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