Reparations Topic LectureJEFFREY MILLER

MARIST SCHOOL

2015 DARTMOUTH DEBATE INSTITUTES

“12 Years a Slave”

Background (1865-1900)

Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman declares that a strip of land along the Southeast coast be set aside

for freed slaves; families can receive up to 40 acres. The federal government also establishes the Freedmen’s Bureau to provide

assistance. But, within the year, President Andrew Johnson

undermines Sherman and weakens the bureau.

William R. Vaughan, a white man from Alabama, persuades members of Congress to introduce the first

of nine bills mandating federal pensions for former slaves, but

none of the bills passes.

The Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association is founded. Under the leadership of Callie House, it eventually enlists hundreds of thousands of members, but the government later indicts House for mail fraud. After serving time in prison, she helps file a lawsuit demanding African Americans receive $69 million acquired through cotton taxes.

African Methodist Episcopal Church Bishop Henry M. Turner campaigns to secure reparations for black Americans. He estimated blacks were owed $40 billion dollars for 200 years of unpaid labor.

1865 18901890’

s1897

Background (1900-1995)

New York activist Queen Mother Audley Moore submits a petition to the United Nations asking the U.S.

government to pay slavery reparations.

Radicals in Detroit form the Republic of New Africa, demanding

five Southern states and $400 billion.

The U.S. government agrees to grant $1 billion and 44 million acres to Native American tribes in Alaska.

Civil rights activist James Forman marches into a service at the

mostly white Riverside Church in New York City and begins reading

his “Black Manifesto.” Forman charges white churches and

synagogues with complicity in slavery and racial oppression and

asks them to pay restitution

1962 1968 1971 19881969

Congress allocates $20,000 for each Japanese American survivor of internment camps. Meanwhile,

activists form the National Coalition of Blacks for

Reparations in America.

A reparations bill introduced in Massachusetts by state Senator William Owens languishes.

And U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., a Detroit Democrat, calls for a federal study of slavery,

racial discrimination, and “appropriate remedies.” The bill does not leave the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers reintroduces it every subsequent year, with similar results.

1989

A federal appeals court in California dismisses Cato v. United States, which

asked for $100 million in slavery reparations. Judges can find no law

allowing the government to be sued for slavery, declaring it an issue for

Congress.

1995

Background (1997-2003)

U.S. Representative Tony Hall, a white Ohio Democrat, introduces a

resolution asking Congress to formally apologize for slavery.

Despite provoking intense debate, it is buried in committee. U.S.

Representative Tony Hall, a white Ohio Democrat, introduces a

resolution asking Congress to formally apologize for slavery.

Despite provoking intense debate, it is buried in committee.

Acknowledging a pattern of discrimination, the U.S. Department of Agriculture agrees to pay restitution to thousands of black farmers.

Writer and activist David Horowitz places an advertisement in college newspapers around the country, arguing that blacks have benefited from being brought to America. And, after intense lobbying, the final document of the United Nations World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, declares that slavery was a crime against humanity.

Randall Robinson’s The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, an argument for reparations, is published, becoming a bestseller and dramatically raising the movement’s profile.

1997 1999 2001 20022000

Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a New York advocate, files a class-action lawsuit against several major corporations for profiting from slavery and violating human rights laws. By the end of the year, the case is consolidated with eight others and moved to federal court in Chicago. Over the summer, activist Conrad Worrill co-organizes a rally in Washington, D.C., that draws thousands of reparations supporters. And in October, the Chicago City Council passes the Slavery Era Disclosure Ordinance, requiring firms that want contracts with the city to investigate and reveal ties to slavery.

Virginia residents Robert L. Foster and his daughter Crystal are sentenced to

prison after filing an income tax return claiming

she was owed $500,000 for reparations.

2003

Background (2004-Now)

Rep. John Conyers Jr of Michigan proposed his legislation, originally HR 40, for the 25th consecutive year.

The U.S. House of Representatives issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the institution of slavery, and the subsequent Jim Crow laws that for years discriminated against blacks as second-class citizens in American society.

20142008

Ta-Nehisi Coates releases the publication “The Case For Reparations” on the Atlantic and revitalizes the debate on reparations.

States start to issue formal apologies -- Virginia in February, followed by Maryland in March, North Carolina in April, and Alabama in May 2007. In January 2008, New Jersey became the first Northern state to issue a formal apology for slavery

2007

Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.

If this topic wins, some firsts would happen…

First NSDA PF Resolution to ever include ought to

Only third NSDA PF Resolution to include full “United States federal government” as the actor

Potential HUGE Overlap with LD in Sept/Oct

Significance of “Ought To”

OUGHT TO Expresses objectivity

Ex: I ought to congratulate her.

Suggests that something has been delayed.

Ought to occurs mostly in positive statements

Ought to is more objective and is used when the speaker wants to represent something as a law, duty or regulation.”

SHOULD Expresses subjectivity

Ex: I should congratulate her.

Should occurs mostly in negative and interrogative sentences

Meta analysis on 1,000 uses of the words ought to and should showed that there was

no significant difference in their usage.

Ought Debate

Ought Implies Can

Forces teams to prove solvency and feasibility

Ought Implies Obligation

Moral Obligation

Economic Obligation

Political Obligation

What are reparations?

individual reparations grants (payments to qualified individuals),

symbolic reparations (constructions of monuments and

memorials),

institutional reforms (measures to ensure that human rights abuses do

not occur again

community rehabilitation (creation of community-

based services and activities, including health

care, education, and housing)

Who are African Americans?

