## 1. History of U.S. Reparations to Blacks




Oddly, Thomas Jefferson was probably the first to imply that the
U.S. ought to make reparation to its slaves. He did not explicitly
*say* that it did or ought to, and his proposal to send them off
to "such place as circumstances of the time should render most
proper" and to "declare them a free and independent
people" was mainly motivated by a desire to rid the U.S. of them,
but it also suggests that they were a people and that the U.S. was
under some obligation to set them up as a people (Jefferson 1785a
[1954: 138]). Some years after Jefferson's proposal, American
slaveholders founded (1816) the American Colonization Society whose
ostensible object, made plausible by the presence of some white Quakers
among its founders, was to help African Americans to go to Liberia and
get a fresh start in a country free of racial discrimination. But the
real object of the Society, or at least that of the white slaveholders
who founded it, was to rid the country of free blacks who they feared
endangered their peculiar institution. Their stratagem was therefore
dealt a deadly blow when Martin Delany, who agreed with Jefferson that
U.S. blacks were a people and needed a territory on which to become a
state, declared that Liberia was *"not* an independent
nation at all; but a poor *miserable mockery*--a
*burlesque* on a government--a pitiful dependency on the
American Colonizationists" and its "principal man, called
President, in Liberia" was a "mere parrot" of these
individuals (Delany 1852 [2004]: 185, emphasis in original).



Demands for compensation related to slavery frequently arose during
the U.S. Civil War, but not do so in the way present day U.S. citizens
would expect. The demands were not to compensate the black slaves for
the injuries of slavery, but to compensate the white slaveholders for
the anticipated loss of their slaves. These demands were voiced in the
South when they faced the prospect of having to free their slaves, but
they were also voiced in the North, and from the highest sources.
President Abraham Lincoln, for example, repeatedly urged compensated
emancipation, which meant paying the slaveholders for the loss of their
slaves who would then be deported from the U.S.. Indeed, at one time he
appeared to be ready to propose paying the South $400,000,000, for the
loss of their slaves. As W.E.B. Du Bois observed dryly: "Lincoln
was impressed by the loss of capital invested in slaves, but curiously
never seemed seriously to consider the correlative loss of wage and
opportunity of slave workers, the tangible results of whose
exploitation had gone into the planters' pockets for two
centuries." (Du Bois 1992 [1935]: 150). And Lincoln did not even
sugar coat his deportation proposal with the suggestion that the
freedmen were a nation and therefore needed a separate territory on
which to govern themselves.



Thaddeus Stevens, congressman from Pennsylvania, argued that it was
not enough to free the slaves and give them the right of suffrage; but
that in addition they should be given land confiscated from the rebels.
Charles Summer, senator from Massachusetts eventually came to agree
with him, but surprisingly the radical ex-slave Frederick Douglass did
not. Peter C. Myers (2008) speculated that Douglass's
"moderation" at this point was a reflection of "what
was politically possible," and of his concern that benevolent
missions organized by whites might encourage dependence in the freedmen
and prevent them from developing and exercising the virtues of a free
people. Douglass' proposed instead a federal corporation that
would purchase tracts of land and then resell or lease them on
favorable terms to the freedmen, urging that this arrangement was
"more fully consistent with the principle of self-reliance"
and give "greater societal recognition of the freed
people's virtue in providing for themselves." Myers
suggested that Douglass was following Jefferson in emphasizing the
corrupting effects of dependence. But while Jefferson had indeed
identified dependence as a crucial corrupter, it "begets
subservience and venality, suffocates virtue, and prepares fit tools
for the designs of ambition" (Jefferson 1785a [1954: 165]) he
declared, he was equally clear that legislators must protect the
independence of the small yeoman farmer "the most precious part
of the state" from the usurpation of the powerful (Jefferson 1785b
[2006: 154]). In other words, Stevens had proposed his scheme for the
freed people for exactly the reasons Jefferson proposed legislation for
protecting the white yeomen. Years later Douglass evidently saw the
error of his moderation. Myers cites his comment in 1882 that had the
counsels of Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and 'leading
stalwart Republicans' prevailed, "the terrible evils from
which we now suffer would have been averted", and "the
Negro to-day", would be "tilling his soil in comparative
independence" (Myers 2008: 239, quoting Douglass 1882, Appendix
A, 440-441). The theme continues to the present day.



Perhaps the most noteworthy demand for U.S. black reparations after
the Civil War occurred in 1969 when James Foreman, a member of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), read his "Black
Manifesto" at the National Black Economic Development Conference,
in Detroit, and later on in Riverside Church in New York City. The
"Manifesto" demanded $500,000,000, in reparations from
Christian white churches and Jewish synagogues, or as the
"Manifesto" put it, "15 dollars per nigger."
This demand for reparations, the Manifesto argued, was justified
because for over three and a half centuries, whites with the assistance
and collaboration of their churches and synagogues had unjustly,
through slavery and discrimination, wrested enormous economic
advantages from blacks. Although this argument relied on widely
accepted moral intuitions, the Manifesto received little popular
support. It did, however, provoke discussion in newspapers and news
magazines, as well as some scholarly discussion. Boris Bittker included
it as an appendix in his book *The Case for Black Reparations*
(1973); Hugo Bedau provided and extended analysis in his
"Compensatory Justice and the Black Manifesto" (1972);
Michael Harrington and Arnold Kaufman debated its merits in
"Black Reparations--Two Views" (1969); and a number of
philosophers wrote essays inspired by its argument, most notably,
Bernard R. Boxill (1972).



Although interest in the topic remained high among U.S. black
philosophers, the wider community of political philosophers preoccupied
with Rawlsian ideal theory generally ignored it. But broad and vigorous
interest has been rekindled. Perhaps the causes lie outside of
academia; in 1988, the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act
which authorized payment of reparations to Japanese American citizens
who had been imprisoned during World War II; U.S. Congressman John
Conyers had in each session of Congress since 1989 introduced a bill to
create a commission to study reparations for slavery and segregation;
in 2000 Randall Robinson published his book *The Debt: What America
Owes to Blacks*; in 2003 David Horowitz published his *Uncivil
Wars*; and in 2014 Ta-Nehisi Coates's widely discussed essay
"The Case for Reparations", appeared in *The
Atlantic*. In September 2020, 
California Assembly Bill 3121 established the 
 Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans, 
 in connection with the enslavement of blacks in the U.S.


