neg reparations

Damien Block

David Neustadt SDI 2K9

Reparations Neg Page 1 of 19

Fiat Means I Beat The Grizzly Bear

TOC

TOC1

***Case***2

Solvency Frontline2

Solvency XTensions- Not the governments fault5

Solvency XTensions- Would stop future repairs9

***States CP***10

Solvency10

***Politics***11

Obama good11

Obama bad12

***Biopower/Statism Kritik***13

Links13

***Capitalism Kritik***15

Links15

Alternative solvency17

A2: You dont specifically solve Black reparations19

***Case***

Solvency Frontline

Its not the governments fault- its the slaveowners and the direct perpetrators of crimes.

Schedler 3

(George, M.A., University of California, San Diego, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, J.D. cum laude, Southern Illinois University School of Law, Chair of philosophy department at Southern Illinois Univeristy, Should the Federal Government Pay Reparations for Slavery?, Tallahassee: Oct 2003. Vol. 29, Iss. 4; pg. 567, P. Proquest//DN)

First, it might be said that sometimes wrongdoers, specifically governments, owe compensation to their charges even absent evidence of a causal connection. Specifically, where the government betrays the trust its citizens place in it, the government owes compensation even without evidence of a causal connection with the victim's injuries. Of course, this principle is inapplicable to slavery, since slaves did not count as citizens, but we could extend it to non-citizens: those living in one country and forcibly transported to a second country trust the government of the second country to protect them from mistreatment. When that trust is betrayed, no causal link need be shown. Governments on this view are strictly liable for protecting human rights (construed loosely, not in any technical sense of rights guaranteed by the U.N. Charter). However laudable, this view is false (because there are counterexamples), and it sets the standard of trust unreasonably high. On its face it is false, because the causal link needs to be established regardless. A government might, for example, be justified in refusing to compensate visitors for betrayal of its trust, even though the government has an unstated policy of not protecting human rights where there was no connection established between such betrayal and their injuries. We might suppose that private parties violate the human rights of two visitors, let us say, by kidnapping them with the intent of forcing them to work. The government makes no effort to rescue them, but they escape unharmed before any forced labor occurs and shortly thereafter both visitors lose all their possessions for two different reasons. One is a victim of a street crime that the government could not prevent even if one of its citizens were a victim, and the other loses all her belongings in an unpredictable windstorm. In such cases the government's policy of not protecting human rights played no role in the losses, so it would be absurd to insist that it compensate these visitors for the loss of their possessions because they betrayed their trust by being unwilling to protect their rights. On the other hand, if we could establish a causal link between the losses and the betrayal of trust, the case becomes stronger. Even if we assume that when a government betrays a trust it is liable for all losses sustained by those in the territory, the important question is which betrayals of trust give rise to a right of compensation. Clearly, we expect governments to enforce their own laws even if those laws fall short of protecting human rights, so governments that fail to enforce such laws should compensate their victims. But, in cases in which the laws are enforced and the citizenry violates human rights of third parties, the appropriate parties to make good the damage are the wrongdoers. American slavery is an instance of these, because positive law gave rights to slaves, and the federal government enforced those, as the case of the Amistad demonstrated. The third parties involved in slavery committed the wrongs, not the federal government.

To hold the federal government strictly liable is to let the direct perpetrators go free.

Schedler 3


In addition to this, the federal strict liability rule fails to distinguish among morally relevant degrees of complicity by holding one agent, the federal government, liable regardless of blame for failing to control the wrongful conduct of the individuals who were to blame. The individuals and other entities who voluntarily maintained slavery performed inherently wrong actions, but instead of holding them liable for the damages, the federal strict liability rule holds the federal government liable even though it regulated slavery but is not to blame for maintaining it. This runs counter to our considered moral judgment that the more complicit parties to a wrongful practice owe more compensation to the victims than the less complicit.

Giving reparations to one group exacerbates current public opinion and racism.

Balfour 5

(Lawrie, @ University of Virginia, Reparations after Identity, Political Theory, Vol. 33, No. 6, December, pp. 786-811, Sage Publications, Inc., P. JSTOR//DN)

Related to the prospect that an effective reparations campaign would both trade on and reproduce a conception of African American victimhood is the danger that it could entrench distinctions between deserving and undeserving recipients of compensation. While arguments for reparations can evade some of these traps by balancing the emphasis on the suffering of African Americans with an appreciation for their contributions,46 such an approach has its own risks. Among them is the possibility of contrasting those citizens who embody an ethic of hardwork and self-sacrifice against those who represent a perversion of those values, those identified as the underclass.As Eric Yamamoto explains, this is an aspect of the underside of reparations. Examining the arguments that led to reparations for Japanese Americans interned duringWorldWar II, Yamamoto notes the significance of an ideology of group worthiness and posits that the effectiveness of those arguments was at least partly traceable to Japanese Americans self-presentation as deserving superpatriots.47 In light of the dependence of this image of Japanese Americans as a model minority on a distinction from black Americans, Yamamotos argument provides a crucial reminder of how reparations claims can be used to support, rather than to transform, public perceptions of whose citizenship counts.

Reparations would be perceived as a final payment even though they cannot truly solve racism, and would preclude any future repair.

Balfour 5


Enacting such a practice, however, requires resisting the allure of closure. In this regard, my argument departs from Robert Westleys conclusion that the closure afforded by reparations means that no more will be owed to Blacks than is owed to any citizen under the law. This is the effect of any final judgment on the merits. Once reparations are paid, Blacks will be able to function within American society on a footing of absolute equality.81 Given the depth of societal denial about the significance and effects of slavery and the pervasiveness of antiblack racism, about which Westley writes so eloquently, it is unlikely that reparations alone could accomplish so much. And while my view is substantially informed by Marables argument, I am wary of his reading of the etymological kinship of reparations and repair as a promise to make whole again.82 The pursuit of final judgment or wholeness might well appeal to white Americans eager to put the ugliness of U.S. racial history permanently in the past. It might, furthermore, disallow what Martha Minow calls a constant double move between the salience of group-based claims and the recognition of the multiplicity of perspectives and identities that compose the groups in whose name the claims are made.

