more on reparations

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

Black leaders divided over reparations for slavery

Special report: UN conference against racism

Ed Vulliamy New York
Sunday August 26, 2001
The Observer

The United States' threat to boycott a world conference on racism in
South Africa this week - because of the inclusion of reparations for
slavery on the agenda - has fuelled debate among leading black figures
over placing a price on suffering at the hands of atrocity.

With reparations hailed as the 'hottest civil rights issue' by
Newsweek magazine, some black leaders and thinkers in America are
denouncing the idea that a cheque can compensate for the abomination
of slavery.

They do so not because they agree with President Bush that the present
need not reckon with its past, but because, as author Shelby Steele
puts it, 'when you trade on the past victimisation of your own people,
you trade honour for dollars'.

Many civil rights politicians and activists, including Coretta Scott
King - Martin Luther King's widow - plan to attend the Durban
conference. But the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, himself black,
says he will not attend if reparations and another item equating
Zionism with racism are included.

The movement for reparations, introduced to Congress in 1989, has
gained ground in America in the past year through political pressure
and a bestselling book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks by
Randall Robinson, who has joined O.J. Simpson's defender, Johnnie
Cochran, in a reparations lawsuit against the federal government to be
filed next spring.

'The history of slavery in America has never been fully addressed in a
public forum,' said Professor Charles Ogletree of Harvard University,
co-ordinating the suit. 'Litigation will show what slavery meant, how
it was profitable and how the issue of white privilege is still with
us.'

But those who inform black American opinion are divided over the scope
of reparations; some in favour of blanket federal funds, others
preferring targeted litigation over specific, broken treaties - with
others arguing that they should not bepaid at all.

Shelby Steele is the best-known black opponent of all reparations.
Labelled a 'neo-conservative', Steele said reparations fall into line
behind the fight for welfare programmes that 'only subsidised black
intertia'. 'The demand for reparations,' he said, 'is yet another
demand for white responsibility, when today's problem is a failure of
black responsibility.'

A more radical position argues that paying off the African-American
community does not open the portal into a history of savage racism but
slams it shut. Among them is Paul Gilroy, professor of
African-American studies at Yale University, who says: 'This is what a
consumer culture does: makes financial transactions and commodities
out of injustices. It'll be "there's your money, now shut up".'

The inclusion of reparations on the Durban agenda is supported by
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. 'Groups that suffer
today because of slavery or other severe racist practices,' said Human
Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth, 'should be compensated
by governments responsible for these practices.'

Related articles
24.08.2001: Bush urged not to withdraw from racism conference
28.07.2001: America may boycott racism summit
26.07.2001: Summit on racism jeopardised by anti-Zionist draft
29.06.2001: Africans call for slavery reparations

Useful links
UN conference against racism
European commission against racism
Racism and public policy conference