## 2. John Locke on Reparations




John Locke provided an early and very clear argument for the
reparations owed a lawful conqueror, and many arguments for black
reparations follow the outlines of his
argument.[2] For
Locke people have natural rights they get directly from Natural Law
and rights they have acquired in accordance with Natural law. To
restrain violations of rights, he proposed punishment; punishment must
be administered "with so much Severity as will suffice to make
it an ill bargain to the Offender, give him cause to repent, and
terrifie others from doing the like." (Locke 1689: sec 8) And to
repair the damage that crime "commonly" causes "some
person or other," Locke proposed reparations. As he put it,
reparation must give the "satisfaction due to any private Man,
for the damage he has received" (Locke 1689: sec 11). According
to Locke, reparations were rights stemming from the right of
self-preservation. But he insisted that the rights can be pressed only
against the "goods or service of the Offender" (Locke
1689: sec 11). More precisely, while the person damaged can seek help
from anyone, she, the victim, has a right to reparations only against
the one who wrongly caused her damage. But Locke does not say that she
must be the immediate victim of the "Offender". His claim
that crime commonly damages "some person or other"
suggests that she may be anyone damaged as a result of the
offender's violation of right. For example, she may be damaged
because someone murdered her father and thus caused her to live in
straitened conditions. On Locke's account, she may be entitled
to press her right to reparations against the murderer for the damage
he caused her to suffer. On the other hand, Locke's claim that
crime "commonly" damages someone suggests that crime or
violations of rights do not *always* cause damage and
consequently do not always generate rights to reparations, though it
does not suggest that such violations of right do not deserve to be
punished. But even when the violation of right does not cause material
losses, it may cause damages to its victim's self-respect and
moral standing, and in such cases the satisfaction due to her may
include an admission of wrong doing from the wrongdoer, a plea for her
forgiveness, and an apology. If such admission, plea, and apology
require that the wrongdoer repent, reparations may seem to require
that the wrongdoer be punished, given Locke's view that
repentance is among the objects of punishment (Locke 1689: sec 8). But
Locke seems clear that the rights to reparations and the right to
punish are different rights. On his view, we give up the right to
punish to the state, but retain the rights to reparations. He writes
that the "Magistrate, ... can often, where the publick good
demands not the execution of the Law, *remit* the punishment of
Criminal Offences ..., but cannot yet *remit* the
satisfaction due to any private Man, for the damage he has
received" (Locke 1689: sec 11). Arguably, then, the apology the
wrongdoer must give to his victim in order to give her the
satisfaction she has a right to does not require that he repent and
perhaps therefore does not require that his apology be sincere. It is
also worth noting that although unjust enrichment from crime should
not be tolerated, it has little if anything to do with reparations.
Reparations focus on getting satisfaction for the injured victim of
crime and the criminal need not unjustly enrich himself as a result of
the crime to have wrongfully injured her. He owes her reparations even
if he impoverished himself in the process of injuring her. Finally
given Locke's separation of the right to punish from the rights
of reparations, and his claim that the rights to reparations is about
making satisfaction to the victim of wrongdoing, Locke would seem
committed to holding that when an act of wrong doing is excused though
it causes harm that the victim has a right to reparations although the
magistrate may well decide that the public good does not require that
the state exercise its right to punish the wrongdoer.


## 3. Reparations, Restitution, and Compensation




In its primary sense, restitution is "restoration of something
lost or stolen to its proper owner" (The New Oxford American
Dictionary 2001). Clearly, then, reparations and restitution both
presuppose the separation of something from its proper owner. But,
equally clearly, reparations do not constitute restitution. Reparations
can only occur after some losses or damage due to a prior wrongdoing.
But though restitution can only occur after some loss or damage, that
loss or damage need not be due to a prior wrongdoing. If *A*
loses his wallet and *B* finds it and returns it to *A*,
restitution has been made although no wrongdoing was committed.
Further, while reparations is a right (or a cluster of rights),
restitution is not always a right. If *B* finds but leaves
*A*'s wallet where it is, restitution has not been made,
but it is not clear that a right was violated. It is doubtful that a
person who loses things has a right that others find it for him. If
*B* finds but keeps *A's* wallet, then again
restitution has not been made, and *A* has a right that
*B* return it. But in that case *A* has a right that
*B* return it because *A* has a right to reparations and
restitution can sometimes be part of reparations. Some authors seem to
think that *B* ought to return the wallet because otherwise
*B* will have unjustly enriched himself at *A*'s
expense. But it is not clear why *B's* unjust enrichment
is a necessary condition for *B's* obligation to return
the wallet to *A*. Even if the wallet is worthless and
*B* is not unjustly enriched by keeping it, *B* has no
business holding on to it since it is not his property.



Restitution is neither necessary nor sufficient for reparations even
when the thing to be restored to its proper owner was stolen. If
*A* steals a bicycle from *B*, *B* has a right to
reparations and consequently to restitution if *A* has the
bicycle; reparations must give satisfaction, and *A*'s
satisfaction may depend on her getting back the very thing that was
stolen from her. But she may have lost more than the bicycle as a
direct result of its theft and her right to reparations requires
satisfaction for that further loss. Consequently, restitution is not
always sufficient for reparations. On the other hand, the bicycle may
have been destroyed or loss after its theft, making restitution but not
reparations impossible. Consequently, restitution is not necessary for
reparations.



Compensation is related to reparations and restitution but is not
the same thing as either. It is not reparation because it simply makes
up for damage, harm or loss or lack whether or not it was caused by
wrongdoing. Robert Nozick's famous definition of compensation
makes this sufficiently clear: "Something fully compensates a
person for a loss if and only if it makes him no worse off than he
would otherwise have been; it compensates person *X* for
person's *Y*'s action *A* if *X* is no
worse off receiving it, if *Y* had not done *A*."
(Nozick 1974: 57)



Note that Nozick (correctly) does not say that the loss or the
action *A* must be wrongful. Thus a person may be compensated
for a loss though he does not have a right to reparations. If a person
deserves a loss he has no right to reparations for it, but he may be
compensated for it, probably unjustifiably. Even if he has a
*right* to compensation, he may still have no right to
reparations. For example, he may have a right to be compensated for a
loss if he is insured against it, but his right is a right to
compensation not a right to reparations if no wrongdoing caused his
loss.



But if a person has a right to reparations, he will also often have
a right to compensation. This is because his right to reparations is a
right to satisfaction for the damages he suffered and such satisfaction
often requires that he be made no worse off than he would have been had
he not suffered the loss. This does not make a right to compensation
the same thing as a right to reparations since a right to reparations
can only be generated by damages caused by wrongdoing.



Since a right to reparations is always generated by a wrongful harm,
such rights are part of corrective justice or to use Rawls's
term, "partial compliance theory" (Rawls 1971: 8, 9). But
Rawls must allow that there can be rights to compensation in full
compliance theory. This follows since people can suffer damages that
result from no one's wrongdoing, and may have insured themselves
against such damages. Consider too Rawls's "principle of
redress". This is a principle of compensation for full compliance
theory. It may be objected that it cannot be such a principle, but must
be instead a principle of non-ideal justice, since according to Rawls
himself it requires that "undeserved inequalities", such as
the "inequalities of birth and natural endowment" be
"somehow *compensated* for" (Rawls 1999: 100). But
Rawls's use of "undeserved" at this point is not
meant to imply that he is referring to inequalities that are the result
of injustice. It only means that those with the inequalities in
question did nothing to deserve them.