Focusing on reparations only for the poor create divisiveness among the black community, but unity is key to solving for disparities.

Nuruddin 1

(Yussuf, adjunct professor of African American Studies and social science at the New School University, The Promises and Pitfalls of Reparations, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Winter 2001. Vol. 16, Iss. 1; pg. 87, P. Proquest//DN)

That conflicting class interests--those of the working class, upper middle class, and underclass--would emerge in the struggle for reparations should not be surprising. Struggles for national liberation always have internal class conflicts. The principle of unity and struggle defines the working class strategy in national liberation struggles. In other words, the black working class must unite with the black bourgeoisie in the struggle to gain reparations from the white power structure, but black workers must struggle against the bourgeoisie for control of the specific reparations agenda. In the face of white supremacy, the unity of African people is an absolute necessity. But emotional calls for black unity often becloud the conflictual class interests that exist within Blackamerica. Because the transfer of wealth involved in a just reparations settlement would not be trivial, it is important that the black working class move, in a Lukacsian sense, from being "a class in itself" to being "a class for itself," in short, that it become conscious of its particular interests and organize around a reparations agenda which represents these interests. Reparations settlements could involve individual cash payments, investments in community development projects, the transfer of land, tax exemptions, tuition-exemptions or any combination of these factors. The way reparations settlements are structured could be more advantageous to one class than to another. It is often argued that class divisions among African Americans are largely fictional, that there is no real black bourgeoisie--that at best Afroamerica has a class of petty bourgeoisie or even lumpenbourgeoisie, i.e., tenuous struggling sub-bourgeoisie, who are "one paycheck away from being homeless," i.e., if laid off or fired they would not be able to make their mortgage payments. I argue that there are substantial class cleavages among African Americans and that the internal struggle for the shape of reparations will sharpen these cleavages. We cannot ignore ideological differences either; some demands for reparations are more revolutionary than others. Some formulations of reparations are consumer-oriented palliatives while others challenge the very legitimacy of the existing nation-state (perhaps prematurely). In launching a reparations movement it is necessary that we be very conscious of the class issues and the ideological issues that shape the various types of reparations demands.

Solely throwing money at people and all in one moment wont remedy the culture of poverty. Reparations cant solve.

Nuruddin 1


Given the pervasiveness of this popular culture, culture of poverty, underclass culture or lumpen culture--with its emphasis on present time orientation (immediate rather than delayed gratification), "gettin' paid," fun and games, and conspicuous consumption--, a blanket cash payment of reparations would not be in the best interests of community development or community uplift. I may be roundly criticized for this assertion as a "bourgeois social scientist" who is insensitive to the needs of the poor. Furthermore, given the feminization of poverty and the number of female-headed households that are impoverished, my remarks could be misconstrued as insensitive to the needs of black women. So let me clarify that I am not anti-cash payment. In fact, I would emphatically state that if reparations are structured in part as cash payments, then the poor/underclass is the segment of the black community which, being most in need, is most deserving of receiving individual reparations checks. I am arguing, however, that such checks should be designated for specific purchases; that payments be made in small installments over a period of years rather than in one lump sum; and that prior to the receipt of such payments the designated recipients enroll in a mandatory six-month seminar in money-management and consumer education. 38 Imagine for a moment if none of the above stipulations were applied. In the worst-case scenario, a lump sum payment of reparations, in lumpen culture, would be considered "mother of all mother days" ("mother's day" is ghetto slang for the first of the month, the date when welfare checks--or aid to mothers with dependent children--arrive in the mail). Sales of liquor and illicit drugs would reach an all-time high, as would sales of designer clothes. Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren might even have a special reparations sales event or design a special "Free at Last" Reparations shirt. Everyone would be talking about buying a Lexus or a Mercedes, and there would be coast-to-coast parties and barbecues as a new black jet-set flew from New York to Atlanta to Los Angeles in search of the best Reparations bash. If reparations checks arrived on a Friday, half the recipients would be broke by Monday morning--with nothing to show for it but fancy new clothes, gold-plated jewelry, a collection of the latest CDs and videos, a 53-inch high-definition wide-screen projection tv, and memories of a great weekend. Of course I exaggerate, in order to make a point, but as a community of consumers rather than producers--and conspicuous consumers at that--the African American poor would not enjoy long-term benefits from sudden wealth. As C.J. Munford pointed out in his Reparations Conference paper, cash transfers are at best short-term redistributions of wealth because in a capitalist system the money is ultimately re-circulated to the ruling class. All one has to do is read about the number of million-dollar lottery winners who soon found themselves in economic difficulty in order to realize that massive social problems caused by centuries of oppression and institutional racism, cannot be solved or repaired by putting a check in the mail. 39

Solvency XTensions- Not the governments fault

Slavery was an undertaking by individuals not a collective action- its not the governments business.

Schedler 3


Now, it might be objected that slavery was not carried on by isolated American citizens. Instead, it was a collective undertaking. The people who maintained it acted as a nation. For that reason, the federal government representing the nation should compensate the victims for what its citizens jointly carried out.1 This objection is wrong on two counts. First, the assumption that the white population was complicit in maintaining slavery is historically false. Second, even granting it were true, those who were complicit were not engaged in a collective or joint undertaking. First, there was no nationwide, concerted effort among free citizens to maintain slavery. Instead, isolated groups, some of whom traded in slaves and some of whom owned and worked slaves, sustained the institution, while others, such as northern capitalists and workers, had no connection with slavery. Others opposed it, either working to abolish it or actively undermining the institution. Second, granting arguendo that the federal government owes compensation for what wrongs the nation inflicts, the people of the United States who maintained slavery were acting neither as a nation nor jointly in maintaining the institution. If we analogize the federal government's responsibility for what its citizens do to corporate responsibility for what its employees or shareholders do, this becomes clearer. Sony Corporation, for example, is responsible for rights violations for which its shareholders might vote at a meeting or of which its board of directors might approve, but it would not be responsible for what rights its shareholders might spontaneously violate in disciplining their children at home, even assuming all of them without exception used excessive force in their homes. Similarly, it is not at all clear, assuming the counterfactual claim that all non-slave citizens were complicit in maintaining the institution, that they represented the nation in so doing. Indeed, domestic activities seem not to have national significance. To be sure, there are clear cases of the citizenry acting as a nation, as might be said of, for example, a widespread effort to recycle goods as in a defensive war. There are also clear cases in which there is no collective effort, as when fads, such as use of hula hoops, become widespread. However difficult it may be to decide the unclear cases, evidence against the proposition that C is a collective action is minority opposition to C and denunciation by national leaders of C. Surely relevant, then, are the publicly expressed anti-slavery sentiments of American presidents, such as Jefferson and Lincoln, and existence of the underground railroad and abolitionist movements. These provide reasons for believing that the supporters of slavery did not act as a nation.

