Slavery Reparations. What Does That Even Mean?

Okay, count me on board morally. Slavery was one of America’s most egregious shames

and more Americans were killed in our Civil War than all other wars combined. But I've got an ethical problem with handing out cash.

Emancipation didn’t actually solve

anything for black Americans. Up to and including today, we

simply played out the white/black American conundrum by other means, such as

voting rights violations, segregation, economic isolation, backwater education

and ghettos.

And now we think we can make things right with money?

Well, that’s my stop. Here's where I get off the bus and, until very recently,

it was from the front of the bus.

Last week’s congressional hearing

brought out calls for a long unmet duty to be met, rebutted by

what was done 200 years ago is of no consequence to white Americans today.

No consequence, huh? Racism in America today is the

consequence.

Those facing elections—and

they’re all facing elections— tellingly kicked the can down the road by

promising to hold a hearing on the problem. What a farce. What a

desperate move to hope the news cycle makes

reparations yesterday’s news. Holding a hearing is the American way in times of crisis, when you want to sift something through the dominant white perspective.

But these are not times of crisis.

Times of crisis were the period

between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, during which 3,446 African

Americans were lynched—hanged from trees while whites cheered and refreshments were

served.

Times of crisis included the famous

‘forty acres and a mule,’ enacted by Union General William T. Sherman’s

Special Field Order No. 15, issued on Jan. 16, 1865. It was available to four million

newly freed American slaves, a promise that lasted exactly nine months. Andrew

Johnson, Lincoln’s successor and a sympathizer with the South, overturned

the Order in the fall of 1865.

Times of crisis began with the 1868

14th amendment to the constitution, which granted full U.S. citizenship to

African-Americans. The 15th amendment, ratified in 1870, extended the right to

vote to black males.

Beginning in 1876, the Supreme

Court presided over a three-decades long dismantling of what seemed to be a

constitutional guarantee of the right to vote for African-Americans. In

United States v. Reese, the court determined that the 15th Amendment, which

states that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged…on account of

race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” did not mean what it

seemed to mean.

Not meaning what it seemed to

mean continues today across southern states, where gerrymandering and false

voter-fraud claims pertain strictly to black voters.

Today, times of crisis include

blacks shot by police for broken taillights, prisons filled with blacks serving

life sentences for minor crimes, unconscionable poverty rates and social

exclusion.

How in the name of god do you solve that with financial

reparations? The fact is, you don’t. But that doesn’t mean there are no

solutions. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that, but he was assassinated,

because his taillight was too bright.

Let’s begin by admitting that civil

rights, as they apply to blacks, are a monumental failure. We are as racially

fucked-up a society as we have ever been. That would be a starting point.

Then let’s see what might be done on a practical basis. It

will be expensive, but so are any meaningful reparations and, by the end, we

may actually have achieved something worthwhile.

Let’s look at black candidate Lori Lightfoot’s recent

election as Mayor of Chicago. If we lean back, half-close our eyes and dream a

bit, what might she achieve? Martin Luther King had a dream and so do I.

Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that and she’s gaining traction. I have

a plan as well, a different plan from hers, but it addresses this issue.

Are you there, Lori Lightfoot?

Chicago is one of America’s least

integrated cities. Blacks live in all the shitty areas and whites elsewhere. I

spent all or part of six decades living in the Chicago area, so I’ve seen

rather more than most.

In black precincts (Chicago runs on a precinct basis), white

banks control all the money. White landlords own what few residences are not

public housing, the grocery chains and auto dealerships are all white owned and

city police drive through (when they are required) with their windows rolled

up, turning a blind-eye to drug dealers.

It’s understandable. Machine politics has always run the

city. Let’s change that,

Lori. You listening?

1)  Establish

black-owned banks in one (or a number of) black precincts. State banks or, if

not, federal banks. Assets owned and voting-rights held only by precinct account

holders. Credit card rates at 3% over prime rate. Loans made only to businesses

and individuals within the precinct. Make payday loan joints against the law.

2)  Encourage

black (resident only) ownership of grocery chains, car dealerships, fast-food

franchises and small businesses—repair shops, plumbers, small contractors, etc.

3)  Sell

the public housing to residents for condominiums and give them management training.

Provide city-financed upgrade money and allow residents (as owners) to kick out

drug dealers and those who fail to care for their apartments, returning that asset

to the condo authority.

4)  Make

precinct police funded by the city (as it already is), but require a shorter

commute, living within the precinct from the top down.

5)  Upgrade

precinct primary schools and establish a local school board, free of the too-political

Chicago Board of Education. Make school principals responsible for curriculum,

teacher hires and school budgets.

6)  As

soon as possible, build a two-year local college to prepare students for

further university education.

7)  In

collaboration with local businesses, prepare young people to become useful

employees, earning wages that compare to white communities.

8)  Build

trust within the community. Above all, build trust.

To

begin with, there’s a tremendous amount of money flowing into these damaged

precincts from welfare programs. Another big hunk from outsider owned businesses.

Boost it as necessary in the short run, but keep it in the precinct. In

the long run, the goal is to build a healthy, vibrant community that moves away

from welfare, sustaining itself and becoming economically powerful.

White

Chicago isn’t going to throw these communities anything more than the bare minimum to keep

residents from rioting and burning the joint down. But they’ll be delighted to

get out from under the responsibility.

          Just how delighted remains to be

seen.

But

it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than reparations for the descendants of slavery

and the model Chicago builds can light a thousand lamps across black America.

The most meaningful reparation is to bring black

America into mainstream America, where it belongs. That’s unlikely to

happen with some gigantic, unenlightened federal program, no matter how well-meaning.

But it’s both possible and doable

on a local basis in a major city. Wasn’t it former Speaker of the United States

House of Representatives Tip O'Neill who coined the phrase, "all

politics is local?"

          That was 1982, but not all that much has

changed since then.

Having

sown the seeds to grow meaningful reparations for slavery, perhaps we can move

on to compensate the genocide America committed against the most deserving Americans of

all—our native American Indians.

          It’s

not what you say, it’s what you do.