Reparations and the Sanders Campaign

Ta-Nehisi Coates is taking Senator Sanders to task for not supporting reparations. I must confess that I found Sanders' reasons for not supporting reparations sound remarkably like what a lot of people who're against them say: they're politically impractical (he says, largely correctly I suspect, that their chances in Congress are "nil") and that they're divisive. But then again, it's not all that different from what then Professor Obama asked about reparations back around 1994:

Given the perceived failures of the traditional civil rights agenda in bringing about racial equality in the U.S., a number of black commentators argue that a program of reparations is the only legitimate means of making up for three hundred plus years of slavery. More recently, some white commentators have also supported a variant of the reparations concept—for example, the government financing a Community Reinvestment funds that would be controlled by the black community and render affirmative action obsolete. Do such proposals have any realistic chance of working their way through the political system? Would there be any legal impediments to such a broadly-conceived reparations policy?

Coates' point is that he expects more from Sanders, who's running as a radical challenger of the status quo.  Certainly Sanders' statement seems quite moderate.

This makes me wonder if once Donald Trump gets the Republican nomination and he decides to run to the left of Hilary Clinton (because, hey, why not -- he wants to be president -- and consistency isn't an issue for Trump), will he come out in favor of reparations?

And a second question: would Sanders have been better off if he'd said something like:

My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all. ...

We know that these challenges can be overcome, because history moves in the direction of justice. The evils of slavery were accepted and unchanged for centuries. Yet, eventually, the human heart would not abide them. There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and woman that will not be silenced -- what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. That flame could not be extinguished at the Birmingham jail. It could not be stamped out at Robben Island Prison. It was seen in the darkness here at Goree Island, where no chain could bind the soul. This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it lights the way before us.

All of this is further evidence of the point I've been pushing for some time that discussion of reparations is not going away.

Comments

[anon]

ONe is not sure how George Bush's words mean that discussion of reparations is "not going away." If reparations are on the table, let's start with reparations for current wrongs.

Can we agree that reparations should be paid whenever, in the here and now, any group, acting in unison, violently deprives, without legal right, another discrete group of persons of life, liberty or property?

If so, should these reparations be paid by the individuals who participated in the group wrongdoing, or by other individuals who were far away from and not involved in any way in the wrongdoing?

Finally, suppose that the wrongdoers, collectively, lack the resources to pay just reparations and that the tort and criminal law systems cannot handle the problem. How should individuals be called to account, financially, for collective law breaking in which they participated that illegally deprived others of life, liberty or property?

Al, would your answer ever be: "They shouldn't pay a dime, or suffer any other consequence, if I think they had a good reason to break the law"?

[Enrique Guerra-Pujol]

How about "reparations" for Native Americans?

[anon]

Reparation means to restore.

Lincoln proposed a means to "restore" the persons wronged by slavery.

What was Lincoln's notion of "reparations"?

Why?

Should we tear down the Lincoln Memorial?

More importantly, what of the slavery in the world today?

Who is engaged in the practice of enslavement today? What about "reparations" for the injustice of the slave trade that thrives today? Who has condemned those who practice it?

Has anyone taken Bernie Sanders to task for not addressing this issue?

Finally, I am wondering this: when it comes time to dole out the money, should all people living in poverty today get the money? Or, will "reparations" be paid without regard to poverty, based on race? If the latter, how will the racial purity tests be administered? By whom?

[Barry]

"This makes me wonder if once Donald Trump gets the Republican nomination and he decides to run to the left of Hilary Clinton (because, hey, why not -- he wants to be president -- and consistency isn't an issue for Trump), will he come out in favor of reparations?"

Yes.

While standing in a group with Antonin 'Honest, God-Fearing Man' Scalia, John 'I support the 14th Amendment' Roberts, Clarence 'Not an Uncle Tom' Thomas, and others who don't exist.