All politics is local; as for now, so are reparations (op-ed)

Photo by John-Mark Smith on Unsplash

In 1989 Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) introduced to congress bill H.R. 40 – The Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African-Americans Act.  Needless to say, H.R. 40 was dead on arrival, and remained dormant for decades. 

In 2014 Ta-Nehisi Coates published the critically acclaimed essay – The Case for Reparations – in the Atlantic Monthly.  Coates mainstreamed the argument for reparations, but America’s first black president was elected to a second term by then.  That made many skeptical about the claim “lingering effects of slavery” prevented black progress in America.  All the while, Rep. Conyers re-introduced H.R. 40 in every legislative session until he retired in 2017. 

But constant appeals to the federal government for reparations might have been the wrong approach.   “America”, as a whole, was always the defendant in the case for reparations, and the argument goes: The first slaves arrived in 1619 and slavery wasn’t abolished until after the Civil War in 1865.  Therefore, descendants of slaves are owed compensation for their ancestor’s free labor between the years of 1619 and 1865.   But if each state was a defendant the reparations argument would change drastically concerning liability.

In 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, slavery existed in all British colonies in North America.  However, states began to abolish slavery during the Revolutionary War: Pennsylvania in 1780, Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 1783.  The U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787 and by 1804 all Northern states had abolished slavery or put in place laws to gradually end the practice. Therefore, the argument that reparations are owed from 1619 to 1865 has no application here. 

Meanwhile, in the south, Kentucky was carved out of Virginia and became a slave state in 1792, and Tennessee was carved out of North Carolina and became a slave state in 1796.  From 1812 through 1850 free states and slave states were admitted into the Union in pairs in order to maintain balance in the Senate.  Indiana (free 1816) was paired with Mississippi (slave 1817), Illinois (free 1818) was paired with Alabama (slave 1819), Maine (free 1820) was paired with Missouri (slave 1821), Arkansas (slave 1836) was paired with Michigan (free 1837), Florida (slave 1845) was paired with Iowa (free 1846), and Texas (slave 1845) was paired with Wisconsin (free 1848).  Obviously, the argument that reparations are owed from 1619-1865 doesn’t apply here either.

In 1850 California was admitted into the union as a free state without a slave state counterpart.  Between 1858 and 1861 Minnesota, Oregon, and Kansas also entered the union as free states without being paired with a slave state, allowing the free states to outnumber the slave states in the senate, contributing to southern succession in 1861.

As previously mentioned, California entered the union as a free state 15 years before slavery was abolished in 1865, but in 2020 California’s governor signed a bill to explore reparations for black Californians.  The bill established a task force that will compile a report on the effects of slavery and systemic discrimination – historically and currently – on black Californians and recommend ways to educate the public of those effects by 2022.  The task force will make recommendations as to how reparations would be provided.  One critic called the bill illogical and complained, “27 percent of California’s residents were not born in the United States.  Most of the naturalized citizens and undocumented immigrants arrived in the state after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.  How, then, do California residents from Asia, Latin America or Europe owe reparations to the current 6.5 percent of the state’s population that is African-American?”

That’s a good question, but it’s for California residents to answer. 

Reparations advocates need to make their appeals state by state because each state has its own history. One writer concluded, “At the local level, activists have more immediate access to institutional pressure points, while decision-makers are often less shielded from criticism and thus more likely to yield … All Politics is local; and for now, so are reparations.”

First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 10/14/2020