Too Late For Reparations

The case for slavery reparations, as proposed by Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree and his national Reparations Coordinating Committee, is an impractical and cosmetic means of achieving a worthy end—amends for the brutal experiences of blacks under slavery and segregation. Americans need to confront the realities of domestic racial inequalities; the issues of institutional disadvantages faced by blacks should not be swept under the table. But 137 years after slavery’s abolition, reparations would not be a constructive solution to these problems.

Ogletree’s committee is reviewing a proposal to target institutions such as Yale University, Harvard University and Brown University, on the grounds that these institutions may have received donations years ago that could be connected to slavery. Targeting private institutions that had no direct role in holding or trading slaves—even if they may have indirectly benefited financially from slavery—is not the best way to deal with disadvantages faced by blacks today. There is a morally important distinction between actively participating in the slave trade and receiving a charitable donation from someone who owned a slave.

In the decades immediately following the Civil War, a proposal to compensate slaves or their direct descendants might have been viable—and certainly desirable. It would have been easier to identify those who were actively involved in the slave trade and benefited directly from the enslavement of blacks, and it also would have been easier to identify the heirs of the appropriate slaves. But monetary atonement for slavery is not feasible today, due to the impossibility of justly and correctly determining contributor, recipient and specific amount.

Chronological proximity, for example, allowed monetary reparations to be made to Holocaust victims who were used as slave labor in Nazi Germany. Similarly, the federal government offered reparations to survivors of Japanese-Americans interned during World War II and victims of race riots, but, in those situations, victims or their direct descendents were more easily identified.

Although Ogletree’s reparations plan brings greater prominence to the issue of modern racial disparities, it is neither a constructive nor practical means of dealing with the most shameful part of America’s history. Any attempt at reparations would most likely cause more harm than good.