Reparations for slavery
Encyclopedia
Reparations for slavery
is a proposal that some type of compensation should be provided to the descendants of enslaved people in the United States
, in consideration of the coerced and uncompensated labor their ancestors performed over several centuries. This compensation has been proposed in a variety of forms, from individual monetary payments to land-based compensation schemes related to independence. The idea remains highly controversial and no broad consensus exists as to how it could be implemented. There have been similar calls for reparations from some Caribbean countries, and some African countries have called for reparations to their states for the loss of their population.
were defeated in the American Civil War
, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 to both "assure the harmony of action in the area of operations" and to solve problems caused by the masses of freed slaves, a temporary plan granting each freed family forty acres of tillable land
in the sea islands and around Charleston, South Carolina for the exclusive use of black people who had been enslaved. The army also had a number of unneeded mule
s which were given to settlers. Around 40,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) in Georgia and South Carolina. However, President Andrew Johnson
reversed the order after Lincoln
was assassinated and the land was returned to its previous owners. In 1867, Thaddeus Stevens
sponsored a bill for the redistribution of land to African Americans, but it was not passed.
Reconstruction came to an end in 1877 without the issue of reparations having been addressed. Thereafter, a deliberate movement of regression and oppression arose in southern states. Jim Crow laws
passed in some southeastern states to reinforce the existing inequality that slavery had produced. In addition white extremist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan
engaged in a massive campaign of intimidation throughout the Southeast in order to keep African-Americans in their prescribed social place. For decades this assumed inequality and injustice was ruled on in court decisions and debated in public discourse.
Reparation for slavery in what is now the United States is a complicated issue. Any proposal for reparations must take into account the role of the, then relatively newly formed, United States Government
in the importation and enslavement of Africans and that of the older and established European countries that created the colonies in which slavery was legal; as well as their efforts to stop the trade in slaves. It must also consider if and how much modern Americans have benefited from the importation and enslavement of Africans since the end of the slave trade in 1865.
Profit from slavery was not limited to a particular region: New England merchants profited from the importation of slaves, while Southern planters profited from the continued enslavement of Africans. In a 2007 column in The New York Times
, historian Eric Foner
writes:
does not track descent from slaves or slave owners and relies on self-reported racial categories.
Various estimates have been given if such payments were to be made. Harper's Magazine
has created an estimate that the total of reparations due is over 100 trillion dollars, based on 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865, with a compounded interest of 6%. Should all or part of this amount be paid to the descendants of slaves in the United States, the current U.S. government would only pay a fraction of that cost, over 40 trillion dollars, since it has been in existence only since 1789.
The Rev. M.J. Divine, better known as Father Divine
, was one of the earliest leaders to argue clearly for "retroactive compensation" and the message was spread via International Peace Mission publications. On July 28, 1951 Father Divine issued a "peace stamp" bearing the text: "Peace! All nations and peoples who have suppressed and oppressed the under-privileged, they will be obliged to pay the African slaves and their descendants for all uncompensated servitude and for all unjust compensation, whereby they have been unjustly deprived of compensation on the account of previous condition of servitude and the present condition of servitude. This is to be accomplished in the defense of all other under-privileged subjects and must be paid retroactive up-to-date".
On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives
passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws, but made no mention of reparations.
Some states have also apologized for slavery, including Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Duke University public policy professor William "Sandy" Darity said such apologies are a first step, but compensation is also necessary.
In April 2010, Harvard professor
Henry Louis Gates in a New York Times editorial advised reparations activists to consider the African role in the slave trade in regards to who should shoulder the cost of reparations.
, the United Kingdom
, and France
) who governed North America at that time. One additional problem is that the governments in power in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe are not still in power now. France, for example, has gone through several forms of government since it was last a colonial power in North America. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to hold the current French government liable for the enslavement of Africans that previous governments encouraged and benefited from between the 17th century up to the Louisiana Purchase
in 1803.
However, France can be held liable to Haiti, who won its independence from France in 1804, but the Haitians were victimized, enslaved, and imprisoned until slavery was abolished there by the French in 1848. It is also liable to all French speaking countries in Africa.
Inc. was her first target because of their practice of writing life insurance policies on the lives of enslaved Africans with slave owners as the beneficiaries. In response to Farmer-Paellmann's demand, Aetna Inc. issued a public apology, and the "corporate restitution movement" was born.
