Are Reparations for Slavery Possible in America?
The cost of compensating Americans descended from enslaved people or the legacy of bondage and subsequent racial oppression could be as much as $13 trillion. For models, many look to policies drafted to translate the most hellish forms of suffering into redress for historically oppressed peoples in countries like Germany and Colombia.
Landwebs
Protests unleashed by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans have renewed a debate around reparations for slavery, with many looking to policies drafted to translate the most hellish forms of suffering into redress for historically oppressed peoples in countries like Germany, Colombia, Kuwait as potential road maps, reports USA Today.
Iraq paid out almost $50 billion to Kuwait for the destruction of its oil fields during its invasion and occupation of the country during the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91. Colombia’s so-called Victims Law was established for more than 11 million people who were caught up in more than half a century of the country’s armed conflicts. And Germany has also, since 1952, paid more than $80 billion in reparations directly to 800,000 Holocaust victims.
According to Kirsten Mullen, a folklorist and historian, and William Darity, an economist at Duke University, the cost of compensating Americans descended from slaves for the legacy of bondage and subsequent racial oppression could be as much as $13 trillion.
Out of an approximate 45 million Black Americans, about 40 million would be eligible recipients of these funds if eligibility is based on whether their ancestors were enslaved in the USA, working out to roughly $300,000-$350,000 per recipient.
Weeks after George Floyd was killed, the California Assembly passed a bill to establish a task force to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans. More than a year before, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, sponsored a bill in Congress known as H.R. 40, or the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.
Though Congress for the first time formally apologized for slavery in 2008, H.R. 40 has still faced opposition. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published in 2021, only one in five respondents agreed that the USA should use “taxpayer money to pay damages to descendants of enslaved people in the United States.”
