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was established to document the history and impact of the country’s residential school system on Indigenous children and their families.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284150/original/file-20190715-173376-qteb3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284150/original/file-20190715-173376-qteb3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284150/original/file-20190715-173376-qteb3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284150/original/file-20190715-173376-qteb3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284150/original/file-20190715-173376-qteb3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284150/original/file-20190715-173376-qteb3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284150/original/file-20190715-173376-qteb3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Residential school survivors march to the opening ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in Vancouver in September 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
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<p>The commission studied more than a century of determined, officially sanctioned efforts to resolve Canada’s “Indian problem” by separating children from their parents and forcing them into schools where they were often undernourished, physically and sexually abused by their teachers and forbidden to use their own languages. </p>
<p>The effort, described by some as outright genocide, left generations of families broken, impoverished and addicted.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/genocide-is-foundational-to-canada-what-are-we-going-to-do-about-it-118948">Genocide is foundational to Canada: What are we going to do about it?</a>
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<p>Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided opportunities for victims and their families to share their experiences in public and private sessions. The entire country finally heard, in an official capacity, about the shame of what had happened in the schools and its tragic impact on individuals, families and communities.</p>
<p>When Canada’s commission released its findings in 2015, it issued 94 <a href="https://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf">“Calls to Action”</a> to aid reconciliation, covering child welfare, education, health, language and culture, justice and equity for Indigenous peoples in the legal system. The Calls to Action also recommend creating museums and archives to document the history and experiences of Indigenous peoples. </p>
<p>The Canadian commission has hardly solved the problems of marginalization and forced assimilation, but it has spurred official and everyday conversations about these issues in ways the United States has yet to experience with slavery. </p>
<h2>Doubt and apathy</h2>
<p>As an expert on global human rights, I have been making presentations at American universities and conferences as part of a McMaster University project called <a href="https://truthcommissions.humanities.mcmaster.ca/">Truth Commissions and the Politics of Memory</a>. </p>
<p>When I speak about the South African and Canadian truth and reconciliation models and their relevance for the American reparations debate, I sense doubt and apathy. While U.S. slavery might differ from apartheid or the residential school system, there are important parallels that many Americans fail to see. </p>
<p>Those who favour reparations doubt the prospects for resolving the issue in a political environment paralyzed by hyper-partisanship, where even straightforward matters grind so slowly and painfully through processes that end up being more about political point-scoring than genuine governance. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284145/original/file-20190715-173329-dpyhkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=383%2C0%2C2847%2C1678&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284145/original/file-20190715-173329-dpyhkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=383%2C0%2C2847%2C1678&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284145/original/file-20190715-173329-dpyhkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284145/original/file-20190715-173329-dpyhkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284145/original/file-20190715-173329-dpyhkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284145/original/file-20190715-173329-dpyhkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284145/original/file-20190715-173329-dpyhkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284145/original/file-20190715-173329-dpyhkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. Jackson Lee pushed for the slavery reparation hearings held on Capitol Hill in June.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)</span></span>
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<p>Bringing American society to face its truth is difficult when, as one American colleague told me, so many still have no idea that slavery and its ghastly descendants, including the <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/jim-crow.html">Jim Crow laws</a> and <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/segregation-united-states">segregation</a>, continue to have terrible impacts on the lives of African-Americans, both by perpetuating racism and by severely limiting economic opportunities and social mobility.</p>
<p>Reparation proponents prefer a congressional commission but have yet to muster the support to hold one. Every year from 1989 until his resignation in 2017, Democratic congressman John Conyers Jr. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/40">proposed a bill</a> to study the “impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation.” Every year, he watched it fail to be adopted.</p>
<h2>‘We elected Obama’</h2>
<p>American opponents of reparation are too ready to dismiss the need for action. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/politics/mitch-mcconnell-opposes-reparations-slavery/index.html">Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he opposes reparations for descendants of slaves</a> because no one currently alive was responsible for slavery. </p>
<p>He added: “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation, by electing an African-American president.” His argument that electing Barack Obama somehow evens the score reflects the yawning gap in America’s understanding of the true legacy of slavery.</p>
<p>The truth and reconciliation process presents an opportunity for a national conversation in the United States that goes beyond simple reparations. </p>
<p>Reparation proponents and opponents alike need to know that the truth and reconciliation process can include objective historical fact-finding and reparative justice. The primary benefit is in recognizing and acknowledging the harm done.</p>
<p>Reparation opponents who oppose truth and reconciliation by insisting that America’s “original sin” of slavery is in the distant past should heed the lessons of South Africa and Canada.</p>
<p>Left to fester, these issues will not disappear in America. With every generation, the demand to address the stubborn legacies of slavery grows stronger. </p>