By 2002, nine lawsuits were filed around the country coordinated by Farmer-Paellmann and the Restitution Study Group—a New York non-profit. The litigation included 20 plaintiffs demanding restitution from 20 companies from the banking, insurance, textile, railroad, and tobacco industries. The cases were consolidated under to multidistrict litigation
in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
. The district court dismissed the lawsuits with prejudice
, and the claimants appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
.
On December 13, 2006, that Court, in an opinion written by Judge Richard Posner
, modified the district court's judgment to be a dismissal without prejudice, affirmed the majority of the district court's judgment, and reversed the portion of the district court's judgment dismissing the plaintiffs' consumer protection
claims, remanding the case for further proceedings consistent with its opinion http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/Z100WR3H.pdf. Thus, the plaintiffs may bring the lawsuit again, but must clear considerable procedural
and substantive hurdles first:
In October 2000, California passed a Slavery Era Disclosure Law requiring insurance companies doing business there to report on their role in slavery. The disclosure legislation, introduced by Senator Tom Hayden
, is the prototype for similar laws passed in 12 states around the United States.
The NAACP has called for more of such legislation at local and corporate levels. It quotes Dennis C. Hayes, CEO of the NAACP, as saying, "Absolutely, we will be pursuing reparations from companies that have historical ties to slavery and engaging all parties to come to the table." Brown University
, whose namesake family was involved in the slave trade, has also established a committee to explore the issue of reparations. In February 2007, Brown University announced a set of responses to its Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. While in 1995 the Southern Baptist Convention
apologized for the "sins" of racism, including slavery.
In December 2005, a boycott
was called by a coalition of reparations groups under the sponsorship of the Restitution Study Group. The boycott targets the student loan products of banks deemed complicit in slavery—particularly those identified in the Farmer-Paellmann litigation. As part of the boycott students are asked to choose from other banks to finance their student loans."
In 2005, JP Morgan Chase and Wachovia
both apologized for their connections to slavery.
published an article which argued that if emancipated slaves had been allowed to possess and retain the profits of their labor, their descendants might now control a much larger share of American social and monetary wealth. Not only did the freedmen and -women not receive a share of these profits, but they were stripped of the small amounts of compensation paid to some of them during Reconstruction. The wealth of the United States, they say, was greatly enhanced by the exploitation of Black slave labor. According to this view, reparations would be valuable primarily as a way of correcting modern economic imbalance. The US Department of Commerce has calculated that in modern US dollars calculated for inflation and interest, slavery generated trillions of dollars for the US economy.
, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government apologized for Japanese American internment
during World War II
and provided reparations of $20,000 to each survivor, to compensate for loss of property and liberty during that period. For many years, Native American tribes have received compensation for lands ceded to the United States by them in various treaties. Other countries have also opted to pay reparations for past grievances, such as the German government making reparations to Jews
and survivors and descendants of the Holocaust.
and soldiers in the Union Army
might be taxed to fund reparations despite the sacrifices their ancestors already made to end slavery.
In the case of Public Lands, European colonizers killed or relocated many Southeastern Native American
tribes. One argument against reparations is that in assigning public lands to African-Americans for the enslavement of their ancestors, a greater and further wrong would be committed against the Southeastern Native Americans who have ancestral claims and treaty rights to that same land.
In addition, several historians, such as João C. Curto, have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade
. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.
Finally, as documented in the book Black Slave Owners, by Larry Koger, slaves were bought and sold and used for purely financial reasons by blacks in the pre-Civil War era. Some of the slave owners were freed slaves who immediately began enslaving other blacks, creating the possibility that if reparations were paid, they could actually be paid to descendants of slave owners.
In "Up From Slavery
," former slave Booker T. Washington
wrote,
Conservative commentator David Horowitz writes,
(ratified in 1865). Thus, there is no legal foundation for compensating the descendants of slaves for the crime against their ancestors when, in strictly legal terms, no crime was committed. Chattel slavery is now considered by many to be highly immoral in the United States, but perfectly legal at the time. However, opponents of this legal argument contend that such was the case in Nazi Germany, whereby the activities of the Nazis were legal under German law; however unlike slavery, the German activities were precedented by the Allied Powers following WWI, which could not rule against the German government then due to lack of precedent—but could do so afterward following WWII on the basis of this established WWI precedent.
