I once appeared on a tv show with him to discuss my book, Class Warfare in the Information Age. He said that he agreed with everything that I said. I expected a nasty neo-con, but he was very pleasant and seemed very open. He gave me a copy of his book, which seemed out of character with his personal demeanor.
Ian Murray wrote:
> 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
--
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu