Slavery, Racist Violence, and Apartheid: The Case for Reparations

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Slavery, Racist Violence, and Apartheid: The Case for Reparations
URL:http://monkeyfist.com:8080/morgue/politics/reparations/case-for
Subject: 
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April 9, 2001

Slavery, Racist Violence, and Apartheid: The Case for Reparations

By Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua <[email protected]>

"I may state to all our friends, and to all our enemies, that we has a
right to the land where we are located. For why? I tell you. Our wives, our
children, our husbands, has been sold over and over again to purchase the
lands we now locate upon; for that reason we have a divine right to the
land. And den didn't we clear the lands and raise the crops of corn, ob
cotton, ob tobacco, ob rice, ob sugar, ob everything? And den didn't the
large cities in de North grow up on de cotton and de sugars and de rice dat
we made? . . . I say they have grown rich, and my people is poor."

--Bayley Wyatt, a freedman from Yorktown, Virginia in Roy Finkenbine (ed.),
Sources of the African-American Past (London: Longman, 1993), p. 88.

Neoconservative activist David Horowitz's anti-reparations advertisement
has provoked a storm of controversy on college campus from Maine to
California. In the wake of multiracial student protests, many university
newspapers have rightfully refused to run Horowitz's factually challenged
ad. Despite his intentions, David Horowitz has helped move the issue of
reparations for African Americans into the headlines and the consciousness
of the American public. Although mainstream talk shows have merely provided
Horowitz with a friendly forum in which to reiterate his simplistic and
contradictory rant, his ad and appearances have reenergized student activism.

Ten Reasons why African Americans Deserve Reparations

To understand what's at stake requires we contextualize and thoroughly
analyze Horowitz's "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks Are a Bad Idea
for Blacks -- and Racist Too." It was first published as part of The Death
of the Civil Rights Movement (Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Popular
Culture, 2000). Death is a diatribe against Rev. Al Sharpton's "Redeem the
Dream" March to end racial profiling. Consequently, Death is a vociferous
attack on Black activists and a fevered defense of racial profiling. For
instance, Horowitz interprets Attorney Johnnie Cochran's encouraging Blacks
to join juries, as racist. Horowitz snidely sums up Cochran's point as "Get
it, Whitey?" (P. 9). Knowing his audience facilitates unmasking his
motivations. Horowitz's purpose is to spark racial hostility, to mobilize
opposition to the elimination of discriminatory policies and practices.
Thus, "Ten Reasons" first appeared as part of a pro-racial profiling pamphlet.

Horowitz's real purpose is to promote the notion that race, by which he
means racism is dead. From this perverted position, he logically concludes
that contemporary Black activism is unnecessary. Therefore, he portrays
activists as self-serving con artists and the African American people as
their dupes. In Horowitz's color-blind perspective, group parity is
irrelevant, because race is a fiction. He wants the public to believe that
because race is an unscientific concept that it is also a non-existent
social reality. Horowitz is the ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing. He is
the prototypical color-blind liberal or neoconservative who would abolish
the race concept, that is all racial classification; but would maintain the
system and social relations produced by racial oppression.

As important, if not more so, is the moment during which Horowitz escalated
his anti-reparations assault. Over the past few years, activists have
pushed reparations to the center of discourse in the African American
community. Moreover, it has recently burst into traditional politics.
Several city councils, including Chicago, Dallas, and Detroit have passed
pro-reparation resolutions. According to Horowitz, he launched his latest
salvo because reparations "is fast becoming the next big `civil rights'
thing" (p. 30).

Horowitz frames his anti-reparations argument in the form of questions or
assertions and responses. His opinions are devoid of data and deficient in
historical evidence. Because they lack validity, his responses never rise
to the level of "answers." What are Horowitz's specific arguments against
African American reparations? The titles in the advertisement often differ
from those in Death. Whereas the pamphlet targeted the racist right, the ad
aimed for a mass audience; thus, Horowitz sanitized it of its more
explicitly inflammatory titles. Consequently, because the titles in Death
are generally more revealing of his racist motivations I have chosen to use
them. Nevertheless, I engage his responses in both Death and the
advertisement.