Other legal experts point to the fact that the current U.S. government did not exist prior to June 21, 1788 when the United States Constitution
was ratified. Therefore, the U.S. government inherited the institution of slavery, and cannot be held legally liable for the enslavement of Africans by Europeans prior to that time. Figuring out who was enslaved by whom in order to fairly apply reparations from the U.S. Government only to those who were enslaved under U.S. laws, would be an impossible task.
Some areas of the South had communities of freedman, such as existed in Savannah, Charleston and New Orleans, while in the North, for example, former slaves lived as freedman both before and after the creation of the United States in 1788. For example, in 1667 Dutch colonists freed some of their slaves and gave them property in what is now Manhattan. The descendants of Groote and Christina Manuell—two of those freed slaves—can trace their family's history as freedman back to the child of Groote and Christina, Nicolas Manuell, whom they consider their family's first freeborn African-American. In 1712, the British, then in control of New York, prohibited blacks from inheriting land, effectively ending property ownership for this family. While this is only one example out of thousands of enslaved persons, it does mean that not all slavery reparations can be determined by racial self-identification alone; reparations would have to include a determination of the free or slave status of one's African-American ancestors, as well as when and by whom they were enslaved and denied rights such as property ownership. Because of slavery, the original African heritage has been blended with the American experience, the same as it has been for generations of immigrants from other countries. For this reason, determining a "fair share" of reparations would be an impossible task.
The most effective legal argument against reparations for slavery from a legal (as opposed to a moral standpoint) is that the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits has long since passed. Thus, courts are prohibited from granting relief. This has been used effectively in several suits, including "In re African American Slave Descendants", which dismissed a high-profile suit against a number of businesses with ties to slavery. Perhaps the most cogent argument against reparations (though this is not a legal argument) is that few African-Americans are of "pure" African blood since the offspring of the original slaves were occasionally the progeny of Caucasian male masters (and a variety of White males) by means of rape, concubinage or threat and forcibly slave-breeding of African and Black female slaves.
injustices would, to a significant extent, be replaced by anger.
The Libertarian Party
, among other groups and individuals, has suggested that reparations would make racism worse:
A leading work against reparations is David Horowitz, Uncivil Wars: The Controversy Over Reparations for Slavery (2002). Other works that discuss problems with reparations, although they are sympathetic in some ways to it, include John Torpey, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (2006) and Alfred Brophy, Reparations Pro and Con (2006).
There is also a technical problem with identifying those who should be entitled to exemptions because of their ancestral opposition to Slavery. In particular, there was a significant Anti-Slavery Resistance Movement among the German and Mexican Texans during the Civil War http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/SS/mgs2.html which effectively negated the gains from New Mexico http://www.over-land.com/civilwar.html by choking off supplies.
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
is a proposal that some type of compensation should be provided to the descendants of enslaved people in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, in consideration of the coerced and uncompensated labor their ancestors performed over several centuries. This compensation has been proposed in a variety of forms, from individual monetary payments to land-based compensation schemes related to independence. The idea remains highly controversial and no broad consensus exists as to how it could be implemented. There have been similar calls for reparations from some Caribbean countries, and some African countries have called for reparations to their states for the loss of their population.
U.S. historical context
The arguments surrounding reparations are based on the formal discussion about many different reparations and actual land reparations received by African-Americans which were later taken away. In 1865, after the Confederate States of AmericaConfederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
were defeated in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 to both "assure the harmony of action in the area of operations" and to solve problems caused by the masses of freed slaves, a temporary plan granting each freed family forty acres of tillable land
40 acres and a mule
40 acres and a mule refers to the short-lived policy, during the last stages of the American Civil War in 1865, of providing arable land to black former slaves who had become free as a result of the advance of the Union armies into the territory previously controlled by the Confederacy,...
in the sea islands and around Charleston, South Carolina for the exclusive use of black people who had been enslaved. The army also had a number of unneeded mule
Mule
A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...
s which were given to settlers. Around 40,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) in Georgia and South Carolina. However, President Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...
reversed the order after Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
was assassinated and the land was returned to its previous owners. In 1867, Thaddeus Stevens
Thaddeus Stevens
Thaddeus Stevens , of Pennsylvania, was a Republican leader and one of the most powerful members of the United States House of Representatives...
sponsored a bill for the redistribution of land to African Americans, but it was not passed.
