There Is No Middle Ground on Reparations
Americans who oppose reparations care more about responding to political expediency than about the emergency of inequality
By Ibram X. Kendi
On December 1, 1862 — a month before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation — President Abraham Lincoln wrote to Congress. He was not yet the Great Emancipator. Instead, he proposed to become the Great Compensator.
Lincoln proposed a Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: the most expansive and expensive slavery reparations plan ever put forth by a U.S. president. “Every State wherein slavery now exists shall abolish the same therein at any time or times before” January 1, 1900, and slaveholders “shall receive compensation from the United States” for emancipating the enslaved.
Lincoln stressed to his fellow citizens that “we cannot escape history.” Pursuing gradual emancipation, and compensating the enslavers for their lost labor and wealth — and not the enslaved for their lost labor and wealth — would repair a broken America once and for all. “Other means may succeed,” he said in closing; “this could not fail.”
Indeed, Lincoln’s proposal did not fail to escape history. His politically expedient plan made and portended history, projecting a…
