Nor has the federal government atoned for the lost equity from anti-Black housing, transportation, and business policy. Slavery, Jim Crow segregation, anti-Black practices like redlining, and other discriminatory public policies in criminal justice and education have robbed Black Americans of the opportunities to build wealth defined as assets minus debt afforded to their white peers.
Moreover, the racial wealth gap did not result from a lack of labor. Rather, it came from a lack of financial capital. Not only do racial wealth disparities reveal fallacies in the American Dream, the financial and social consequences are significant and wide-ranging. Wealth is positively correlated with better health, educational, and economic outcomes. Recessions impact everyone, but wealth is distributed quite unevenly in the U.
The woeful inadequacy of a government-sponsored safety net was made apparent in the wake of economic disasters like the housing crisis and natural ones like Hurricane Katrina in Those who can draw upon the equity in a home, savings, and securities are able to recover faster after economic downturns than those without wealth. The lack of a social safety net and the racial wealth divide are currently on display amid the COVID crisis. Disparities in access to health care along with inequities in economic policies combine to make Black people more vulnerable to negative consequences than white individuals.
Below, we provide a history of reparations in the United States, missed opportunities to redress the racial wealth gap, and specific details of a viable reparations package for Black Americans.
Reparations—a system of redress for egregious injustices—are not foreign to the United States. Native Americans have received land and billions of dollars for various benefits and programs for being forcibly exiled from their native lands. Additionally, the United States, via the Marshall Plan , helped to ensure that Jews received reparations for the Holocaust, including making various investments over time.
In , West Germany agreed to pay 3. Black Americans are the only group that has not received reparations for state-sanctioned racial discrimination, while slavery afforded some white families the ability to accrue tremendous wealth.
And, we must note that American slavery was particularly brutal. About 15 percent of the enslaved shipped from Western Africa died during transport. The enslaved were regularly beaten and lynched for frivolous infractions. Slavery also disrupted families as one in three marriages were split up and one in five children were separated from their parents. The case for reparations can be made on economic, social, and moral grounds. The United States had multiple opportunities to atone for slavery—each a missed chance to make the American Dream a reality—but has yet to undertake significant action.
The first major opportunity that the United States had and where it should have atoned for slavery was right after the Civil War. Union leaders including General William Sherman concluded that each Black family should receive 40 acres. Sherman signed Field Order 15 and allocated , acres of confiscated Confederate land to Black families. Additionally, some families were to receive mules left over from the war, hence 40 acres and a mule. The campaign in Britain to abolish slavery began in the s, supported by both black and white abolitionists.
The battle was long and hard-fought, with pro-slavery campaigners arguing that the slave trade was important for the British economy and claiming that enslaved Africans were happy and well-treated.
However the frequent rebellions by enslaved Africans and evidence of the appalling conditions endured by them during and after transportation led to growing support for the demands to abolish the slave trade. Eventually, in , Parliament passed an Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which abolished the trade by Britain in enslaved peoples between Africa, the West Indies and America.
The pro-slavery campaigners had argued that with no new enslaved Africans being traded slave-owners would treat their existing slaves better. However, it was clear that enslaved people were still harshly treated and many continued to resist and rebel against their enslavement.
In Parliament passed a further act to abolish slavery in the British West Indies, Canada and the Cape of Good Hope southern Africa , meaning that it was now illegal to buy or own a person. Use this lesson to explore original court records from Dominica, a British colony and photographs from HMS Daphne, a British naval ship later used to prevent the transportation of enslaved people. Having been the largest slaving nation, Britain became a determined abolitionist power after , using the Royal Navy to stop ships suspected of being slavers.
These photographs were taken about , off the east coast of Africa. Zanzibar did not abolish slavery until Enslavement is both a result and a cause of racism. A belief that certain people were racially inferior allowed Europeans to set up the trade in African enslaved people in the s. It encouraged whites to believe that the cruelty of the capture of enslaved people, the inhuman conditions on the slave-ships and the incredibly harsh treatment the enslaved received in the Americas were somehow justified.
