<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=3>The fundamental issue here is not how to operationalize 'reparations,' but
<BR>the pretense that it could be done easily verges on a bad faith argument.
<BR>Reparations for African-Americans is hardly a run of the mill class action
<BR>suit, where either the victims themselves or their immediate descendants are
<BR>alive [such as in an asbestos, black lung, tobacco or handgun claim], and in
<BR>this respect, it is also quite different from every case where reparations
<BR>has ever been provided -- Holocaust survivors, Japanese-Americans interned
<BR>during W.W.II, survivors of the Rosewood and Tulsa massacres]. Rather, we are
<BR>dealing with centuries of oppression, and with generation upon generation of
<BR>children born out of relations with partners from outside of the affected
<BR>group, and even the race. This is precisely where the sheer arbitrariness of
<BR>racial categories [do I qualify if I am 1/4, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64 a descendant of
<BR>an enslaved person?] comes into play. I remember a discussion that has gone
<BR>on at times about whether or not Bob Barr, the racist and ultra-conservative
<BR>Congressman, has African-American ancestry. If he did, which seems quite
<BR>possible, would he qualify for reparations? And where, pray tell, are all
<BR>these reliable documents, which will be accepted by a court of law, which can
<BR>show a clear line of descent from an enslaved person? Moreover, if I read
<BR>Randall Robinson's case for reparations correctly, a case which I think is
<BR>more compelling than any other I have come across, he would reject the
<BR>paradigm of individual compensation which is inescapable in legal, class
<BR>action remedies, and in existing examples of reparations.
<BR>
<BR>[In fact, I remember Justin dismissing, in quite scathing terms, the claim
<BR>that every individual emancipated slave, and therefore his/her descendants,
<BR>was entitled to "forty acres and mule," but that was all before I had entered
<BR>the debate, and he felt his usual -- could we call it predictable? --
<BR>compulsion to find some way to appear to be on the other side.]
<BR>
<BR>The real, fundamental issue here is, as I have said here more than once, is
<BR>whether reparations is an idea with any political efficacy, with any
<BR>reasonable hope of moving the struggle for racial justice forward. I have
<BR>argued that it does not have such efficacy, and that it will harm rather than
<BR>advance the struggle. I have argued that the focus of the struggle for racial
<BR>justice needs to be on goals which are both politically realizable, on the
<BR>one hand, and significant goods for communities of color -- such as providing
<BR>quality education and health care to the inner city -- on the other hand, as
<BR>well as on defending what gains have been made in the last decades in areas
<BR>such as civil rights, voting rights and affirmative action. If you read
<BR>Justin's post far enough you will discover that he eventually concedes that
<BR>"I am not persuaded that reparations is a campaign worth its costs," and
<BR>suggests that it might be better to work on reform of the criminal justice
<BR>system and on defending affirmative action. That sounds like a position it is
<BR>quite compatible with what I had said, if not exactly the same thing, so one
<BR>would have to wonder exactly with whom Justin is disagreeing.
<BR>
<BR>Well, a clue to that might be found in the several paragraphs that Justin
<BR>meanders through on his way to that statement. With numerous twists and
<BR>turns, he manages to impute to me a position of limiting politics to what he
<BR>calls the "feasible," which means that I
<BR><< give up the goals of the civil rights movement, forget voting rights,
<BR>abandon affirmative action for a color blind "class based" alternative, throw
<BR>in the towl in prison and welfare reform, and chuck employment duscrimination
<BR>law--because after all, that is the way things are going, Congress won't
<BR>defend the gains of the past, the courts hate them and are restricting them,
<BR>and they aren't popular with the white public. >>
<BR>
<BR>Now I might just call this a straw argument, and leave it there, but that
<BR>seems so inadequate a term to describe such a bizarre, bad faith imputation
<BR>of the opposite of my politics. It reminds me of the scene in _Annie Hall_,
<BR>where someone runs on for about five minute on how the Woody Allen character
<BR>is a "Upper West Side, Jewish, socialist youth summer camp..." and he
<BR>responds, "so nice to be reduced to your stereotype." And all this from a
<BR>Justin who, a few weeks ago, thought that a discussion of functionalism in
<BR>which I made reference to a variety of Marxist functionalism other than his
<BR>own, was such an offensive straw argument that he had to condemn it as
<BR>Stalinist and announce that he couldn't continue to participate in the
<BR>thread. Life in LBO-Talk does have its ironies.
<BR>
<BR>Justin:
<BR>Bless you, Leo, you're so predictable. As I have explained, reparations not
<BR>not the least impossible or even very difficult to operationalize. One could
<BR>use a fairly simple mechanism of the sort familiar to managing class action
<BR>settlements. I will repeat it once more: establish a fund, here appropriated
<BR>by an act of the legislature; set up a formula to determine eligibility, say
<BR>demonstrated descent from a slave; send out a notice of elibility to the
<BR>potential class members; hire or create an administrator to screen
<BR>applicants; screen 'em, and send out the checks. We do it _all the time_.
<BR>It's utterly routine.
<BR>
<BR>Now I very seriously doubt whether it will happen. But that is not because it
<BR>cannot be operationalized. It is because the political will to do it is
<BR>lacking, probably for the reasons Kelly mention, namely, most white Americans
<BR>do not feel any responsibility for slavery, or think that whites owe blacks
<BR>anything. Indeed, there is probably a more or inchoate and utterly irrational
<BR>suspicion that blacks have a lot of advantages whites don't, affirmative
<BR>action and the like. Therefore, they do not feel inclined to sacrifice
<BR>anything to benefit blacks. No doubt if the campaign got off the ground,
<BR>reparations would be depicted as just more welfare for the shiftless.
<BR>
<BR>The best argument _for_ a reparations campaign, even one unlikely to
<BR>succeed, is that it provides us with an opportunity to fight these
<BR>attitudes, to show "the debt," as Randall Robinson puts it, that America
<BR>owes to blacks. Campaigns for "regulative" or educative goals are not
<BR>uncommon on the left, and they make a lot of sense in many contexts. If we
<BR>ask only for what it seems feasible to get here and now, which is what you,
<BR>Leo, have consistently advocated over the years, we will get a good deal less
<BR>than that. We lose if we let the other side set the parameters of the debate.
<BR>Right now, what seems "feasible," is to give up the goals of the civil rights
<BR>movement, forget voting rights, abandon affirmative action for a color blind
<BR>"class based" alternative, throw in the towl in prison and welfare reform,
<BR>and chuck employment duscrimination law--because after all, that is the way
<BR>things are going, Congress won't defend the gains of the past, the courts
<BR>hate them and are restricting them, and they aren't popular with the white
<BR>public.
<BR>The argument against a reparations campaign is that it looks like guilt trip
<BR>and not a way to revitalize interracial cooperation for justice; it's
<BR>divisive, zero sum, backwards looking rather than forwards looking, and
<BR>doesn't address the current racial problems in a clear way. I don't mind
<BR>that the Horowitzes of the world hate it. They'd hate anything that looked
<BR>like racial justice. But I would like to see organizing around some racial
<BR>justice issues that might energize black-white cooperation. Reform of the
<BR>criminal justice system comes to mind. Some divisive campaigns are necessary,
<BR>but these address current problem--defense of affirmative action, for
<BR>example. I am not persuaded that reparations is a campaign worth its costs.
<BR>As to supposed censorship stuff, although I think the Brown students' action
<BR>in destroying the papers was foolish, it hardly matters. My own experience
<BR>suggests that any left objection to right wing speech will be attacked as
<BR>censorship, whether it happened or not.
<BR>--jks
<BR>
<BR>-
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --
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