The Unspoken Reason Slavery Reparations Won’t Happen
Why neither liberals nor conservatives will allow reparations
In cities across the US — from Santa Monica, CA, to Athens, GA, to Evanston, IL — Americans who had their lives upended and their opportunities dashed by bigoted policies and actions by their own governments are receiving at least some measure of redress for their losses. But reparations for some two centuries of official white supremacism at the national level are still just so much talk.
The reality of American white supremacist policy is undeniable. And although enslavement is nothing new in this world, stretching back even before the dawn of recorded history, the trans-Atlantic slave trade of the 16th to 19th centuries took an especially brutal form — race-based, lifelong, inherited chattel slavery.
Enslavement historically was often exacted as a penalty, for opposing a siege or incurring debts or breaking laws or just being on the losing side of a war, although it was also an expedient means of procuring labor for imperial works or keeping a lid on disfavored populations. Some cultures imposed time limits on enslavement, granted limited rights to slaves against exceedingly cruel treatment, allowed enslaved persons to purchase their freedom or even let former captive slaves join the free culture and…