## 4. Kinds of Reparations




Kinds of reparations are at least two in number: compensatory, as
discussed above, and non-compensatory. In either case, reparations are
to be understood as matters of rights to those wrongfully harmed by a
group or a state. However, while compensatory reparations amount to
rights to monetary compensation paid by a responsible party to those
they have harmed, as discussed in section 4 above, non-compensatory
reparations constitute rights to enactments of social justice in
non-monetary forms such as the removal of symbols of injustice from
official governmental spaces, the accurate teaching of history of a
society in non-exclusionary terms, etc. (Corlett 2010: 1-17). In either
case, reparations can serve as a condition of an apology with an eye
toward social forgiveness and reconciliation (Corlett 2010:
187-212).


## 5. Ethical Approaches to Reparations




Generally, there are two ethical approaches that might be used to
ground or justify reparations: utilitarian versus rights-based.
Utilitarian approaches to reparations seek to justify and articulate
reparations in terms of equity for oppressed citizens relative to
other citizens of a society, no matter to which, say,
"racial" or ethnic groups they belong. Further, their
commitment to a suitably described principle of utility will attempt
to *promote* rights to reparations up to a point wherein social
utility maximization and equality amongst the citizenry are threatened
based on the perceived consequences of the application of a particular
reparative policy. But this level of commitment to the rights to
reparations is criticized for its inadequate commitment
to *honoring* said rights *qua* rights, thereby
subsuming the rights to reparations under the utilitarian commitments
to social utility considerations and equality (Corlett 2010:
33-79), something the rights-based approach would reject
concerning rights in general (Feinberg 1980; Rawls 1999). For the
rights-based approach to reparative justice, a right to reparations
fashioned by social utility maximal considerations is no right at all.
The rights to reparations, like other rights, must be honored, not
merely promoted in accordance with the ethics of a utilitarian
calculation. For if *X* is a right at all, *X* as a
right trumps social utility considerations.



For the rights-based approach to reparations, such rights include at
least the following rights-cluster: The set of rights to corrective
justice honored in proportion to the wrongful harm experienced by
either the proximate cause of the harm caused to the group or to the
group responsible for honoring the reparations in question. It is
important to note that a group can be responsible for compensating a
harm without that group being guilty of causing the harm (Feinberg
1970). Hence in the case under consideration, the U.S. government is
said to owe reparations to U.S. blacks for the enslavement of said
blacks on what is currently considered to be U.S. soil.


## 6. Reparations for Slavery




This entry focuses on making a case for reparations for contemporary
U.S. blacks for the enslavement of their U.S.-enslaved ancestors,
partly because slavery was one of the most horrific experiences that
said blacks have endured in the U.S., and the one for which the
immediate victims of the experience most clearly deserve reparations;
and partly because making the case in question nevertheless presents
peculiar, difficult, and particularly interesting philosophical
problems. As we will see, much of that case will depend on the argument
that the injustices U.S. blacks endured after emancipation have caused
some of the injuries of the slaves to persist into the present. But
there is no reason to suppose that these injustices did not themselves
cause damages to their victims, quite apart from causing the damages of
slavery to persist, and that these damages may also deserve
reparations. In fact, there is good reason to suppose that arguments to
that effect may be more important politically than slave-based
arguments for black reparations.



Stevens's argument for slave reparations was simply that the
slave holders had committed serious harmful transgressions against the
slaves, who consequently had rights for reparation against their
masters that could plausibly be satisfied by some of their
masters' land. Today, few would challenge that argument, at least
publicly. The argument that many challenge today is that present day
U.S. blacks have rights to reparations from contemporary U.S. citizens
or the U.S. government because generations ago the U.S. government
permitted many U.S. citizens to enslave several blacks. That argument
seems to get no support from the undeniable fact that enslaved black
ancestors had rights to reparations from their respective masters.
People do not have rights to reparations for the wrongful harms
*others* suffer. Two arguments, the harm argument and the
inheritance argument, each attempt to circumvent this difficulty.



The harm argument relies on the idea that the transgressions of
slavery initiated an unbroken chain of harms linked as cause and effect
that began with the slaves and continues among U.S. blacks to the
present day. Therefore, since the transgressions of slavery harm
present day U.S. blacks they have rights to reparations against those
who committed those transgressions. It differs crucially from the
inheritance argument because it assumes that slavery's
transgressions against the slaves have harmed present day U.S. blacks
but the inheritance argument does not. The inheritance argument relies
on the idea that present-day U.S. blacks have inherited the rights to
reparation that was owed their enslaved ancestors and was never
paid.


## 7. The Harm Argument




Three main objections have been urged against the harm argument
against U.S. reparations to blacks. First, that although the
transgressions of slavery harmed the slaves, and present-day U.S.
blacks do suffer from many disadvantages, these disadvantages may not
be the result of the transgressions of slavery; they could easily be
the result of vast economic and political changes that have occurred
since slavery ended. The present harms may not be the "automatic
effects of slavery" (Sher 1981: 7). Second, that even if present
day U.S. blacks have been harmed by the slaveholders'
transgressions against their ancestors, and have rights to reparations
against these slaveholders, such rights can only be pressed against the
slaveholders who are now all dead. Third that if present-day U.S.
blacks demand reparations for the harms that the transgressions of
slavery caused them, then since reparation implies compensation, they
demand to be made no worse off than they would have been had the
transgressions of slavery never occurred. But if these transgressions
had never occurred present-day U.S. blacks would not exist.
Consequently, the harm argument is incoherent (Morris 1984, Levin
1980).



Fullinwider reformulated the harm argument so that it avoids the
first two objections. The reformulated argument goes as follows: the
U.S. government after 1865 failed "to vindicate the rights to
full and equal citizenship the Civil War Amendments extended to U.S.
blacks;" but, had that government "vigorously"
protected those rights, "the legacy of slavery would have faded
considerably if not wholly by now through the industry of blacks
themselves". Consequently if present day blacks do suffer from
various aspects of the legacy of slavery, the real cause of those harms
is not slavery, but the U.S. governments after 1865, for if those
governments had vigorously protected the rights of the freed people and
their descendants, the legacy of slavery would have faded and present
day U.S. blacks would not be disadvantaged by it (Fullinwider
2004).



Boris Bittker made a similar suggestion. His main argument is that
had the goals of Reconstruction not been foiled by the "political
settlement of 1877" and the network of Jim Crow laws not been
introduced and finally fully authorized by *Plessy v. Ferguson*
in 1896 the "only identifiable residue of slavery today would
have been cultural", and the descendants of U.S. slaves and the
descendants of U.S. slaveholders would lead the same lives (Bittker
2003: 12, 13). In other words, Bittker seems to go a little further
than the first one, suggesting that the legacy of U.S. slavery would
have disappeared completely if the U.S. government had protected the
rights of the freed people and their descendants, the second line of
reasoning too concludes that any responsibility for the legacy of
slavery that persists today must be attributed to post Civil War
governments.