Reconstruction came to an end in 1877 without the issue of reparations having been addressed. Thereafter, a deliberate movement of regression and oppression arose in southern states. Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
passed in some southeastern states to reinforce the existing inequality that slavery had produced. In addition white extremist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
engaged in a massive campaign of intimidation throughout the Southeast in order to keep African-Americans in their prescribed social place. For decades this assumed inequality and injustice was ruled on in court decisions and debated in public discourse.
Reparation for slavery in what is now the United States is a complicated issue. Any proposal for reparations must take into account the role of the, then relatively newly formed, United States Government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
in the importation and enslavement of Africans and that of the older and established European countries that created the colonies in which slavery was legal; as well as their efforts to stop the trade in slaves. It must also consider if and how much modern Americans have benefited from the importation and enslavement of Africans since the end of the slave trade in 1865.
Profit from slavery was not limited to a particular region: New England merchants profited from the importation of slaves, while Southern planters profited from the continued enslavement of Africans. In a 2007 column in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, historian Eric Foner
Eric Foner
Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...
writes:
- [In] the Colonial era, Southern planters regularly purchased imported slaves, and merchants in New York and New England profited handsomely from the trade.
The American RevolutionAmerican RevolutionThe American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
threw the slave trade and slavery itself into crisis. In the run-up to war, Congress banned the importation of slaves as part of a broader nonimportation policy. During the War of Independence, tens of thousands of slaves escaped to British lines. Many accompanied the British out of the country when peace arrived.
Inspired by the ideals of the Revolution, most of the newly independent American states banned the slave trade. But importation resumed to South Carolina and Georgia, which had been occupied by the British during the war and lost the largest number of slaves.
The slave trade was a major source of disagreement at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. South Carolina’s delegates were determined to protect slavery, and they had a powerful impact on the final document. They originated the three-fifths clauseThree-fifths compromiseThe Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise between Southern and Northern states reached during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in which three-fifths of the enumerated population of slaves would be counted for representation purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the...
(giving the South extra representation in Congress by counting part of its slave population) and threatened disunion if the slave trade were banned, as other states demanded.
The result was a compromise barring Congress from prohibiting the importation of slaves until 1808. Some Anti-Federalists, as opponents of ratification were called, cited the slave trade clause as a reason why the Constitution should be rejected, claiming it brought shame upon the new nation....
As slavery expanded into the Deep SouthDeep SouthThe Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
, a flourishing internal slave trade replaced importation from Africa. Between 1808 and 1860, the economies of older states like Virginia came increasingly to rely on the sale of slaves to the cotton fields of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. But demandDemand- Economics :*Demand , the desire to own something and the ability to pay for it*Demand curve, a graphic representation of a demand schedule*Demand deposit, the money in checking accounts...
far outstripped supplyMaterielMateriel is a term used in English to refer to the equipment and supplies in military and commercial supply chain management....
, and the price of slaves rose inexorably, placing ownership outside the reach of poorer Southerners.
United States Government
Some proposals have called for direct payments from the U.S. government. One such proposal delivered in the McCormick Convention Center conference room for the first National Reparations Convention by Howshua Amariel, a Chicago social activist, would require the federal government to make reparations to proven descendants of slaves. In addition, Amariel stated "For those blacks who wish to remain in America, they should receive reparations in the form of free education, free medical, free legal and free financial aid for 50 years with no taxes levied," and "For those desiring to leave America, every black person would receive a million dollars or more, backed by gold, in reparation." At the convention Amariel's proposal received approval from the 100 or so participants, nevertheless the question of who would receive such payments, who should pay them and in what amount, has remained highly controversial, since the United States CensusUnited States Census
The United States Census is a decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution. The population is enumerated every 10 years and the results are used to allocate Congressional seats , electoral votes, and government program funding. The United States Census Bureau The United States Census...
does not track descent from slaves or slave owners and relies on self-reported racial categories.
Various estimates have been given if such payments were to be made. Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
has created an estimate that the total of reparations due is over 100 trillion dollars, based on 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865, with a compounded interest of 6%. Should all or part of this amount be paid to the descendants of slaves in the United States, the current U.S. government would only pay a fraction of that cost, over 40 trillion dollars, since it has been in existence only since 1789.
The Rev. M.J. Divine, better known as Father Divine
Father Divine
Father Divine , also known as Reverend M. J. Divine, was an African American spiritual leader from about 1907 until his death. His full self-given name was Reverend Major Jealous Divine, and he was also known as "the Messenger" early in his life...