1. Who Owes the Debt?

Horowitz claims "There is no single group clearly responsible for the crime
of slavery" because of African and Arab involvement in the slave trade and
3,000 African American slaveholders. The problems with his presentation
here pervades the rest of his discussion. This time his information is
generally accurate but stripped from its socio-historical and legal
context, and the power relations of the slave(ry) trade its trivia, at
best, and duplicitous, at worst. That is, without the context we do not
know what this information means and when contextualized it generally does
not mean what Horowitz implies. Scholars of the slave trade generally
acknowledge the role of power relations as a coercive factor stimulating
African participation. As Walter Rodney pointed out in his classic text,
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Europeans controlled the international
slave trade. Without excusing the role of kings and other African elites,
their involvement must be understood in the context of actual power relations.

Another example of how decontextualization distorts history is his
discussion of Black slaveholders. First, according to census of 1830 there
3,777 Black slave owners, not 3,000 as Horowitz states (Christian, 1999, p.
100). Amazingly, his facts are wrong, even when they bolster his position!
Nevertheless, the existence of 3,777 Black slaveholders is meaningless
without knowing the total number of slaveholders. In 1850 there were
348,000 slave holding families (the Census Bureau collected the data on
families, not individuals). Thus, the three thousand seventy-seven Black
slaveholders comprised only about one percent of slaveholding families!
Second, African American slave owners were a statistical reality that tells
us nothing about actual relationships. Although many Black slave owners
held others in bondage, that is they asserted rights of ownership and
exploited slave labor, most did not. Most so-called Black slave owners are
a statistical phenomenon. They were people of some means who purchased
family and friends from bondage, but never imposed master-slave relationships.

Even given the role of Africans, Arabs, and African Americans Horowitz's
conclusion is deceptive. He offers a negative conclusion, "no single group
is responsible"; yet, this scenario cries out for a positive one, i.e.,
that several groups were responsible. Moreover, the participation of
multiple ethnicities does not mean that all participated or benefited
equally. Furthermore, African Americans seek recompense from the only
governmental entity still in existence the United States, their government.

2. African Americans Have also Benefited from Slavery

Horowitz makes two comparative claims here. First, he argues that if the
present wealth of the United States resulted from slavery, than African
Americans as well as whites are beneficiaries of enslavement. Second, he
offers an estimate of the difference between African Americans' and
Africans' per capita incomes as evidence that African Americans benefited
from slavery.

First, he proceeds as if wealth accumulation produces positive impacts
across society. This illogical argument suggests that slaves of wealthy
masters were better off than the slaves of poor ones. Relationships of
domination and exploitation are parasitic, not mutually beneficial. That
is, the slave trade and slavery enriched European nation- states and the
U.S. (particularly the class of slaveholders, slave trading merchants and
manufacturers) but impoverished Africans and African Americans. Horowitz
can only make this argument in the abstract. Actual data reveals that
African Americas' percentage of U.S. wealth has stayed roughly the same,
about one percent since the ante-bellum period. Furthermore, he limits his
discussion of "benefits" to a narrow economic argument. Thus, he
circumvents discussing the effects of racial oppression, particularly
racist violence in producing stressors that undermine Blacks' physical and
psychological health.

His second assertion is also ahistorical and represents a false comparison.
It is ahistorical because he ignores the role of five centuries of slave
trading and colonialism in producing contemporary African poverty.
Secondly, comparing the per capita income of African Americans to various
African nationalities is spurious because of the vast differences in the
gross national product of African nation-states and the U.S. This
difference is largely the consequence of the slave trade and colonialism.

3. What About the Descendants of Union Soldiers Who Gave Their Lives To
Free the Slaves?

Here Horowitz makes three assertions. First, he contends only a minority of
whites nationally owned slaves. Second, he claims only one in five whites
in the ante- bellum South was a slaveholder. Third, he posits that 350,000
Union soldiers "died in the war that freed the slaves" (p. 35). His first
claim is correct; nationally, only a minority of U.S. families owned
slaves. In 1790 23 percent of the U.S. families owned slaves and only 10
percent in 1850. However, his second claim is a blatant lie. In 1790 72
percent of southern families owned slaves. In 1850, in the South Atlantic
and the East Central sub regions, 31 and 32 percent of families owned
slaves (Census Bureau, 1979, p. 12)

In his third declaration, Horowitz deliberately misleads the reader by
blurring the issue. Three hundred fifty thousand Union soldiers died in the
Civil War and the war did precipitate slavery's abolition, but it was not
fought to abolish slavery. The North fought to preserve the Union. It only
became a war to end slavery when Lincoln realized that victory necessitated
destroying the Confederacy's capacity to wage war, that is removing its
most productive resource, Black slaves.