These arguments of Fullinwider and Bittker are clear improvements on
the original harm argument. But they seem to assume that post-Civil War
governments committed only one transgression against their black
populations, namely those governments failed to protect the civil
rights of the members of those populations. In fact, however, these
governments committed another and quite distinct transgression against
their black populations; they failed to make reparations to those
populations. These two transgressions are not the same thing. The duty
of government to protect its citizens' civil and political rights
is one thing; its duty to pay and/or make reparations to them if it has
wrongly injured them is quite another.



Fullinwider seems aware that protecting civil and political rights is
not the same as making reparations, that the U.S. government did not
fulfill all of its obligations to the Japanese it interred during
World War II just because it released them after the war and protected
their civil and political rights after that. But some write as if they
believe that the post-Civil War governments would have fulfilled all
of their obligations to their black citizens if only they had
protected those citizens' civil and political rights
(Fullinwider 2004: 148). Others write that *compensation* in
1865 to the slaves for their forced or unpaid might have been
"strong" (Bittker 2003: 12), and that "compensation
in 1865 for blacks' forced labor would certainly have been
appropriate" (Bittker 2003: 28). But having conceded that
monetary compensation would have been in order in 1865, Bittker then
drops the point without comment. Interestingly, too, he seems to
think that unpaid labor is the only harm the transgressions of slavery
caused the slaves or that merits any mention. This is a strange
position to hold for a book titled *The Case for Black
Reparations*, for of course unpaid labor was perhaps the least of
the harms that the transgressions of slavery visited on the
slaves. What about reparation for the theft of their liberty?



But the claim that "Had the federal government done nothing
after 1865 except vigorously protect the civil and voting rights of
blacks, the legacy of slavery would have faded considerably if not
wholly by now through the industry of blacks themselves"
 (Fullinwider 2004: 148) suggests that only the governments'
failure to protect the civil and political rights of the freed people
and their descendants caused any problem. An obvious difficulty with
this view is that large economic inequalities make it difficult for the
government to protect the rights of the poor. That problem aside, these
authors give no argument to support their view that the freed
peoples' descendants would have recovered from the wrongful harms
of slavery without the help of reparations if only government had
protected their civil and political rights. Fullinwider's
confidence seems to rest on the "immigrant model", by which
is meant the path to success taken by the European immigrants who came
to America after the Civil War, and with "little to offer but
their physical labor", and "by dint of hard work"
eventually "blended into the larger American fabric". The
implication is that the freed people were sufficiently like these
immigrants to justify the inference that had government vigorously
protected their civil and voting rights then they too by would have
blended into the larger American fabric (Fullinwider 2004: 148).



But the freed people and their descendants were *not* very
much like the white immigrants arriving from Europe. To say the
obvious, slavery is very bad for people. It prevents them from
developing the useful dispositions and skills that people tend to
develop in freedom. Although the immigrants had had a rough time in
Europe--that is why they flocked to America--they were better
prepared to take advantage of the opportunities available than the
slaves. Consequently, they would likely have kept well ahead of the
freed people and their descendants even if the civil and political
rights of each group were equally protected. The issue is debatable of
course. Some black writers, Douglass, for example, seem to think that
human beings are resilient, equipped as they are with an almost
ineradicable love of liberty, and consequently the slaves would recover
readily from the rigors of slavery if only they were given justice. He
liked to say that all he asked for the Negro was "simply
justice", though the contexts always left it unclear how much he
included in justice, whether it would involve reparation, and whether
he was simply denying that he was not asking for
"benevolence" or "pity" for the Negro (Douglass
1865: 283). Alexander Crummell, on the other hand, seemed to worry
about the enduring effects of slavery especially because of the
tendency of its victims to remember its horrors, though interestingly
Douglass thought that these memories could be bracing (Crummell 1891:
18, 19). The issue of the effects of the memory of enslavement and
domination on recovery from the effects of these evils deserves further
study. Whatever the results of that study, however, it does not follow
straightaway that the wrongly injured are not owed reparations just
because they are resilient enough to recover from the effects of their
injuries without it.



Even if socio-economic advancement depends on informal contacts that
involve the sharing and transfer of genuinely useful information and
skills among people who enjoy what used to be called "social
equality". But social equality cannot be secured by even the most
rigorous protection of the civil and political rights of the freed
people; on the contrary such protection can help social inequality to
persist since it entitles individuals to choose their friends and
associates even if their choice is determined by color prejudice. Since
color prejudice remained strong after the Civil War the white
immigrants would more readily associate with well-placed and
well-educated locals and learn useful information and skills from them.
Finally, since social equals tend to marry each other rather than their
inferiors, and since immigrant whites were more likely than the freed
people and their descendants to become the social equals of prosperous
native whites, they were also more likely to marry such individuals and
thus to gain access to their wealth, much of it incidentally inherited
from the spoils of slavery.



Bittker seems aware that the official enforcement of civil and
political rights might not nullify the effects of personal prejudice
and asks whether "personal" prejudice without official
segregation would have produced segregation, "first in the home,
then in Mrs Murphy's boardinghouse, and then in business and
politics". This issue is of decisive importance for the implied
contention that even without reparations blacks would have made
themselves equal to whites if there had been no Jim Crow
legislation. He rejects William Graham Sumner's maxim
"law-ways cannot alter folkways" which implies that
segregation and prejudice could have persisted without the help of Jim
Crow laws. However, there seems to be no argument to show that
Sumner's maxim is mistaken. Bittker takes it as a "working
hypothesis" that "statutes, ordinances, and other official
actions have been the predominant source of the racial discrimination
that has blighted our public and private life," given that we
have no science "capable of producing a model of the United
States as it would have been if blacks had come here as voluntary
immigrants rather than as slaves, or if emancipation had been followed
by an integrated society" (Bittker 2003: 26).



The many and various considerations just canvassed conclude that it
is too optimistic to suppose that the descendants of the freed people,
without reparations, would have achieved parity with the descendants of
the white immigrants if only their civil and political rights had been
protected. In any case, the issue they raise is a distraction from the
central question whether U.S. blacks are owed reparations. Achieving
parity with the descendants of immigrants is not the same thing as
receiving the reparations one is owed. The point of reparations is not
to make people equal to others; reparations is not *defined* as
making the wrongly harmed equal to others. In fact, equality has little
to do with reparations. People deserve reparations as a matter of right
when they have been wrongfully harmed by transgression but a person may
be harmed as a result of transgression and may therefore have a right
to reparations and yet be better off than others. Similarly, a person
may be worse off than others without having suffered from any harm or
disadvantage for which he deserves reparations. If reparations
necessarily requires compensation it requires that people be put as far
as possible in the condition they would have been in had they not been
wrongly injured. This may make them equal to others, but it may not. It
can leave them worse off than others and it can also make them better
off than others. Some philosophers may protest that we should not allow
claims for reparations to get in the way of an ideal egalitarian
society, but of course their position is as bad as the utilitarian
arguments they disparage that rights may and should be violated in
order to maximize utility (Corlett 2010).



