No one living today is responsible for America’s original sin.
When the first ships flying under European flags reached Africa’s shores, early navigators were not drawn to the continent to become involved with the slave trade. Although early voyages did return to Europe with a small number of African slaves, it was the lure of curious commodities and riches, above all gold, which proved irresistible. As history has properly recorded, the emergence of the slave trade into a full-scale market occurred only when North and South America were established as European territorial possessions. Soon after the European powers gained a foothold in the New World, the slave trade became a sprawling business involving merchants in Portugal, Great Britain, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, and oddly enough, Norway. Wealth gushed from the slave trade, particularly from the West Indies and South America, where Portuguese and Dutch merchants had introduced sugar to plantation owners. Naturally, business expanded to include tea and coffee and, so too, did the need for labor. By the late 18th century, international commerce fell under the constant gaze of British Parliament and a small abolition movement bloomed into a political movement.
Following several landmark legal cases led by British theologian Granville Sharp, boycotts of slave-grown sugar appeared in England. Soon after, the movement gained two powerful allies: Member of Parliament William Wilberforce, and abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. Passionate foes of slavery and the slave trade, together the two men argued against the practice and successfully saw through a campaign to end the trafficking of slaves and the outlawing of slave ownership with two laws, The Slave Trade Act of 1807 and The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. A law with force, the Slave Trade Act of 1807 authorized the Royal Navy to repress the international slave trade on the high seas. With the slave trade now considered to be an act of piracy after 1807, British warships blockaded the African coast, merchant ship owners found to be trading slaves were fined, and by 1860 British naval vessels had returned to Africa over 150,000 men, women, and children who otherwise would have fallen into a life of forced labor.
Despite Great Britain’s success in crippling the slave trade, slavery continued to legally thrive in certain parts of the globe. In the United States, legal slavery continued despite protests from clergy and men and women who led maturing abolition groups. Fearing limits placed on slavery by Congress, the first southern states seceded in 1860 over concern the institution of slavery would be condemned to death, and the Confederate States waged a costly war against the Union, which took the lives of over 600,000. A region left in ruins, out of the rubble of the Civil War grew a Deep South which was led by much of the pro-slave political apparatus which had previously defended legalized slavery and had called for armed rebellion for its preservation. Despite the Union victory, the passage of the 13th Amendment, and Reconstruction, a re-united America was a spent force with little vitality to compel a change in culture in the former Confederacy. Sadly, what followed was nearly a century of continued oppression, political exclusion, deprivation, and misery for many Blacks in the south. Only through the Civil Rights movement did Blacks finally achieve rights through federal legislation in the 1960s.
Although White attitudes toward minority groups gradually changed, calls for a reckoning for slavery have grown. Since a 1989 motion introduced in Congress by former Michigan Democrat John Conyers to create a commission to study the impact of slavery, demands to adopt the resolution have expanded. Despite the fact Conyers’ measure proposing the commission has failed every year, a 2104 article penned by Ta-Nehisi Coates and appearing in The Atlantic, only intensified the demand to explore reparations for slavery. A deeply embittering essay, Coates lays out a case for reviving the reparations issue, not only for descendants of slaves but for all Blacks in America. Furthermore, with the emergence of the 1619 Project sponsored by the New York Times, calls for reparations have turned into overwrought screams. Too the surprise of virtually no one, members of the Chicago City Council have now jumped on the reparations bandwagon.
Under a motion submitted by Alderman Roderick T. Sawyer (6), in September 2019, the Chicago City Council is preparing to consider the establishment of a committee to study methods to compensate descendants of enslaved Americans living in Chicago. A non-binding resolution, the measure has a majority of City Council members recorded as co-sponsors, virtually guaranteeing its passage once it is voted out of the Health and Human Relations Committee. Though Sawyer has been intentionally vague by insisting he is only concerned moving closer to a conversation about reparations and a shared understanding of what precisely reparations means remains elusive, it is fair to speculate the alderman’s vision would be modeled on proposals unfurled on the national level and involve directly remunerating descendants of slaves living in Chicago.
