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Debra Dickerson and Erroll McDonald

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from: Debra Dickerson

A Reparation-Safe Environment

Posted Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2000, at 11:55 AM ET

Mornin' Sunshine (this really is just too much fun),

As for reparations, the Jews didn't start out with the Swiss bankers who "absorbed" their banks accounts and such. They got to them once they'd mostly done with the Germans. If you believe in reparations, there's just no reason, tactically or morally, not to start with homegrown white folks before working our way back to the African dictators who sold slaves to them. Legally, you don't have to sue everybody, you can pick and choose (how much money could anyone get from them?). By the way, do you really believe that if the chiefs had chosen not to sell us, the whites folks would have said, "OK. Thanks. Bye"? Those who chose not to cooperate were shown the error of their ways. But yeah, the whole casino thing is weird (Did you know about some tribes' ability to sell tax-free cigarettes? Millions.). Why is it palatable for them to get reparations (albeit indirect) but not black folks? (For you FraygrWhyants: Screw welfare and affirmative action. First, blacks paid taxes to and received much less in services, so we helped fund any transfer payments. Second, our unearned labor built this country. Whatever returned in that form was a drop in the bucket of our contributions.) I find the "anonymous ancestors" line unpersuasive and actually perverse, a cockeyed endorsement of the reparations position. My great-great-grandmother is anonymous only because her master sold her somewhere (She was already in the Mississippi delta. Where the hell else was there for her to go?) from which she never returned or was heard from again. She had six kids. No one remembers her name now. Not that you made it, but the argument that some cosmic statute of limitations has run out and prevents current descendants of slaves from pressing a claim is just plain evil. When exactly was it that we were supposed to file our neat little reparations lawsuit? It's been only in the last generation that we could stop worrying about being lynched, let alone press claims in court. I don't support the call for reparations, but I find the arguments made against it make me very, very bitter and resentful. I resist the lure in spite of its opponents, not because of them.

There's a new book by Berkeley professor John McWhorter (I'm reviewing it for National Review). It's called Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. The title is self-explanatory. He summarizes by saying,

As direct consequences of the abrupt unshackling of a crippled race, Victimology, Separatism, and Anti-intellectualism are a person with his eyes sealed shut still pawing frantically at the air long after his attacker has laid off, driven to frenzy by massive assault. But thank God the attacker did let up. And the unjust fact is that once he has, he walks on unharmed, while it is up to us to stand up, rub our eyes, brush ourselves off, and walk on to do the best work and lead the best lives we can.

That's what the reparations movement is all about, the walking-on-unharmed thing. They got away with it. There is no justice, and that's just the way it is. I guess I (grudgingly) agree with you that the gambling concession is condescending. I was at a conference this summer where an Indian activist made it clear that they very much enjoyed providing the white man his vices and watching him act a fool. As vengeance goes, it's not much is it? She didn't mention either the many black and Hispanic (and presumably Indian) gamblers wreaking havoc on their lives through gambling and smoking. I guess when you've been as thoroughly defeated as the slaves (and their descendants) and the Indians, it's best to withdraw with dignity. And try to keep from getting your ass kicked again.

Dubya and the debates: Funny that you follow the money trail. The networks should all carry the debates. It's obscene that they get control of the broadcast spectrum then refuse to carry out such an obvious public service. What's required of them is so little in return for the bazillions they make. But I think we both know what's happening here, from the candidates' side. Bush is a ditz. He seems like a nice guy, but smart he ain't. Gore will have him for lunch. If he could avoid the debates altogether (I'm sure his people have to keep explaining to him again and again why he just can't have the presidency just given to him for his next birthday) he would. Man, I wish the American public would pay attention to things like this. First the chicken hawk who supported the Vietnam War but wouldn't fight it (Clinton is a draft-dodger too, but at least he opposed the war. Bush is an elitist who thinks anyone whose dad can't buy him a deferment ought to do stuff like that since their lives matter less) goes on about restoring leadership for the military and the country, and then he hides in his basement when Gore challenges him. I doubt the public is paying attention, though. Too busy working, that other thing Bush has only done for the last six years. The networks should be shamed into showing all the prez/vice prez debates wherever they originate. It's certainly the least they can do with the free billions we've handed them.