But it is now time to consider the third main objection to the harm
argument. This objection, let us recall, is that making reparations to
the present U.S. black population for the harms that slavery caused it
is impossible because if slavery had never occurred the present U.S.
black population would not exist. This problem is now known as the
non-identity problem. This difficulty might seem to reappear in the
revised harm argument just described. For although this argument does
not call for compensating the present U.S. black population for the
harms that slavery caused it, it may seem to call for compensating the
present U.S. black population for the harms it suffers because of
policies enacted and enforced before it was conceived. Given that these
policies would have affected who was conceived in succeeding U.S. black
populations, had they not occurred the present U.S. black population
would not exist.



The following discussion shows how this difficulty can be avoided.
Imagine two slaves, Tom and Beulah released from slavery. They were
released from slavery but the government continued to wrong them in at
least two ways: first, by preventing them from exercising rights
guaranteed to every citizen; second, by violating their rights to be
compensated for the harms that it had caused them by supporting their
enslavement. And both these wrongs probably harmed them. Obviously
preventing them from voting or going to school probably harmed them;
and the harm that often results when one's right to be
compensated is violated is an additional harm, on top of the harm
caused by the first violation of right. If you owe me a hundred dollars
to compensate me for wrongly breaking my arm, you wrong me again by
refusing to give me what you owe me, and you might owe me another
thousand dollars for the harms that second wrong might cause me, for
example going around for a month with the pain and inconvenience of an
unfixed broken arm. Now the government wronged Tom and Beulah in the
two ways mentioned as soon as it caused them to be released from
slavery and before Beulah conceived any child; but it also continued to
wrong them in these ways after the conception of their daughter, Eulah.
These wrongs to Tom and Beulah almost certainly harmed them by forcing
them to remain longer in the poverty and ignorance that slavery had put
them in. But it is more germane to the present argument that the wrongs
also almost certainly harmed their daughter Eulah. They harmed her by
keeping her parents in poverty and ignorance and by, therefore, also
keeping her in ignorance and poverty. They also harmed her by causing
her to be raised by parents with the various disabilities that the
experience of slavery normally causes its victims. And if she acquired
these disabilities from her parents by imitation and necessity, and if
these disabilities harmed her, the government's wrongs caused
those harms too. If wrongdoers must make reparations for the damages
their wrongdoing causes other people, then the government must make
reparations to Eulah.



The argument is not that Eulah has a claim to the compensation her
parents Tom and Beulah's were owed and never paid. If that were
the argument, we would have an inheritance argument, not a
counterfactual argument. Eulah's claim for compensation is for
harms she herself suffered. And she can rightly press that claim
against the government. It is not as though her parents could have done
better by her but chose not to. The government's wrongs prevented
them from doing better by her. They had no choice but to raise her in
poverty and ignorance. The government could have given them a choice if
it had compensated for their wrongfully caused harms, or allowed to
recover from them. But it did not. Second, the amount of the
compensation she is owed does not depend on the amount of compensation
they were owed. It depends on the harms she suffered. Though she
suffered those harms because they were harmed and not compensated,
compensating her for her harms may be much more, (or much less), than
compensating them.



Third, she may have an inheritance-based claim to their
compensation. The fact that she was harmed because they were not
compensated and can claim compensation for that harm does not mean that
they lose their claim to be compensated for their harms. If they were
never compensated she may therefore inherit a right to their
compensation. The counterfactual argument is compatible with the
inheritance-based argument.



Fourth, her claim for compensation is not confounded by the argument
that she would not exist had the wrongs that caused her harms not
occurred. Those wrongs are not the wrongs of slavery, which occurred
before she was conceived, and indeed were among the causes of her being
conceived. And they are not the wrongs that government committed
against her parents after it released them from slavery and before she
was conceived. They are the wrongs that were all committed after her
conception. They are the wrongs of not protecting her parents'
rights and failing to compensate them for the wrongs already committed
against them. Had those wrongs not been committed, she would have lived
in less straitened conditions, and would have been less constrained to
imitate and duplicate her parents' slavery induced qualities and
habits.


## 8. The Inheritance Argument




The inheritance argument for black reparations states that the freed
people had rights to reparations for their injuries; that they held
these rights against the slave holders and also against the state and
federal governments for failing in their duties to protect them from
the slave holders; that these rights were never honored; and finally,
that they passed on the right of inheritance to present day U.S. blacks
who are their descendants and heirs. (Corlett 2010)



This argument avoids the objection that the present black population
would not exist if their ancestors had never been enslaved. And each
premise seems plausible. When people die their rights to their property
are normally passed on to their heirs (Boxill 1972: 113-122;
Kershnar 1999: 95-101). The reparations owed to the freed people
was their property; it was never in their physical possession of
course, but obviously something need not be in your possession to be
your property. Neither did the freed people abandon their inheritance.
Laws and guns very forcefully kept it from them. Consequently, it
should pass, by right of inheritance, to their descendants, the present
black
 population.[3]



Two important objections against the inheritance argument are: first
that it relies on the counterfactual claim that the freed people and
their descendants would have held on to their reparations had they
received it; and second that it demands that people make reparations
for the injuries of a crime that they could not have committed. Let us
begin with the second.



Locke's discussion of a lawful conqueror's rights to
reparations suggests how to solve it. "The right of
Conquest", Locke claims, "extends only to the Lives of
those who joyn'd in the War, not to their Estates, but only in
order to make reparation for the damages received, and the Charges of
the War, and that too with reservation of the right of the innocent
Wife and Children" (Locke 1689: sec. 180). Locke's claim is
that the lawful conqueror has rights to reparations from the estates of
those who unjustly waged war against him, though some part of these
estates should be reserved for their wives and children. The clear
implication is that the wives and children would have gotten a larger
part of the estates in question had their husbands and fathers not
harmfully transgressed against the lawful conqueror; but Locke would be
guilty of self-contradiction if he had meant that the wives and
children were being forced to pay or make reparations for the harms
their fathers' and husbands' the crimes caused. His view
was that when people unjustly harm others, a portion of their estates
may be used to make reparations to the people they harmed, and as a
necessary result their children cannot inherit that portion of their
estates.



