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What Price Slavery? What Price Freedom?
Howard Dodson
The enslavement of African peoples established the African presence in the United
States as well as the formative development of the American national economy. While the
first enslaved Africans arrived in the continental limits of today's U.S.A. in 1526,
slavery developed as a critical aspect of Euro-American colonial economies in North
America during the 17th century. Of the 10-12 million Africans that survived the
transatlantic slave trade to the Americas, only some 500,000 settled in the British North
American colonies. By 1860, however, the half-million involuntary immigrants had grown to
nearly 4 million Africans in bondage. Most of this growth occurred after the abolition of
the slave trade to the U.S. in 1807. The population growth paralleled the rise of the
slave-based cotton plantation economy in the American South, the foundation of the
ante-bellum American national economy.
Efforts to calculate the value of this enslaved African labor in the United States
as well as the social costs of racism and social oppression during and after slavery
have been used to define and support black Americans' reparations claims. While debates
about African Americans' rights to reparations as compensation for the enslavement and racial
discrimination they have endured have been constant themes in African American history, such
claims - indeed demands - have escalated over the last three decades. The purpose of this
paper is to review the nature of some of the most recent demands and to suggest an
alternative strategy for establishing the basis for black reparation's claims and making
appropriate compensation to the African American community.
This paper begins with the understanding that the enslavement of African peoples
was a global phenomenon impacting African peoples on the African continent as well as
throughout the Americas. As such, all African people who were victimized by the slave
trade and slavery are entitled to compensatory reparations. In focusing on the enslaved
African experience in the United States, my intent is neither to deny the claims of other
descendants of enslaved African peoples nor to separate the African American experience
from the plight of other African peoples. Rather, my intent is to explore certain
assumptions and principles related to African Americans in hopes that they might serve as
a model or framework for documenting and making similar claims throughout the Atlantic
world. In interrogating the U.S. particularly, it is my hope that I will shed some light
on the global possibilities.
The emergence and development of modern reparations movements among black Americans have
undoubtedly been inspired in no small measure by the successful reparations struggles
waged by other oppressed groups in American and world society since 1945. Foremost among
these have been the widely publicized reparations payments made to individual Jews and
the State of Israel over the last half-century in compensation for the exigencies of the
holocaust in Nazi Germany. Germany and Austria have paid over one billion dollars to
individuals and several billion to Israel to date. Another 600 million was slated for
payment by 2000. This is independent of the holocaust-inspired aid payments made by the
United States and other European powers annually. Still other reparations claims have
been successfully pursued to gain compensation for lost or confiscated property, including
gold deposited in European banks.
Japanese-Americans who were rounded up and imprisoned after Pearl Harbor recently
were awarded reparation payments. The United States paid an initial $20,000 per person,
but in 1992, the U.S. Office of Reparations agreed to increase the amounts to the Nisei
or their descendants beyond the original $1.25 billion payment.
The U.S. Government has also made reparations payments to Native Americans who
have suffered various injustices over the years. Native Americans of Alaska were awarded
one billion dollars and 4.4 million acres of land. The Sioux of South Dakota received $105
million, the Klamaths of Oregon, $81 million, the Ottawas of Michigan, $23 million, The
Chippawas of Wisconsin, $31 million, and the Florida descendants of the Seminole holocaust,
$12.3 million. These successful reparations cases have established the fact that the U.S.
government recognizes the principle of reparations as a means of making amends for past
wrongful deeds.
Black Americans' interest in pursuing reparations claims as compensation for the
crimes associated with the capture and enslavement of their ancestors and the economic
consequences of racism has escalated over the last thirty years. The Republic of New Africa
sought $400 billion in reparations as part of its effort to establish an independent black
republic in five southern states. Founded in Detroit in 1968, the RNA, under the leadership
of Imari Obadele, has been a consistent proponent of reparations in the United States.
James Foreman's Black Manifesto of 1969 included a modest $5 billion reparations
demand from white Christian churches and Jewish synagogues. In recent years, the
International Tribunal on Reparations for African Peoples in the U.S. held its tenth
gathering in Philadelphia in 1991. The Los Angeles-based Cosmopolitan Brotherhood
Association has called for the indemnification of descendants of enslaved Africans for
their enslavement. U.S. Representative John Conyers of Michigan has drafted a reparation
bill for the U.S. House of Representatives, and the National Coalition of Black Reparations
Associations (N'COBRA) has been established to coordinate initiatives and strategies.
