The New Yorker Radio Hour - Who Should Receive Reparations for Slavery and Discrimination?

Episode Date: May 28, 2019

The idea of reparations—real compensation made to the descendants of slaves or the victims of legalized discrimination—has gained traction since the publication, in 2014, of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s influential article “The Case for Reparations,” which appeared in The Atlantic. But even among proponents of the concept, the ideas about what reparations would mean vary wildly. Questions linger about the intended recipients. Should only descendants of people enslaved on American soil (rather than the Caribbean or elsewhere in the diaspora) be eligible? That is the contention of people using the hashtag ADOS, or American Descendants of Slavery, which has become controversial. How important is genealogical proof to making a claim, given that slavery often did not leave good records? What about Americans who may have had an enslaved ancestor, but have not personally identified as African-American? Alondra Nelson, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and president of the Social Science Research Council, talked with two prominent scholars who have addressed the issue: Darrick Hamilton, the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, and William A. Darity, the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Then Nelson sat down with The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman to explain the challenges faced. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is a bonus episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Josh Rothman, an editor and writer at the magazine. The last episode of the show was all about the debate over reparations, whether this country ought to intentionally address the legacy of slavery. Recently, I was meeting with Alondra Nelson, who's a professor of sociology of Columbia and the president of the Social Science Research Council. And she's been asking a lot of great questions about how reparations might really work. assuming we decide that we want to do it, how would we actually put it into practice?

What would it mean to try to concretely address the legacy of slavery and the way that it has affected black Americans throughout history? So Alondra, you wrote about reparations a bit in your book, The Social Life of DNA. Yes. Well, I thought I was writing a book about the impact and effect of the direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry testing market. And a few years later, I looked up and I was writing a book about it. reparations. So what happened? How did reparations come into it? Well, reparations comes into it in the form of a historic class action suit that starts in 2002. Basically, there are eight plaintiffs

who say that reparations are owed to them from 21 multinational corporations. So these included Lloyds of London, Etna, CSX, the transportation company, and others. Are those companies the descendants of corporations that were involved in the slave trade? Yes, that was the argument, that these companies would not exist today, if not for the proceeds and the wealth that had been made, you know, during the slave trade. And were the plaintiffs? Who were the plaintiffs? The lead plaintiff was a woman named Deidre Farmer Palman, and she had put herself through law school to figure out a theory and a strategy to try this case. And so you won't be surprised to hear there's an early dismissal by 2004. Court dismisses the case and says that the plaintiffs can't prove.

in a kind of civil court context that they're the injured parties to whom restitution is owed. And they go back to the drawing board with their attorneys. And they come up with a, you know, this new, I mean, it's 2004. The genetic ancestry testing market has been around only for a year and a half, two years, a couple years. And they decide that they're going to try to use these tests to, as part of their argument to the court, that they weren't to use the court's phrase merely alleging some relationship to form or slay. So they said we're doing, we're demonstrating that we have a relationship to formerly enslaved people and that, you know, reparations are owed to us. So that was in two, it was dismissed in 2004, but and now it's 2019 and the conversation about reparations has shifted.

Right. Well, the one thing to say is the conversation about reparations has been going on since the late mid-19th century. And now it's shifting, you know, a few years prior in the early aughts, we would have said these large multinational corporations would pay. And the way that the debate is taking place right now, it's very clear that the federal government would pay. How? Like, what form will that payment take? So that's a good question. And I went to Professor Derek Hamilton at Ohio State to answer that question, who's thought a lot about what reparations would look like and should look like in this moment. One, we need to begin with authentic conversation of the implications of our sordid pass as it relates to. race, as well as an honest, authentic conversation of some of the atrocities that have been committed.

And, you know, that is not just important for the sake of an apology. It allows us to change discourse that we have today about inequality more broadly. In other words, we will get out of these narratives of an undeserving poor if we were to have that honest conversation. And then we would need redress. without redress, we just have an empty apology. In addition, the redress would address some of our inequality that exists today. We know that there are huge disparities when it comes to wealth,

and we know that wealth is generated largely by having access to some inheritance or access to some government program that puts you in a position to generate more wealth. reparations can take a variety of forms, but one key form that I think is critical is that there is some transfer of means of production to black individuals. And that means of production could be literally ownership in corporations or it could be ownership of land so that that land can be used to generate additional income or additional assets. there's something symbolically useful about a check as well, and I like that as well, some notion that a harm was done to you, and we will offer this transfer without condition, and at the very least, that is symbolically recognizing the dignity of the fact that you have withstood some of these atrocities, and you should be compensated without condition. So an informed apology, a transfer of the means of production, and maybe also payment for damages. Yeah. So I think what's key about what Professor Hamilton articulated is that the payment is not the centerpiece.