The government was not responsible- to extend the indirect blame to them would be to extend it to everybody around the world. And if it was they would only have to pay a fraction of the reparation.

Schedler 3


A third objection to the causal principle is that the definition of "wrongdoer" is excessively narrow. The term, it might be said, should be extended to those who made indirect contributions. Any such suggestion blurs the line between wrongdoers who infringe the rights of others and those who do not. For example, abolitionist northerners who purchased goods consisting in part of the products of slave labor contributed to the perpetuation of the institution and therefore indirectly participated in the institution. If individual consumers who benefited from slavery by purchasing goods for less than the amount for which the goods would have sold had free workers produced them are wrongdoers, then consumers in other countries who bought the goods were also wrongdoers. As the list of wrongdoers grows longer, whatever federal obligation follows would extend to only a fraction of the total damages.

The government isnt responsible- they werent the enabler.

Schedler 3


That conclusion brings us to the second issue of whether the government owes compensation for the role it did play. My answer is negative because of the following rule: (2) The enabler principle: Agents who enable W to perpetrate P owe compensation to V only if the agents are to blame for enabling W to perpetrate P. An agent is to blame for enabling others to perpetrate wrongdoing if the agent knew or should have known that it was duty-bound to perform an alternative act within its power that would have prevented the wrong-doing. Applying the enabler principle to the case of American slavery, the federal government's responsibility to the victims of slavery can be summed up in the following two applications or instantiations of the enabler principle. (2a) The federal-blame rule: The federal government owes compensation to the victims of slavery only if it is to blame for allowing private parties and State officials to maintain slavery. (2b) The federal-duty rule: The federal government owes compensation to the victims of slavery only if it knew or should have known that it was duty-bound to abolish slavery. "Duty-bound" here means under a moral duty that trumps other duties. This excludes supererogatory acts or acts that are beyond one's power. Showing that such a duty binds the agent involves demonstrating that it was within the power of the agent to perform a morally superior alternative act to what the agent in fact did (or failed to do). Using the federalblame and federal-duty rules, the federal government owes no compensation for two reasons: it was not under a duty, and if it were, it discharged the duty. The latter is true because it did abolish slavery with the passage of the thirteenth amendment. The obvious response to this is that the federal government enabled slavery to thrive until the Civil War amendments, so it should pay for the damage caused by its failure to cease regulating slavery sooner. If the federal government were under a duty to abolish slavery sooner, then, under the federal-duty rule, as defined earlier, there would be a morally superior alternative action that was within its power, an alternative that was not supererogatory and would have been effective in abolishing slavery sooner. But, as I show in this part, there was no such action. Therefore, it was not to blame. The federal government owes no compensation to the victims of slavery, because it could not have known that it was duty-bound to perform a morally permissible act that would have effectively ended slavery sooner. Because the founders ratified a Constitution that mandated that the federal government play a role in regulating slavery, to hold that it should not have played that role is tantamount to saying it was obligated either (a) to attempt to do what the federal government had no Constitutional power to do, as for example, to attempt to abolish slavery before 1808, or (b) to breach its duties under the Constitution by, for example, not enforcing the fugitive slave clause or refusing to suppress the Nat Turner rebellion, or (c) to perform a duty it could not have known it had. But in none of these cases is the government is responsible for damage that results.

The federal government isnt responsible- they didnt actually have the power to end slavery.

Schedler 3


First, the federal government is not the only agent that could have ended slavery. The states could have done so individually. Or the state legislatures could have called for a constitutional convention and have enacted an amendment similar to the thirteenth.3 Second, even if these were not possible ways to abolish slavery, a duty to perform extraconstitutional actions is limited to cases in which the government has the "power" in the sense of the military or police manpower or armament to perform some act that it has no legal "power" or authority to perform. Here, however, we have no power in the first sense; we only have a declaration (that slaves are henceforth free persons) it has no legal authority to make. The federal government had no power in the military or police sense to enforce it. Without such power, holding it as a duty violates the principle of "ought implies can." A final rejoinder here is that if the states could have abolished slavery, or the people through a constitutional convention could have abolished slavery, then the people who could have done this along with the state governments and the federal government are all liable for failing to do so. In other words, the agents who owe reparations include parties in addition to the federal government. Granting that the federal government has the power, it owes only a portion of the damages due the victims of slavery, since there were so many other agents with the same power. Now, one might argue that the federal government owes the entire amount of the damages by invoking a concept of joint and several liability. But one needs a moral argument for adopting such a view. There might indeed be a utilitarian argument for the policy, but such arguments are beyond the scope of the present discussion, which is limited to responsibility for harm an agent causes. Even if the utilitarian calculus for such a rule is favorable, it runs against our moral intuitions that those who are more complicit owe more than those who are less complicit and those who cause more suffering owe more to their victims than those who cause less.

The federal government had no duty to breach the constitution to end slavery, and if it had it would have led to more disparities.

Schedler 3


Notwithstanding its responsibility on that view, the federal government cannot be blamed for the damage caused by acts falling under (b), that is, its failure to breach its duties under the Constitution, because it could not know that doing so would be morally superior to regulating slavery. It would have to be the case that the consequences of breaching its duties would have been no worse morally than continuing to regulate slavery until the Civil War erupted and effectively abolished the practice. But there is no reason to believe this is true. Indeed, breaching its Constitutional duties may only have led to multiple republics, some slave owning and some free, lingering beyond 1865. Or, a civil war may have resulted sooner, with either a negotiated settlement recognizing slavery or the union subdued.4

The federal government has no responsibility- it could not have known that it shouldve ended slavery.

