 The
call for reparations for slavery is gaining momentum
here in the United States. And yes, as an African American
I am well aware of the fact that the enforced servitude
and labor of my ancestors increased the coffers of individuals
and institutions. Just as the pyramids were built with
the blood, sweat, and tears of slaves, so were the industrial
war machine of Nazi Germany and the cotton, rice, and
sugar kingdoms of the South, as well as much of this
nation's capital. Yes, this must be acknowledged and
should never be allowed to be forgotten. But the sum
of the oppression is far, far greater than the price
of the labor, the direct and indirect profits reaped.
How
does one come close to figuring out the bill, much less
collect it? What's the dollar value of the millions
of lives stolen in the Middle Passage, of 246 years
of slavery, and what about the century of state-sanctioned
apartheid? And if reparations were paid, would it prove
little more than a Pyrrhic victory? Would it be used
to justify closing off discussion of the ongoing impact
of racism that the slave state spawned, or rolling back
all the laws created to provide some measure of remedy?
Do we end up emulating the very forces that created
slavery itself by reducing it all down to dollars and
cents?
Do
payments from German industries to survivors of the
Third Reich's slave labor camps serve to legitimize
genocide, as if it were a minor matter of lost wages?
The other day I read an article stating that the lawyers
who sought reparations from those German companies on
behalf of the survivors will split $52 million. Meanwhile,
the survivors will receive between $2,500 and $7,500
each. While I don't doubt that the attorneys did an
incredible amount of work to bring that case to court,
the irony is that they are well rewarded for their voluntary
labor while their clients — the people forced to
live and work under inhuman conditions — receive
little more than a token. And I'm sure that before they
agreed to pay a dime, the accountants for those companies
had already figured out how to pass the cost off to
consumers. While here in the United States, if reparations
are made, a huge chunk of the money would come out of
tax dollars that African Americans paid into the system.
Does
money serve to acknowledge the wrong done, the moral
debt owed to the "comfort" women who the Japanese forced
into sexual slavery? Or is it in fact the ultimate insult,
like money thrown on the floor beside a woman by a man
who has just finished raping her? Is the proper response
to past and present oppression ever a class action suit,
as if money were the cure for all evil? Destroy the
land, defile the waters, make war, commit genocide,
enslave, oppress, murder, and rape; and when your wrong
is made known, all you have to do is pay a fine.
I
wonder what the people in some future time will think
when they look back at this era. How will they judge
us? On one hand, they will see that we moved to acknowledge
some of our past evils; sometimes people swore "never
again," on occasion apologies were made. With the other
hand, we attempted to put price tags on the evil that
we do, the suffering inflicted on others.
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