I mean, there's a real effort here in the platform that he's suggesting to have some ongoing redress by making a kind of structural. adjustment, an economic adjustment. And also, you know, he, you know, places a lot of significance on a really, you know, a real public admission of the wrongdoing, historical wrongdoing that's taken place in the past. And so I think to the extent that we've been able to have public conversations in the United States about reparations, a lot of these conversations have been very much caught up on the transfer of funds solely. And here you have a sort of platform for reparations that's meant to be fairly multifaceted in the way that it tries to combat sort of intergenerational longstanding economic and racial inequality.

It says something about the nature of the harm that was done to include in the reparations package, you know, wealth generating instruments like stock. Because being excluded from being denied access to those, to those things is a, you know, actually a kind of a profound intergenerational harm. Yes. And I think what your comments really hit on, which is what's distinctive about this moment is a larger conversation that talks about compound damages and about the fact that these damages exist over generation and over time.

So one of the things I hear about is baby bonds. That's a term you hear in this debate. What does that mean? So baby bonds and Cory Booker's plan are investment accounts that would be managed by a federal agency and something like Social Security that would be given to every American child at birth. And for Derek Hamilton in particular, he sees these as baby bonds as complementary to a reparations platform. I think baby bonds is a critical component of a racial economic justice plan because it addressed perhaps the paramount indicator of one's economic position, and that is wealth. And we often think about wealth in terms of it as an outcome. But what is really important about wealth is it as an input, the agency that it can offer somebody, the ability to make financials, decisions, the ability to not be threatened by an economic shock, the ability to really have some

assets for economic security across your life. So what Baby Bonds is designed to do is as a birthright, we will offer everybody some financial capital that they can use when they become a young adult to purchase the asset security of something like a home, something like an education without debt or something like some seed capital to start up a business. It would be a program that's universal that would have a strong race-conscious aspect to it. The typical black family has about 10 cents on the dollars, the typical white family. Well, the criteria to access that program would be based on family position in which you're born.

And then the program itself is aimed at addressing that severe inequality of basically 10, the one between black and white families. So you probably noticed that Derek Hamilton said that baby bonds would be a race conscious program. Yeah. But what he means by that is that not that it would be a racially exclusive program, so it wouldn't be only for African Americans. But given the wealth gap, the impact of them would be more beneficial for some communities rather than others. reparations, on the other hand, would be a direct payment for damages, an acknowledgement, some recognition of historic damage. That would be for people of African descent, for black Americans specifically. And, you know, of course, this raises, you know, the one of the two kind of thorny questions that comes up about reparations.

So one is this happened a long time ago, you know, what does this have to do with me or now? the other is sort of who would qualify. Like which African Americans would qualify? Is that what you mean? Well, sure. I mean, I think how do we, how do we, you know, make the case for eligibility? And I think given how sort of complicated, complex, and in some ways subjective, racial identity can be in this country. It's a tough question. Okay, so if there are programs like direct payments that are targeted at African Americans specifically, what does that mean in practice? Who qualifies for those programs? So this was a question I posed to William Dherty, the Duke professor, who's been working on the economics of reparations for more than 15 years now.

And he offered two qualifiers as an answer to this question about eligibility. The first is an individual needs to demonstrate that they are a descendant of at least one person who was enslaved in the United States. And then the individual has to show that for at least 10 years before the enactment of a reparations program or the formation of a commission to study reparations, the individual's self-identification, as black, negro, African-American, or the equivalent. Okay, so the basic idea is you qualify as an African-American person who should receive reparations. If, first, you can show that through your family tree, you're related to someone who was enslaved. That's thing number one. And then thing number two is you have to show that you identified as an African-American person before we were talking about writing you a check.

Right. So that's what Darity is suggesting, but it gets complicated. It gets complicated not only because of the ways that people think about identity and family in this current moment. It gets complicated also because, you know, the way that historical damages sort of travel intergenerationalally, over the same period of time, what it means to be African American or the descendants of slaves has changed as well. So we've had. you know, migrants from the African continent. We've had migrants from, you know, the Caribbean where there were significant large slave societies who were also the descendants of slaves. And it becomes, I think if one's going to take, you know, a kind of longitudinal perspective or intergenerational perspective on the damages of slavery, it seems to me that an argument can be made that one might also need to include people who might be able to trace their legacy to slavery. in the United States, vis-a-vis Jamaica or Barbados or other places. So this has come to the fore and debates, particularly on social media and in a social movement, but called, you can hashtag this, ADOS, American Descendants of Slaves. So the hashtag means people are talking about this online. Yes, people are talking about it online, people are fighting about it online. And the issue is really, do you paint with a broad brush or a small brush with regards to descendants of slaves?