, was one of the earliest leaders to argue clearly for "retroactive compensation" and the message was spread via International Peace Mission publications. On July 28, 1951 Father Divine issued a "peace stamp" bearing the text: "Peace! All nations and peoples who have suppressed and oppressed the under-privileged, they will be obliged to pay the African slaves and their descendants for all uncompensated servitude and for all unjust compensation, whereby they have been unjustly deprived of compensation on the account of previous condition of servitude and the present condition of servitude. This is to be accomplished in the defense of all other under-privileged subjects and must be paid retroactive up-to-date".
On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws, but made no mention of reparations.
Some states have also apologized for slavery, including Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Duke University public policy professor William "Sandy" Darity said such apologies are a first step, but compensation is also necessary.
In April 2010, Harvard professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
Henry Louis Gates in a New York Times editorial advised reparations activists to consider the African role in the slave trade in regards to who should shoulder the cost of reparations.
Ex-colonial governments
The full cost of slavery reparations prior to 1776 would be borne by the governments of the European countries (SpainSpain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) who governed North America at that time. One additional problem is that the governments in power in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe are not still in power now. France, for example, has gone through several forms of government since it was last a colonial power in North America. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to hold the current French government liable for the enslavement of Africans that previous governments encouraged and benefited from between the 17th century up to the Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...
in 1803.
However, France can be held liable to Haiti, who won its independence from France in 1804, but the Haitians were victimized, enslaved, and imprisoned until slavery was abolished there by the French in 1848. It is also liable to all French speaking countries in Africa.
African Governments
There are no indications that African governments will be expected to take part in any future reparation rounds. West African governments, in particular Nigeria have become wealthier in recent years due to oil production and could be well placed to compensate descendants of slaves as a result of collusion and organization by traditional tribal leaders in the selling and exporting of their own people.Private institutions
Private institutions and corporations were also involved in slavery. On March 8, 2000, Reuters News Service reported that Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a law school graduate, initiated a one-woman campaign making a historic demand for restitution and apologies from modern companies that played a direct role in enslaving Africans. AetnaAetna
Aetna, Inc. is an American health insurance company, providing a range of traditional and consumer directed health care insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmaceutical, dental, behavioral health, group life, long-term care, and disability plans, and medical management...
Inc. was her first target because of their practice of writing life insurance policies on the lives of enslaved Africans with slave owners as the beneficiaries. In response to Farmer-Paellmann's demand, Aetna Inc. issued a public apology, and the "corporate restitution movement" was born.
By 2002, nine lawsuits were filed around the country coordinated by Farmer-Paellmann and the Restitution Study Group—a New York non-profit. The litigation included 20 plaintiffs demanding restitution from 20 companies from the banking, insurance, textile, railroad, and tobacco industries. The cases were consolidated under to multidistrict litigation
Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation
The United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is a special body within the United States federal court system which manages multidistrict litigation. It was established by Congress in 1968 under 28 U.S.C...
in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois is the trial-level court with jurisdiction over the northern counties of Illinois....
. The district court dismissed the lawsuits with prejudice
Prejudice (law)
There are two meanings for "prejudice" in legal proceedings; civil and criminal.-Civil procedure:Within legal civil procedure, prejudice is a loss or injury, and refers specifically to a formal determination against a claimed legal right or cause of action. Thus, in a civil case, dismissal without...
, and the claimants appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts:* Central District of Illinois* Northern District of Illinois...
.
On December 13, 2006, that Court, in an opinion written by Judge Richard Posner
Richard Posner
Richard Allen Posner is an American jurist, legal theorist, and economist who is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...
, modified the district court's judgment to be a dismissal without prejudice, affirmed the majority of the district court's judgment, and reversed the portion of the district court's judgment dismissing the plaintiffs' consumer protection
Consumer protection
Consumer protection laws designed to ensure fair trade competition and the free flow of truthful information in the marketplace. The laws are designed to prevent businesses that engage in fraud or specified unfair practices from gaining an advantage over competitors and may provide additional...
claims, remanding the case for further proceedings consistent with its opinion http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/Z100WR3H.pdf. Thus, the plaintiffs may bring the lawsuit again, but must clear considerable procedural
Civil procedure
Civil procedure is the body of law that sets out the rules and standards that courts follow when adjudicating civil lawsuits...
and substantive hurdles first:
If one or more of the defendants violated a state law by transporting slaves in 1850, and the plaintiffs can establish standing to sue, prove the violation despite its antiquity, establish that the law was intended to provide a remedy (either directly or by providing the basis for a common law action for conspiracy, conversion, or restitution) to lawfully enslaved persons or their descendants, identify their ancestors, quantify damages incurred, and persuade the court to toll the statute of limitations, there would be no further obstacle to the grant of relief.