Schedler 3


We turn now to (c), the view that the federal government had a duty of which it was unaware. In hindsight we may realize that there was a morally superior alternative action the federal government could have taken to abolish slavery sooner, but the government could not have known that it would ultimately have been better to abolish slavery this way. For example, it might be said that it was within the federal government's power to abolish slavery after 1808 but before 1865 and compensate all slave owners out of the federal treasury for their losses. So, if it were under a duty to do this, the reasons would be that compensating slave owners would have been less costly than the Civil War and its amendments. However, the federal government could not have known that and is not blameworthy. Now, it might be objected that this standard too easily absolves the federal government. All that need be shown, it might be said, is that the federal government could have abolished slavery sooner without all the horrors that continued slavery followed by the Civil War would have caused. Such an objection is wrong on two counts. First, it does not require that the federal government could have known this; it simply holds it strictly liable regardless of what it could have known. My claim is that it is inconsistent with our moral intuitions to hold liable those who did not cause the damage without a showing of some moral shortcoming. Strict liability ignores this, and I will say more about this in the next section. The second defect of this argument is that it is highly unlikely that had the federal government could have avoided the Civil War by trying to abolish slavery sooner. In 3.d.4 below, I present the historical argument for this. In short, the federal government is not responsible for the marginal damage it caused by not abolishing slavery before 1865, because it cannot be blamed for the marginal damage that resulted, and it cannot be blamed because it could not know that the alternatives from which it could choose were morally superior, either because they were not morally superior or because it is uncertain that it could have known of these alternatives. (We might note that no part of this argument presupposes that the federal government could have done otherwise; the issue here is knowledge of morally superior alternatives, even if it could not have done otherwise.)5

To extend the blame to the federal government for no reason other than that it could have stopped slavery is to hold the entire world responsible.

Schedler 3


It might be said that the relevant fact is that federal government protected slavery by, for example, deterring and suppressing slave rebellions, and protecting slave shipping, regardless of what it knew or should have known. Had the federal government withheld such protections, slavery would have ended or suffered serious setbacks. The focus, it might be said, should be on the violation of the rights of the victims, apart from the degree of culpability of those with the power to hamper or end slavery. On this view, one would reject the enabler principle (and, along with that, the federal-blame rule and the federal-duty rule) in favor of a principle of strict liability, the upshot of which would be the following rule: (3) The federal strict liability rule: The federal government is obligated to make reparations for slavery for allowing private parties and State officials to maintain slavery regardless of whether it knew or should have known that it was duty-bound to perform a morally permissible act that would have effectively ended slavery sooner. The difficulties with the federal strict liability rule are that it does not distinguish among degrees of complicity and it holds responsible parties under no duty to abolish slavery. To understand the second difficulty, we need to appreciate the significance of holding that the federal government is obligated to pay for the damage slavery caused regardless of what it knew or could have known. Rejecting the enabler principle above entails holding responsible other agents who are in all morally relevant respects situated as the federal government was, namely, they are not to blame for establishing or maintaining slavery, but were in a position to abolish it. We would hold responsible those who were not to blame for allowing slavery and those who were not duty-bound to abolish slavery, so long as they could have abolished it. This runs counter to the well-settled judgment that one owes no compensation where one violates no duty. Moreover, if we assume that the use of violence to abolish slavery is justified, any nation or combination of nations that could have invaded the United States and succeeded in a government takeover that would have abolished slavery would also be liable. Thus, we reach the counterintuitive conclusion that virtually any nation or entity that could have abolished slavery alone or in concert with others would owe compensation. Furthermore, responsibility could be extended to those parties who could not have abolished slavery but could have hampered it, much as the federal government could have, for example, withheld protection of slave shipping. Thus, the federal strict liability rule leads to a reductio and runs counter to our settled moral judgments. But, even if it did not, the federal government owes only a fraction of total reparations owed by so many other entities.

Solvency XTensions- Would stop future repairs

Monetary reparations cannot achieve full repair, but they do increase ressentiment.

Balfour 5


The first meaning of Baldwins for nothing emphasizes the value of the uncompensated labor performed by generations of African Americans, a staggering theft whose legacy can be traced in the economic inequalities of Baldwins day and our own.68 This alone provides a forceful moral basis for the demand for reparations, and a growing body of literature attends to the question of just how much is owed.69 While such calculations provide testimony to the scope of slavery and the effects of decades of discrimination on the lives of individuals and communities, however, arguments for reparations tied primarily to this kind of calculus reveal several of the traps to which Brown alerts her readers. First, insofar as the claims are framed as a return of resources stolen by white Americans from African Americans, with presentday individual whites and blacks standing in for their forebears, they risk reinforcing precisely the kinds of identity against which Brown warns. As Robert Fullinwider notes, reparations arguments that trade on notions of personal guilt and innocence can distract from questions of collective responsibility. 70 A second peril resides in the effort to build the case for reparations from a notion of inheritance. Although a compelling argument can be made along these lines,71 to do so requires accepting inegalitarian aspects of liberal individualism. A single-minded emphasis on fixing, precisely, the meaning of slavery in monetary terms raises a third set of concerns insofar as it precludes a more complex analysis of slaverys reach into all domains of American life. For example, the centrality of sexual slavery is not easily reckoned with in this kind of accounting; nor is the worth of years of underpaid domestic work performed by African American women susceptible to measurement in market terms. Finally, even if advocates were successful in obtaining a substantial settlement, a focus on the value of what was taken from African Americans under slavery and in its aftermath highlights the insufficiency of any form of material redress. Because the value of reparations will be far smaller than the approximate value of what was stolen, arguments organized around measurements of the debt inevitably highlight the ineradicability of the loss. Thus although rectification of the pattern of unjust enrichment is a significant part of the demand for reparations, too narrow a focus on this aspect of the larger struggle could sow the seeds for a future politics of ressentiment.