<p>American politicians and other leaders can choose to begin the difficult conversations now, or kick the can down the road one more time, to the next generation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120318/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bonny Ibhawoh receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>Reparation opponents who oppose truth and reconciliation by insisting that America’s “original sin” of slavery is in the distant past should heed the lessons of Canada and South Africa.Bonny Ibhawoh, Professor of History and Global Human Rights, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1167612019-05-10T11:40:08Z2019-05-10T11:40:08ZWhat should British universities do about benefits received from past wrongs?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273533/original/file-20190509-183083-12zgrgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/panorama-cambridge-beautiful-sunset-sky-uk-501120658?src=mDEAUH0mLrUhWCI1V5H2Og-2-30">Shutterstock/Pajor Pawel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The University of Cambridge has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48097051">embarked on a project</a> to discover how it may have contributed to, and benefited financially from, slavery. This venture follows hot on the heels of a similar investigation at University College London, and a decision by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/22/glasgow-university-wealth-from-transatlantic-slave-trade-reparations">University of Glasgow to launch</a> a “reparative justice programme” after having discovered it made the equivalent of £200m from the transatlantic slave trade.</p>
<p>Not everyone has welcomed these developments however. Trevor Phillips, former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/30/cambridge-university-inquiry-slave-trade-connections-virtue/">described the Cambridge inquiry</a> as “virtue signalling on steroids”, unlikely to reveal anything we don’t already know. He argues that the money might be better spent attempting to find solutions to some of the current challenges facing non-white people in Britain. </p>
<p>These inquiries form part of the growing debate in British and other universities about how their connections with various historic wrongs, especially those connected with slavery and colonialism, should be addressed. And superficially, there are two possible responses: either they should do nothing at all, or they should recognise the tainted benefit, raise awareness about it, make a full public apology, and provide appropriate recompense to the descendants of direct victims. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-a-nation-apologise-for-the-crimes-of-its-past-66525">Should a nation apologise for the crimes of its past?</a>
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<p>But the histories of these institutions and the injustices themselves are extremely complex. So even if the first response is rejected, tricky issues arise with the alternative. </p>
<p>Let’s look first at the case for doing nothing. To begin with, distinctions need to be drawn between different kinds of historic wrongs, the benefits received, and degrees of culpability on the part of various institutions. </p>
<p>For example, by contrast with some of the cities in which they were established, British universities founded long after the formal abolition of slavery in most of the empire in 1833, are unlikely to have benefited directly from it. And any benefit derived from colonialism will probably have been shared by many other public and private institutions. </p>
<p>UK universities are, typically, also the beneficiaries of a range of other historic wrongs, with varying degrees of moral culpability. For example, construction of the University of Bristol’s iconic <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/university/visit/tower-tours/">Wills Memorial Building</a> was financed largely by the Wills tobacco fortune. Other historic sources of morally suspect income might include those derived from industries that were harmful to workers, the general public, and the environment. </p>
<p>All of this may suggest that singling out certain kinds of morally contaminated funds is less than honest about the full historical record. Yet to start apologising for the full range could be regarded as a vacuous exercise in tokenism, virtue signalling, gesture politics and moral grandstanding. </p>
<h2>Healing wounds</h2>
<p>But even if we reject the “do nothing” position, questions remain about how we should rise to the challenge of making suitable amends. Should we, for example, tear down statues of enthusiastic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/28/cecil-rhodes-statue-will-not-be-removed--oxford-university">imperialists like Cecil Rhodes</a>? </p>
<p>Or would it be better to keep them where they are, but add explanatory plaques exposing their hidden histories? Should we erect physical and virtual memorials to the victims, acknowledge the wrongs of the past, rename facilities which currently honour discredited historical figures, issue apologies, and find other ways of seeking to atone for the sins of our forebears? </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273537/original/file-20190509-183083-1kabj8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273537/original/file-20190509-183083-1kabj8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273537/original/file-20190509-183083-1kabj8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273537/original/file-20190509-183083-1kabj8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273537/original/file-20190509-183083-1kabj8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273537/original/file-20190509-183083-1kabj8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273537/original/file-20190509-183083-1kabj8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Bristol’s Wills Memorial Building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wills-memorial-building-landmark-university-bristol-30128479?src=38FwbSQo7VurZ0X22VNWPw-1-4">Shutterstock/Tupungato</a></span>
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<p>Several things need to be considered if we proceed down this path. First, while history matters, the wrongs of the present more urgently require attention than those of the past. And although there is almost universal consensus on what many of these are – human trafficking, child abuse, racism – there is much less agreement on how others, including excessive private wealth, chronic poverty, and limited access to higher education on the part of disadvantaged groups, should be tackled. </p>
<p>We should certainly seek to learn from the past. But the temptation to see it only as a series of heroic struggles between the good guys and the bad guys should be resisted. </p>
<p>The uncomfortable fact is that, in reality, history was typically much more complex and multidimensional. Two eminent late 18th-century Cambridge alumni, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/clarkson_thomas.shtml">Thomas Clarkson</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wilberforce_william.shtml">William Wilberforce</a>, were for example, leading lights in the movement to abolish slavery. And the Wills family tobacco business pioneered canteens, free medical care, sports facilities and paid holidays for its workers.</p>
<p>The moral imperative to apologise for the behaviour of distant ancestors, far removed from responsibility or control, is difficult to determine. That said, in certain contexts, it may contribute to healing deep wounds. </p>
<p>Finally, where they can be identified, the descendants of the direct victims of past wrongs need to be consulted about what should be done now. The city of Bristol was, for example, not only directly involved in slavery and colonialism – it was also one of the first English cities where freed and escaped slaves established their own communities. </p>
<p>There are two main reasons why excluded voices, particularly those of their descendants, should be heard: first, they do not always chime with those which echo round the ivory towers; and second, unless inclusive consultations take place with such parties, subtle forms of elite domination are likely to remain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Greer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History is complex and multi-dimensional. Any response to what happened in the past should reflect this.Steven Greer, Professor of Human Rights, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.