And how much does the United States as a nation state matter as the culpable body here or as the responsible institution or organization that should pay reparations? Or is this a larger kind of global historical phenomenon? And we should be thinking about redress on that scale. I mean, just so I get this. more. It's like two people are from two neighboring towns. They're both captured by slave traders. One person is brought to the American South. The other person is brought to the Caribbean. Now they're neighbors in the same American city. So if you applied the Dardy test, the conclusion would be that the person who was enslaved in the American South gets reparations,

but the person who was enslaved in Barbados doesn't get them. It's sort of like, we'll pay you because we enslaved you, but we didn't enslave you, so we won't pay you. That's basically the concept. Is that? Sure. I mean, one point, you know, that's worth, I think, probably thinking about is that, you know, if we're talking about mid-20th century migrations from the Caribbean and other, you know, Brazil, potentially even Latin America and Africa, you know, we know from the social science literature, that there was probably a lot of selectivity. So these are probably people, you know, we know for the most part that many of these immigrants were students or more highly skilled. And so, you know, I think it's an arguable point, but a point could be made that these later migrations are the sort of more highly skilled, both, you know, and more highly resourced immigrants coming from the Caribbean to the

United States. And so even if it is the case for a decade or two decades or three decades that they identify and experience life as an African American and all of the both joys and perils that come with that, it is also the case that they might have also come to the United States with resources that had been denied families that come out of the genealogy of plantation slavery in the United States. So what do people think in the reparations movement of the genealogical approach. So I think the temperature's been, you know, it's been getting a little hot in some places, in part because there are some strong voices in this new social movement. You know, I think that has been accused by some of being nativist. And many of the reparations

activists of prior generations had had a principle of pan-Africanism. You know, there's a tension between, I think, a longstanding pan-African perspective and one that is really understanding the literal boundaries of the U.S. nation state as being an important qualifying variable of eligibility for reparations. So Professor Darity has applauded the work of ADOS. And so, you know, I wanted to ask, what's the case for painting with a small brush with regards to eligibility rather than with a broad brush, given that the harms of slavery are transatlantic in nature. So I don't think it's a small brush in the following sense. I think the best estimates indicate that at least 85% of blacks in the United States

are folks who are descendants from persons who were enslaved in the United States. So that puts us in the vicinity of talking about upwards of 33-dose. to 35 million individuals. And so I think that's, you know, that's not a small brush. That's a significant share of the American population. But I think also, I think everyone throughout the Black diaspora probably has a claim for reparations, but the claim doesn't, is not appropriately lodged against the United States government. So if I'm hearing you correctly, you are putting the emphasis on the culpability, not on the eligibility, the culpable entity, the nation state that has power here as well, or give shape to what you think is deserved.

Yeah, yeah. And so I think that culpability or the relevant culpable nation also dictates who is eligible to make the claim on that nation. I mean, but in what he just said, there was the idea that we want reparations to acknowledge this specific harm, slavery. Like, we don't want to dilute it too much. We want this payment has to do with this very specific thing that was done to very specific individuals. And there's some moral power. Yeah, but also that was enabled by a very specific nation state. Right. And that's the responsibility of the United States government.

And there's moral power that comes from the specificity of those charges and the specificity of those recipients. And if you broaden it out too much, you lose some of that focus. That's important as far as acknowledging what really happened. Yes. That is part of his idea. I think that he would agree with that. Yes. Yeah.

That's interesting. So Alondra, you've been thinking about genetics. and reparations for a while. And in your book, The Social Life of DNA, you wrote about the 2002 class action case for reparations. The plaintiffs used DNA to attempt to trace their ancestry back to slavery. Is it even technically possible to prove through a DNA test that an ancestor was enslaved? No.

I mean, what can happen is that one can try to sort of inquire incorporate genetic ancestry testing with conventional genealogy in which you were using the genetic ancestry testing to help one clarify, get closer to a kind of family tree in a very traditional genealogical way. But what these tests rely on are the sort of techniques and theories of population genetics. Do you have a sense of, I mean, how many people can produce the evidence to satisfy the first test? Is that a widespread ability that people have? I don't think it is, actually. The most reliable records tend to be, you know, bills of sale from plantation sales. So in the case of Georgetown University and the descendants who were sold by the Jesuits of then Georgetown College, the document that they have is this bill of sale that lists all the names because this was property.

This was chattel being sold from a plantation in Maryland to one in Louisiana. And so, you know, it's in very few instances that you have those kinds of detailed records. And even to the extent that you have them, those were the names that were given to people. But are those the names that they claimed for themselves? Are those the names that the families are called now? I mean, there's, yeah. I mean, I was thinking, I mean, I was thinking about my own family. You know, I have a Chinese mom and a Jewish dad.