As most of you know, African people's demand for Reparations rests on three basic
propositions:
1. That the mass kidnapping, sale and enslavement of Africans from the 16th
through the 19th centuries was one of the most wicked criminal enterprises in
recorded human history,
2. That no adequate compensation has ever been paid by the perpetrators or their
descendants to the sufferers and their descendants, and
3. That the consequences of the crime continue to enrich the descendants of
perpetrators and impoverish and under-develop Africa, Africans and
descendants of Africans in the Diaspora.
Arguments in support of African peoples' claims for reparations have rested on moral,
cultural, legal and economic grounds. I believe that the assertion that the enslavement of
African peoples and its consequences constitute a crime against humanity must rest on solid
legal foundations. Lord Anthony Gilford, British Queens Counsel and a Jamaican
Attorney-at-Law, maintains that international law recognizes that those who commit crimes
against humanity must make reparation. In a paper presented to the First Pan-African Congress
on Reparations held on April 27-29, 1993 in Abuja, Nigeria, Lord Gifford noted that the
Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal defined crimes against humanity thusly:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and
other inhumane acts committed against any civilian
population... whether or not in violation of the domestic
law of the country where perpetrated.
This charter also included within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, the "violation
of the laws and customs of war including murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor
or any other purpose of civilian population of, or, in occupied territory..."
Scholarship on slavery, African history and African diasporan history clearly
documents the fact that the capture and enslavement of Africans as part of the transatlantic
slave trade was in violation of the principles articulated in this and other international
laws.
International law has also recognized that those who commit crimes against humanity
must make reparations. According to the Permanent Court of International Justice (predecessor
of the International Court of Justice),
reparation must, as far as possible, wipe out all the consequences
(my emphasis) of the illegal act and re-establish the situation
which would, in all probability, have existed if the act had not
been committed. Restitution in kind or, if this is not possible,
payment of a sum corresponding to the value which a restitution
in kind would bear;
The court defined reparations as "the award, if need be, of damages for loss in kind or
payment in place of it." In determining the amount of compensation due for an act contrary
to international law, these principles should guide the determination.
Numerous cases in international law can be cited to demonstrate that peoples throughout the
world have been compensated for crimes against humanity far less heinous and enduring than
the centuries-long enslavement of African peoples. To date, however, African peoples just
claims have not been adequately compensated.
I have entitled this presentation, "What Price Slavery? What Price Freedom?" In
the remaining time that has been allotted to me, I wish to focus my remarks on the economic
consequences of slavery and racial discrimination in the United States and suggest a
framework for thinking about an appropriate approach to group compensation. I call this
proposed compensation plan "a generational approach to African American freedom."
Black Equity In The U.S. Slave Industry
In a paper published two decades ago in the Review of Black Political Economy,
Jim Marketti, an economist sought to calculate the income appropriated from blacks during
slavery. Using the tools of capital theory and historical data on the slave population and
the prices paid for slaves over the period of slavery in the United States, Marketti
concluded that the then present day value of unpaid black equity in the U.S. slavery
industry reached between $448 billion and $995 billion. This estimate did not include the
contribution of blacks as labor and capital to the development of the United States.
Marketti argues that the $448-$995 billion in black equity should be seen as the baseline
amount of exploited income that was deposited in the nation's social bank
account where it has been and should continue to draw interest until it is repatriated.
What price slavery? A minimum of $448 to $995 billion plus interest compounded until
reparations are paid!! Julian Simon's and Larry Neal's estimates ranged from $96.3
billion to $9.7 trillion!
The economic basis of reparations to African Americans do not end there, however.
The consequences of slavery - racial discrimination in all its variant forms: political,
economic, social, psychological and cultural - are also bases for exacting reparations,
since it continues to enrich the perpetrators at the expense of the sufferers of racial
oppression and exploitation in the Americas as well as Africa. Calculations of the economic
consequences of racial discrimination must be carried out in at least four broad areas:
1) The lower pay that blacks performing the identical work of whites have been
paid over the years.