4. Most Whites Have No Connection to Slavery

Horowitz's main contention is that most contemporary U.S. citizens do not
have a "lineal connection to slavery" (p. 35). His argument here is quite
devious. First, he uses the ambiguity inherent in term "lineal" to
manipulate the reader. Second, he cynically attempts to pit African
Americans against recent immigrants of color and other oppressed
ethnicities. Although Horowitz means a straight line for many readers
lineal suggests a heredity relationship. Of course, most Americans are not
biological descendants of slaveholders, but all white Americans have
benefited from the legacy of racial oppression -- white privilege and Black
exploitation, exclusion and subordination. Planters, small slaveholders,
and capitalist manufacturers, exporters, investors, and insurers of slave
produced products benefited from the exploitation of slave labor. During
the century from 1865 to 1965 the same groups, plus industrial capitalists
benefited from the superexploitation of Black labor.

Third, he limits reparations to compensation for slavery. It is on this
basis that he argues post-slavery immigrants are not liable for
reparations. Although post slavery European immigrants were brutally
exploited and endured ethnic discrimination, like the Irish and Germans
before them they expressed their rage by replicating their treatment on
Blacks. Even so, by World War II the Italians, Hungarians Greeks, and Poles
had become "white" and have since enjoyed the full benefits of whiteness in
a white supremacist country. Whether native or immigrant the vast majority
of white middle and working class Americans, have benefited from the
exclusion of Blacks from professional and civil service jobs, unions, and
governmental programs. For instance, African Americans were denied the
opportunity to participate in the 1962 Homestead Act that transferred
hundreds of millions of acres to white citizens and European immigrants.
Additionally, Blacks were practically excluded from the 1935 Social
Security Act because almost all worked as farm laborers or domestics.
Furthermore, from the 1940s to the early 1960s white homebuyers obtained
low interest Federal Housing Authority loans, a program from which Blacks
were excluded. Finally, as governmental data indicates whites continue to
benefit from racial discrimination in employment, loans, housing, and
healthcare. Consequently, activists demand reparations not just for
enslavement, but for exclusion, discrimination, and the racial violence
that characterized the era of segregation as well for contemporary
disparities.

Finally, his argument here implicitly his contradicts the position
presented in point two. There he argues that if the United States' wealth
was partly created by slave labor, than African Americans, as inheritors of
U.S. wealth, are also beneficiaries of slave- produced wealth. If he were
right, wouldn't this situation also apply to all persons living in the
U.S., including white Americans?

5. The Cases of Jewish and Japanese Reparations Are Not Comparable And
Therefore Do Not Provide Precedents

Horowitz dismisses African Americans' reparation claims because unlike Jews
and Japanese-Americans, he contends Blacks are not survivors of the wrongs
for which they seek retribution. He frames his argument in what legal
scholar Eric K. Yamamoto calls "traditional remedies law," which seeks to
identify specific individual victims and abusers (Yamamoto, 1998, p. 488).
However, Black demands for reparations are based on group, not individual
rights.

>From about 1641 to 1965, federal and state law classified individuals by
race and distinguished rights and opportunities on that basis. Group
membership, not individual merit, determined one's role, position, and
status in the economy, polity, and civil society. Individuals assigned to
the African category were treated as a separate and subordinate group.

Moreover, since the establishment of the Indian Claims Commission in 1946,
the U.S. federal government and numerous state governments have paid
reparations to persons other than survivors or their immediate descendants.
During the 1980s several Native American nations have received reparations
in form of money and land for actions a century or more ago. For instance,
in 1986 the Ottawas of Michigan received $32 million based on an 1836 Treaty.

