Diversity S e pecial
dition
July 17, 2019
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O PINION
Page 13
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The Moral and Ethical Case for Reparations
Movement gains
traction with
2020 candidates
t om h. h astings
Aaron Campbell of
Portland was young,
black, unarmed, and
suffered from mental
illness, exacerbated
by his brother’s death
that day from kidney
failure. He was dis-
traught, of no danger to anyone,
but police were called, and they
shot him dead.
With his hands up. Unarmed.
Even off-duty black cops report
being pulled over at alarmingly
high rates. How much worse must
it be for young black drivers who
are not police officers?
The significant issues with ra-
cial profiling include, but are not
limited to black drivers and even
black pedestrians being searched
much more frequently and for
dubious probable causes. With
the higher rates of police interest,
it naturally leads to higher rates
of discovery (e.g., drugs), higher
rates of arrest, charges, convic-
tions and incarceration.
Other impacts include a lower
rate of employment as a conse-
quence of minority workers who
face increased scrutiny because
of criminal charges; more poverty,
and even more profiling as a direct
result of the higher rates of crime.
by
Thus behold the perfect posi-
tive feedback loop with negative
consequence. Profiling leads to
more arrests of the profiled group
that leads to all the other social
and personal consequences and
then to the resultant addi-
tional profiling.
Now comes a social
movement gaining traction
straight into the US pres-
idential primary--at least
amongst Democratic can-
didates. Marianne William-
son was first to declare she
would make it a central campaign
issue, then Cory Booker, with
Elizabeth Warren and Kamala
Harris supporting a Senate inquiry
into it.
Amongst the black intellectu-
al peerage, Ta-Nehisi Coates and
others are cogent about the justice,
moral, and ethical rationales for
making reparations.
In many ways, Coates is the
spark for this modern revisit and
rethink. His 2014 essay from The
Atlantic, “The case for repara-
tions,” is a magisterial work, a lit-
any of egregious treatment of Af-
rican Americans from colonial-era
slavery through 20th century legal
theft--really robbery, since the dis-
criminatory laws were ultimately
backed by the armed agents of the
state if it came to that. He broad-
ened and deepened our under-
standing of this question and we
see it finally seriously emerging
now.
My partner, who is African
American, rejects the notion of
reparations that start with sending
out money before fixing the core
problems that still drive such high
rates of pain and suffering in the
black community.
“Start with universal health
care,” she says. “That looks like
equal benefits for all and that is
exactly what we don’t have right
now. Fix that first.”
She is the daughter of a health
care professional who made her
own emendation to that disparate
delivery system in her Ohio town
by bringing a small but significant
mobile clinic to provide at least a
fraction of the basic health care so
unfairly missing from the black
community there.
My partner is a health care
professional herself and hopes to
bring such services to more who
need it. She practices and thinks
about health care and declares that
racism is a threat to public health-
-indeed, there is a movement to
push the Centers for Disease Con-
trol to make the same declaration,
a movement she helps lead.
So reparations are a complex
set of inquiries, not just an up-or-
down 40 acres and a mule ques-
tion.
From my standpoint in my field
of Conflict Transformation, it’s
the multivariate nature of such a
problem that may provide a com-
plex but effective way forward
with more, not less, opportunity.
Each facet of the problem--from
serious debt directly owed for
slavery itself, to the awful long
trail of residual consequences of
the racism inherent in that slavery
history, right down to the skewed
social indices in health, wealth,
incarceration, education, and em-
ployment--presents opportunities
for creative and authentic prob-
lem-solving.
My sons are African American.
They are unarmed. I want them
to live out their natural lives and
it’s disproportionately unlikely
they will. Ask yourself, my fel-
low white people, how that might
make you feel about starting a tru-
ly helpful, human national conver-
sation about fixing as much of this
as we can, as is actually reparable?
What if a social construct were a
direct threat to your children?
Would you not want it fixed?
Can you support fixing racism by
whatever nonviolent means we
can employ?
Aaron Campbell and thousands
of others are never coming back--
no repair is possible. But it is just
possible that he and other Port-
landers who have lose their lives
to police actions, Kendra James,
Oscar Grant, James Jahar Perez,
and others summarily executed
young unarmed African Amer-
icans, did not die in vain--if we
manage to radically reduce racism
going forward and make repara-
tions thus more than simple legal
settlement that ignores ongoing
harm.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings of Port-
land is director of PeaceVoice.
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