The following argument parallels Locke's argument: the slave
holders harmed the slaves. Consequently the slaves had rights to
reparations against the estates of the slave holders; these rights
reduced the extent of the estates that the slave holders'
children would otherwise have inherited from them; the slaves were
forcibly prevented from exercising those rights; but it is absurd to
suppose that people lose rights just because they are forcibly
prevented from exercising those rights; consequently the slaves
retained their rights against the estates of the slave holders; present
day U.S. blacks are their heirs; consequently present day U.S. blacks
have rights against the estates of the slave holders. This argument
does not prove much. Even if many descendants of the slave holders can
be identified, proving that they inherited their property from their
slave holding ancestors seems hopeless. But the argument can be
improved. The first step is to see that the slaves did not have rights
to reparations only against the slave holders. This step may seem to
follow easily from Locke's famous theory that residence in a
state is tacit consent to it (Locke 1689: sec 119). This theory applied
to the case of the lawful conqueror might seem to commit Locke to the
view that the lawful conqueror had rights to reparations against all
members of the state that waged the unjust war against him. But in fact
Locke explicitly denied that it did. "The people" he said
gave "to their governors no power to do an unjust thing, such as
is to make an unjust War, (for they never had such power in
themselves:) They ought not to be charged as guilty of the Violence and
Injustice that is committed in an Unjust war, any further than they
actually abet it" (Locke 1689: sec 179).



And he identified those who "actually abet" and unjust
war as those who "assisted, concurred, or consented", to
that war (Locke 1689: sec 179). It may seem that Locke is guilty of
self-contradiction here at least if we suppose that to consent to
something, even tacitly, is to give the "power", that is,
the right to do it. But Locke evidently did not suppose that to consent
to another's action is to give the other the right to do it; and
no one else supposes that it does, except perhaps confused
philosophers. For such a supposition implies that one could not consent
to another's unjust action since of course one cannot give
another a right to act unjustly, but of course people can and do often
consent to another's unjust action. To consent to another's
action is "to make oneself a partner in the other's action
and to accept a share in the responsibility for it" (Boxill 1993:
96-99). This suggestion may seem to leave us with the conclusion
that if voluntary residence in a state is tacit consent to it, as
Locke's theory says, then all the residents of a state must have
accepted responsibility for the state's actions, including its
unjust wars, and consequently that the just conqueror must have rights
to reparations against all residents of the state. But, as we have
seen, Locke denies that the lawful conqueror has such rights. The
solution to this puzzle lies in a peculiarity of most signs of tacit
consent. The peculiarity is that signs of tacit consent are normally
conditions people have good reason to be in other than to give their
consent. Thus voluntary residence in a state is a sign of tacit consent
to it because most residents of a state have good reason to reside in
the state other than to give consent to it. Since a sign of consent
would be coerced, and consequently not a sign of consent if not making
it is impossible or very costly, it follows that every sign of tacit
consent, like residence in a state, must be such as to allow people to
make the sign, while withdrawing their consent by making some cheap and
easily performed sign of dissent. This reasoning suggests how Locke can
say both that voluntary residence in a state is tacit consent to its
actions and that the lawful conqueror has rights to reparations from
only those who "assisted, concurred, or consented", to
their state's unjust wars against him. All voluntary residents of
a state have tacitly consented to its actions but only those who fail
to make some sign of dissent to its unjust wars, have consented to its
waging these wars, at least if there are signs of dissent that are
relatively easy to make and are not too costly.



Returning to the question of reparations for slavery, U.S. citizens
prior to the Civil War knew that their government permitted and
supported slavery and also knew that slavery was a crime. The slave
holding states certainly tried to conceal the full horrors of their
"peculiar institution" but the evidence suggests that their
efforts were not successful. Consequently, since few white U.S.
citizens expressed dissent from their government's complicity in
the crime of slavery, although it did not punish such dissent, it seems
fair to conclude that most white U.S. citizens voluntarily consented to
their government's complicity in the crime. In Locke's
language, they "assisted, concurred, or consented" to the
government's injustice against the slaves. Therefore, still
following Locke, it follows that the slaves had rights to reparations
against almost the entire white population of the United States for the
damages that their enslavement caused them. This argument is perhaps
open to the objection that there was in the period of slavery more than
a little dissent to the government's complicity in the crime of
slavery; certainly the abolitionists strongly expressed their dissent.
Or alternatively it could be objected that dissenting from the
government's complicity in slavery in the Deep South did carry
considerable costs including costs not necessarily imposed by the
government. Finally, the argument also requires a fuller account of
what residents of a state must do in order to make appropriate signs of
dissent from the injustice of their government, and consequently to
avoid being rightly accused of consenting to that injustice.
Presumably, confiding to a few friends that one was opposed to slavery
would not be enough. But if these problems can be satisfactorily
settled, then since the slaves had titles to reparations against the
estates of those who assisted, concurred or consented to their
enslavement, they would have titles to reparations against practically
the entire white population, *not just against the estates of the
slave holders*. These reparations were never paid. Instead each
white generation specified that only whites of the succeeding
generation were permitted to own, or compete for, or be educated by,
the assets it was leaving behind. Since the slaves had titles to
reparations against these assets, and the present generation of U.S.
blacks is the slaves' heir, the present generation of U.S. blacks
has inherited titles to a portion of the assets held by the present
white population. This includes the white immigrants who arrived in the
U.S. after the abolition of slavery to take advantage of opportunities,
funded by assets the slaves had titles to, or for the education the
slaves and descendants were prevented from getting, or to take natural
assets including land that the slaves also had titles to. The fact that
they competed for these opportunities and worked hard misses the point
since many of these "so called" opportunities had already
been inherited by and were the property of, the slaves' heirs
(Corlett 2010: 161-186).



Locke put a limit on the right to reparations. In the case he
discussed, the lawful conqueror's right to reparations was
limited by reservations made for the rights of the wife and children of
those engaged in or consented to the unjust war against him. As Locke
put it:



> 
> 
> The Conqueror has a Title to Reparations for Damages received, and
> the Children have a Title to their Father's Estate for their
> Subsistence...What must be done in the case? I answer; The
> Fundamental Law of Nature being, that all, as much as may be, should be
> preserved, it follows, that if there be not enough fully to satisfy
> both, viz, for the Conqueror's Losses, and the Children's
> Maintenance, he that hath, and to spare, must remit something of his
> full Satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable Title of
> those, who are in danger to perish without it. (Locke 1689:
> sec.183)
> 
> 
> 




Thus Locke appeals to the Fundamental Law of Nature which requires
that all or as much as may be should be preserved in order to argue
that that the lawful conqueror's right to reparations must give
way if it comes into conflict with the rights to subsistence and
maintenance of the children of those who owe him reparations. But Locke
does not say that the lawful conqueror's right to reparations is
trumped by the children's right to *inheritance;* on his
account, it is the right to subsistence that trumps the right to
reparations when the two rights conflict. When Locke limits the
conqueror's right to reparations, he does so in order to
accommodate the rights to subsistence of innocent children. He is
concerned that such children will die if he presses the right to
reparations too hard, not that they will inherit very little.



