Black Reparations: It is Time for America to Fulfill the Promise, continued

It is true that the issue of compensating blacks is much more complex than that of compensation for other groups. "The History Place" chronicles the timeline of Hitler's reign of terror over the Jews as beginning in the 1930s to the mid-1940s – less than a decade, and the Japanese Americans were unjustly treated over a three-year period – relatively brief periods compared to the time during which blacks were (and continue to be) unjustly treated. Fortunately for the Jews, the Soviets and allies rescued them from Hitler's tyranny, and within a short time the United States initiated trials of some of Hitler's henchmen. On the other hand, black enslavement in America lasted for centuries (from 1619 to 1865), and institutional racism still exists. American society still bears the wounds of racism, which has continued to blight the lives of millions of African Americans to substandard living due to underpaid jobs and generally poor educational opportunities.

Bittker highlights the impact of America's racism on blacks today. A key-contributing factor lies in the lack of equal educational opportunities, and inferior educational opportunities perpetuate a cycle of poverty. In the period leading up to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, the NAACP had tried to demand that Southern school boards supply black children with "equal" facilities to those of whites, as a condition for maintaining separate schools. The demands were never met, and black children were forced to attend schools in "inferior buildings" with "smaller per student budgets" (43). The impact of this inferior education has had far-reaching consequences for blacks and persists to the present day. Jon M. Van Dyke, a proponent (like Bittker) of black reparations, asserts in Should America Pay? that "the educational divide between whites and blacks today is certainly linked to that deprivation." He further contends that this educational deprivation is "in many ways directly related to their economic status" (Winbush 61).

Proponents of reparations for blacks are convinced that America is legally and morally obligated to compensate blacks for the injustices meted out by whites during the centuries of slavery, as well as for the racist practices carried out after slavery. Van Dyke cites the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which asserts, inter alia, that "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race . . ." and that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" (Winbush 60). Parties to this declaration included the United States – a member state of the United Nations.

The call for America to compensate its black citizens has given rise to a movement similar to the modern civil rights movement. Indeed, in recent years the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the leading civil rights organizations, has joined the call for reparations. The group maintains that many of the socio-economic problems experienced by blacks today are attributable to the effects of slavery. It plans to seek reparations from companies with ties to the African slave trade. Companies will be asked to complete a "business diversity report card," and companies that refuse to do so will be boycotted. The organization will also try to get cities to pass laws that would make the completion of the "report card" a prerequisite for obtaining a contract with the city. The "report card" is part of the NAACP's Economic Reciprocity Initiative (ERI) which is aimed at, among other things, analyzing the "economic impact" of African American funds on various industries and creating opportunities for African Americans in the various areas such as employment and investment. The group cites the disadvantaged economic status of blacks and indicates: "the typical African American family had . . . only 58% as much (income as a typical white family) in 2002. … One in nine African Americans cannot find a job. White households had an average net worth of $468,200 in 2001 - more than 6 times the $75,700 average net worth of Black households. At the slow rate that the Black-White poverty gap has been narrowing since 1968, it would take 150 years (i.e., until the year 2152) to close the gap" (DeBose 2005).

Other individuals and institutions are weighing in on the discussion of reparations. In 2003, in the wake of a series of lawsuits brought against various institutions regarding reparations, the president of Brown University, Ruth Simmons, established a commission to investigate the university's role in slavery. Ancestors of the school's most important patron, Nicholas Brown, owned slave ships, and part of the university was built by slaves. Although no lawsuit was brought against the college, President Simmons felt that the time was right to engage the university community in this process aimed at producing a forthright historical account of the university's ties to slavery. The information gleaned would enable the commission to recommend action, if appropriate.

<next page>