***States CP***

Solvency

The states are responsible for a larger part of slavery than the federal government.

Schedler 3


A similar but different approach would be to extend "wrongdoers" to governmental entities and ignore individual citizens. It might be said that the individual States owe compensation, since they had laws regulating slavery and the treatment of slaves, but applying the causal principle to this kind of wrongdoer would stretch the meaning of "caused" beyond the slave owners, traders, and transporters who inflict the suffering to embrace second-order wrongdoers who not only inflict no suffering but may have no contact with or dealings in slavery. Assuming nevertheless that we could do so, the federal government was not a direct participant in the process, and its regulation was even more remote than that of the States. To be sure, the government stood by and allowed the practice to continue, but on the basis of the causal principle, a wrongdoer's obligation to compensate is limited to the damage the wrongdoer caused. If the federal government did cause damage, the causal connection seems remote or not as clear as the connection with the participants in the institution. But even if the case can be made, its contribution to the reparations fund would be smaller than the individual slave States, comparable perhaps to the fraction owed by non-slave States that surrendered runaway slaves to their owners.

State reparation practices are modeled by the Federal Government.

Aiyetoro 9

(Adjoa A., Associate Professor of Law at UALR William H. Bowen School of Law, A. B. Clark University, M.S.W. Washington University, J.D. St. Louis University, P. http://newsone.com/nation/not-so-fast-senate-how-slavery-reparations-might-work///DN)

But, she says, the fight will continue throughout the country. They say all politics is local, and the more we organize in Tulsa and other cities, the more we get resolutions from state and city governments in favor of H.R. 40 [Conyers reparations legislation in Congress], all those things will help.

The states had the ability to end slavery, and are thus responsible for reparations.

Schedler 3


A final rejoinder here is that if the states could have abolished slavery, or the people through a constitutional convention could have abolished slavery, then the people who could have done this along with the state governments and the federal government are all liable for failing to do so. In other words, the agents who owe reparations include parties in addition to the federal government.

The states were responsible for the continuation of slavery.

Schedler 3


The historical argument is in part based on the conclusions reached earlier about the United States being a slaveholder's republic and in part on what it means to have the power to change a state of affairs. An agent has the power to change some state of affairs if there is a close possible world in which the agent can bring about that change. Since the Supreme Court did not have the constitutional power to abolish slavery, the power resides in either Congress or the President. But there was no close possible nineteenth-century world in which either the President or Congress could have chosen to abolish slavery, largely because of the power of the Southern states. Until passage of the seventeenth amendment in 1913, state legislatures chose the Senators, whose views on slavery reflected those held in the state legislatures. A Senate majority that would agree to abolish slavery would not exist in a close possible world of the nineteenth-century Senate. For similar reasons, holding that the President could have abolished slavery presupposes a nineteenth-century United States that is not a close possible world. The state legislatures chose the presidential delegates, so an anti-slavery President could never have emerged, given the Southern legislatures' commitment to slavery.10 In other words, the political power of the Southern states is a feature of the slave system that the nineteenth-century federal government faced. One must take that into account when one considers whether Congress or the President had the power to abolish slavery.11

***Politics***

Obama good

The plan is hugely controversial and sparks huge congressional fights.

The Washington Times 1

(August 03, 2001, Friday, Final Edition, Fanning the Flames of Failure, P. Lexis//DN)

In addition to the anti-Zionism issue, U.S. participation in the conference is further jeopardized by the provisional agenda that plans to address reparations payments for slavery. Should reparations stay on the table, the conference risks also losing French, British and German participation. Domestically, the reparations issue is already a powder keg, and the unsurprising result of its latest explosion has been a fierce congressional debate that provoked Rep. Cynthia McKinney to accuse Mr. Bush of intransigence and to ask, "Is the Bush White House just full of latent racists?"

Reprations are hugely controversial.

The Observer 1

(Ed Vulliamy, March 25, 2001, Slavery debt row embroils black pioneer, P. Lexis//DN)

She is due to arrive on 1 July to a fanfare proclaiming the progress of black Americans, but instead faces a fierce row and campus action over one of the most controversial debates in contemporary America - reparations demanded for the misery and legacy of slavery. Students at Brown, in Providence, Rhode Island, have staged campus-wide protests against their own newspaper after its publication of an advertisement, posted by the hardline conservative David Horowitz, assailing the notion of reparations for slavery, which is being lobbied for in Congress.

Reparations kill Obamas agenda.

Outterson 9

(Kevin Outterson- Associate Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law.- 57 KANSAS L. REV. xxx (fall 2009)- Online- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1346914//DN)

Obama ran against Congressman Rush in 2000 and lost.55 But, Obama polled well among white voters. These results encouraged him to subsequently run for statewide officefor the United States Senate. The political difference is immense: a statewide politician must garner a majority of the entire population, not just a majority of a racially disproportionate gerrymandered district. Obama approached the election with a different history and trajectory than traditional Black politicians. With this foundation, Obama was elected President of the United States in 2008. The rhetoric of reparations is not on his political agenda, and that fact takes it off the nations agenda as well. Let me be clear what my claim is here: I do not suppose that the mere election of a Black President serves in and of itself as reparation for the history of slavery, racism, and segregation. This election was full of symbolism and history, but President Obama cannot singularly carry away this debt by the simple act of election. Nevertheless, the election has permanently changed the rhetoric of reparations, even if some have not recognized it yet. If our Black President will not embrace slavery reparations, the issue will have no political traction in the United States. And yet, fulfilling his comments on the campaign trail, President Obama may bring some of the substance of reparations without the rhetoric. As I write this Article in early 2009, he just signed a huge stimulus package.56 The law makes historic investments in education, infrastructure, and jobs; almost unnoticed in the political debate was an additional $87 billion for Medicaid and billions more for investment in health information technology.57 The Obama Administration is making health care reform a top priority. Major health care reform might provide near-universal coverage and make significant headway against racial disparities in health. President Obama appointed Eric Holder as U.S. Attorney General, and plans to step up enforcement of civil rights laws. But when Holder called Americans a nation of cowards on confronting racial issues,58 President Obama distanced himself from the remark: Im not somebody who believes that constantly talking about race somehow solves racial tensions . . . I think what solves racial tensions is fixing the economy, putting people to work, making sure that people have health care, ensuring that every kid is learning out there. I think if we do that, then well probably have more fruitful conversations.59 President Obama has exiled reparations talk to the political wilderness, ignoring the impressive body of work on reparations theory. But he is talking about health care reform, education, and the needs of average Americans. If he achieves a higher quality, lower cost, and more comprehensive health care system, then Blacks will be some of the biggest beneficiaries of improved health status. He does not talk the talk, but walks the walk; avoiding reparations rhetoric in order to achieve reparational results. The end of reparations talk might be the price for actual progress in Black health. This appears to be the deal that has been offered. I doubt a better one will become available in the next decade or two. I would celebrate the end of Black health disparities, even if it further marginalized reparations talk. But, just like the plaintiff in the Slave Descendants Litigation,60 I lack standing to accept this deal, albeit for a different reason.

