Restoration

The United States is no stranger to paying reparations. From the Civil Liberties
Act of 1988 for the forced internment of Japanese Americans, to Medicaid for the
Marshallese after the federal government tested 67 nuclear weapons on their
islands, to the $10 million dollar fund established for victims (and descendents)
of the Tuskegee Experiment, there is long legal precedent for compensation for
state-sponsored suffering. Some of those cases are still progressing today-the case
of Trân Tô Nga for the US Army’s use of Agent Orange on Vietnamese civilians is
currently on appeal, and Congress held just last month hearings for compensation to
victims and families of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Hence, it cannot be argued
that there is no precedent-there is, and it stretches across decades. This essay
will attempt to establish a legal and economic case for a reparations policy to
African-Americans, understood not as lump-sum payments, but as communal investments
and legal changes, in order to provide justice for both the original sin of slavery
as well as later state-sponsored discrimination and murder under the Jim Crow
regime.

The first objection to a reparations plan is rather straightforward-that no

slaves are still alive today. But this is both misleading, as well as legally
irrelevant. Precedent established in the Indian Claims Act of 1946-and several of
the cases litigated under it, such as Pueblo of San Ildefenso v. United States and
Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. v. United States, merely to name a few, are
explicit examples of the United States federal government giving compensation to
groups for historic injustices even when all of the persons to whom the injustice
being litigated occurred had been deceased for centuries-and the case was brought
not by them, but their descendents. (San Ildefenso closed in 1975, concerning
events in 1858, whereas Cheyenne-Arapaho closed in 2007, concerning events
beginning in 1869). Hence, it is made apparent that legal precedent is rather
straightforward on this point-that the people having been subjected to great
injustices need not be alive for the government to be required to compensate their
descendents.

But this line of argument is misleading on its face, for the suffering being
remedied is not solely the horrors of slavery-it is the state-enforced
discrimination of Jim Crow. And whereas the last slaves died sometime in the 1970’s
(several unconfirmed claims make learning the identity of the true last survivor of
slavery impossible), human beings who suffered under, and those who upheld the Jim
Crow regime are still very much alive today. Even if we were to merely take the
idea that those who were directly impacted (contradicted by precedent established
in Pollard v. United States) and those directly responsible, both qualifications
are satisfied. The same applies for the US Government and the various State
Governments, who are all the same legal entities they were during segregation and
slavery.

The last objection takes two separate paths. The first is that it is
impossible to quantify the damage committed to African-Americans over 250 years (or
if it was, that in bankrupting the country, it would only make things worse) or
that lump-sum cash payments would fail to solve the problems at hand. Both of these
things are true. Hence, any reparations program should not be seen as payments to
individual African-Americans, but rather, programs and investments in order to
bring down the barriers of structural discrimination. Some of these would require
”merely” setting up or expanding a federal program (an example being an expansion
of the Environmental Protection Agency to combat the effects of pollution and
race’s effect on zoning laws or a medical coverage program for the same [Shertzer
et al, 2014]). Others would require a larger federal effort, such as decoupling
school funds from local property taxes (and in the case of the poorest schools,
local funding at all.) There are, of course, other structural changes that would be
wildly unpopular-zoning laws for single-family housing, reductions on the power of
the carceral state (understood first and foremost as the racist-from-the-outset War
on Drugs [Perry, 2007), but also in the vast network of fines and fees operated by
police in every city in the country [Singla et al, 2019], the COPS program [Weaver,
2007], qualified immunity [Maxted, 2021], etc.). These would not solve every
problem, of course. But they would go a long way towards alleviating and remedying
the legacy of state-sponsored discrimination and violence towards African-
Americans.

It should be understood that this is first and foremost an effort to uplift

and remedy the harms inflicted upon the black community in America over the past
250 years. But it is also an economic case for white Americans. The economic
effects of strong communities trickle outwards to others. In much the same way that
bars and bowling alleys shutter when a factory closes its doors, white residents of
rural Michigan benefit when downtown Detroit is not impoverished and beset by
crime. And in much the same, it is a moral case for the same. To be a citizen is
not merely to enjoy the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, it is to take on the
responsibilities ingrained in the same. It was the American government who built an
expansive system of chattel slavery and dehumanization, and it was that same
government who built a system of racial discrimination too strict for the Nazis.
(Moyers, 2017). It is now that same government which must craft remedies.

Citations
* Qureshi, Bilal (2013): From Wrong To Right: A U.S. Apology For Japanese
Internment: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/09/210138278/japanese-
internment-redress
* Rust, Susanne (2020): Decades later, Congress restores Medicaid for Marshallese
and other Pacific Islanders: https://www.google.com/url?
q=https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-12-21/congress-approves-medicaid-
for-marshallese&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1627113972091000&usg=AOvVaw30d-
LclFd5U1olYXrZXzDU
* * CDC: Tuskegee Study - Frequently Asked Questions:
https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/faq.html
* Welle, Duetch (2021): Tran To Nga's last stand against Agent Orange manufacturers
https://www.dw.com/en/agent-orange-lawsuit-france-monsanto-bayer-dow-chemical-
vietnam-war/a-57485400
* CSPAN (2021): Congressional Hearing on Tulsa Race Massacre:
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/180283
* Department of Justice (2020): Lead Up To The Indian Claims Commission Act Of
1946: https://www.justice.gov/enrd/lead-indian-claims-commission-act-1946
* Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. v. United States:
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2386998/cheyenne-arapaho-tribes-of-okla-v-
united-states/
* Pueblo of San Ildefenso v. United States:
https://www.leagle.com/decision/19751896513f2d138311650
* Pollard v. United States: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/FSupp/384/304/1370708/
* Shertzer et al (2014) Race, Ethnicity, and Discriminatory Zoning:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w20108/w20108.pdf
* Weaver, V. (2007). Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy.
Studies in American Political Development, 21(2), 230-265.
doi:10.1017/S0898588X07000211
* Pew Research Centre (2021): Facts About the U.S. Black Population:
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/facts-about-the-us-black-
population/
* American Enterprise Institute: The shocking story behind Nixon’s declaration of a
‘War on Drugs’ on this day in 1971 that targeted blacks and anti-war activists:
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-shocking-story-behind-nixons-declaration-of-a-
war-on-drugs-on-this-day-in-1971-that-targeted-blacks-and-anti-war-activists-3/
* Maxted (2021): The qualified immunity litigation machine: eviscerating the anti-
racist heart of § 1983, weaponizing interlocutory appeal, and the routine of police
violence against black lives:
https://www.coloradoadc.org/images/easyblog_articles/2021/Vol.98_Issue3_Maxted_APPR
OVED_-_PUBLISHED.pdf

* 1. Singla A, Kirschner C, Stone SB. Race, Representation, and Revenue:

Reliance on Fines and Forfeitures in City Governments. Urban Affairs Review.
2020;56(4):1132-1167. doi:10.1177/1078087419834632
* Moyers (2017): How the Nazis Used Jim Crow Laws as the Model for Their Race
Laws: https://truthout.org/articles/how-the-nazis-used-jim-crow-laws-as-the-model-
for-their-race-laws/