Related: 'Game of Thrones' cast predicts who will sit on the Iron Throne in season 7. Comments 0. Top Stories. CEO who threw chair inside Capitol on Jan. Turpin sisters speak out in 1st interview about 'house of horrors' Nov 10, AM. America is defined by continuing injustice rooted in slavery. The lack of education and conversation about it constitute a deficit that shackles our country.
It makes America fertile ground for myth and revisionism that attempt to teach schoolchildren that slaves were just immigrant workers, sharecroppers who tended land in exchange for a place to live. The unmentioned rape and torture and maiming and poor nourishment and killings — and even the legally maintained ban on slaves learning to read — were all just minor inconveniences.
Slavery endures in a legal system that allows black voter suppression and housing restrictions and education policies that continue to make life harder for blacks than whites in America. Slavery endures in an injustice system that continues to jail more black men than white people for the same crimes. It was recognized as early as B.
Massachusetts became the first British colony to legalize slavery in How does a country recover from centuries of slavery and racism? In the US, a growing number of voices are saying the answer is reparations. Reparations are a restitution for slavery - an apology and repayment to black citizens whose ancestors were forced into the slave trade. It's a policy notion that many black academics and advocates have long called for, but one that politicians have largely sidestepped or ignored.
But increased activism around racial inequalities and discussions among Democratic presidential candidates have thrust the issue into the national spotlight. This week, talk of reparations made headlines after a Fox News contributor argued against the policy by saying the US actually deserves more credit for ending slavery as quickly as it did. Fox's Pavlich complains that America gets no credit for ending slavery. America came along as the first country to end it within years.
And we get no credit for that. The backlash to her comments from liberals and activists was swift. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr, responded by saying America "doesn't deserve credit for 'ending slavery'" when the ideologies are still prevalent. Talk of repaying African-Americans has been around since the Civil War era, when centuries of slavery officially ended. Some experts have calculated the worth of black labour during slavery as anywhere from billions to trillions of dollars.
Adding in exploitative low-income work post-slavery pushes those figures even higher. Even after the technical end of the slave trade, black Americans were denied education, voting rights, and the right to own property - treated in many ways as second-class citizens.
Those arguing for reparations point to these historic inequalities as reasons for current schisms between white and black Americans when it comes to income, housing, healthcare and incarceration rates. In arguing for reparations, Prof Hamilton says the impact of slavery continues to manifest in American society. Psychologically, the consequence is [how] we treat blacks without dignity, that we dehumanise them in public spaces.
From policies excluding primarily black populations - like social security once did - to pushing narratives that blame black Americans for their economic problems, Prof Hamilton says the US has structural problems that must be addressed in order to move forward. In , journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates brought similar ideas into the national conversation with his piece The Case for Reparations.
Coates detailed how housing policy and wealth gaps in particular most clearly illustrate the ways black citizens are still affected by America's past. Decades of segregation kept black families away from white areas, which had better access to education, healthcare, food and other necessities, while institutionalised discrimination hindered black Americans' economic development. Subconscious racism in police forces, enduring bias against black Americans in the courts and financial institutions are some examples of that subtle violence, he adds.
But support for reparations today remains largely divided along racial lines.
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