Gordon Fitch:
> >But the subject under discussion, reparations for slavery,
> >is not exclusively a Black issue in the same sense as, say,
> >organizing Black people to campaign for reparations (or anything
> >else) is. (I'm assuming the issue is being taken seriously.)
kelley:
> huh. well, look at it this way: i thought art pointed out some glaring
> mistakes in the arguments y'all had put forth thus far. there was some
> assumption, for instance, that reparations discussions among black radicals
> wasn't class based. there was some suggestion that they hadn't addressed
> native americans. there was some suggestions that the discourse needed to
> be more cognizant of how white people would take it.
> ...
Well, that depends on what the reparations campaign is for. If it's merely posturing, it can be the private business of any group that wants to go through the postures. But it's my impression that the reparations concept is a serious one and that reparations are supposed to function in such a way as to change the relationship between Blacks and Whites (and everyone else) in some way which is supposed to be desirable to most people, not just most Black people.
To persist in the analogy, a feminist initiative about changing the marriage laws would also be about men and would have to involve them as participants. And just as changing the marriage laws would rest on certain fundamentally conservative assumptions (we're going to continue to have laws, we're going to continue to have marriage, and we're going to continue to have laws especially about marriage) so the idea of reparations for slavery rests on similarly conservative assumptions about property and related social relationships. Since these assumptions are about everyone in the community that adopts them and require the support and enforcement of the community as a whole, the initiative can't reasonably be considered the business of only one part of the community -- at least not if it's to be taken seriously.
Furthermore, given the conservatism of the underlying assumptions, I don't think it can be taken for granted that leftist radicals will line up unequivocally in support. As I think I said before, communism or serious socialism would render reparations irrelevant. On the other hand, were the idea to be implemented absent other revolutionary changes, the deal would be negotiated and administered by bourgeois on both (or all) sides, with predictable consequences, not least of which would be the most severe disappointment of many of those who might have expected to benefit meaningfully in one way or another. So I think this is a reason for reviewing the class issues.