The Sociological Case for Slavery Reparations
Submitted to Prof. Yael Barda, September 1st 2022
Introduction
The argument for the reestablishment of the
Freedman's Bureau
As a movement, you are interested in using Law, in a broad sense,
to promote reparations for slavery. You have asked for my opinion on the
matter, and it is provided in this paper.
The U.S. seems to have a unique anti-black sentiment. Police
violence towards dark skinned people is, sadly, still a global phenomenon, and
racism as well; However, the fervor of American persecution of people of
African descendant people is unique in the western world, South Africa
notwithstanding.
Reparations for slavery may seem odd to an onlooker. The
more liberal or progressive among white Americans may turn their gaze back to
the 1950's, but few dare turn a critical eye further back than 1914. Redlining
and segregation seem closer and more tangible than the far away slave
plantations. White Americans can see the poverty and crime rampant in
predominantly black neighborhoods, and many of them still have family members
that lived through desegregation.
To convince those with more liberal sensibilities, lawmakers
included, I will spend some time establishing connections between slavery and
the systems of racial exploitation and oppression that succeeded it. To do that,
I shall return to colonial America to show the creation of the unique
anti-black sentiment that is rampant throughout the United States and may be
the reason for the continuation of racist policy. This is best explained
through legal consciousness, which in the U.S., is tainted with three centuries
of white supremacist law.
I will establish minimal demands for repreparations and justify
them through the economic history of slavery. Moreover, I will go over the
historical promises of the U.S. government to the freedmen and suggest how to
best utilize them when establishing further goals for the reparation effort.
Finally, I shall argue against individualizing the problem and
against a single-payment or short-term conceptions of reparations. These
conceptions will hurt the momentum of anti-racist movements while failing to
address the causes of the persistence of anti-black sentiments in the United States.
The deep, historical, and conscious nature of white supremacy in
the United States requires nothing less than a century-long reestablishment of
the reconstruction era "Freedman's Bureau". This project should be
legally defined, and official recognition of the historical wrongdoing should
be legislated. This will be the way to finally erase the United States' legal
and institutional white supremacy.
Theoretical analysis
Why (and how) slavery still matters
In this section, I will argue that the American anti-black sentiment
stems from a historical effort to create a perception of white supremacy. This
effort dates back before the united states' independence. Its root is in
"divide and conquer" policies which pitted poor white people against
black people, causing them to see black progress and excellence as a threat to
their lives and livelihoods.
The first of these is the legal response to the anti-government
movements of the 1640s. Multi racial, lower class anti-government movements
culminated in Bacon's rebellion, in which black slaves rebelled alongside poor
and yeoman (land owning but not slave owning) white people. These movements
caused a government reaction, passing laws that determined black people were of
a lower class than any white citizen. A law passed in Virginia in 1662
determined the slave status of African people as inherited, further limiting
the potential freedom of black Americans and encouraging slavery as a long-term
investment.[1]
While the material conditions of landless and yeoman white people weren't
necessarily improved, their supremacy was legislated. An official body
recognized them as more akin to rich white people then black slaves. This
creates an illusion of a significant difference between these two classes of
people,[2]
and most likely contributed to the sense of comradery between slave owning,
poor and yeomen white people.
These "divide and conquer" tactics made by powerful white
people continued well into independence. For example, in the 19th
century, white workers regularly supplemented slave labor in the plantations.
These workers had relatively low wages, due to having to compete with slave
labor; however, their freedom of movement and sense of entitlement may have
distracted them from any class sentiment concerning their wages. Thus, the
racist sentiment was strengthened. This probably wasn't even a conscious
process; white supremacist legislation gave white supremacy a false sense of realness,
and the economic benefits of slave plantations, which grew exponentially after
the introduction of the cotton gin,[3]
incentivized an insistence on white supremacy.
These racist laws allowing and legitimizing white supremacy lasted
for three hundred years. They were only somewhat limited to the south after
independence.[4] The
civil war occured after two centuries of legal and economic incentives to white
supremacy. Of course, a less-than-a-decade long effort of reconstruction would
not erase this racist legal consciousness. This consciousness is, in my
opinion, the reason why anti-black policy and economics, such as sharecropper
farms, Jim Crow laws, redlining and the ghetto-prison relationship persist to
the present.[5]
What African Americans are owed
Slaves did not receive wages; however, their white colleagues did.
Many plantations supplemented black slaves with white workers.[6]
To properly rectify the economic coercion constituted by slave labor, one must
look at the wage of white plantation workers, adjust for currency fluctuation, and
compensate slave-descendant Americans accordingly. Having to compete with slave
labor weakened the negotiating power of white workers, causing them to work for
relatively low wages. Therefore, proper compensation must be at a rate higher
than that of the average wage of a white worker, perhaps a rate comparable to
that of the highest paid white worker, whose wage can be determined through
historical research.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves
were often used as collateral for loans taken by land-owning southerners.[7]
Therefore, slave-descendant Americans should receive some benefit when
acquiring loans. A historical effort should be made to trace the earliest known
usage of slaves as collateral for loans in the colonies. The number of years
that passed between that earliest use and the ratification of the 13th
amendment should be the number of years in which African American receive benefits when loaning large amounts of
wealth. Ideally, this connection will be expressed in the language of the law,
as a counterbalance to the white supremacist legal consciousness I described
earlier.
What African Americans were promised
The federal government made many promises to the freedman, and most
of them remained unfulfilled. Infamously, in January 1865, Gen. William Sherman
issued an order reallocating hundreds of thousands of acres of white-owned land
along the coasts of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina for settlement by
black families in 40-acre plots.[8]
President Johnson returned the land allocated to black families to their former
white owners.
While it may be unwise to attempt a reclamation of these lands as
part of reparations, a different approach may be effective. Presumably, a
record of the allocated land still exists. The land's value can therefore be
estimated by independent property valuers. After proper valuation, an amount of
wealth equal to it should comprise a minimal government investment in the
contemporary African American dwellers of ghettos. The ghettos, predominantly
northern former-industrial neighborhoods, are the main living space of African Americans
due to racist policy and white violence.[9]
Seeing reparations as part of a larger process of recognition and
rectification, the loss of the promised living space should be rectified
through investment in the current living space.
Why a collective approach is necessary
After determining minimal satisfactory reparations and explaining
the socio-legal source of the persistence of anti-black sentiments, I will now
argue for a collective approach to reparations. This is opposed to an
individual approach and opposed to a short-term solution.
A collective approach is more productive to advance race relations
than one based on individual claims. That is due to the nature of legal claims,
and what they do to existing social movements. Historically, while the process
of naming wrongdoing and claiming it through legal means has helped to create
social movements to fix said wrongdoings,[10]
it can hurt the momentum of existing social movements.[11]
Moreover, as shown above, the persistence and fervor of American
anti-black racism stems from a racist legal consciousness, created around 1662
and officially reinforced until 1965. A short term or individual solution is
simply not enough to counter the sense of realism granted to anti-blackness by
said legal consciousness.
Therefore, it seems that reparation advocates have no better choice
than the following high aspiration: a century long reestablishment of the
Freedman's Bureau. This body will provide small government allowance for
black or slave descendant citizens, an investment in ghettos and their
dwellers, and benefits for African Americans in loans in general and mortgages
in particular. This body should be officially recognized by law, as should the
historical wrongdoing of slavery and the equal value of African Americans. Only
aw massive effort such as this has chance to uproot the racist legal
consciousness of the United States.
Conclusion
The unique persistency and fervor of American anti-black sentiments
stem from a racist/white supremacist legal consciousness first created through
legislation in Virginia 1640s-1660s. This legislation succeeded in dividing and
weakening the multi-racial lower-class anti-government movements of the time.
In the following two hundred years, powerful economic incentives,
partially created by this Virginia legislation, aided in the replication and
proliferation of slavery and of anti-black sentiments. This deeply rooted the
racist/white-supremacist legal consciousness caused anti-black legislation and
violence to continue even after the reconstruction era.