Can we talk about the Vatican's announcement next? The one about their "monopoly on salvation." God (oops!) I love it, just love it, when religions are forced to be consistent and say stuff like this. Bitterly but buoyed by religious controversy,

Debra

the breakfast table
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from: Debra Dickerson

A Reparation-Safe Environment

Posted Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2000, at 11:55 AM ET
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Debra Dickerson is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a columnist for Beliefnet.com. Her memoir, An American Story, will be published this month (click here to buy it). Erroll McDonald is an editor at Pantheon Books.
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Reader Comments from The Fray:


Indian gaming may seem like a form of reparations in our tort-minded culture, but this is a false analogy. Indians are permitted to operate casinos because they have sovereignty over their reservations by treaties signed in the preceding centuries. When the federal courts ruled that states could not bar tribes from running casinos, states negotiated agreements with them regulating their operation (restricting alcohol, for example). Indian gaming, fishing rights, and sales tax exemptions are not gifts of guilty white liberals. They are an acknowledgement of legal obligations from another era.

--Andrew W.Cohen

(To reply, click here.)


I believe the best reparations would be putting forth the effort to treat Black Americans and Indians with the respect and equality human beings deserve. What good would money and property do, when white folks can still treat Black Americans and Indians as less than human, therefore less than equal? What would I, a Black American, rather have: 40 acres and a mule, or to be treated and given as much respect and equality is my white brother and sisters? Forget the money and the property, give me my equality and my respect. That is the best reparation any oppressed people can ask for.

--philiagoddess

(To reply, click here.)


The purpose of reparations is justice. The purpose of group reparations (vs. individual) is approximate justice. So it is necessary to decide how approximate we wish our justice to be. I believe that reparations for the dead (eg slaves) paid to their remote descendants is too crude. However, after slavery there was still a long-term injustice towards blacks: Jim Crow. This depressed the wages of Afro-Americans. Some of these victims are still alive. Since they would be mostly retired now, I suggest compensation through the Social Security system. This could be done in many ways, for example by adjusting the probability distribution of wages of blacks to mirror that of whites (on a year-by-year basis, up to some cutoff date), and then using that adjustment to adjust individual wage histories, and so finally increase Social Security payments.

--Bob Cox

(To reply, click here.)


We do owe the black people. The whole country does, because we took their share of work for building this country up, for free, and on top we dragged them through the hell of slavery, and broken families, and constant humiliation. And even now 140 years after the Civil War, the prejudice continues. If we inherited all the good stuff from our predecessors in this country, we also inherited their debts. And the debt to the black people still needs to be paid.

--Amyntas

(To reply, click here.)


Several questions:
1)If we're starting with home-grown folks, should we be planning to collect reparations from black slave owners' descendants?
2) Would you prefer African-Americans have quasi-sovereign nations to live on like Native Americans tribes, and thus be immune (to a large extent) from the state and federal government?
3) Did Bill Clinton oppose the war before or after he signed up for ROTC, and then dropped out once he realized he might get drafted?
4) Was Gore struggling along as a pauper while Bush was living high with his family's money?

--MRB

(To reply, click here.)


Notes from the Fray Editor: Debra Dickerson does a splendid job of explaining The Fray. (In fact, our job--thanks Debra.) This is the post she mentions about the National Review. Views on reparations can be found all over The Fray, and we picked out some of what we hope she will think the more intelligent and thoughtful ones, above. And WillV liked Ms Dickerson's description of the shooting--Tuesday-- so much he thought she should be be hired by Slate to write a cops and crime column.


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