Now that the reparations debate is back in the headlines, I often am asked what I, as a descendant of African-American slaves, think of the issue.
My answer: How are you defining “reparations?”
I have to ask because reparations mean different things to different people.
Some people, most of them black, want to know if I will get on the bandwagon to demand the “40 acres and a mule” that was promised to black families during the Civil War.
There are others, most of them white, who hope I do not want reparations, since they fear it will cost them something.
For example, the federal government gave $20,000 apiece in the late 1980s to those who are still living of the more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans, many of them citizens, who were unfairly rounded up and kept in detention camps during World War II.
But, unlike those who survived World War II detention camps, the survivors of slavery are all dead. What’s left is a bitter legacy of poverty and discrimination for many African-Americans, a legacy that today hurts some much more than it hurts others.
Questions like who should be paid what and how much haunt the debate. How much is a child in a public housing development, for example, going to be helped by giving a check to Bill Cosby or, for that matter, me?
That’s why I favor reparations, but only in the true sense of the word, which means actions that are taken to repair.
For example, Randall Robinson, president of TransAfrica, makes a compelling argument for reparations in his new book, “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” yet he concludes that direct payments would be a terrible idea.
He prefers to see a commission formed to study the issue and explore what sorts of action might be taken to repair the extensive damage slavery has left behind.
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who has introduced reparation bills every year since 1989, calls for the formation of a commission. So does the resolution introduced last week by Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio). Hall also calls for Congress to acknowledge and apologize for the wrongs of slavery, put together a public school curriculum on the history of slavery and establish a national slavery museum and memorial.
Yet, just the idea of a simple national apology for slavery stirred a national uproar when Hall called for it in 1997. He heard from some who thought blacks have enough government help already. He heard from others who think apologies are meaningless gestures. He heard from others who thought an apology was just a cheap way to avoid dealing with real problems.
Hall responded with a compelling argument when he introduced his latest bill: “Reconciliation begins with an apology.”
If so, Congress should not limit its apologies to slavery alone. History has left other unfinished business.
For example, Rep. Rick Lazio (R-N.Y.) introduced a bill in 1997 that asked for a full historical accounting of injustices suffered by Italian-Americans during World War II. More than 10,000 living on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes and were prohibited from entering coastal zones. Thousands were arrested unfairly and hundreds were interned. An estimated 600,000 had their movement restricted.
Former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) introduced similar measures. All languished in their respective committees.
The idea of apologizing for the past elicits moans and groans from many Americans. Once we begin, they ask, where do we end?
Good question. Maybe we shouldn’t end until we finish.
If ever there was a justification for affirmative action, it is in making up for the legacy of past transgressions against a people because of race, creed, gender or ethnicity.
Yet, we cannot begin to have a sensible discussion about it, until we figure out what the damage is.
It is not easy for those of us who live in the present to face up to the sins of the nation’s past. Yet, we need to reconcile with the past if we are going to put it behind us.
Reparations cannot really repair the past but they can help repair the future.
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E-mail: cptime@aol.com