“’African American” refers to a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The Black racial category includes people who marked the “Black, African Am., or Negro” checkbox. It also includes respondents who reported entries such as African American; Sub-Saharan African entries, such as Kenyan and Nigerian; and Afro-Caribbean entries, such as Haitian and Jamaican.” (Rastogi, 2011)

“The problem of “who qualifies?” is explosive enough with hiring and admissions preferences. As the benefits at stake expand to the vast dimensions urged by Coates, the question will become more explosive yet. Does a mixed race person qualify? How mixed? What about recent immigrants from Africa or the West Indies? What about future immigrants? What about illegal immigrants from Africa who subsequently gain legalization—would amnesty come with a check attached?” (Frum, 2014)

Affirmative Strategy

THREE KEYS TO SUCCESS

1) SOLVENCY

2) DEFENSE OF ACTOR

3) IMPACTS

Material Reparations Good

“This emotional closure, combined with economic and educational programs, could eventually bring the end of race-preference programs and the start of a dialogue about race focused on the future. “ (Harvard Law Review, 2002)

Monetary Reparations Good

“Compensation to Blacks for the injustices suffered by them must first and foremost be monetary…freedom for Black people today means economic freedom and security. A basis for that freedom and security can be assured through group reparations in the form of monetary compensation.” (Westley, 2001)

Answering Feasibility Claims

“For the sacrifice is meaningless if society gives up something that is of little value. Words alone will not break these spiritual chains. Even legislation, if it does not dramatically alter existing positions and serve as a sign of repentance, will not serve as the spiritual sacrifice that is so desperately needed.”

Symbolic Reparations Good

“…financial compensation for victims of genocide, although lacking in any true compensatory value, is a symbolically significant exchange that promotes authenticity to an apology offered by a state to victims of genocide. Compensation represents some acknowledgement that the apology is sincere and that the wrongdoer is prepared to surrender something of value to meet the victimized party halfway as both now proceed into a future that will be developed in partnership with each other.” (Cooper, 2012)

Federal Reparations - Obligation

The federal government is the single most important currently existing party that can truly be held accountable. In view of that history and the entrenched nature, the wide scope, and the great magnitude of the persisting inequities, the federal government is a fitting target of moral demands for corrective justice. (Lyons, 2004)

Federal Reparations - Taxes

“…the government collected a tremendous amount of money in taxes on cotton, and he states: Cotton was the principal export crop of the United States. It earned more in foreign revenue than all other exports put together. The revenues to the treasury were major.” (Roberts, 2000)

“

”

[Reparations] will give individual African Americans and the community as a whole a chance to create their own economic base and become self-reliant. The cost of reparations may be great, but a debt is owed and must be paid.

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS FORUM, 2009

Impact – Self Sufficiency

“

”

There are reasons why citizens should want their government to act as a morally responsible intergenerational agent: to keep its agreements, to maintain valued institutions and practices, to pursue policies for the good of themselves and their successors, and to acknowledge and make up for past wrongs.

THOMPSON, 2005

Impact – Precedent/Prevents Future Atrocities

“

”

There are reasons why citizens should want their government to act as a morally responsible intergenerational agent: to keep its agreements, to maintain valued institutions and practices, to pursue policies for the good of themselves and their successors, and to acknowledge and make up for past wrongs.

THOMPSON, 2005

Impact – Precedent/Prevents Future Atrocities

“

”

If the political energy and purpose generated in the pursuit of reparations does not represent a promising example of democratic politics, then what does?

BALFOUR, 2005

Impact – Democratic Politics

Negative Strategy

THREE KEYS TO SUCCESS

1) ALTERNATE ACTORS

2) REPARATIONS WORSE

3) IMPACT AREAS

“

”

Committing yourself to a solution before you have any idea whether such a solution is workable is not a responsible reaction to America’s racial dilemmas.

FRUM, 2014

Framework – Feasibility

Alternate Actor – Slaveowners

“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.” (Schedler, 2003)

Alternate Actor – States

“the individual States owe compensation, since they had laws regulating slavery and the treatment of slaves…the federal government was not a direct participant in the process, and its regulation was even more remote than that of the States” (Schedler, 2003)

Reparations Bad – Class Divisions

“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” (Nuruddin, 2001)

Reparations Bad – No justification

Opponents to reparations have a legitimate case when they assert that (a) there is no single group responsible for the crime of slavery; (b) there is no single group that benefitted exclusively from slavery; (c) only a minority of White Americans owned slaves, whereas others gave their lives to free them; (d) most living Americans have no connection (direct or indirect) to slavery; (e) the historical precedents used to justify the reparations claim do not apply, and the claim itself is based on race not injury; and (f) the reparations argument is based on the unsubstantiated claim that all African Americans suffer from the economic consequences of slavery. In short, the economic basis of the reparations claim is highly problematic and has failed to earn the minimum standard for standing in the American judicial system. (Cooper, 2012)

Reparations Bad – Can’t Solve Racism

“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.” (Cooper, 2012)

“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” (Balfour, 2005)

Reparations Bad – Future Precedent

Reparations Bad – Natives Failed

“

”

To ignore the cultural invasion of legal forms and local adaptations to them—as exemplified in the operations of the postcolonial performative of victimization—thus courts the charge of a cultural blindness, an academic imperialism

SEGALL 2002

Impact – Cultural Blindness

“

”

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.

BALFOUR, 2005

Impact – Entrench Racism

“

”

Various methods have been proposed to estimate the size of the reparations debt, with estimates ranging from $17 billion (Ransom and Sutch, 1990), to $1.4 trillion (Neal, 1990), up to $4.7 trillion (Marketti, 1990), all in 1983 dollars

CRAEMER, 2015

Impact – Economic Collapse

“

”

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 …“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.

BALFOUR, 2005

Impact – Economic Collapse