Reparations sounds like a disastrous political strategy to me, whatever its legal merits.
The message of it is that discrimination is a hangover from the past, not something that is recreated here in the present.
Furthermore, the struggle would become legalised, with lawyers seeking to prove descent, pursuing no-win, no-fee strategies that would further reduce the children of former slaves into front-men for lawyers' campaigns latch onto the government tit.
The struggle against racism in the here-and-now would become a legalistic, retro caricature.
And after the dust had settled, what would be the consequence? A great number of advocates and intermediaries would have enriched themselves, and the whole country would have persuaded itself that it had solved the problem of racism, leaving black Americans exactly where they were before.
In message <006901c0a53e$6f7b97a0$fd20aace at oemcomputer>, Michael
Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net> writes
>Berlin at Cal, Berkeley>I don't have a legal background, but it seems to me
>that the legal case
>for basing reparations would be weaker because the individuals are dead,
>and then people who have a grandmother who was into genealogy as a hobby
>would be benefitted, while those who don't know would not qualify. And
>records on names of slaves were never particularly good. People's last
>names were changed all of the time.
>
>I think corporations shown to benefit should pay, but because genealogy
>probably couldn't be sorted out, the general fund idea seems like it would
>be best. had this story.
>
>
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/02/27/nati
>onal0139EST0430.DTL
>
> Mormon church releases post-Civil War database
>
>JANELLE CARTER, Associated Press Writer Tuesday, February 27, 2001
>Breaking News Sections
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>----
> (02-27) 08:50 PST WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Mormon Church published records
>Monday from the post-Civil War Freedman's Bank for newly freed slaves,
>making ancestral records available for as many as 12 million black
>Americans.
>
>The records have been available for years through the National Archives but
>not in organized form. The church, formally the Church of Jesus Christ of
>Latter-day Saints, spent 11 years, with help from volunteer Utah state
>inmates, extracting and linking the 480,000 names contained in the records.
>
>The result is a searchable database on compact disk which includes
>information such as family names, birth locations and names of former slave
>owners.
>
>``These records can provide clues for an estimated 8 to 10 million
>African-American descendants living today who might want to research their
>family histories,'' said Elder L. Lionel Kendrick, a church official.
>
>The church began the project when an employee discovered the existence of
>the original microfilm records. At that time, no one had undertaken the long
>process of extracting the documents into one database.
>
>Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, said, ``For too long,
>African-American history was embodied in untruth. We were not given an
>opportunity for truth.''
>
>The Freedman's Savings and Trust Company was established through a
>congressional charter in 1865 -- the same year the Civil War ended -- to
>help former slaves with their new financial responsibilities. With 37 branch
>offices in 17 states, the bank had deposits totaling more than $57 million
>before it collapsed in 1874 because of mismanagement and fraud.
>
>What survived, however, were meticulous bank documents recording the names
>and family relationships of account holders.
>
>One application for a former slave lists the name of his former plantation,
>age, complexion, children, place of birth and occupation. It also lists the
>names of siblings who were sold away during slavery.
>
>``The records created by the bank are a rich source of documentation,'' said
>Reginald Washington, an archivist with the National Archives and Records
>Administration.
>
>Still, the discovery of the documents poses prickly questions for the
>nation.
>
>When the bank closed, about 61,000 account holders were eligible to receive
>money. Less than 30,000 former slaves ever recovered their money and even
>then, most received just over half of what they were actually owed,
>Washington said.
>
>Jackson Lee said it was premature to say whether there would be legislation
>to compensate the former account holders. Instead, she said she hoped to
>first have a review of the bank's records and operations.
>
>Jewish descendants of the Holocaust have sued several European countries in
>recent years over decades-old bank accounts and other property confiscated
>by Adolf Hitler's Germany and European collaborators.
>
>The Freedman's Bank had branches in Huntsville and Mobile, Ala.; Little
>Rock, Ark.; Washington, D.C.; Tallahassee, Fla.; Atlanta, Augusta and
>Savannah, Ga.; Lexington and Louisville, Ky.; New Orleans and Shreveport,
>La.; Baltimore, Columbus, Natchez and Vicksburg, Miss.; St. Louis; New York;
>New Bern, Raleigh and Wilmington, N.C.; Philadelphia; Beaufort and
>Charleston, S.C.; Memphis and Nashville, Tenn.; Lynchburg, Norfolk and
>Richmond, Va.
>
>The Mormon church has maintained a massive genealogical database since 1894,
>originally to assist church members in tracing their family histories. The
>collection today is the largest of its kind. The church also plans to
>release a searchable database of the 1880 Census.
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>----
>The Freedman's Bank Records CD can be purchased for $6.50 over the Internet
>at www.familysearch.org, or by calling church distribution centers at
>1-800-537-5971 and asking for item 50120.
>On the Net:
>
>The National Archives: www.nara.gov
>
>The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints: www.lds.org
>
>
>
>
>
-- James Heartfield