How to Steal Things, Exploit People, and Avoid All Responsibility (Reparations, again)

I started this narrative bibliography for "The Case for Reparations" back in June, but, regrettably, I didn't finish the final section before I left for the summer. Some time has passed but I think it is very important that, as much as possible, I complete this public acknowledgement of all the previous work that contributed to my own.

As I've written, the process began with the understanding that racism was a "done thing" and not an irrepressible clash between people of different hues. Another way of putting this is to say white supremacy is not an invention of white people; white people are an invention of white supremacy. The second step was understanding that the most flagrant demonstration of white supremacy, enslavement, is not ancillary to American history but at its very roots. The enslavement of Africans is foundational to the United States, and it is tough to imagine this country without it. The third step was understanding that the legacy of that enslavement gave us a suite of policies that injured—and continues to injure—people who are alive and well and living in North Lawndale.

I first seriously grappled with the concept reparations in my early 20s, in the form Randall Robinson's moving argument in The Debt. A taut and beautifully rendered book, The Debt mostly focuses on enslavement. But I remember sitting with Robinson some years ago—he was the subject of my first big profile for a national magazine—and hearing him almost off-handedly note that housing discrimination alone is estimated to have cost black people billions. And I recall dimly thinking, "Some of those people are alive."(continued)

But I remember sitting with Robinson some years ago—he was the subject of my first big profile for a national magazine—and hearing him almost off-handedly note that housing discrimination alone is estimated to have cost black people billions.

Huh? How so?

In reality, of course, there is no such thing as “black people” - there are many individual people with identifiable features typical of members of many different African tribes in various mixtures - and varying degrees of admixture of European ancestry as well. These “black people” tend to refer to themselves as “African American” - but that leads to the confounding factor that there are “whites” (Thomas Sowell points out that they are actually pink) who were born in Africa and have no other native land, and if they come here and obtain citizenship they are African American, but not “African American.” And also to the tendency for American “liberals" to call non-“white” Africans “African American.”
But the point I was headed for is that, absent the slavery experience, none of the “African American” people would even exist. Some, tho undoubtedly not all, of their African ancestors would have survived in Africa to have progeny - but not one, I dare say, would have had any of the same children in Africa that they ended up having in America. And as to the possibility of any of them having the same great-great-great grandchildren - well, forgetaboutit. And that is without even considering the admixture of European ancestry which is far from atypical of the “black” “African American” - and which would not have been at all likely absent slavery.
All “African Americans exist because of American corn and beans. There arguably would be no more people in Africa today if slavery had not existed in America than there are as it is.
On top of all this, what price would an “African American” put on his American citizenship?

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