Estimates of the current market value of slave labor performed in the U.S. range as high as $1.4 trillion. In the 139 years since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, many attempts have been made to even the social and economic playing field for African-Americans. The fact is that reparations would not solve the problem. What is needed is a formal apology and the responsible allocation of funds to programs that actually help the underprivileged.
The concept behind reparations is simple: all one must do to be awarded compensation is to prove in court that a present entity, like a corporation, profited from the slave labor of his or her ancestors. One proposal would compel the federal government to foot the $1.4 trillion bill or 70 percent of the annual federal budget.
First, the sad fact is that slavery was legal in the United States before the ratification of the 13th Amendment, and to hand down a ruling against an institution which participated in slavery would violate ex post facto laws. Second, reparations succeed only in cheapening human suffering; the true crime was the deplorable treatment of human beings, not monetary exploitation. Third, to say that current African-Americans are affected enough by slavery to be deserving of recompense furthers a trend of destructive victimization.
"You don't get away with murder just because you did it 100 years ago," UB law professor and reparations supporter Makau Mutua claims in a Buffalo News article, "People should be infinitely responsible for their wrongs." That may sound good, but a person is responsible for what he or she does forever, not his or her descendants. Furthermore, the argument Mutua voices is too broad to be practical, and lacks a clear standard for determining why only certain people deserve monetary compensation for their suffering.
Women, for example, still make 25 percent less than their male counterparts in the same jobs, and were not eligible to vote in federal elections until 1920. Add that to the fact that women had limited-to-no property rights until the 20th century and were legally property of their husbands or fathers, and it forms a striking similarity to the ground upon which slave reparation claims are based. Are women then eligible for financial compensation as well? And what about other groups that were negatively impacted by discriminatory practices - should they, too, be paid? In that case, who determines eligibility and payment? And where is the line between a check and tough luck drawn?
Instead of paying out the greater part of our federal budget to people who can prove that their ancestors languished in state-sanctioned bondage, we should invest in a long-term solution. Schools in low-income areas, for example, are almost never comparable to those in wealthy ones and their students almost never do as well. These are the real challenges facing minorities, not whether or not a corporation profited off of the backs of their ancestors.
This is a country built not on equality but on equal opportunity, and it is the responsibility of the government not to throw money at the problem but to once and for all recognize the gross discrimination practiced by our ancestors, issue a formal apology and give disadvantaged groups the chance to overcome their circumstances. We need to provide the poor, in whom the effects of racial discrimination are most evident, with the tool necessary to equalize their chance for success with whites: equal education. Not until all students have access to the same quality education growing up will disparities in testing statistics and academic achievement or earning power and social status between races disappear.
It will only be when poor black students are afforded positive structure and comparable educational opportunities from an early age that the need for later compensatory measures will disappear.