Do these reasonable limitations on the right of inheritance have any
relevance to whether U.S. blacks have a right to inherit the
reparations owed their slave ancestors? Here it is important to note
these limitations do not abolish or cancel the right to inheritance.
They do not imply, that is, that there is no right to inherit at all.
They allow that there is such a right, and that it holds in normal
circumstances, but that it fails to hold or is outweighed when allowing
it to hold would make innocent people destitute, or create large
inequalities that are likely to lead to exploitation and domination. In
other words, we cannot set aside the inheritance argument just because
it depends on the right of inheritance. We can set aside the
inheritance argument aside only if implementing it would make innocent
people destitute or create large inequalities that are likely to lead
to their exploitation and domination. But would implementing the
inheritance argument have these results? It would not. The slaves were
horribly harmed by slavery, but paying or making reparations to them
would not have required turning over a continent to them. It would have
called for no horrendous uprooting of populations, or driven anyone
into poverty, or created morally outlandish inequalities. The slaves
would not suddenly have become the masters and the whites their
subordinates. The nation could have made reparations and suffered mild
discomfort at worst. As for the right of inheritance of their heirs, we
must remember that it is not limited by the mere length of time between
benefactor and heir. The right of inheritance is limited by the
dangerous and morally repugnant inequalities that would result from
honoring it. These could appear after one generation, or fail to appear
after ten generations. We are certainly not referring here to a statute
of limitations. It would be wrong for someone's immediate heir to
insist on his right to inherit his father's goods if this would
cause undue hardship to others, or put him in a position to oppress
them. But it would be right for someone's distant heir to insist
on her right to inherit his goods if this could save her from hardship
or oppression at the hands of her debtors. But is not this latter case
exactly similar to that of U.S. blacks? Would they not save themselves
from hardship and oppression at the hands of their debtors if they
insisted on their right to inherit the reparations that were owed their
slave ancestors and never paid?


## 9. Supersession and Historic Injustices




Others have objected to arguments for reparations for
"historic" injustices, specifically Europeans' theft
of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. from their original
occupiers the Aborigines, Maori, and American Indians (Waldron 1992:
4-28). The basic objection is that the historic wrongs of the
ancestors of the Europeans now in the territories have been
"superseded" (Waldron 1992: 24). Possibly the objection can
be raised against the inheritance argument for reparations to U.S.
blacks.



The following example has been used to illustrate what is meant by
an historic wrong being superseded. Suppose that there are plenty of
water holes on the savanna and two groups *P* and *Q*
each have a waterhole, but



> 
> 
> 
> motivated purely by greed, members of group *Q* descend on
> the water hole possessed by group *P* and insist on sharing that
> with them. (What's more they do not allow reciprocity; they do
> not allow members of *P* to share any water hole that was
> legitimately in the possession of *Q*.) That is an injustice.
> But then circumstances change, and all the water holes of the territory
> dry up except the one that originally belonged to *P*. The
> members of group *Q* are already sharing that water hole on the
> basis of their earlier incursion. But now that circumstances have
> changed, they are entitled to share the water hole; so that their doing
> so no longer counts as an injustice. It is in fact part of what justice
> requires. The initial injustice of *Q* against *P* has
> been superseded by circumstances. (Waldron 1992: 25)
> 
> 
> 




What is meant by the circumstances having changed so that the
initial injustice "has been superseded?" The meaning seems
to be that, although the members of *Q* acted unjustly when they
first shared *P*'s water hole, they do not act unjustly
now when they share *P*'s water hole; and this is because
circumstances have changed. In the changed circumstances the members of
*P* and *Q* are now joint owners of the waterhole. It
might be asserted that this follows from one of the conditions Locke
laid down as necessary for taking something as property, the Lockean
proviso, as Nozick famously put it (Nozick 1974: 175; Locke 1689: Book
II, 5, sec 27). According to the proviso, the water hole used to be
*P*'s waterhole when circumstances were such that it was
permissible for *P* to make it his property. But circumstances
have changed so that it is no longer permissible for *P* to make
the waterhole his exclusive property. The present circumstances make
the waterhole the joint property of *P* and *Q*.



This argument seems persuasive if we suppose that the only
alternative to making the waterhole the joint property of *P*
and *Q* is for *P* to prevent *Q* from using its
water since in that case *Q* would die very painfully. But there
are other alternatives. Members of *P* (*P*s) can
generously allow the members of *Q* (*Q*s) to use the
water; or they can sell the water to the members of *Q*; or they
can rent *Q* a piece of land next to the waterhole. These
alternatives may be ruled out by Locke's apparent opposition to
arrangements that put some people in a position of extraordinary
dependence on others. For example, he argued that a beggar has a
"right" to a portion of a rich man's surplus when she
must have it in order to survive. If so the *Q*s must have
rights to an adequate supply of the water in *P*'s
waterhole. Otherwise if the *P*s with ostensible generosity
allowed *Q*s to drink they could also have demanded demeaning
behavior from the *Q*s in exchange; or if they sold water to the
*Q*s they could raise its price as much as they liked; and so
on. But in any case, there are alternatives to the joint ownership of
the waterhole by the *P*s and *Q*s that do not turn the
*Q*s into *P*'s dependents. We could, for example,
divide the waterhole so that the *Q*s get an adequate supply of
water and are not dependent on the *P*s.



In this scenario, the entire case for supersession would seem to
rest on the Lockean proviso and its alleged prohibition of claiming
unowned stuff as property when there is not enough and as good left
over for others. We say "alleged prohibition" for it is not
at all clear that Locke's words amount to such a prohibition.
However, the supersession thesis fails even if we allow the
prohibition. To see this, let us agree that the *P*s and
*Q*s are now joint owners of the waterhole and that the
*P*s cannot demand that the *Q*s depart leaving them the
waterhole's sole owners. Our agreement does not imply that we
also agree that the *P*s cannot demand reparations from the
*Q*s for the damages that the *Q*s earlier wrongly caused
them. That would be absurd because it implies that the *P*s and
the *Q*s had always been joint owners of the waterhole, but by
assumption the *P*s and *Q*s were not always joint owners
of the waterhole. In particular, by assumption, the *P*s were
once the sole owners of the waterhole when the *Q*s attacked
them and stole their water. This foregoing sketch is meant to parallel
the case of the Europeans and indigenous peoples in New Zealand,
Australia, and the Americas. For convenience, let us consider the
Europeans and the Maoris in New Zealand. We concede that these two
people are now the joint owners of the land mass of New Zealand. The
Maoris cannot demand that land mass back as reparation because they are
no longer its sole owners. They used to be its sole owners, but
circumstances have changed and now they are only its joint owners. No
one can demand that anyone leave. But that concession does not make the
injustice of the European conquest two hundred years ago disappear into
thin air. New Zealand may not now belong exclusively to the Maori, but
it once did, and when it did, the Europeans did then injure them
unjustly. If those injuries persist in the Maoris' descendants
because the European conquerors and their descendants did not pay or
make reparations to the original Maoris, their descendants have rights
to reparations against the Europeans' descendants for their
injuries, even if they do not have rights that the Europeans'
descendants leave New Zealand to them. To put the point in a different
way, the fact that restitution is no longer possible and morally
mandatory does not imply that reparations is not still possible and
morally mandatory. Restitution, the return of a stolen item to its
rightful owner, is often a part of making reparations to the victim of
the theft, but as we stressed earlier it is neither necessary nor
sufficient for such reparations. It is not sufficient because if I
steal your bicycle and then return it to you, though I have made
restitution I have not made reparations since the damages you suffer as
a result of my theft may be more that the loss of the bicycle; and
restitution the return of your bicycle may not cancel, undo or erase
the damages you suffered as a result of my theft. And restitution is
not necessary for reparations because while the loss or destruction of
a stolen item may make its restitution impossible, it does not make
reparation for the loss of the item impossible or obligatory. If the
bicycle I stole from you is lost restitution is impossible. But it does
not follow that reparations is impossible. I can still make reparations
to you by providing you with the money to buy another
 one.[4]



