I don't support reparations anymore, at least not in the form of a monetary payment to individuals descended from slaves.
I defintely think that reparations insome form should be considered. We give billions of dollars in aid to other countries every yr while poor ppl in urban communities are left in crumbling public school systems, inadequate housing( in some cases none at all), stifling unemployment and just disenfranchisement. Many of these ppl are black and the descendants of slaves. Most have lived for the most part under the thumbs of a system that has discriminated against them continually in one form or another even after Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement. All of this encompasses much more than the simple fact that Blacks in this country have been discriminated against or that they were once slaves. Much more than that, what we have in the experience of one group of ppl is the sustained, systemic flouting of the basic American principles that every immigrant that has ever risked life and limb to come here has counted on to make a better existence for themselves and their prosterity.
In his preface to the 2001 one re-release of Race Matters Cornel West sums up the experience of Black America quite succinctly, imo.
Black people in the United States differ from all other modern people owing to the unprecedented levels of unregulated and unrestrained violence directed at them. No other people have been taught systematically to hate themselves ---psychic violence--reinforced by the powers of state and civic coercion---physical violence---for the primary purpose of controlling thier minds and exploiting their labor for nearly four hundred years. The unique combination of American terrorism--Jim Crow and lynching--as wells as American babarism--slave trade and slave labor--bears witness to the distinctive American assault on black humanity. This vicious ideology and practice of white supremacy had left its indelible mark on all spheres of American life --- from the prevailing crimes of Amerindian reservations to the discriminatory realities against Spanish-speaking Latinos to racial stereotypes against Asians. Yet the fundamental litmus test for American democracy--it's economy, government, criminal justice system, education, mass media, and culture--remains: how broad and intense are the arbitrary powers used and deployed against black people. In this sense, the problem of the twenty-first century remains the problem of the color line.
The basic ain of a democratic regime is to curb the use of arbitrary powers--especially of government and economic institutions---against it's citizens. Based on this uncontroversial criterion, the history of American democracy in regard to black people from 1776 to 1965 was a colossal failure. this also holds for red, brown, and yellow peoples. For one generation--thirty-five years--- we have embarked on a multiracial democracy with significant breakthroughs and glaring silences.
