Reparations for Slavery | Pros, Cons, Debate, Arguments, & Financial Compensation

Pro 1: Slavery led to giant disparities in wealth that should be addressed with reparations.

The wealth of the United States was largely built on the backs of enslaved people. As Ta-Nehisi Coates, author and correspondent for The Atlantic, explains, “By 1836 more than $600 million, almost half of the economic activity in the United States, derived directly or indirectly from the cotton produced by the million-odd slaves. By the time the enslaved were emancipated, they comprised the largest single asset in America: $3 billion in 1860 dollars, more than all the other assets in the country combined.” [7]

Black Americans were not compensated for their economic contributions, leading to decades of financial struggle. The most recent data available shows that Black Americans held about 2.6% of U.S. wealth while being 13% of the population. On average, white households had a net worth of $80,000 more than Black households. [8][9]

William A. Darity, Jr., Duke University economist, and Kirsten Mullen, folklorist, state, “The origins of this gulf in Black and White wealth stem from the immediate aftermath of slavery when a promise made to provide the formerly enslaved with 40 acres in land grants went unmet—while many White Americans were provided substantial ‘hand outs’ (typically 160 acres) of land in the west.” [1]

Experts from the Hamilton Project, the Federal Reserve, and the Brookings Institute note, “Efforts by Black Americans to build wealth…have been impeded in a host of ways, beginning with 246 years of chattel slavery and followed by Congressional mismanagement of the Freedman’s Savings Bank (which left 61,144 depositors with losses of nearly $3 million in 1874), the violent massacre decimating Tulsa’s Greenwood District in 1921…and discriminatory policies throughout the 20th century including the Jim Crow Era’s ‘Black Codes’… the GI bill, the New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act… and redlining. Wealth was taken from these communities before it had the opportunity to grow.” [10]

As Darity and Mullen conclude, “Public policy has created the Black–White gulf in wealth, and it will require public policy to eliminate it.” Reparations is one such public policy. [8]

Pro 2: Slavery left Black American communities at the mercy of the “slave health deficit,” which should be addressed with reparations.

Health Policy Research scholar Brittney Butler explains, “The health effects of slavery and racism in the U.S has transcended generations and laid the foundation of poor health for Black families in the U.S….The connection between health disparities and racism dates back to slavery. The Slave trade introduced European diseases to African and Indigenous populations, and prior to arriving to these shores, the long journey to North America and the horrible ship conditions increased risk for disease and mortality with the leading cause of death being dysentery. If they survived the treacherous journey, they were forced to live and work under inhumane conditions that further exacerbated their risk for chronic and respiratory diseases. During slavery, white physicians experimented on, exploited and discarded Black bodies under the auspice of advancing medicine.…once the enslaved people were free, they had minimal access to health care and other basic necessities.” [11]

Post-slavery, health disparities continued in terms of differences in access to and care within the health care system, as well as higher levels of disease due to higher rates of exposure and differing life opportunities. Black Americans are more likely to be underinsured or uninsured and less likely to have a primary care physician. High blood pressure, asthma, strokes, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are more prevalent among Black Americans than white Americans. [12][13]

Oliver T. Brooks, president of the National Medical Association, states, “It is known that the social determinants of health (SDoH) play as important a role in a person’s health as genetics or medical treatment. There are broadly six SDoH categories: economic stability, physical environment, education, food community and social content and healthcare systems. African Americans are adversely affected in this arena.” [13]

Brooks continues, in terms of COVID-19, “With poorer housing we cannot generally socially isolate at home each in a different wing of the house; in some instances, there may be six people in a 2-bedroom apartment. We work in types of employment that will not allow us to work from home; going out to work puts one at a higher risk of acquiring the infection. Many of these jobs also do not provide healthcare coverage.” [13]

Reparations could bolster Black American health care as well as the underlying social conditions that have resulted in the health disparity.

Pro 3: There is already precedent for the paying of reparations to the descendants of slaves and to other groups by the U.S. federal government, U.S. state and local governments, and international organizations.

The U.S. federal government paid reparations to victims of Japanese internment camps via the Japanese-American Claims Act of 1948 ($38 million between 1948 and 1965), and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (a $20,000 payment to each survivor for a total of $1.6 billion by 1998). [14]

Victims of the Tuskegee Study, which infected 399 Black men with syphilis and left them untreated, were paid $10 million in reparations, and they and their families were given lifelong medical care by the U.S. government. [14][15]

Not only has the U.S. paid reparations to victimized groups, but around 900 Washington, D.C., slaveholders were paid about $23 million in 2020 dollars to free 2,981 slaves in Apr. 1862 through the Compensated Emancipation Act in D.C., which Lincoln also tried in several states where the acts failed. [16][17]

North Carolina set up a $10 million reparations program for the estimated 7,600 people the state forcibly sterilized between 1929 and 1974. [18]

Virginia paid $25,000 to each of the living survivors of about 8,000 people forcibly sterilized by the state. Florida passed a $2 million reparations plan for victims of the 1923 Rosewood race riot. Chicago passed an ordinance to pay a minimum of $20 million in reparations to victims of police brutality from 1972 to 1991 under police commander John Burge. [14][19][20][21]

As of 2012 the German government had paid $89 billion to victims of the Nazis through a reparations program begun in 1952. The country continues to pay reparations. [22]

In 2003 South Africa paid $85 million in reparations to 19,000 victims of apartheid crimes. [23]

Georgetown University offered reparations to descendants of the 272 enslaved people the Jesuits sold in 1838. Students voted for a $27.50 increase in fees to raise about $400,000 per year for a reparations fund. Virginia Theological Seminary ($1.7 million) and Princeton Theological Seminary ($27.6 million) have followed suit, and at least 56 colleges and universities have joined Universities Studying Slavery to explore the legacy of slavery at the institutions. In 2018 the Society of the Sacred Heart, an organization of Catholic nuns, paid reparations to descendants of people enslaved by the organization. [24][25] [26][27][28][29]

In 1998 German electronics company Siemens created a $11.9 million fund for slave labor used in World War II, following a similar announcement by German automaker Volkswagen. [30]

If reparations can be paid to groups other than the descendants of enslaved people by the government, and to the descendants of enslaved people by independent groups, then reparations can be paid by the federal government.