Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T00:25:09.031Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

REPARATIONS: Justice and Greed in Black and White

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2004

Michael C. Dawson
Affiliation:
Departments of Government, African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Rovana Popoff
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Chicago

Abstract

Proponents and opponents of reparations for Blacks vociferously disagree. Conservative opponents argue that reparations for Black slavery are a disastrous idea and that proponents are motivated by either greed or the desire to do harm to the republic. Liberal and left opponents of reparations argue that the advocacy on this issue will lead to great racial divisions and do potentially irreparable harm to progressive movements. Supporters of reparations argue that it is a case of simple justice. That during the colonial, slavery, and Jim Crow eras Blacks were systematically oppressed and exploited with the active support of the state. They also argue that both domestic and international precedents strengthen the case for Black reparations. This paper shows that there is a tremendous divide between Blacks and Whites on questions of both an apology to Blacks as well as monetary reparations. The racial divide extends to support for the reparations to Japanese-Americans who were victims of official incarceration during World War II. Finally, multivariate analyses demonstrates that for both Blacks and Whites, racialized views of politics are best predictors of support for or opposition to reparations.

Type
STATE OF THE ART
Copyright
© 2004 W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, Robert L. (1998) Past due: The African American quest for reparations. Black Scholar, 21: 217.Google Scholar
Arnesen, Eric (1994) ‘Like Banquo's Ghost, It Will Not Down’: The race question & the american railroad brotherhoods, 1880–1920. American Historical Review, 99: 16011633.Google Scholar
Black Panther Party (2003). Black Panther Party for Self-Defense 10 Point Program and Platform. Pacifica Radio/UC Berkeley Social Activism Sound Recording Project: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/panthers10pt.html, (last visited Dec. 17, 2003).
Chafe, William H. (ed.) (2001). Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South. New York: The New Press.
Conley, Dalton (1999). Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
Dawson, Michael C. (1994). Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dawson, Michael C. (2001). Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
D'Souza, Dinesh (1995). The End of Racism. New York: The Free Press.
Ellis, Joseph J. (2001). Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York: Alfred Knopf.
Feagin, Joe R. (2000). Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations. New York: Routledge.
Finkelman, Paul (2001). Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of the Jefferson, Second Edition. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.
Foner, Eric (1988). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row.
Fullinwider, Robert K. (2000) The Case for Reparations. Philosophy and Public Policy, 20: 18.Google Scholar
Greene, William H. (2000). Econometric Analysis: Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.
Horowitz, David (2001). “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks—and Racist, Too,” http://www.adversity.net/reparations/anti_reparations_ad.htm, (posted 3 October 2001).
Horowitz, David (2002). “Uncivil Wars: Alan Dershowitz's Capitulation to the Racial Left,” http://www.FrontPageMagazine.com (posted 7 June 2002) 5.
Kelley, Robin D. G. (2002). Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston: Beacon Press.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1986 [1963]). I Have a Dream. In James M. Washington (Ed.), A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., pp. 217220. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Magdol, Edward (1977). A Right to the Land: Essays on the Freedmen's Community. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Oliver, Melvin L. and Thomas M. Shapiro (1995). Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge.
Robinson, Randall (2000). The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. New York: Dutton.
Rose, Willie Lee (1976). Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment. London: Oxford University Press.
Saville, Julie (1994). The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1860–1870. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Swain, Carol M. (2002). The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williamson, Joel (1969). After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861–1887. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.