In October 2000, California passed a Slavery Era Disclosure Law requiring insurance companies doing business there to report on their role in slavery. The disclosure legislation, introduced by Senator Tom Hayden
Tom Hayden
Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden is an American social and political activist and politician, known for his involvement in the animal rights, and the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is the former husband of actress Jane Fonda and the father of actor Troy Garity.-Life and...
, is the prototype for similar laws passed in 12 states around the United States.
The NAACP has called for more of such legislation at local and corporate levels. It quotes Dennis C. Hayes, CEO of the NAACP, as saying, "Absolutely, we will be pursuing reparations from companies that have historical ties to slavery and engaging all parties to come to the table." Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, whose namesake family was involved in the slave trade, has also established a committee to explore the issue of reparations. In February 2007, Brown University announced a set of responses to its Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. While in 1995 the Southern Baptist Convention
Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members...
apologized for the "sins" of racism, including slavery.
In December 2005, a boycott
Boycott
A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...
was called by a coalition of reparations groups under the sponsorship of the Restitution Study Group. The boycott targets the student loan products of banks deemed complicit in slavery—particularly those identified in the Farmer-Paellmann litigation. As part of the boycott students are asked to choose from other banks to finance their student loans."
In 2005, JP Morgan Chase and Wachovia
Wachovia
Wachovia was a diversified financial services company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before its acquisition by Wells Fargo in 2008, Wachovia was the fourth-largest bank holding company in the United States based on total assets...
both apologized for their connections to slavery.
Social services
A number of supporters for reparations advocate that compensation should be in the form of community rehabilitation and not payments to individual descendants.Accumulated wealth
In 2008 the American Humanist AssociationAmerican Humanist Association
The American Humanist Association is an educational organization in the United States that advances Humanism. "Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that...
published an article which argued that if emancipated slaves had been allowed to possess and retain the profits of their labor, their descendants might now control a much larger share of American social and monetary wealth. Not only did the freedmen and -women not receive a share of these profits, but they were stripped of the small amounts of compensation paid to some of them during Reconstruction. The wealth of the United States, they say, was greatly enhanced by the exploitation of Black slave labor. According to this view, reparations would be valuable primarily as a way of correcting modern economic imbalance. The US Department of Commerce has calculated that in modern US dollars calculated for inflation and interest, slavery generated trillions of dollars for the US economy.
Precedents
Under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988Civil Liberties Act of 1988
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 is a United States federal law that granted reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been interned by the United States government during World War II. The act was sponsored by California's Democratic Congressman Norman Mineta, an internee as a child, and Wyoming's...
, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government apologized for Japanese American internment
Japanese American internment
Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and provided reparations of $20,000 to each survivor, to compensate for loss of property and liberty during that period. For many years, Native American tribes have received compensation for lands ceded to the United States by them in various treaties. Other countries have also opted to pay reparations for past grievances, such as the German government making reparations to Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and survivors and descendants of the Holocaust.
Relocation of injustice
The principal argument against reparations is that their cost would not be imposed upon the perpetrators of slavery who were a very small percentage of society with 4.8% of southern whites (only 1.4% of all whites in the country), nor confined to those who can be shown to be the specific indirect beneficiaries of slavery, but would simply be indiscriminately borne by taxpayers per se. Those making this argument often add that the descendants of white abolitionistsAbolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
and soldiers in the Union Army
Union Army
The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...
might be taxed to fund reparations despite the sacrifices their ancestors already made to end slavery.
In the case of Public Lands, European colonizers killed or relocated many Southeastern Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
tribes. One argument against reparations is that in assigning public lands to African-Americans for the enslavement of their ancestors, a greater and further wrong would be committed against the Southeastern Native Americans who have ancestral claims and treaty rights to that same land.
In addition, several historians, such as João C. Curto, have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.
Finally, as documented in the book Black Slave Owners, by Larry Koger, slaves were bought and sold and used for purely financial reasons by blacks in the pre-Civil War era. Some of the slave owners were freed slaves who immediately began enslaving other blacks, creating the possibility that if reparations were paid, they could actually be paid to descendants of slave owners.