Obama bad

Congressional Black Caucus Obama Bad link

The CBC loves reparations.

The Sentinel 9

(Yussuf J Simmonds. Sentinel. Los Angeles, Calif.: Feb 12-Feb 18, 2009. Vol. 75, Iss. 7; pg. A15, 1 pgs, P. Proquest//DN)

In 1989, John Conyers, who many consider "the dean" of the Black Congressional Representatives, first introduced a bill, H.R. 40, "the Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African American Act." It got nowhere however, he has stated, "I have re-introduced H.R. 40 in every Congress since 1989, and will continue to do so until it's passed into law. And lately, there have been a dramatic increase in supporters of the bill among the Members of Congress. The CBC fully supports H.R. 40."

And they wield huge influence- Obama was a member.

The Sentinel 9

(Yussuf J Simmonds. Sentinel. Los Angeles, Calif.: Feb 12-Feb 18, 2009. Vol. 75, Iss. 7; pg. A15, 1 pgs, P. Proquest//DN)

Amidst the 111th Congress in 2009, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) now has 42 members, consisting of one senator and 41 representatives, who work together and are described as "the conscience of the Congress." As a body, their authority derives from each member's individual standing as an elected official, and together, they work as a moral force to affect public policy on behalf of their constituents and those that have historically been voiceless, downtrodden and forgotten. In the past three years, new members have arrived and one distinguished member - former Senator Barack Obama - was elected President of the United States. Marcia Fudge (OH-11) and Andre Carson (IN-7) have replaced two recently deceased members. Laura Richardson (CA-37) replaced another distant departure. The others include Donna Edwards (MD-4); Hank Johnson (GA-4); Donna Christensen (D-USVI); Yvette Clarice (NY-11) and the lone senator, Roland Bums (D-IL). Barbara Lee (CA-9) is the new chairwoman.

***Biopower/Statism Kritik***

Links

The call for reparations re-entrenches state power.

Balfour 5


Even if my assessment is right, and the reparations movement need not be built upon a fixed, unchanging conception of black and white identities, even if it is possible to offer an interpretation of the relationship between identity based suffering and emancipation that evades the traps Brown so effectively exposes, and even if the idea of a politics of ressentiment might be more aptly used to limn the contours of white identity politics than to provide a wholesale critique of the reparations movement, Brown points toward another, related, constellation of dangers. In asking the state to play a central role in resolution, the reparations movement risks both reinforcing and disguising state domination. Although one might reply that the demand for reparations involves an airing of state complicity in slavery and Jim Crow, to stop there is to miss the deeper challenge of Browns argument. Not only could a successful claim for redress serve as an invitation for an expansion of the states disciplinary power, it could also authorize a repressive politics within African American communities. In particular, Browns arguments about the masculinism of state power raise crucial questions about the (un)intended consequences of the demand for reparations. The state, Brown writes, does not simply handle clients or employ staff but produces state subjects, as bureaucratized, dependent, disciplined, and gendered (SOI, 195). These effects are more pernicious as they become more difficult to detect. Just as race has become more diffuse and subterranean in the postcivil rights era, Brown exposes ways in which state repression is increasingly disguised: its power and privilege operate increasingly through disavowal of potency, repudiation of responsibility, and diffusion of sites and operations of control (SOI, 194). In this section I ask how Browns concerns about turning to the state might be applied to the politics of reparations and consider how the reparations movement, in turn, uncovers limitations in her argument. I begin by attending to one of the central questions her analysis raises: What kinds of political subjects might a successful reparations movement produce?

***Reparations would engender African Americans to the state, exacerbating their marginalization and state power.

Balfour 5


One answer is that it could provide new mechanisms through which African Americans are interpellated as victims. This is supported by a range of critical race theorists, who demonstrate ways in which U.S. law requires a victim.41 For example,Williams recalls that, in the courtroom, I learned that the best way to give voice to those whose voice had been suppressed was to argue that they had no voice.42 Contrast this comment with white reactions to signs of black militancy, and it is easy to imagine that the claimants most likely to become beneficiaries of state largesse are those whose performance of willlessness is most convincing. Historically, argues Daryl Michael Scott, the deployment of damage imagery has ensured the success of many liberal policies aimed at improving the conditions of African American lives by reaffirming white, middle-class racial assumptions and eliciting pity.43 Unlike social-welfare policies that are not evidently racial in character, those associated in the public imagination with African Americans have traded on perceptions of victimhood.44 Furthermore, Scott warns, any politics emphasizing the harms of centuries of oppression is especially worrisome in more conservative periods, when pity is in short supply; for accounts of black Americans as victims can become justifications for further marginalization. And these concerns extend beyond claims for reparations in the United States. Writing about the international trend toward restitution for historic injustice, Elazar Barkan notes, no restitution has lifted the burden of victimization; instead it has routinized it.

**Specific Social Services Link**

Even if the reparations were funneled into poor communities, it would still entrench state power.

