So you don't think we are owed ?
History of reparations in the United States
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. For Japanese Americans, $1.5 billion was paid to those who were interned during World War II. 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 1952, West Germany agreed to pay 3.45 billion Deutsche Marks to Holocaust survivors.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.
Missed policy opportunities to atone for slavery with reparations
40 Acres and a MuleThe 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 400,000 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.
Yet, after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson reversed Field Order 15 and returned land back to former slave owners. Instead of giving Blacks the means to support themselves, the federal government empowered former enslavers. For example, in Washington D.C., slave owners were actually paid reparations for lost property—the formally enslaved. This practice was also common in nearby states. Many Black Americans with limited work options returned as sharecroppers to till the same land for the very slave owners to whom they were once enslaved. Slave owners not only made money off the chattel enslavement of Black Americans, but they then made money multiple times over off the land that the formerly enslaved had no choice but to work.
Why we need reparations for Black Americans (brookings.edu)