6. What About Successful Blacks? What Is Their Economic Grievance?

Horowitz's major assertion is that slavery and subsequent racial
discrimination were either non-existent or have been insufficient barriers
to success. He make this point by contrasting the Black middle class, which
he claims composes the majority of African Americans, and West Indian
immigrants to the so-called "underclass." Except the disparities between
African Americans' and West Indians' incomes, his assertions are
unsupported. Moreover, his logic and conclusions are absurd.

First, the minority of African Americans who attained middle class
position, have generally done so by taking advantage of the fleeting
opportunities available in the aftermath of successful collective Black
struggles. Members of those classes best positioned previously have made
the most advances. Moreover, that members of the Black middle and
capitalist classes suffer racial discrimination is widely documented in
past and current employment, housing, and loan discrimination suits.
Horowitz's attempt to use Oprah Winfrey and the few wealthy Blacks to shift
attention from racism to class is dishonest and malevolent. He alleges that
contemporary Black-white income disparities are the consequence of
"individual character" (p. 39). To blame most Blacks for not surmounting
racism is analogous to questioning the character of victims of the
holocaust because a few Jews managed to escape! In addition to his racism,
Horowitz's central problem is his refusal to recognize that social groups
(racial, ethnic, gender, class, etc.) are the organizing principle of human
societies.

If the question is historic group-based disparities, why rely on income
rather than wealth? The wealth index measures accumulated assets over a
lifetime, instead of one year's monetary returns. Currently, the median net
wealth of Black households is about 12% that of whites; but only 1% if home
equity is deducted. This is extremely important since Blacks were initially
excluded from government sponsored homeownership programs. Furthermore,
that much of this discrepancy is due to inheritance underlines the historic
accumulative nature of African American poverty.

On the surface, his comparison between West Indian immigrants and African
Americans seems to have merit. Yet, a closer analysis reveals the
spuriousness of this comparison. Horowitz's discussion is ahistorical and
superficial. He implicitly treats all slave systems the same. West Indian
immigrants are the descendants of slaves, but they come slave systems that
differed markedly from U.S. slavery. Because African slaves greatly
outnumbered whites in the West Indies, the white working and yeoman farming
classes were minute; therefore a large number of slave acquired valuable
skills. More important, most contemporary Caribbean immigrants are the
products of independent countries and were socialized in societies
controlled by people of African descent.

7. Reparations Will Increase Victim Mentalities, Negative Attitudes and
Alienation Within the Black Community

First, Horowitz has it backwards. The Black struggle for justice, freedom,
and self-determination, including reparations is empowering. Participation
it the struggle produces cognitive liberation, self-esteem, and a sense of
efficacy. Do all reparations create a "victim mentality, or just
reparations to African Americans? What is a victim mentality? Is it
recognition that Blacks have been and continue to be victimized by racial
oppression? Recognition is the first step toward resolution. The problem is
not that Blacks possess a negative victim mentality, but that Horowitz has
a "blame-the-victim" mentality. He is unwilling to honestly acknowledge the
centuries of racial oppression to which African Americans have been
subjected by white Americans.

8. What About the Reparations That Have Already Been Paid?

Horowitz's contention that inclusion in Great Society social programs
should count as reparations is absurd. He simply ignores the multiple roles
social programs play in U.S. society. On the one hand, Great Society
initiated programs were ostensibly designed to abolish poverty. Programs,
such as AFDC and food stamps, were class- determined minimum subsistence
programs. Whites have made up the overwhelming majority of aid recipients,
and the proportion of African Americans has been disproportionate.
Nevertheless, Horowitz's discussion rips them from their broader public
policy context. Great Society programs were part of Keynesian economics,
the country's policy of using governmental spending to stimulate economic
growth -- employment and consumption. In addition to increasing levels of
purchasing, these programs also created well paying government jobs for a
predominately white middle class. On the other hand, some programs were
designed specifically to address discrimination, racial, gender, ethnic,
and religious. No government program has sought to solely benefit Blacks.
Moreover, white women and white men over fifty-five, not Blacks, have been
the major beneficiaries of affirmative action.

9. What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?

He continues to falsify history, here by distorting the history of the
abolition movement, in both the U.S. and Britain. Two points are important:
(1) his denial of Black agency; and (2) his crude one-sided interpretation
of abolitionism, particularly in Britain. African slaves and quasi-free
Blacks initiated the abolition movement. Horowitz omits any discussion of
Black self-activity because his goal is to present African Americans as
indebted, ungrateful children. Therefore, he mentions 3,000 Black
slaveholders, but omits thousands of Black abolitionists, 186,000 Black
Union soldiers, and numerous slave revolts for his account.