Balfour 5


One of the attractions of many proposals for reparations is the idea that responsibility for allocating any resources would reside within black communities themselves or be overseen by organizations with African American leadership. Shifting authority away from government to these communities does not entirely allay Browns concerns, however. Such an arrangement promises some measure of self-determination. But for whom? And on what terms? In this regard, Adolph Reedswarning about the ways that reparations politics can reinforce intraracial class lines deserves close attention, and Cathy Cohens arguments about how internal policing mechanisms can stifle oppositional politics cautions against reparations programs that might further marginalize the least privileged members of black communities.48 They suggest the limitations of exclusively empowering reputable citizens to oversee the distribution of resources

***Capitalism Kritik***

Links

The root cause of racial subjugation is capitalism, and reparations movements will fail within it.

Burkett 8

(Maxine Burkett- Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado Law School.- 2008- Reconciliation and Nonrepetition: A New Paradigm for African-American Reparations P. http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:Oz7chzTgePEJ:www.law.uoregon.edu/org/olr/archives/86/burkett.pdf+%22reparations%22%22african+american%22%22slavery%22%22capitalist%22&cd=33&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us//DN)

Racial subjugation has been a component of American capitalism since the countrys earliest days.159 Indeed numerous stories reveal the consistent conflation of capitalist development and white supremacy.160 The singular story of Tench Coxe is one example.161 Coxe, a White Philadelphian and leading political economist of the late 1700s,162 was once a prominent supporter of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. During that time he espoused a belief in a single human race, and [f]rom this fundamental belief flowed the notion of an unracialized citizenship.163 However, that view shifted sharply in the wake of the depression that followed the War of 1812. Soon Coxe viewed free African Americans concentrated in the North as an impoverished, uneducated mass for whom the rights of full citizenship were inappropriate.164 In addition to the larger economic pressure, Coxes shift was attributed to the social influence of Philadelphias White workingmen who were growing increasingly rabid on race issues.165 To this day, African-Americans are particularly vulnerable to the negative sideeffects of American capitalism.166 In short, a political-economic structure that produces profound inequities is exacerbated for those at the bottom of the societal hierarchy when there is a racial component to it.167 American capitalism and racial equality suffer longstanding incompatibilities, such that some of the most cross-racially honored and respected black thinkers have decried the impacts of capitalism.168 By the mid-twentieth century W.E.B. Du Bois was disillusioned with the prospects of racial equality in America. At that point, he was not only a leading voice of pan-Africanism, but he also advised that the method laid down by Karl Marx may be on the only alternative for the darker people of the earth.169 The assumption that reparations must be tied to present forms of capitalism is a troubling starting point for this movement.170 It is certainly possible that a more humane American society can be achieved through capitalism. However, uncritical faith in present forms of American capitalism is practically disadvantageous. This kind of approach cannot succeed in the very value system that reparations should aim to corrode. The societal actors - i.e., consumers, producers, governments, courts, economic institutions - and the set of societal values that justified slavery and continued to justify economic suppression of certain members of our society171 populate the same web of values and reinforcing structures that American capitalists have today, values that reparationists work within at their own peril.

Reparations just seek to create a Black Capitalism that exacerbates inequalities and seeks assimilation.

Burkett 8


One of the fundamental, unquestioned myths integral to the peculiarly American brand of capitalism is the notion of unfettered upward mobility. Indeed, one Black economist contemplated using reparations payments from the White civil society to form the basis of a Black capitalism within the overall system of white capitalism.172 Similarly, in 1997 Jesse Jackson launched the Wall Street Project with the aim of introducing more minorities and minority businesses to the world of big businesses.173 Yet under the veil of upward mobility, absent revolutionary spirit, there is a dangerous assimilationist strain. This is dangerous for two reasons. First, assimilation asks, and often insidiously forces, an individual or community to conform to the cultural mandates of the dominant for that individual or communitys advancement and perhaps survival.174 While not directly advocating assimilation, adopting familiar methods of upward mobility for Jackson and reparationists leads the movement into an adoption of mainstream cultural norms. While African-Americans might be more able to compete, they will also be complicit.175 And, equally relevant, because the racism in our society is so pernicious, that complicity will not yield a fully favorable result.176 Certainly, wealthy African-Americans are not free from the disadvantages of anti-black sentiments. Further, as one additional example, history has proven that the acquisition of capital does not necessarily mean that that capital will be retained, as African-Americans have suffered repeated exploitation, through fraud and misrepresentation. Second, the current reparations paradigm may also encourage the proliferation of the Black Capitalist. Manning Marable expresses a concern regarding the co-opting potential of American capitalism by identifying the - capital B, capital C Black Capitalist. He explains, the crisis of modern capitalism may push the advocates of Black Capitalism squarely into the camp of the most racist and conservative forces of white America.177 Indeed, Jacksons Wall Street Project incorporates many key concepts of Black capitalism, including the accumulation of capital by individual black entrepreneurs; strategies designed to maintain Black control over the Black consumer market in the U.S.; and collective programs to improve the economic condition of all Blacks within the overall framework of U.S. capitalism.178 The danger of such a project is a flawed theory of economic development at its base -- flawed because it incorporates a dangerous myth that American capitalism is race neutral such that capital accumulation alone can be a panacea for African-Americans. 179 However, the racial hierarchy is so inextricably interwoven into the capitalist economic hierarchy that reliance solely on capital is ultimately self-defeating. Ultimately, however, the reparations movements reliance on traditional hallmarks of American capitalism suggests a lack of innovation and optimism in conceiving of an alternative future.180

The root cause of racism is the structures of economic inequality, which reparations cant fix.

