Group Recommends Reparations for Slavery

by

John J. Dunphy

(Originally published in the 10–5–16 edition of The Telegraph of Alton, IL)

Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, an organization affiliated with the United Nations, spent 14 years researching racism in the United States. It finally announced its conclusions last month: the slave trade was a crime against humanity and reparations are in order. The report strongly encourages Congress to pass the Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for People of African Descent Act, a bill sponsored by Congressman John Conyers, Jr., a Michigan Democrat.

Introduced into Congress in January of 2015, Conyers drafted the bill “to acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.”

The Working Group’s report was harshly critical of “the alarming levels of police brutality and excessive use of lethal force by law enforcement officials, committed with impunity against people of African descent in the United States.” CBS News quoted Ricardo A. Sunga III of the Philippines, the Working Group’s chairperson, as stating, “The group urges a serious consideration of a full formal apology, repatriation, cultural institutions, public health initiatives, African knowledge programs, psychological rehabilitation, technological transfer and debt cancellation.”

The United States isn’t the only nation that has been challenged to offer reparations for slavery. Caricom, a coalition of Caribbean communities, seeks reparations and other measures from those European nations that once held colonies in the Caribbean and utilized slave labor. Caricom’s web site notes that the Parliament of Jamaica in 2015 supported a motion introduced in the House to pursue reparations from Great Britain.

Reparations for American slavery isn’t a new idea. One of the earliest attempts to compensate Americans blacks for their enslavement and stolen labor was made by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, when he issued Special Field Orders №15 in January of 1865 during the Civil War. Sherman’s orders provided for the confiscation of 400,000 acres of coastal land in the Confederate states of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The land was to be divided into parcels of not more than 40 acres and distributed to slave families that Sherman had liberated during his celebrated March to the Sea. The measure became popularly known as “40 Acres and A Mule.” The Freedmen’s Bureau, established by Congress during the Civil War, also attempted to empower former slaves by getting them land that had been confiscated from Confederates. Both plans were stymied by politicians, however, and “40 Acres and A Mule” became yet another broken promise to black Americans.

In a painstakingly-researched article titled “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, “Won’t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided.” I beg to differ. Passing Conyers’ bill at this time would transform our nation’s racial divide from a valley into a canyon. The facts speak for themselves. A recent HUD study demonstrated that people of color are shown fewer houses and apartments when looking for places to live. John Hopkins University researchers in 2012 found that primary care physicians’ unconscious racial bias negatively impacts the health care received by people of color. Justice Department statistics prove that a black driver is about 31 percent more likely to get pulled over by police than a white driver. And speaking of police, consider those unarmed, non-threatening black Americans who have been killed by law enforcement officers.

Reparations at this point in time would serve only to worsen racism by giving right-wing demagogues yet another soapbox from which to spew hate. We must dismantle the systemic racism that makes “with liberty and justice for all” an empty promise for too many Americans. Then, we can seriously discuss reparations.

John J. Dunphy owns The Second Reading Book Shop in Alton. His books include Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials and Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois.