Репарации за рабство в США: история и современные дебаты.

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Reparations for slavery is the application of the concept of reparations to victims of slavery or their descendants. There are concepts for reparations in legal philosophy and reparations in transitional justice. In the US, reparations for slavery have been both given by legal ruling in court and/or given voluntarily (without court rulings) by individuals and institutions. The first recorded case of reparations for slavery in the United States was to former slave Belinda Royall in 1783, in the form of a pension, and since then reparations continue to be proposed. To the present day, no federal reparations bills have been passed. The 1865 Special Field Orders No. 15 ("Forty acres and a mule") is the most well known attempt to help newly freed slaves integrate into society and accumulate wealth. However, President Andrew Johnson reversed this order, giving the land back to its former Confederate owners. Reparations have been a recurring idea in the politics of the United States, most recently in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. The call for reparations intensified in 2020, amidst the protests against police brutality and the COVID 19 pandemic, which both kill Black Americans disproportionately. Calls for reparations for racism and discrimination in the US are often made by black communities and authors alongside calls for reparations for slavery. The idea of reparations remains highly controversial, due to questions of how they would be given, how much would be given, who would pay them, and who would receive them. Forms of reparations which have been proposed in the United States by city, county, state, and national governments or private institutions include: individual monetary payments, settlements, scholarships, waiving of fees, and systemic initiatives to offset injustices, land based compensation related to independence, apologies and acknowledgements of the injustices, token measures (such as naming a building after someone),

Since further injustices and discrimination have continued since slavery was outlawed in the US, some black communities and civil rights organizations have called for reparations for those injustices as well as for reparations directly related to slavery.

The debate on reparations reaches as far back as the eighteenth century. Quakers, who were some of the first abolitionists in the United States, almost unanimously insisted that freed slaves were entitled to compensation from their former owners. If an owner repented of his sin of owning a chattel slave, he needs to atone for it by making amends. Quakers cited the book of Deuteronomy, in which owners were exhorted to share their goods with former slaves. During the Revolutionary War, Warner Mifflin advocated for restitution for freed ex slaves as early as 1778, in the form of cash payments, land, and shared crop arrangements. Gary B. Nash writes that, "he may fairly be called the father of American reparationism".

Well before slavery was abolished nationally in 1865, abolitionists presented suggestions on what could or should be done to compensate the enslaved workers after their liberation. Early in 1859, in a book dedicated to "Old Hero" John Brown, James Redpath declared himself a "reparationist", and implies that in his view, the lands of the Confederacy should be given to the ex slaves. He also quotes an earlier poem, by William North, that refers to "the course of reparation". Calls for permanent confiscation and redistribution of plantation lands had already been made by Representatives George W. Julian and Thaddeus Stevens, both of the Radical Republican faction.

The arguments surrounding reparations are based on the formal discussion about many different reparations, and actual land reparations received by African Americans which were later taken away. In 1865, after the Confederate States of America were defeated in the American Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 to both "assure the harmony of action in the area of operations" and to solve problems caused by the masses of freed slaves, a temporary plan granting each freed family forty acres of tillable land in the sea islands and around Charleston, South Carolina for the exclusive use of black people who had been enslaved. The army also had a number of unneeded mules which were given to freed slaves. Around 40,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres (1,600 km2) in Georgia and South Carolina. However, President Andrew Johnson reversed the order after Lincoln was assassinated, the land was returned to its previous owners, and the blacks were forced to leave. In 1867, Thaddeus Stevens sponsored a bill for the redistribution of land to African Americans, but it did not pass. Reconstruction came to an end in 1877 without the issue of reparations having been addressed. Thereafter, a deliberate movement of segregation and oppression arose in Southern states. Jim Crow laws passed in some Southeastern states to reinforce the existing inequality that slavery had produced. In addition, white extremist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan engaged in a massive campaign of terrorism throughout the Southeast in order to keep African Americans in their prescribed social place. For decades this assumed inequality and injustice was ruled on in court decisions and debated in public discourse. In one anomalous case, a former slave named Henrietta Wood successfully sued for compensation after having been kidnapped from the free state of Ohio and sold into slavery in Mississippi. After the American Civil War, she was freed and returned to Cincinnati, where she won her case in federal court in 1878, receiving $2,500 (~$ in ) in damages. Though the verdict was a national news story, it did not prompt any trend toward additional similar cases.