Nuruddin 1


Of course, human agency can only be effective at the ripe historical moment. Marcus Garvey, known for his visionary Pan Africanism rather than any materialist conception of history, once stated with Marxist clarity that "When all else fails to organize our people, conditions will." 4 The material conditions in Blackamerica were ripe for a reparations movement. In the public discourse generated by this movement, some reactionary whites have argued that the movement by African Americans to obtain reparations for slavery would divide the American people. But the American people are already divided--by stark economic inequalities. These structural inequalities are the material conditions which have mobilized the African American populace in support of a reparations agenda. A study of households conducted in the mid-1980's showed that while income gaps between blacks and whites were closing, the median white American family owned eleven times as much wealth (real estate, investments, savings, etc.) as the median black American family. 5 During 1990s and into the twenty-first century this racial wealth divide has been widening. Wealth is often accumulated through inheritance; thus the origins of this widening divide may be traced back many generations. The Civil Rights movement dismantled American apartheid (de jure segregation--but certainly not de facto segregation as a tour through any of America's chocolate inner cities and vanilla suburbs will reveal), qualitatively transforming the landscape of civil liberties, access and opportunities for African Americans. Yet the dismantling of the social and political aspects of American apartheid has not led to African American community empowerment or development, just as the dismantling of the social and political aspects of Zimbabwean and South African apartheid has not led to national reconstruction in those societies, because in all three cases, the economic resources (including the land and the mineral wealth--all ill-gotten gains) remained concentrated in the hands of whites.

Alternative solvency

***We have to look at future utopian goals toward solving the larger structural issue of capitalism to solve reparations.

Burkett 8


The contemporary reparations movements focus on capital may be an indication of a growing pessimism among those on the left, generally, and those struggling for civil rights, specifically. This push for remedying the past is symptomatic of a severely diminished faith in shaping a progressive future. In fact, looking to the past is a form of activism in a period of progressive paralysis and disarray.181 Consequently, coming to terms with the past has displaced more utopian possibilities for the future.182 For African-Americans, this is particularly true at a time when the political right is experiencing unparalleled influence. The ascendancy of the right in the arena of race politics has crippled the momentum towards racial equality that defined the sixties and seventies, and is evidenced by, for example, the current challenges to affirmative action from the right.183 With the growing resistance to the advancement of the civil rights era, the left and reparations activists are literally looking backwards. This looking backwards is indicative of the greater retreat of progressive thinking.184 The shifting of focus toward a backward looking reparations paradigm is both the result and indication of a diminished vision of an alternative future.185 Now, the quest of active citizens and mobilized constituencies for social change, which marked the civil rights movement for example, is increasingly displaced by legalities alone.186 This increase tracks an overall pessimism regarding the future that the left exhibits today.187 In the midst of such diminished expectations about the future, the past becomes increasingly attractive. Progressive thinkers and activists are now looking at the past as the space that they can fix, and the current paradigm of reparations politics is the perfect tool.188 With the definitive end of the early, intercultural and interracial civil rights movement, African-American reparationists are gazing in a similar direction. To be sure, the post-civil rights era activists are scrambling for a well-articulated, common vision.189 As evidence, the tepid support among African-Americans for reparations, including an apology, or payment of a different kind, suggests that there has not been an inspiring and fervent campaign amongst the very group reparations is meant to benefit directly. For example, polls have consistently found that three to five out of ten African- Americans support neither an apology nor financial transfers of any sort. 190 The lack of a future-oriented goal is worsened by the fact or perhaps caused by the fact that there is no popular movement at base.191 A fervent ground swell is absolutely in order192 if reparations are to gain any traction. However, for it to gain traction, the reparations movement must incorporate the future-oriented mandates of reconciliation and nonrepetition. Reparationists maintain that the current movements focus on the past is still crucial to the social change that needs to occur in our society. In fact, some reparationists, such as Alfred Brophy, are suspicious of calls only to look toward the future. Brophy rightly argues, It merits mentioning that a dialogue concerned with prohibiting discussion of the past is, at bottom, a call to passively accept the current distribution of power and wealth. And while it may be correct that a focus on the past is distracting to those who should be focused on the future, calls to not talk about the past still deserve scrutiny because they prevent an inquiry into the justice of the current asymmetrical distribution of wealth. The absence of a future-oriented approach is conspicuously dangerous, however, particularly because the future is the only space that can truly be fixed.193 Further, the sharp focus on the past ignores the exigencies of the present, which would dictate a movement that is equally concerned with the African-American condition as it is with the racial and/or economic subjugation suffered by many in American capitalism.194 Indeed, the reparations movement should shift to a cross-racial coalition-building that is forward looking and focused on structural reparations. Structural reparations would incorporate into the current reparations campaign the means and methods of the reconciliation model and the results that ensure the guarantees of non-repetition.

Solving the capitalist system is key to an effective reparations system.

Burkett 8


If the reparations discourse is truly concerned with meaningful and lasting change, it must vigorously define its space in the fight for social justice. And if it is truly concerned with equalizing the playing field for African-Americans today, as it purports to be, it must commit itself to the goal of non-repetition. In achieving that goal, African- American reparationists will have to consider cross-racial, cross-ethnic coalitions and advocate on behalf of more generalized remedies for economic inequality because it is an imperative. Indeed, that is the only way the movement can begin to ensure that the central wrong will not be repeated and truly achieve a successful reparations campaign. What is of primary and immediate importance is that the true purpose of the movement not get lost in the morass of numbers. It is vital that the African-American reparations movement incorporate a progressive opposition to American economic, cultural, and gender hierarchies that are perpetuated by the American brand of capitalism.208

A2: You dont specifically solve Black reparations

It is the opposite- because of the current systems of domination, the only way to specifically solve reparations is to first generally solve for capitalism.

Burkett 8


It is essential that the remedies that the contemporary African American reparations movement seeks be both crafted in isolation of the dominant culture and mindful of creating cross-racial and cross-cultural coalitions for combating universal ills, such as poverty.198 Though reparationists may question how a generalized remedy can be responsive to the specific struggle for African-American reparations, those concerns are necessarily mooted by the realization that this type of large-scale request is the only way to ensure non-repetition. Accordingly, in the structuring of remedies, African-Americans must keep Eric Yamamotos insights at the forefront. He identifies a normative and descriptive model of reparations. The normative model says that reparations should be aimed at restructuring institutions and relationships that gave rise to (and sustain) the underlying justice grievance.199 The descriptive model warns, [R]estructuring those institutions and changing societal attitudes will not flow naturally and inevitably from reparations itself. Dominant interests, whether governmental or private, will cast reparations in ways that tend to perpetuate existing power structures and relationships. Indeed, traditionally framed, American interests in racial reparations, including international credibility and domestic peace, tend to reinforce the social status quo.200

neg reparations

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