My Jewish side of the family was, you know, from Europe. and no one knows actually where they're from. And the Chinese side is from Malaysia, and they were displaced in the various wars in the early 20th century, and nobody knows where they're from. And the idea that I would have to show somehow, how would I even begin to do that work? So it seems important to me how many of the people

that were aiming to address with reparations can actually qualify for reparations according to this standard. Yeah, and a bit of my concern is about, you know, the potential harm that might be created by not being able to meet that standard. Yeah. But it's also the case, you know, that Professor Dherty suggested that, you know, something like the family Bible could be used as well. I mean, he has admirably a very capacious way of how one might think about demonstrating that evidence that one is the descendants of enslaved Africans. But, I mean, for myself, if what this idea is asking us to do is way to,

concerns. One is the moral specificity that comes from actually paying reparations to actual descendants of actual slavery perpetrated by the actual United States government, the moral power of specificity on the one hand. If we're weighing that against, on the other hand, the fact that destroying the historical record of exactly those types of specific historical facts was part of what slavery and Jim Crow did. It just seems to be. me, you're going to end up in a situation whereby investing in the idea of the power of specificity, you're denying the reality of the real historical fact that this was a system that aimed specifically at uprooting people and destroying the connections in their families.

Precisely. Right? Okay. So reparation is the way we're talking about it right now. It's a three-part idea. An apology. A transfer of the media. means of production. Although if I were in charge of this PR effort, I would not use that particular

term. But, you know, transfer of the means of production, sure. And a payment, right? It's three things. Now, it seems to me pretty hard to not be in favor of an apology. I mean, I'm sure there are people. I mean, I know there are people who are not going to be in favor of that. But, you know, it's crazy that there's no National Museum about slavery. It's crazy. It's just nuts. But yes, it's easy for me to imagine people getting behind that. The baby bonds.

Fantastic plan. We should all have baby bonds. It's the third thing that's hard. It seems like to me. I actually think the thing that will be harder than acknowledgement or redress

will be this transfer of wealth piece because a transfer of wealth means that it's being transferred from someone and to someone. Land is being, you know, I don't know if it's going to be, you know, federal land, but land that would have had other owners will have new owners. And so this structural adjustment, this transfer of wealth, strikes me as the piece of the platform that will be the most controversial. So some of these ideas for the wealth transfer, at least to me they don't quite like make sense. Like if you gave people land, there's a lot of places where a piece of land is not that profitable. I mean, it's not really a tool of wealth creation.

And if you take the case of Native Americans, obviously there's Native American land. But it's not in a place where it generates wealth unless you build a casino on it. It's just not actually solving the problem. And there's also recent data suggesting that land owned by black people doesn't appreciate. Right? So we have data from the housing markets, from the real estate markets, that if this is a home owned by African Americans, it will either depreciate or will not appreciate in the same fashion as it would have owned by white Americans. You know, doing this in the face of a society that remains deeply racist, does that really accomplish what people are seeking to accomplish here, given the sort of backdrops? in which these things would occur.

I mean, one thing that I guess kind of emerges out of this, just listening to these ideas, is is it possible that although we're having a conversation about reparations, we haven't really come up, we don't have the best possible idea of what the reparations should be. Like, if this program were to pass, would we look back on it 100 years from now and be like, that was a nice try at reparations?

But really, we just, like, we missed it. So, I mean, one of the things that comes up, repeatedly in conversations about reparations is, you know, this bill that Congressman Conyers tried to advance for many decades, H.R. 40. And that would just, that would be, you know, a commission, a committee to discuss the legacy of slavery and reparations. And so in a lot of other instances, when we as, you know, a national community face an issue that seems complicated or intractable, you know, we get. lots of smart folks from civil society sector, from academia, from the political sector to sort of hash it out and talk it through. So one could imagine, instead of you and me trying to hash it out, a process over several years or several years in which there are lots of scenarios that are presented that people really think this through. And I would hope that part of that conversation would be, you know, this looming question, which is we can do, all of these things. But what do we do with the society we're left to

live in with those things? Yeah, and one thing I'm hearing from you is it just seems to me like there's a way of talking about reparations, which is sort of like, we should do reparations, and then we're going to just kind of solve the problem of what that might look like. And

then there's actually solving the problems of racism and inequality, and you could do reparations and not really solve those problems. And that would be a big missed opportunity if you did that. Is that seem right? Well, I think it's, you know, we haven't done anything so far. So it's worth the start. So let's try and leave that as an empirical question to be answered down the road.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Alandra. Always great to talk to you, Josh. That was Josh Rothman with Alondra Nelson, president of the Social Science Research Council and a professor of sociology at Columbia University. We also heard from Professor William Derrity from Duke University and Professor Derek Hamilton from Ohio State. This episode was produced with help from Anthony Jackson, Rajath Singh, Caroline Lester, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.