In 1896, the National Ex Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (MRB&PA) was founded for the purpose of obtaining pensions for former slaves from the Federal government as compensation and reparations for their unpaid labor and suffering. Chartered in 1898 in Nashville, Tennessee, the organization was founded by former slaves Callie House and Isaiah H. Dickerson. According to some historians, the organization was "the first mass reparations movement led by African Americans." The organization and its leaders were hounded with false allegations and criminal prosecutions until its last local branches closed in the 1930's. In 1915, under Callie House's leadership, the association filed a class action lawsuit, Johnson v. McAdoo, in federal court against the U. S. Treasury Department for 68 million dollars. $68 million was the amount of cotton tax collected between 1862 and 1868 and, it was argued, was due to the plaintiffs because this cotton had been produced by them and their ancestors as a result of their involuntary servitude. This was the first documented Black reparations litigation in the US on the federal level. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied the claim based on governmental immunity as did the U. S. Supreme Court, siding with the Appeals Court's decision.

Private institutions and corporations were also involved in slavery. On March 8, 2000, Reuters News Service reported that Deadria Farmer Paellmann, a law school graduate, initiated a one woman campaign making a historic demand for restitution and apologies from modern companies that played a direct role in enslaving Africans. Aetna Inc. was her first target because of their practice of writing life insurance policies on the lives of enslaved Africans with slave owners as the beneficiaries. In response to Farmer Paellmann's demand, Aetna Inc. issued a public apology, and the "corporate restitution movement" was born. By 2002, nine lawsuits were filed around the country coordinated by Farmer Paellmann and the Restitution Study Group—a New York non profit. The litigation included 20 plaintiffs, demanding restitution from 20 companies from the banking, insurance, textile, railroad, and tobacco industries. The cases were consolidated under 28 U. S. C. 1407 to multidistrict litigation in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The district court dismissed the lawsuits with prejudice, and the claimants appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. On December 13, 2006, that court, in an opinion written by Judge Richard Posner, modified the district court's judgment to be a dismissal without prejudice, affirmed the majority of the district court's judgment, and reversed the portion of the district court's judgment dismissing the plaintiffs' consumer protection claims, remanding the case for further proceedings consistent with its opinion. Thus, the plaintiffs may bring the lawsuit again, but must clear considerable procedural and substantive hurdles first:
If one or more of the defendants violated a state law by transporting slaves in 1850, and the plaintiffs can establish standing to sue, prove the violation despite its antiquity, establish that the law was intended to provide a remedy (either directly or by providing the basis for a common law action for conspiracy, conversion, or restitution) to lawfully enslaved persons or their descendants, identify their ancestors, quantify damages incurred, and persuade the court to toll the statute of limitations, there would be no further obstacle to the grant of relief. In October 2000, California passed the Slavery Era Disclosure Law requiring insurance companies doing business there to report on their role in slavery. The disclosure legislation, introduced by Senator Tom Hayden, is the prototype for similar laws passed in 12 states around the United States. The NAACP has called for more of such legislation at local and corporate levels. It quotes Dennis C. Hayes, CEO of the NAACP, as saying, "Absolutely, we will be pursuing reparations from companies that have historical ties to slavery and engaging all parties to come to the table." Brown University, whose namesake family was involved in the slave trade, has also established a committee to explore the issue of reparations. In February 2007, Brown University announced a set of responses to its Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. While in 1995 the Southern Baptist Convention apologized for the "sins" of racism, including slavery. In December 2005, a boycott was called by a coalition of reparations groups under the sponsorship of the Restitution Study Group. The boycott targets the student loan products of banks deemed complicit in slavery—particularly those identified in the Farmer Paellmann litigation. As part of the boycott, students are asked to choose from other banks to finance their student loans. Pro reparations groups such as the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America advocate for compensation to be in the form of community rehabilitation and not payments to individual descendants. as well as investments in education initiatives, mental health services, and jobs programs. These calls for reparations have been bolstered amidst the COVID 19 pandemic and the high rates of police brutality against Blacks.

Housing discrimination played a big role in creating the racial wealth gap that exists today. After the Great Migration of Southern blacks to Chicago in the 1940s, redlining was used to keep former slaves segregated from whites and to prevent black families from getting a mortgage. According to this view, reparations would be valuable primarily as a way of correcting modern economic imbalances. In 2008 the American Humanist Association published an article which argued that if emancipated slaves had been allowed to possess and retain the profits of their labor, their descendants might now control a much larger share of American social and monetary wealth. Not only did the freedmen not receive a share of these profits, but they were stripped of the small amounts of compensation paid to some of them during Reconstruction. Therefore, many scholars and activists call for reparations to eliminate "racial disparities in wealth, income, education, health, sentencing and incarceration, political participation, and subsequent opportunities to engage in American political and social life". Ray and Perry state in a Brookings article that the lack of a social safety net and the wealth gap are particularly highlighted during the COVID 19 pandemic. They explain that “disparities in access to health care along with inequities in economic policies combine,” making this inequality a life or death situation for black Americans.

Many argue that giving reparations for slavery is too complicated, but there is a strong basis for them on the past and current discrimination that blacks in America face. Ta Nehisi Coates explains it in "The Case for Reparations" article in The Atlantic as "ninety years of Jim Crow, sixty years of separate but equal, and thirty five years of racist housing policy". As Bittker claims in his book The Case for Black Reparations, "as slavery faded into the background, it was succeeded by a caste system embodying white supremacy". Many argue that while reparations may be a first step towards amending the harms caused by slavery, the systemic racism that exists in many institutions will not be fixed as easily. Malcolm X stated: "If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made."

Most state and federal laws under which parties can sue for damages have a statute of limitations which sets a deadline for filing; these have all long since passed, which prevents courts from granting relief under existing laws. This has been used effectively in several suits, including In re: African American Slave Descendants, which dismissed a high profile suit against a number of businesses with ties to slavery.

The technical side of reparations is very complex, and could be a reason why they have not yet been implemented. Some argue against the idea of putting a monetary value on the traumas that Black Americans have faced, dubbing it "transactionalism". Some claim that closing the wealth gap involves paying descendants of slaves “individual cash payments in the amount that will close the Black white racial wealth divide”. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is a descendant of slave owners, while acknowledging that slavery was an "original sin" of the United States, opposes providing reparations because he believes "none of us currently living are responsible." One publication against reparations is David Horowitz, Uncivil Wars: The Controversy Over Reparations for Slavery (2002). Other works that discuss problems with reparations include John Torpey's Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (2006), Alfred Brophy's Reparations Pro and Con (2006), and Nahshon Perez's Freedom from Past Injustices (Edinburgh University Press, 2012). Reparations in the U. S. have never gained widespread public support. This relates back to the fact that white families have roughly ten times the wealth of black families. In August 2020, the CDC released data showing that Blacks, Latinos, and American Indians are experiencing hospitalizations at rates 4.5 to 5.5 times higher than non Hispanic whites, and that African Americans are dying at 2.4 times the white rate.

California – Adopted legislation requiring insurance companies to determine whether they have records going back to when slavery existed in this country and, if so, to provide information on insurance policies held by slaveholders on slaves to the state's insurance department. The California Reparations Task Force was established in 2020 as a non regulatory state agency to study and develop reparation proposals. Illinois – Adopted legislation requiring insurance companies to determine whether they have records going back to when slavery existed in this country and, if so, to provide information on insurance policies held by slaveholders on slaves to the state's insurance department.

