THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ESTIMATE COST OF REPARATIONS

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ESTIMATED COST OF REPARATION – a big number A young friend of mine has the academic background and experience to ask me what form reparations to the American Descendants of Slavery would take. She is a young white woman with a family and the daughter of a very close friend of mine – now deceased. The daughters question puts reparations in a context which best informs all interested in the subject that reparations is not just about money – but there is a cost to heal the injuries done to American slaves and their descendants. There are persons infinitely smarter than I in economics and finance; they estimate the cost of reparations to be in the trillions. When you think about the billions spent keeping the banks solvent in the most recent financial crash, when you consider the billions in tax cuts for the wealthy, when you consider the billions in aides to Israel, when you consider the millions in tax cuts to business and industry, when we consider aide to developing countries, when we consider aide to states for natural disasters, when we consider these government sanctioned expenditure of tax dollars we might begin to get our minds around the legitimate cost of reparations. I have a semantical problem with the way in which reparations is often referred. More often than not it is referred to as a DEBT owed or a payment for SOMETHING STOLEN. Each of the terms is built on a false assumption: DEBT assumes that there was a legal transaction between the government and slaves or other blacks – that was certainly not the case; SOMETHING STOLEN too is a false assumption – neither slave nor other blacks had the legal right to self-will so it could not be stolen. Perhaps it’s just semantics but setting VALUES where injustices – injuries, harm – have been done to American slaves and their descendants might be a template for establishing the categories of reparations and cost for each. Toward that end it might help us to consider injurious extractions from and injurious denials to American slaves and the American Descendants of Slavery, ADOS.