By Preib, Martin
If we accept Sawyer’s organizing material is bathed in obscure blather to start a conversation without specifics, then it is fair to begin our discussion over the alderman’s grand idea by acknowledging the notion of reparations is merely an extension of the national conversation on race. A discussion with a beginning, a mid-point but no end, for us to proceed it will be helpful for us to remind Alderman Sawyer of three cold, hard, unsentimental facts related to the reparations debate: Slavery ended over 150 years ago, slave owners are dead, and neither their descendants nor modern America should be held liable for those sins.
Evidence Sawyer has obviously chosen to defy, there are ample reasons to reject Sawyer’s exploratory panel itself and any finding it draws before a formal committee is empaneled. To begin, it is critical to identify who would be eligible for reparations. Under any solution in the proposed panel’s wisdom, would mix-race citizens be entitled to reparations? How would any plan conceived by the reparations panel determine qualification? How would lineage be established to prevent a fraudulent claim for reparation? Basic questions, Sawyer has offered no clues, insisting he only desires to “start the conversation.” If Sawyer’s plan to study reparations is similar to reparations plans debated elsewhere, it is likely the alderman’s panel will argue reparations have indeed been paid out for similar circumstances with little opposition. Although a valid point strengthening the debate for reparations for slavery, reparations have generally been accorded in the instance when a government takes actions which are either illegal or unconscionable under universal standards of international law. For example: Cash payments were delivered in the 1980s to Japanese-Americans whose property was seized and interred by U.S. authorities at the onset of America’s involvement in the Second World War. As well, to make amends following the end of the Second World War, the West German government paid for the re-settling of European Jews who, experiencing the excesses of Nazism and the pathology of European anti-Semitism, sought refuge in the newly created State of Israel. Unlike the illegal seizure of American citizens’ property and the crimes perpetrated by the Nazi regime, slavery was regrettably legal under international law from the time colonial empires engaged in the trade to the conclusion of the American Civil War. While supporters of reparations would argue slavery is comparable to the crimes committed by the Nazis because they were lawfully committed under the Nazi regime, given the scale and scope of Nazi crimes against European Jews, reparations paid to Israel by West Germany were necessary and just.
Additionally, misguided advocates of reparations like Sawyer often advance the argument reparation payments to Blacks would acknowledge lasting loss, hardship, and would encourage healing tend to overlook the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Union troops who fought to free slaves. Similarly, Sawyer’s proposed committee also ignores the fact redress for slavery was undertaken ahead of recent calls for reparations. After the growth of the Civil Rights movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 followed a raft of domestic assistance programs, the Great Society, introduced under President Johnson and affirmative action ushered in under President Nixon. Programs and policies which were aimed in part at assuaging the suffering of Blacks and bringing Blacks under one standard, the cost to provide housing, job training, and opening avenues to education is estimated in the trillions. Many of those programs and policies remain in place today and continue to facilitate growth for Blacks who lag behind.
While we should use the past as a guide to learn and develop, we should not remain locked in the past. The fact Mr. Sawyer has made slavery and its legacy a focal point of his duties in the City Council is both distressing and senseless. Moreover, it is quite unreasonable to insist a financial burden be placed on modern American society for misdeeds committed centuries before and by those who have long passed.
A great evil and a violation to America’s founding principles, slavery was plainly an institution which needed to be dismantled. America has its past blemishes and its imperfections. Though America is with sin, and the full acceptance of Blacks in America was primarily sluggish, significant progress has been achieved in the last six decades. While racism still exists among those who dwell in the darker corners of American life, it has receded considerably from the dawn of the slave trade and throughout slavery and segregation. However, healing began in the 1960s when America definitively recognized slavery, segregation, and racism were deep moral flaws and tragic violations of our founding tenets. An acknowledgement which re-modeled America forever, the admission of malfeasance and neglect revealed America had adopted a new moral obligation, one which demanded redemption from those early sins to claim validity of a democracy.
Black America and Black Chicagoans should neither be faulted for being frustrated at the length of time it required for White racism and segregation to ebb, nor faulted for impatience with what lingering discrimination remains. However, no windfall payment will compensate for the past. If Mr. Sawyer is earnest in his purpose to fulfill social commitments to Black Chicagoans, he should consider constructive steps to deepen the commitment to opportunity for all. From his position in the city’s legislative chamber, Sawyer can do as much by promoting legislation aimed at improving Chicago’s public education system, addressing crime, reducing the tax burden on residents, and sweeping away barriers which prevent economic development in Chicago.
[WTTW]