Continuing his manichaean view of history, he presents the British
Anti-Slavery Movement as simply an exercise in humanism. He simply extends
his argument concerning Union soldiers and Christian abolitionists in the
U.S. to Britain. In reality, the British anti-slavery movement was a
mixture of humanitarians and imperialists. More important, British
abolitionism drew its impetus from a complex mixture of humanist
sentiments, economic motivations, and fear of slave rebellions. Horowitz
misses these nuances because his purpose is to exaggerate white
humanitarianism and deny Black agency. Thus, he denigrates the life and
death struggle waged by African Americans throughout U.S. history by
calling hard-won rights gifts. In sum, this argument approximates those who
called for compensation for the slaveholders!

10. Blacks are Virtually the Oldest Americans, Why Not Embrace Their
American Destiny

His last assertions are as duplicitous and dumb as those that precede them.
Essentially, he reiterates the tired assimilationist position.
Consequently, he charges that pursuing reparations will only further
isolate American Americans. First, as always he blames the oppressed for
conditions created by the oppressor. Black isolation, geographically,
socially, and politically is a consequence of white capitalist created
ghettoization, ostracism, and racism.

Horowitz's one-sided analysis obscures the potentially positive aspects of
reparations. Beginning with Presidential and congressional apologies
(Congress apologized to Japanese-Americans in 1988 and to Hawaiians in
1993) the U.S. government and white Americans can initiate a sincere
conversation on racial oppression. Finally, the payment of several hundred
billion dollars in reparations would ultimately benefit all Americans.
Reparations would enable the rebuilding of Black civil society, the
transformation of inner city ghettoes, the rebuilding of urban
infrastructure, and go along way toward eliminating poverty. Reparations
represent a way to repair the past, a means "to rebuild relationships
through attitudinal changes and institutional restructuring" (Yamamoto, p.
521). Conclusion

Horowitz's argument is redundant, racist, ahistorical, and manipulative. In
his zeal to discipline Blacks for challenging U.S. reality and for
rejecting the hypocritical America dream, Horowitz fails to consider the
debt America owes Blacks. Beyond apologies and the transfer of billions of
resources for past and present oppression, the U.S., especially white
Americans owe African Americans for forcing it toward its noblest ideals.
The Black Freedom Movement has been at the crux of every progressive social
change in the nation's history. African Americans have been the most
thorough and determined fighters in the struggle to expand democracy and
socioeconomic security beyond white male elites. The Black Freedom Movement
has served as the inspiration and model for the new social movements that
are challenging the nightmare. Horowitz wants to bury this legacy and
possibility. Yet, ironically his actions have produced the opposite effect.
His diatribe has energized a nascent Black student movement and transformed
college campuses into sites of struggle. Furthermore, his ad has forced the
mainstream media to remove the shroud covering the struggle for
reparations, thus making audible the claims of our ancestors.

--

Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua is an Associate Professor of Historical  Studies at
Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and a  member of the National
Council of the Black Radical Congress. The views and opinions expressed in
this article are his own.

-- 

References

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Capitalism And The Black Condition In America (New York: New
York University Press, 1999),

Ronald Bailey, "The Slave(ry) Trade. "Journal of Social
Science History, 14: 3 (Fall 1990), pp. 373-414.

Roy L. Brooks (ed.), When Sorry Isn't Enough: The
Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human
Injustice (New York: New York University Press, 1999).

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Black Population in the United States: An Historical View,
1790-1978 (Washington, D.C., Department of Commerce, 1979).

Charles M. Christian, Black saga: The African American
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(London: Longman, 1997).

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Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, rev. ed.
(Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1981).

Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1988).

Robert Westley, "Many Billions Gone: Is It Time to
Reconsider the Case for Black Reparations," Boston College
Law Review 40 (December 1998), pp. 429-76.

Eric K. Yamamoto, "Racial Reparations: Japanese Americans
Redress and African American Claims," Boston College Law
Review 40 (December 1998), pp. 477-523.

Copyright (c) 2001 Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua. All Rights Reserved.