Academic

The City that Care Forgot and the Case for Black Reparations

By Salamishah Tillet

I just visited East New Orleans and the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana. We drove around these two towns — neighborhoods formerly predominated by African-Americans, respectively upper-middle class and working-class, and disproportionately ravaged by the (foreseeable) breech of the levees and the (perhaps deliberate?) neglect of the federal government. And then I remembered that the empty houses, abandoned churches, and drowned stores were not simply the remains of our government failure to protect its black citizens from this federal calamity, but were extensions of a much older and I would argue more insidious betrayal of its African-American citizenry: the federal withholding of reparations for slavery to the freedmen and women.

As I stood at one the most popular and profitable sites of the transatlantic slave trade, a question not only about America?s past, but about its future loomed. When will America pay its debt for slavery? And when will African-Americans demand repayment? This is not to suggest that there have not been several reparations for slavery movements in America. While most of us are familiar with the Freedmen?s demands for their ?40 Acres and a Mule,? there have been several subsequent movements such as Callie House and the Ex-Slave Pension Association in 1899, Queen Mother Moore’s creation of the Reparations Committee of Descendants of United States Slaves in 1955, and the activism of the National Coalition of Black Reparations Activists (N?COBRA) from the 1970s to the present.

In 2001, Randall Robinson?s The Debt help foreground reparations for slavery as a national issue. However, within the last five years, the debates about reparations amongst many African-Americans seems to have evaporated despite the fact that black Americans continue to experience the cumulative effects of slavery: high incarceration rates, racialized wealth disparities, redlining, predatory mortgage brokers, inadequate healthcare, lack of access to quality education, and the list continues.

Unfortunately, the momentum behind reparations for slavery seems to have dissipated because many people think it is unrealistic. To which I reply that there are historic precedents of the US government distributing reparations and that former slaves, anti-lynching crusaders, WWII black veterans, black female suffragists, and Civil Rights activists, dared to dream and fight for the impossible. Others tell me, with a tinge of classism, that most black people won?t know what to do with a check. To which I state, most reparations advocates do not only seek monetary restitution, but also understand that the racial inequities (born in slavery, sustained by segregation, and now thrive because of institutional and individual racism) are social, political, psychological, educational, and environmental. As such, their varied reparations packages demand monetary, moral, political, and educational restitution for slavery.

These days, I comfort myself with the fact that reparations reared its controversial head during one of the 2007 Democratic Presidential debates. Fortuitously, an African-American man named Will from Boston, MA asked the candidates, via youtube, ?Are African-Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery?? Even though Dennis Kucinich was the only person who endorsed reparations, Will?s question reminded the candidates and the viewers that reparations is not and should not be a dead issue. The problem then is not just how fast we can rebuild these communities in New Orleans, but rather how far are we willing to go, to create a solid foundation for full racial equality in America?

Dr. Salamishah Tillet is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the co-founder of the non-profit organization, A Long Walk Home, Inc.

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Full post as published by BlackProf on March 10, 2008 (boomark / email).