The distinction between restitution and reparations resolves another
case that may weaken sympathies for reparations for historic
injustices. The case involves the theft of a car that ends up years
later the treasured possession of the thief's daughter who has no
idea that it was stolen (Waldron 1992, 14-15). In the meantime, the
car's original owner has eventually outgrown his attachment to it
and gotten many other cars. The inference that we are invited to draw
is that it would be wrong for him to compel the thief's daughter
to return the car to him, given that she has invested so much of her
life in it and he has lost interest in it. Perhaps; but just because it
would be wrong of him to demand restitution, it does not follow that it
would be wrong of him to demand reparations; that his rights to
reparations are somehow "superseded". This is an entirely
different question. The owner may act wrongly in insisting on
restitution; maybe he should allow the thief daughter to keep the car.
But it does not follow that he cannot demand reparations from the thief
for the losses he suffered as a result of the theft of his car.



These results should make it obvious that the supersession argument
cannot nullify claims for reparations for historic injustices. To
consider the example of New Zealand, perhaps restitution of the land
mass of New Zealand to the Maori is out of the question. Perhaps
justice cannot demand that Europeans leave New Zealand to the Maori.
But it does not follow that justice does not demand that the Europeans
make reparations to the Maori for violating their rights and injuring
them when New Zealand belonged to them. Theft injures the victim by
depriving him of the thing that was stolen from him; but it also
injures him by depriving him of the benefits that he was going to earn
and enjoy because of his possession of that thing. For the reasons we
have surveyed, he may lose his rights to restitution; the thing for
example may be lost or destroyed. But it does not follow that he
therefore also loses his rights to reparations. Arguments for those
rights have to deal with the various objections to historic reparations
reviewed in this entry and elsewhere, but they are not undone by the
supersession argument.


## 10. Reparations Policies



Not much has been published on possible policies of reparations to
U.S. blacks. But at least a few words concerning such matters are in
order in case said reparations are morally justified
and
 required.[5]
A rights-based
approach to reparations to U.S. blacks by the U.S. government might
most plausibly construe such reparations both compensatorily and
non-compensatorily. In so doing, reparations are a cluster of rights to
such means of corrective justice imposing duties on the U.S. government
to provide said reparations to U.S. blacks. The provision of such
rights is not to be diminished due to the amount of that which is owed,
though it would be counter-productive to settle on an amount or demand
so much that the U.S. could not possibly pay it. The main point is to
estimate a combined figure that captures the fact that the peculiar
institution was widely and deeply supported by several U.S. industries
and workforces, from U.S. financial institutions to ship builders, from
U.S. lawmakers and courts to slave owners, and well beyond (DeWolf
2008). Thus it is not unreasonable to argue that there was and remains
a collective liability of the U.S. to provide such reparations (Corlett
2010: 161-186; McGary 1999).



Compensatory reparations can be calculated with approximation by
figuring on a moderate number of sub-Saharan Africans who were brought
against their wills to the territory of the U.S. to serve as slaves.
Then a moderate estimation can be made of average life expectancy of
said slaves, and how many hours a day and per week, etc. said slaves
worked without monetary compensation. Perhaps even more important are
the human rights abuses of slavery itself, an amount that might be
estimated in terms of punitive damages. There are also social,
political and psychological effects of slavery, among others, damages
to some extent lingering amongst several U.S. black communities
throughout the U.S..



However, in order to respect the sovereignty of U.S. blacks as a
people and their autonomy as individuals, no presumption should be made
that would make the provision of reparations to them dependent on the
reconciliation between said blacks and the U.S.. In order to effect
this, a Committee on Black Reparations might be established only by
vote of U.S. blacks, having a 3-4 year service for each member. There
would be no shortage of highly qualified U.S. blacks to serve
excellently on said committee: from educators, business persons,
attorneys, medical experts, etc.. Said committee would alone decide
what to do with the monetary reparations paid by the U.S. Treasury. An
annual audit of the transactions between the two parties could be
conducted by a party of the committee's choice.



Since the amount of compensatory reparations would likely reach into
the trillions of dollars, the U.S. Congress would be asked to pass into
law a U.S. Black Reparations Tax which might amount to a 3% tax on
every income made in the U.S., in perpetuity (In perpetuity because of
the relatively low percentage of the tax). The taxes received by the
committee would presumably be used for the education of U.S. blacks,
medical costs, job training, retirement benefits, cash disbursements
for rent, mortgage payments, etc.. 



But also owed to U.S. blacks are non-compensatory reparations. Among
other things, the names and images of the confederacy have no place in
official public spaces as if they represented the U.S., state or local
government. This is because, among other things, the U.S. Civil War was
(at least in the minds of many) supposed to symbolize the bloody and
painful sacrifice of many soldiers and families for the sake of
instituting a slaveless society. Because of this, U.S. history books
must continue to be revised in order to provide more balanced and
accurate stories of the truth, inclusive of all peoples. This includes
the revelation of the ugliest of truths often shrouded in myths in the
name of U.S. patriotism. But genuine patriotism has nothing to do with
misleading or false information dressed in the guise of history. It
must often recount the evils of the 1921Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre of
U.S. blacks by whites, the 1923 Rosewood, Florida massacre of many U.S.
blacks by many U.S. whites, the murder of Emmet Till and the lynchings
of thousands of other blacks, and the pervasive terrorism of U.S.
blacks by the KKK. Continued recognition of such evils must replace
self-serving glorified images and imaginings which persist to this very
day in the minds of many U.S. whites that in one way or another promote
white privilege. Such changes should be lawfully instituted, not
because to fail to do so would stand as offensive (Corlett 2018), but
rather because truth, justice and fairness demand it.