Reparations

Reparations

The 2020 movie called Worth that stars such greats as Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci and Amy Ryan is about the valuing of lives lost in the 9/11 tragedy. It is a fascinating study in how professionals go about putting human lives into dollars and cents and it may be one of the more instructive stories to help us deal with the next great reparations issue, dealing with the compensation for African Americans who’s ancestors suffered under slavery and all the follow-on discriminatory acts that still plague our society through the current day.

Reparations are always a big deal and are probably about as controversial as almost any sort of civil action taken. I am only a recent student of the arena, but I know that there were reparations after wars, which seems somewhat to be expected wherein the victor claims the spoils over the vanquished. Since the victors write the history books, they generally get to dictate who was right and wrong in the altercation. Yes, after WWII, the Potsdam Conference mandated that Germany pay what amounts to about $23 billion in reparations to the Allies. More relevant to the issue of American slavery, Germany also agreed in 1952 that they owed reparations to Jewish descendants of the Holocaust. In that controversial agreement, Germany agreed to pay $714 million to the state Israel (Specifically the World Jewish COnference) to be paid over fourteen years for the descendants. Perhaps most relevant is the case of the 1980 agreement by the U.S. Government to the Japanese Americans that were subjected of the internment during WWII as detailed by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. That process allocated $1.6 billion federal dollars to the 82,219 interned citizens at a rate of $20,000 apiece. Some might suggest that such a move was made by Jimmy Carter and thus not in keeping with the current profile of the American electorate. But then in 1983, Ronald Reagan himself, the grandfather of modern conservatism sponsored the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, in which the United States Congress specifically gave voice to the injustice by calling it a “grave injustice” to people of Japanese heritage.

It is clear that reparations are always easiest when the injustices are glaring and when they are dealt with soon after the injustice. They are also easier to handle if they are inflicted on a contained and definable universe of victims. Such seems to be the case with the Holocaust and the Japanese American internment situations. Slavery in America began in 1619, as we all know, and it wasn’t formally outlawed until 1865 with the passage of the 13th Amendment. But even then, the discriminatory Jim Crow laws at the state and local level continued for almost another 100 years until the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And of course, many black Americans would contend that even since 1964 the playing field has been less than level. As a nation, we have still not done for the descendants of slavery in America what we did for Japanese Americans or than the world insisted Germany do for Jewish descendants. But the extended timeframe of the injustice, whether you think it was 246 years, 346 years or 404 years, its a long time and spans 15 or more generations. That generational span is a challenge all unto itself since these are wrongs committed by our collective ancestors and yet paid out of our collective national balance sheet to a vast number of black Americans (41+ million), only some of whom may have descended from slaves (an estimated 10% of those are foreign born).

Recent studies show that many Americans reject reparations as a fair solution and the reasons range from the “impossibility” of quantifying the impact of slavery, the fact that some Americans believe that the playing field is now and has been level for some time, and the significant dislocation between the victims and those who are being asked to pay the reparations. The leader on this initiative of considering reparations at the state level is my home state of California. There has been a great deal of detailed quantification that’s been done to nail down the value or “worth” of the injustice and the number that is being bandied about is a maximum of $1.2 million per person. If we round that down to $1 million since it is a maximum number, that would imply a total reparations cost at the national level of some $35 trillion, just shy of the level of the national debt. No wonder there is pushback. If we just took the Japanese American number of $20,000 per person, it would total $700 billion, not an insignificant number itself. That starts to sound like a number that could at lest be managed realistically by the nation. The only problem is that the current discussions for California alone are already up to $800 billion, so good luck with that.

I recently read an article sent to me by one of my conservative friends that found the whole topic offensive. That article talks about the coming issue which is docketed in Sacramento this month. The study underlying this state legislative action focuses on issues like the wealth these people have foregone due to lower rates of Black home ownership ($148,099), the average devaluation of Black-owned businesses ($77,000), and each year of disproportionate incarceration factored by race, combining lost wages and freedom ($159,792). It adds up fast if you take the most fulsome look at the issue. as strange as it may sound, the loss of life is a less controversial cost/benefit calculation than the impact of home ownership impairment and higher levels of incarceration. Those are extra controversial in their quantification.

The math of this exercise is where the rubber meats the road, but long before we get to that, we really need to get a national consensus about the righteousness of the claim and the truth of the wrong that has been done. Unfortunately, the nation is perhaps further away from that “come to Jesus” moment than it may have been in the past. The conservative efforts taking root in places like Florida to erase the issue of systemic racism in American history implies that denial is a bigger barrier than it ever has been and that we are still a long way away from anything resembling a national apology. The same can be said about the softer corrective issues like affirmative action, which we’re more acceptable fifty years ago than they are today.

It is probably not a surprise to anyone that this reparations issue will meet up with its biggest initial battlefield being the state of California. It certainly wasn’t a surprise to my Florida resident pals that are happy to be living in the state most likely to quickly deny any responsibility for the impact on former slaves or their descendants. I don’t know how I feel about this all but i certainly know that I believe that our history makes our nation more rather than less culpable and should be prepared to issue an apology. I also believe that we have a long way to go to have a level playing field, so I am more rather than less inclined to support things like continued affirmative action, especially in the educational arena. I believe that financial reparations are the hardest issue to resolve and I suspect that like with most civil actions, some sort of rational settlement that may or may not pencil out exactly to the actual inflicted harm, but given that there are good aspects that black Americans have derived from their long-term family citizenship, looked at in the most objective sense, a settlement might be the only way to clear the divide on such a touchy issue that seeks to solve such a long-term issue that is, unfortunately, endemic to humankind.