"Thanks, but No Thanks"

I do not think the United States Government should give Reparations to Black people for the wrongs committed during slavery. I feel very strongly about it, actually, which sets me in a different camp from many of the folks with whom I often find my arms linked. But my justifications are such that I want the Reparations heads to hear me, and I look forward to building with them to see where we might go from here.

There is no amount of money that can come close to addressing the sinister atrocities of the kidnap, the middle passage, and the centuries of chattel bondage. There is no price that can be paid to address the subsequent lynch mob formations, sharecropping setup, and strange fruit harvests that have so intricately laced “The American Experience,” whether or not folks today choose to acknowledge it. And we don’t have to look hard to recognize contemporary parallels to these historical malefactions, either. Lynch mobs still operate daily, as evidenced by the recent incident in Ithaca, when a Black middle school girl was assaulted by a group of White boys on the school bus. Intentionally-created debt conditions, such as the sharecropping structure that tied newly-freed Black slaves to the land, come today under the guise of predatory lending and too-high interest rates that disproportionately harm folks in poor communities of color. And the Strange Fruit about which sister Holiday sung are so much a part of our contemporary context that nooses are showing up everywhere from small southern towns to Ivy League campuses. The legacy of slavery creates a unique time-space-experience conundrum, where many of us find ourselves struggling against contemporary manifestations of historical hegemonies. We are in constant conversation with our ancestors.

Five dollars, five hundred dollars, five thousand dollars, nor five million dollars can change what has been done.

Thus I clearly do not team up with anti-Reparations folks who claim that what was done is over, and we should leave it in the past (“I certainly didn’t hold slaves, and you were never a slave… so why should my tax dollars go to lining your pocket?”). Neither do I agree with those who assert the impracticability of the plan (“How would they know who to give the money to? What is done with biracial people? What is done with African and Caribbean Black people, whose ancestors were not slaves in the U.S.?”).

I’m saying that we are due an apology: public and grand and sincere and well-publicized. And I’m applauding those state governments and Fortune 500 Companies that have taken the lead in recognizing the ways in which Black slaves contributed to their vast success.

My problem with financial Reparations for Black Americans is the inevitable aftermath that would be linked to such a federal program, both on moral and political grounds. Morally, I am uncomfortable with the connection between sincere apology and money. The capitalistic society in which we live measures the magnitude of most things by the corresponding monetary value. There is a very real danger that even well-meaning folks would feel better about the whole “slavery thing” if at least they had put five on it. Politically, I have no doubt that the federal programs that are already under fire from those who claim racism is over would be wiped out for good. Those who consistently fight to dismantle Affirmative Action, WIC, Section 8 and like programs (which, we know provide aid not only to Black people) will become even more irrational in their leanings: “We gave ‘em money, what else to they expect?”

I agree wholly with Reparations proponents who point to our 40-acre-and-a-mule-less status and the ludicrous historical inaccuracies in our children’s textbooks as ways that we have been robbed our due. I support efforts to address these wrongs, such as targeted first-time home buyer programs and curriculum transformation in primary and secondary schools. And I think of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and wonder how we might learn from it to develop a process that fits our context. But I ultimately believe that the attendant risks of moral or political backlash are too great to accept a check – for any amount of money – from Uncle Sam.