Reparations

What are Reparations?

The making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.

Forms of reparations which have been proposed or given in the United States by city, county, state, and national governments or private institutions include: individual monetary payments, settlements, scholarships, waiving of fees, and systemic initiatives to offset injustices, land-based compensation related to independence, apologies and acknowledgements of the injustices, tokenary measures (such as naming a building after someone), and the removal of monuments and streets named to slave owners and defenders of slavery.

First mentioned on a serious national stage by Jessie Jackson when running for President in 1985.  Message quickly caught attention by NAACP - formed committees to study

Since inception the message has become more convoluted and distorted.

1. The reparationist claim that the United States must compensate the descendants of slavery for 400 years of slavery. The United States came into being in 1788 when the constitution was approved. The institution of slavery existed for 77 years before the 13th amendment abolished slavery.
   
2. Who sold people into slavery, and who purchased them? Black Africans from many countries in Africa raided other African countries and they sold to the traders. —— The Arab slave trade took more Blacks out of Africa and for a longer period than did the European traders. African slaves transported by Arabs across the Sahara Desert died more often than those transported thru the middle passage by ship.

Between 1525 and and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade thru the new world, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the new world. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. 

1. Who owned slaves? While the southern economy enriched the large plantation owners, it did little to help the majority of southern whites. At its peak, only 25% of Southern whites or members of their families owned slaves. 

How many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly into North America. About 388,000. A tiny percentage!

As a tiny percentage, the Blacks in America have prospered to a far greater degree than those sent elsewhere. If Black America were a separate country, its GDP would make it the 17th largest economy and wealthiest in the world.

Robert Johnson, 1st black Billionaire, owner of an NBA team, owner of BET, sold both, addressed reparations very seriously and came to the magic number of $14 trillion or $453,000 to each black person in the US to make sufficient amends. His contention is that only a direct transfer of wealth ($) will make atonement complete because all things done in the past did not work.

Who pays Whom?  On Former President Obama’s maternal side there were slave owners and his father came from Kenya, a former slave trading state. 

Does he get a check or cut a check?  Vice President Kamala Harris, an outspoken proponent of reparations acknowledges slave owners in her family.  Does she get a check or cut a check?

Question: Will there be a clear investigation into every black to determine if they are a descendant of North American slaves or do we just start atoning? Answer: All black people because whether they were descended from slaves or not, they were discriminated against. Jim Crow, Red Line, applicants for loans, etc. 

Where does money come from? It was Jesse Jackson’s suggestion that the seed money would initiate from white pension plans. 

Does anyone here doubt reparations will occur?  Have reparations already started?

Warnock’s Black farmer reparations. This was in the $1.9 trillion COVID 19 Relief bill recently passed and signed into law.   A little-known element of President Biden’s massive stimulus relief package would pay billions of dollars to disadvantaged farmers — benefiting Black farmers in a way that some experts say no legislation has since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Of the $10.4 billion in the American Rescue Plan that will support agriculture, approximately half would go to disadvantaged farmers, according to estimates from the Farm Bureau, an industry organization. About a quarter of disadvantaged farmers are Black. The money would provide debt relief as well as grants, training, education and other forms of assistance aimed at acquiring land.

While it’s a fraction of the $1.9 trillion bill that passed in the Senate on Saturday, advocates say it still represents a step toward righting a wrong after a century of mistreatment of Black farmers by the government and others. Some say it is a form of reparations for African Americans who have suffered a long history of racial oppression.

Evanston, I’ll. One of the richest cities in the US with very few black residents....  The City Council on Monday voted 8-1 to begin making good on its pledge to distribute $10 million over the next 10 years with the distribution of $400,000 to eligible Black households. Each qualifying household would receive $25,000 for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city.
 
Oakland - give away but only to blacks - is this discrimination?

Like a lot of cities, the recipients must be poor and have at least one child to qualify. Specifically, they must have an annual household income of no more than $59,000 for a family of three — or roughly 50% of the median income — and half of the recipients will be selected from households that pull in less than $30,000 a year.

But unlike a lot of cities, the recipients also must be Black, Indigenous or otherwise identify as a person of color to qualify.

Brown University
Undergraduate students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, voted last week for the Ivy League school to offer reparations to the descendants of enslaved people who labored on campus.  Carroll, who is a descendant of enslaved people, said he’s grown tired of “liberal institutions like Brown publicly professing their ideals to address racial harm and justice. This institution is built off of racial harm and injustice, and there's really not been much done about that.”

Brown University is now investigating what can be done to accommodate demands. 

Sources: The Los Angelis Times, The Augusta Chronicle - Larry Adler column, The Charlotte Voice, The Chicago Tribune