Source 2 is just another example of this. Enslavement has also caused racism by setting up a stereotype of black people as victims in the past.
The British trade in enslaved people was a three-legged voyage: from British ports to West Africa, where enslaved people were bought with guns and other British-manufactured articles. The enslaved were then sold in the southern USA, the Caribbean Islands and South America, where they were used to work the plantations. Plantations were farms growing only crops that Europe wanted: tobacco, sugar, cotton. The merchant ships would load up with these products and take them back to Britain on the last leg of their journey.
Profits from this trade made merchants rich as well as providing the capital money for many of the enterprises of the early Industrial Revolution. The enslaved people were worked in gangs, made up of both men and women, driven on by the whip of the overseer.
They worked for ten to 12 hours a day in the tropical sun, for six days a week. Other enslaved people worked as craftspeople, or servants.
A note about the interactive exercises. The first allows students to explore vocabulary in context. It links to a PDF you can print and distribute. Selecting passages to serve as evidence and providing rationales for those choices offer an excellent opportunity for small group work. The PDF also features a model essay and an analysis of it that students can use to guide the writing of their own essays. This lesson is divided into two parts, both accessible below.
One of the most vehement proponents of this argument was George Fitzhugh — , a Virginia lawyer, writer, and slaveowner. He believed that civilization depended upon the exploitation of labor. This led him to ask which system — slavery or free labor — exploited workers less.
He concluded that slavery did, and made his case in Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters. In the book Fitzhugh unapologetically acknowledges that the South is a slave society, but he claims that the North is, too. The central question is what form of society most effectively curbs their appetites. How might that word affect his pro-slavery readers?
Here, they might think, is one of us — unapologetic, unashamed, confident. The word would probably repel his anti-slavery readers and dampen their willingness to entertain his argument. Substituting any of the suggested alternative verbs tones down the paragraph, makes Fitzhugh seem more reasonable, less truculent. And, realizing that, we can legitimately ask why Fitzhugh is writing: to persuade Northern readers or bolster to Southern ones.
Certainly, family cares might burden free workers, but they would not deprive them of their freedom. However burdened, Northern laborers would, unlike the enslaved, be free to marry legally, start families, and live together in a single household. Fitzhugh sees freedom purely in economic terms.
For him freedom is not having to work and being unburdened by worries about economic well-being, either your own or that of others. Why are employers free? Why are slaves free? Are the slave owners free? Why or why not? Employers are free because they do not work; they profit from the toil of other people. Moreover, they do not have to worry about the physical well-being of workers: their responsibility ends when they dole out wages.
While slaves must work, they are free because, according to Fitzhugh, their physical well-being is assured by their masters. Slavery would be too difficult to abolish This probably is the reason why some cultures chose to tolerate slavery while trying to eradicate many of the more cruel practices - but it is not a justification for slavery.
Slaves are essential to certain industries A number of past industries have depended on slave labour, and the employers claimed that abolishing slavery would be economically disastrous.
This argument isn't an ethical one and isn't backed up by examples. Slavery is acceptable in this culture Slavery was generally accepted by the majority in some societies - if ethics is a matter of public opinion Cultural Ethical Relativism then some would say that slavery was ethically OK in those societies where it was the cultural norm.
This sort of argument is a key reason why many people oppose CER. Slavery is a useful form of punishment Some cultures have used enslavement as a punishment. Slavery is legal This is no argument at all - things can be legal and unethical at the same time.
Abolishing slavery would threaten the structure of society This argument was popular at some periods - but it was perhaps an argument that a particular society was ethically flawed and needed reorganisation.
Since no modern society is based on slavery it has no application. Living in slavery is better than starving to death In circumstances of extreme poverty, living in slavery may be the least bad available option. Free men should be able to become slaves if they want to It can be argued that this sort of slavery isn't real slavery until some form of coercion is involved.
Find out more Philosophers who argued for slavery Top. See also.
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