[Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #5

[the madison insurgent]

Reparations for the Rich
by Adrian Lomax


In August, activists from around the United States
gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC, for
the “Millions for Reparations” rally. Participants
advocated justice for the descendants of slaves and
listened to various speakers including Nation of Islam
chief Louis Farrakhan. 
What most fascinates me in the public discourse over
reparations for slavery is the level of opposition
expressed by white people in the United States. I am
consistently taken aback by the vehemence of the
anti-reparations sentiment relayed to me in everyday
conversation. Anti-reparation fervor extends far
beyond the circle of people I encounter in my own
life. In the days leading up to the Washington rally,
right-wing talk radio, both local and national,
approached the point of hysteria in denouncing the
reparations movement as absurd and ridiculous. A
CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken last February found
that 84 percent of white people in the United States
oppose reparations for slavery. 
It’s not as if people of the United States reject in
any general way the concept of reparations to
compensate for social crimes of the past. The US
government’s payment of compensation to
Japanese-American victims of internment during World
War II was well received by the public here. As were
the efforts of Swiss banks to compensate Jewish
families for assets confiscated by the Nazis. 
By far the largest and most successful reparations
movement in recent memory, though, is President Bush’s
2001 tax cut. His tax plan distributes $1.3 trillion
from the US Treasury, with the vast majority of it
going to the wealthiest one percent. Yet we have no
trouble in this nation telling the descendants of
African slaves they should pull themselves up by their
bootstraps. Yes, African Americans should rely on hard
work and perseverance rather than government handouts
in order to overcome whatever disadvantages and
hardships the 400-year regime of slavery and Jim Crow
has placed in their paths. But when the mega-rich
complain that they are not quite rich enough, Dubya
and his cronies rush in with public giveaways on a
mind-boggling scale. 
Speaking of scale, it’s worth pointing out that making
reparations to the descendants of slaves would be no
more expensive than Dubya’s tax cut. The 2000 US
Census numbers the African American population at 34.7
million. We could send a check for $37,000 to every
African American woman, man and child and the total
would amount to less than Dubya’s $1.3 trillion tax
cut. I hasten to add, though, that most proponents of
reparations aren’t even proposing direct cash
payments. Instead, they favor the establishment of
foundations, at a cost of far less than $1.3 trillion,
that would assist slavery’s descendants in obtaining
education, jobs and housing – assets that the legacy
of race-based social and economic hierarchy has long
impeded. 
Advocates of reparations for slavery are unable even
to pass HR 40, the bill introduced annually by Rep.
John Conyers (D-Mich.). It asks only for the
establishment of a commission to study the question of
reparations. Dubya’s reparations-for-the-rich-tax-cut
sailed through Congress. The elected representatives
of society have thus decided that the wealthiest among
us deserve reparations for the special burdens of
being rich. 
It is tough, I suppose, to figure out how to spend and
invest all that money. To be forever on the lookout
for new ways to evade taxes. Living in palatial
mansions. Attending Ivy League schools. Taking
vacations in Europe. Having summer homes in the
Hamptons and Cape Cod. I don’t know how the rich can
stand it. And consider for a moment the singular
hardship of living one’s entire life without ever
performing manual and menial – to say nothing of
dangerous – labor. It is a cruel fate beyond the
imaginations of the upper class receiving the bulk of
tax relief. 
The real priorities of the US policy-making
establishment stand out clearly in the context of
reparations for slavery versus the Bush tax cut. The
suffering and degradation caused by 400 years of
slavery and Jim Crow, along with those institutions’
persisting legacy of racial prejudice, is a minor
historical footnote unworthy of governmental redress.
We should all just get over it. On the other hand, the
complaint of the very wealthiest, many of whose
families were enriched by slave labor, that they
deserve affirmative governmental action to make them
even wealthier – becomes a problem of crisis
proportion requiring an immediate $1.3 trillion
reparations program. 
It would appear that the descendants of victims of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade, a human-rights atrocity on
a scale rarely equaled in history, are far more
deserving recipients of a trillion dollars in
reparations than are the billionaires who now feed at
the trough of the Bush tax cut. I guess I’m neither as
compassionate nor as conservative as our president.
	See In These Times, Sept. 30, 2002 for more
information. 
This article was intended for publication in the
October Madison Insurgent, but was received after
production had ended. Our apologies to the author and
to our readers
The author is currently a guest of the State of
Wisconsin. Write him at 116387, PO Box 25, Oregon, WI 53575.

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