One item not on Biden’s list is the long-delayed but still-controversial idea of reparations to be paid to the descendants of enslaved people as penance for original sin. The proposal for reparations has been controversial because of figures like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the top Republican in the House of Representatives, who said in 2019 that “none of us alive today are responsible for slavery.”
Now, Harvard professors Linda J. Bilmes and Cornell professor William Brooks, a white woman and a black man, have refuted McConnell’s claims and related ones in a detailed, well-supported academic paper published to coincide with Juneteenth this week.
In a persuasive way, Two authors — One is of European descent, the other is the great-great-grandson of slaves, they wrote in the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of Social Science. The federal government “already has the norms, precedent, expertise, and resources to provide reparations to Black Americans.”
Their study reveals that Washington has funded numerous and diverse “reparations and compensation programs,” showing that “reparations for non-race-related harms are routinely and routinely provided” and that “the United States provides compensation to nearly all but black Americans, even for relatively severe harms.”
While the politically contentious term is not commonly used to describe this form of compensation, Bilmes and Brooks said, “reparations are a surprisingly common practice in the federal government’s role in compensating for damages.”
The list of reparations goes far beyond the amounts often cited as payments to Jewish victims of the Holocaust or Japanese Americans held in internment camps during World War II.
“Categories of injured people who have received compensation include coal miners, farmers whose crops have failed, workers whose companies have gone bankrupt, victims of terrorism and natural disasters, people exposed to radiation, veterans, people wrongfully convicted in the legal system, people who have had their income taken away from tribal lands, fishermen who have faced depleted fish stocks, people harmed by pesticides, toxins, vaccines and medical devices, workers and businesses affected by U.S. trade agreements, bank depositors, and many other categories,” they wrote.
The authors do not estimate the cost or structure of a slavery reparations program, but Bilmes and Brooks wrote, “A key finding is that the federal government has used designated fees, trust funds, excise taxes, subsidized insurance premiums, and customized financial arrangements to help pay for an extensive reparations program.”
One of their recommendations is the creation of a presidentially appointed national commission to investigate reparations, similar to HR 40, a bill previously proposed by former Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) in 2021. The professors also suggested an audit of the federal reparations system to gather more information about it.
The House and Senate have not voted on the 2021 bill, but that doesn’t mean action on reparations is stalled.
Rather, said Ron Daniels, chairman of the National African American Reparations Committee. The issue is “burning hot” across the country, he added, citing a 2022 book by Washington lawyer Nkechi Taifa called “Reparations on Fire.” A longtime political activist, Daniels said he’s “never seen a more active period” for the reparations movement. He noted that the House bill has 196 co-sponsors (the Senate bill has 22), and that there are “probably hundreds” of state and local actions related to reparations.
Evanston, Illinois, is a pioneer in this field. My colleague, Emanuel Felton reported earlier this month that the Chicago suburb is implementing the nation’s first government-funded reparations program. Over the past two years, the town has paid out about $5 million to nearly 200 black residents. Evanston’s program is now under threat from the conservative group Judicial Watch, which is suing to halt the program, arguing that its “race-based eligibility requirements” violate the Constitution.
The lawsuit is part of a broader attack on affirmative action following the Supreme Court’s ruling last year against the college admissions program. The attacks extend to fundamental American values of diversity and inclusion that were once widely praised. Last week, Republicans in the House and Senate introduced the “Dismantling DEI Act,” a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s efforts to outlaw federal programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Mike Gonzales, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the Harvard professors’ arguments “fail the tests of justice, morality, logic, ethics and validity.” “They instil collective guilt. They are inflicting collective punishment and granting collective rewards nearly 160 years after the Civil War ended and the 13th Amendment abolished slavery,” he said.
However, the effects of slavery continue to this day and it has not been abolished.
Because of the “significant racial harms caused or exacerbated by actions involving the federal government,” Bilmes and Brooks wrote, “there is a moral basis, social norms, and governmental precedent to pay reparations for those harms and the resulting racial wealth gap.”
In an email, Bill Bilmes, a former Commerce Department chief financial officer and assistant secretary, said that providing compensation to those harmed by the legacy of slavery is “based on norms of generosity and the idea that America will be better off if we do this.”
But as the laws banning federal DEI programs show, for many, that “standard of generosity” or even basic fairness stops where programs to right past wrongs against African Americans begin.
Responding to opponents of reparations who say McConnell’s “two great-great-grandfathers, James McConnell and Richard Daley, owned a combined total of at least 14 slaves in Limestone County, Alabama,” the article lays out a list of issues that show the “intertwined and compounded racist harms inflicted on black Americans for centuries” following slavery that continue “to the present day,” according to NBC News.
The authors argue that because “Black Americans have long been denied the ability to accumulate wealth,” compensating them “in recognition of their unpaid contributions to the nation and the suffering they endured” during slavery and since is consistent with American norms, precedents, and practices.
“Not only is reparations a regular and routine practice, but we also have the experience, expertise and resources to actually carry it out,” Brooks, the former NAACP CEO and president, said in an interview.