2) The exclusion of blacks from jobs for which they were qualified.
3) The exclusion of blacks from industries for which they were qualified and
capable of working(?).
4) The exclusion of blacks from jobs and industries because they were excluded
from access to the education needed to qualify for the job.
Richard America, in a recent study set the white benefits from labor market discrimination
against blacks from 1929 to 1969 to be $689 billion in 1972, prices which when adjusted for
inflation in 1983 came to $16.3 trillion. Again, let me remind you that these are modest
estimates of the black equity accumulated in post-emancipation American society for a brief
period (40 years) of the more than 130 years since the abolition of slavery in the United
States. Recognizing the existence of a black American "social bank account" in the American
national economy of a minimum of $16 trillion is certainly warranted based on these two sets
of calculations. This black equity fund is sufficient to establish an economic basis for
beginning to compensate African American sufferers and their descendants for their capture,
enslavement and exploitation and the racial discrimination they have endured as a consequence
of slavery.
Towards a Generational Approach to Reparations
Most proposals for compensatory reparations have been expressed in terms of cash
payments to individuals, political states or groups of peoples within nation states. Making
direct cash payments to individuals who were parties to the litigation producing the
reparations settlement has been a traditional approach to making restitution for past
wrongs. Some reparations claims have also been settled through one-time awards of
land/property. I would like to propose a slight variation on this approach, believing as I
do that the reparations must be made at a group level and that it should produce a
quantifiable restitution to the group over time. This is in keeping with the notion that
reparation must wipe out the consequences of the illegal act and re-establish the situation
which would have existed if the act had not been committed. My proposal is that African
Americans be the beneficiaries of the "social bank account" in the U.S. economy that was
generated by their unrequited labor during slavery and by racial discrimination afterwards
For the next forty years (one year for each ten years of slavery and economic underdevelopment),
funds accumulated in this social bank account should be used to support the sustained
restitution and development of a full generation of Americans in several key areas. Foremost
among these is investment in the development of the next generation of African American
children, but the funds should be allocated to:
1) Insure that every African American child born in the next 40 years will be guaranteed
food, clothing and shelter and access to publicly supported education through the
equivalent of the BA. This is simply a basic commitment to invest in securing the
future health and social development of the next generation - the first generation of
African Americans of the new millennium.
2) Insure that every African American interested in creating a business over the next 40
years will have access to a venture capital fund to help finance the development of the
new businesses.
3) Insure that over the next 40 years, every African American seeking to own a home
will have access to a home ownership loan fund to acquire residential property.
4) Invest in the expansion of the educational system especially urban school systems and
Hack's to insure that the American educational system is capable of accommodating
these expanded African American educational enrollments.
Let me remind you that this is not and should not be perceived as a program of
government of welfare or largess. The value of the nation's social bank account is in fact
"black equity" in the American national economy, a product of the labor and economic
exploitation of black Americans. The various "black equity funds" to be established in
this social bank account derive from black labor and economic presence. Charges against
these funds for the purposes described above are charges against black Americans'
historic accumulation of capital in the American economy.
SOURCES
What Price Slavery? What Price Freedom?
Munford, Clarence J., Race and Reparations: A Black Perspective for the 21st Century
(Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, Inc., 1996).
Main, Brian G.M., "Toward the Measurement of Historic Debts," The Review of Black
Political Economy, Vol. 2 No. 2, (1972). pp. 22-42.
Marketti, Jim, "Black Equity in the Slave Industry," The Review of Black Political
Economy, Vol. 2 No. 2, (1972). pp. 43-66.
Browne, Robert S., "The Economic Basis for Reparations to Black America." The
Review of Black Political Economy, Vol. 2 No. 2 (1972). pp. 67-80.
Simon, Julian and Larry Neal, "A Calculation of the Black Reparations Bill" The
Review of Black Political Economy, Vol. 4 No. 2 (1974). pp. 75-86.
America, Richard, "A New Rational for Income Distribution" The Review of Black
Political Economy, Vol. 2 No. 2 (1972), pp. 3-21.
Obadale, Imari Abubakari, Revolution and Nation-Building: Strategy for Building the
Black Nation in America (Detroit, MI, The House of Songhay, Publishers, 1970).
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