Identification of victims and of levels of victimization
Identification of actual descendants of slaves would be an enormous undertaking, because such descent is not simply identical with present racial self-identification. And levels of actual victimization would be impossible to identify; had freed slaves been given their recoverable damages, they may have followed different patterns of marriage and of reproduction, and in some cases would not have made their offspring the sole or even principal heirs to their estates. (Opponents of reparations refer to the lost wealth of slaves as “dissipated”, not in the sense of simply having ceased to exist, but in the sense of being untraceable and transmitted elsewhere.)Comparative utility
It has been argued that reparations for slavery cannot be justified on the basis that slave descendants are subjectively worse off as a result of slavery, because it has been suggested that they are better off than they would have been in Africa if the slave trade had never happened. The slave population in the US grew six-fold after the importation of slaves was ceased. In all other countries the slave population either did not increase or declined. This was because the treatment of slaves in the US was generally very good - birth survival rates exceeded that of poor whites and was twice that of their native Africa. In addition, each state had laws against the abuse of slaves and many religious groups rigorously enforced them.In "Up From Slavery
Up From Slavery
Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of Booker T. Washington detailing his slow and steady rise from a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton University, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the...
," former slave Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
wrote,
- I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction... Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. ...This I say, not to justify slavery – on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive – but to call attention to a fact, and to show how ProvidenceDivine ProvidenceIn Christian theology, divine providence, or simply providence, is God's activity in the world. " Providence" is also used as a title of God exercising His providence, and then the word are usually capitalized...
so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose. When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which, a good Providence has already led us. http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/slavery/i.html
Conservative commentator David Horowitz writes,
- The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNPGNPGross National Product is the market value of all products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the residents of a country...
of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomePer capita incomePer capita income or income per person is a measure of mean income within an economic aggregate, such as a country or city. It is calculated by taking a measure of all sources of income in the aggregate and dividing it by the total population...
s in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were taken. (From Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks – and Racist Too)
Legal argument against reparations
Many legal experts point to the fact that slavery was not illegal in the United States prior to the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States ConstitutionThirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On...
(ratified in 1865). Thus, there is no legal foundation for compensating the descendants of slaves for the crime against their ancestors when, in strictly legal terms, no crime was committed. Chattel slavery is now considered by many to be highly immoral in the United States, but perfectly legal at the time. However, opponents of this legal argument contend that such was the case in Nazi Germany, whereby the activities of the Nazis were legal under German law; however unlike slavery, the German activities were precedented by the Allied Powers following WWI, which could not rule against the German government then due to lack of precedent—but could do so afterward following WWII on the basis of this established WWI precedent.
Other legal experts point to the fact that the current U.S. government did not exist prior to June 21, 1788 when the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
was ratified. Therefore, the U.S. government inherited the institution of slavery, and cannot be held legally liable for the enslavement of Africans by Europeans prior to that time. Figuring out who was enslaved by whom in order to fairly apply reparations from the U.S. Government only to those who were enslaved under U.S. laws, would be an impossible task.
Some areas of the South had communities of freedman, such as existed in Savannah, Charleston and New Orleans, while in the North, for example, former slaves lived as freedman both before and after the creation of the United States in 1788. For example, in 1667 Dutch colonists freed some of their slaves and gave them property in what is now Manhattan. The descendants of Groote and Christina Manuell—two of those freed slaves—can trace their family's history as freedman back to the child of Groote and Christina, Nicolas Manuell, whom they consider their family's first freeborn African-American. In 1712, the British, then in control of New York, prohibited blacks from inheriting land, effectively ending property ownership for this family. While this is only one example out of thousands of enslaved persons, it does mean that not all slavery reparations can be determined by racial self-identification alone; reparations would have to include a determination of the free or slave status of one's African-American ancestors, as well as when and by whom they were enslaved and denied rights such as property ownership. Because of slavery, the original African heritage has been blended with the American experience, the same as it has been for generations of immigrants from other countries. For this reason, determining a "fair share" of reparations would be an impossible task.
