You can guess what I think of slavery reparations, but I’ll hold my tongue for now. I want to know what you think. Brown University created a committee to discuss the issue. Writer John McWhorter and others are scheduled to publicly discuss slavery reparations.
Other sources:
- Project 21 Slavery Reparations Information Center
- NPR
- Reparations Central
- Rep. John Conyers’s Reparations Page
- Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks – and Racist Too
Update: I missed McWhorter’s latest on National Review, but here’s link to ‘Racism!’ They Charged.
You may also be interested in this post about a book forum I attended where McWhorter and others discussed similar issues.
Update II: An interesting idea has emerged. Would you agree to pay slavery reparations to black Americans, however defined (assume for a moment that payors and payees can be easily determined), in exchange for ending government-mandated skin color preferences?
Update III: I especially like this passage from Horowitz’s column:
Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) – all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a “healing,” what will?
I’ve said the same thing myself over and over. Reparations have been and are being paid, and people still aren’t satisfied. They want cash.
About the rewriting of law, that’s exactly what happened during the Civil Rights movement in order to dismantle government-mandated segregation. State laws against race mixing were state issues and should’ve been handled by the states, some said. Because of the odious nature of racial discrimination, it had to be dealt with on a national level, others said.
Arguments can and have been made on both sides that government-mandated, skin color segregation was immoral. Arguments can and have been made that government-mandated skin color preferences are immoral. But where does all the rhetoric get us?
Update IV (9/29) : Thanks for the comments. Here’s what I think of slavery reparations:
- Brown University’s Slavery Reparations Panel
- Social Security Reform As Reparations?
- Gospel of Oppression