I have gathered the specific financial benefits granted to
slave-owners and argued for them being a minimal goal for reparations. Moreover,
I suggested to use the promise of land made by Gen. Sherman and later broken by
Pres. Johnson as a tool to justify a demand for further investment in the
ghettos.
I have argued that a collective approach would be more beneficial
than one based on individual claims, seeing as an individual system would
likely drain the energy of African American activist organizations. Moreover, a
legal recognition in the collective harm inflicted on the African Americans
could begin to mend three hundred years of racist damage done to the American
legal consciousness by racist legislation and by systems of race-based economic
exploitation.
However, I do believe that to fully repair centuries of damage by
the government, a century long government effort is required. It will be
comprised of all the above-mentioned economic reparations and more. This effort
needs to be explicit, both in the title and stated purpose of its managing body
and in the legislation creating and sustaining it. This effort should ideally
come with official legal recognition of the harm and exploitation inflicted on
African American people by the United States government and citizenry.
Only this epochal effort can hope fully counterbalance, and
hopefully uproot, the racist legal consciousness created and reinforced by the
colonial and united states government from 1640s to 1965.
In short, this is a call for the reestablishment of the reconstruction
era Freedman's Bureau; however, this reestablished body will be financed
properly and will last a century. This is a monumental task, however, if one
hopes for true racial equality in the U.S., it is worthwhile.
Bibliography
· Elliot,
Mary and Hughes, Jazmine. "Four hundred years after enslaved Africans
were first brought to Virginia, most Americans still don’t know the full story
of slavery", The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 14, 2019
· Desmond,
Matthew. "American capitalism is brutal. You can trace that to the
plantation.", The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 14, 2019
· Lee,
Trymaine. "A Vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining,
evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America.", New York
Times Magazine, Aug 14. 2019
·
Wacquant, Loic. "Deadly
symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and
mesh.", Punishment & Society 3.1, SAGE publishing, 2001
·
Felstiner, William LF,
Richard L. Abel, and Austin Sarat. "The Emergence and Transformation of
Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming..." Law & Society Review 15, 1980
· Kitty
Calavita, “Law and Social Justice” from Invitation to Law &
Society: An
Introduction to the
Study of Real Law, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2010
· Patricia
Ewick and Susan Silbey, “Conformity, Contestation and Resistance: An
Account of Legal
Consciousness.” New
England Law Review, Boston 1992
General
comments
This
is a beautiful paper, very well written, that demonstrates the ability to
integrate the theoretical concepts of law and society scholarship with historical and contemporary empirical data.
one
comment – you do not introduce your reader to freedmans bureau until page
3
so she
does not know what you are writing about until late in the paper.
really
excellent and I hope you continue on this path
grade
99
[1]
Elliot and Hughes, "Four hundred years after enslaved Africans
were first brought to Virginia, most Americans still don’t know the full story
of slavery" The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 14, 2019
[2]Ewick
and Silbey, "Conformity, Contestation, and Resistance: An Account of
Legal Consciousness," New England Law Review, 1992
[3]
Desmond, "American capitalism is brutal. You can trace that to
the plantation. The New York Times Magazine 2019
[4]
Elliot and Hughes, "Four hundred years after enslaved Africans
were first brought to Virginia, most Americans still don’t know the full story
of slavery", The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 14, 2019
[5]
Wacquant, Loic. Deadly symbiosis: when ghetto and prison meet and
mesh, Berkely
[6]
Desmond, "American capitalism is brutal. You can trace that to the
plantation." The New York Times Magazine 2019
[7]
See note 3
[8]
Lee, "A Vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining,
evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America.", New York
Times Magazine 2019
[9]
Wacquant. "Deadly symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and
mesh.", SAGE 2001
[10]
Calavita, kitty. "Law and Social change", Chicago 2010
[11]
Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat, The Emergence and Transformation of
Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming..." Law & Society Rev.,
1980
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