Alabama – Apologized for its involvement in the enslavement of Africans on April 25, 2007. Connecticut – In 2009 apologized for its involvement in the enslavement of Africans. Delaware – Apologized for its involvement in the enslavement of Africans on February 11, 2016. Virginia – Apologized for its involvement in the enslavement of Africans on February 26, 2007. which is named after North Carolina Governor Zeb Vance, a slave owner who used convict labor to build the railroad to Western North Carolina. Significant community involvement led to the decision. Leading up to the vote, the board received 549 supporting messages and 19 opposing.</div>

Chicago, Illinois: "In 2015, Chicago enacted a reparations ordinance covering hundreds of African Americans tortured by police from the 1970s to the 1990s. The law calls for $5.5 million in financial compensation, as well as hundreds of thousands more for a public memorial, and a range of assistance related to health, education and emotional well being." Evanston, Illinois: "The City Council of Evanston, Illinois, voted to allocate the first $10 million in tax revenue from the sale of recreational marijuana (which became legal in the state on January 1, 2020) to fund reparations initiatives that address the gaps in wealth and opportunity of black residents." The Asheville City Council also voted unanimously on June 9, 2020, to remove two confederate monuments as a result of demands made by a group called "Black Asheville Demands" and the work of the Racial Justice Coalition with led the push for the effort. The City Council meeting had so much community engagement public comment was extended for an extra hour beyond the normal meeting time.

Aetna: Apologized in 2000 for issuing life insurance policies to enslavers covering the lives of enslaved people from c. 1853 to 1860. In 2002, when Farmer Paellman brought suit against Aetna, CSX and Fleet for unjust enrichment by "a system that enslaved, tortured, starved and exploited human beings," this suit was dismissed. University of Alabama: Apologized for the history of slavery at the university in 2004. Wachovia: Apologized for its connection to slavery in 2005. JP Morgan Chase: Apologized for its connection to slavery in 2005. Georgetown University: "In 2016 [the university agreed] to give admissions preference to descendants of the 272 slaves[,] formally apologized for its role in slavery [and] [renamed] two buildings on its campus to acknowledge the lives of enslaved people". In April, 2019 students at Georgetown University voted to increase their tuition by $27.20 to benefit the descendants of the 272 slaves sold by the Jesuits who ran the school in 1838. The student led referendum was non binding. Later that year, after further pressure and follow up from the Georgetown University Student Association, the university eventually moved forward with a similar proposal without the students' covering the cost with a tuition increase. Princeton Theological Seminary: In 2019 the Seminary announced a $27 million commitment for various initiatives to recognize how it benefited from black slavery. This is the largest monetary commitment by an educational institution.

Brophy, Alfred L. Reparations: Pro & Con. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Brooks, Roy L. Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Darity, William Jr., A. Kirsten Mullen, and Marvin Slaughter. 2022. "The Cumulative Costs of Racism and the Bill for Black Reparations." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 36 (2): 99–122. Dottin, Paul Anthony. "The end of race as we know it: Slavery, segregation, and the African American quest for redress." Ph. D. Thesis, Florida Atlantic University, 2002. Flaherty, Peter, and John Carlisle. The Case against Slave Reparations. Falls Church, Va: National Legal and Policy Center, 2004. Hakim, Ida. The Debtors: Whites Respond to the Call for Black Reparations. Red Oak, GA: Cure, 2005. Henry, Charles P. Long Overdue: The Politics of Racial Reparations. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Martin, Michael T., and Marilyn Yaquinto. Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States: On Reparations for Slavery, Jim Crow, and Their Legacies. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Miller, Jon, and Rahul Kumar. Reparations: Interdisciplinary Inquiries. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2007. P

Torpey, John. Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. University of Kansas. Symposium: Law, Reparations & Racial Disparities. Lawrence: University of Kansas, Kansas Law Review, 2009. Walters, Ronald W. African Americans and Movements for Reparations: Past, Present, and Future. Dedicated to the Memory and Scholarly Legacy of Dr. Ronald W. Walters. Washington, DC: Association for the Study of African American Life and History, 2012. Winbush, Raymond A. Should America Pay? Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations. New York: Amistad/HarperCollins, 2003.