The most effective legal argument against reparations for slavery from a legal (as opposed to a moral standpoint) is that the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits has long since passed. Thus, courts are prohibited from granting relief. This has been used effectively in several suits, including "In re African American Slave Descendants", which dismissed a high-profile suit against a number of businesses with ties to slavery. Perhaps the most cogent argument against reparations (though this is not a legal argument) is that few African-Americans are of "pure" African blood since the offspring of the original slaves were occasionally the progeny of Caucasian male masters (and a variety of White males) by means of rape, concubinage or threat and forcibly slave-breeding of African and Black female slaves.
Reparations could cause increased racism
Anti-reparations advocates argue reparations payments based on race alone would be perceived by nearly everyone as a monstrous injustice, embittering many, and inevitably setting back race relations. In this view, apologetic feelings some whites may hold because of slavery and past civil rightsCivil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
injustices would, to a significant extent, be replaced by anger.
The Libertarian Party
Libertarian Party (United States)
The Libertarian Party is the third largest and fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects its brand of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated, laissez-faire markets, strong civil liberties, minimally regulated migration...
, among other groups and individuals, has suggested that reparations would make racism worse:
- A renewed demand by African-Americans for slavery reparations should be rejected because such payments would only increase racial hostility... (From press release)
A leading work against reparations is David Horowitz, Uncivil Wars: The Controversy Over Reparations for Slavery (2002). Other works that discuss problems with reparations, although they are sympathetic in some ways to it, include John Torpey, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (2006) and Alfred Brophy, Reparations Pro and Con (2006).
There is also a technical problem with identifying those who should be entitled to exemptions because of their ancestral opposition to Slavery. In particular, there was a significant Anti-Slavery Resistance Movement among the German and Mexican Texans during the Civil War http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/SS/mgs2.html which effectively negated the gains from New Mexico http://www.over-land.com/civilwar.html by choking off supplies.
See also
- History of slaveryHistory of slaveryThe history of slavery covers slave systems in historical perspective in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved...
in the world - History of slavery in the United StatesHistory of slavery in the United StatesSlavery in the United States was a form of slave labor which existed as a legal institution in North America for more than a century before the founding of the United States in 1776, and continued mostly in the South until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in...
- The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in AmericaThe National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in AmericaThe National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America is an organization based out of Washington, DC that seeks financial compensation for the descendants of former slaves in the United States.-Goals:...
- Republic of New AfrikaRepublic of New AfrikaThe Republic of New Afrika , was a social movement that proposed three objectives. First, the creation of an independent African-American-majority country situated in the southeastern United States. A similar claim is made for all the black-majority counties and cities throughout the United States...
- Slavery reparation scamSlavery Reparation ScamThe "Slave Reparations Act" is a tax fraud related to the concept of reparations for slavery...
- LiberiaLiberiaLiberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
- 40 acres and a mule40 acres and a mule40 acres and a mule refers to the short-lived policy, during the last stages of the American Civil War in 1865, of providing arable land to black former slaves who had become free as a result of the advance of the Union armies into the territory previously controlled by the Confederacy,...
External links
- Apology and Reparations for Slavery – Legal articles that argue for and against reparations, compiled by law professor Vernellia R. Randall, University of Dayton.
- Reparations for Slavery: a Reader – a collection of essays on the topic of reparations for slavery.
- Reparations, R.I.P., City Journal, Autumn 2008
- Slavery Reparations: A Misguided Movement – Professor Peter H. Schuck, Yale Law School, JURIST Guest Columnist
- Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act – A bill introduced by Congressman John ConyersJohn ConyersJohn Conyers, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1965 . He is a member of the Democratic Party...
, Jr. every year since 1989, which has not yet passed. - The Legal Basis of the Claim for Slavery Reparations – Anthony Gifford, American Bar Association, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities.
- Reparations for Slavery – lesson plan for high school students, by the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Offers arguments for and against reparations from one of the links.
- Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks – and Racist Too – David Horowitz
- Indian Removal Act – The Library of Congress' site on the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
- Slavery Reparations Information Center – Links to articles for and against reparations compiled and maintained by the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives
- National Coalition Of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA)
- Making Amends Debate Continues Over Reparations for U.S. Slavery – National Public Radio, August 27, 2001.
- BANISHED site for Independent LensIndependent LensAiring weekly on PBS through ITVS, the Emmy Award-winning series Independent Lens introduces new drama and documentary films made by independent filmmakers. Past seasons of Independent Lens have been presented by hosts Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Susan Sarandon, Edie Falco, Terrence Howard, Maggie...
on PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....