Focus should be on helping America reach its potential

  • William Raspberry / Washington Post columnist
  • Monday, August 26, 2002 9:00pm
  • Opinion

WASHINGTON — You didn’t have to be on the National Mall the other day to understand the assumptions behind the demands for reparations. They are clear enough.

1. Black Americans are owed for our ancestors’ forced and uncompensated labor.

2. The absence of that payment accounts for the ills of the African American community.

3. Payment will relieve those ills.

But each of the assumptions raises other questions in my mind. For instance, it is a lot easier to make the case that the heirs of slaveholders owe the descendants of slaves than to make the case the U.S. government owes the descendants of slaves because it sanctioned slavery.

That, however, is a small hurdle. Here are some bigger ones — for me, at least. Even the most enthusiastic advocates of reparations will acknowledge privately that they don’t really expect the money — which they estimate at trillions of dollars — ever to be paid.

The important thing, they say, is that America acknowledge the damage wrought by slavery and its aftermath. In fact, I believe, that damage is acknowledged — if not in specific legislation, at least in common sense.

But what if it were acknowledged officially and completely? Some think it would trigger in black Americans the psychological response that therapists try to engender in victims of rape and abuse: I may be messed up, but it’s not my fault. Think how easily that translates into: I’m messed up and there’s nothing I can do about it.

There was a time, not long ago, when we believed that all we needed for equality was a fair shot. Don’t deny us the opportunity to use places of public accommodation, to absorb as much education as our appetites demand, to work where our skills and potential warrant, to vote for the people who make our laws, to live where our money will allow and, in general, to seek the good things of life.

That demand could be translated: We don’t need white America to do anything for us because we are black; only stop doing things to us because we are black. Just treat us fairly from now on.

The demand for reparations says something else: that fair treatment from now on can’t solve our problems; we need someone else to solve them or, failing that, to accept the responsibility for them.

Or, just give us a bunch of money.

Again, I find it a lot easier to make the case that the money is due than to believe that a partial payment (who can expect more than that?) would set things right.

Try asking advocates of reparations how they think the money should be spent and you’ll see what I mean. The most frequent answer will have to do with education — vastly improved schools, free college tuitions, that sort of thing. Some would invest in black business development, and some, like the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan, insist on the delivery of "millions of acres of land."

Most, however, would spend the reparations money on things Americans, with the enthusiastic participation of the reparations advocates, ought be doing anyway: helping our nation assure its future by maximizing the opportunities for all its citizens.

But why wait for reparations?

Think of the difference between divorce lawyers and marriage counselors. The former are reparationists, guided mostly by financial bottom lines — how much of the marital assets can be grabbed for their client. The latter are healers: What arrangements, commitments and concessions are necessary to make the marriage work?

For a lot of people, not all of them black by any means, America isn’t working very well. Sometimes it’s their own fault, and sometimes — particularly in the case of children — it isn’t. Can’t we agree that it is in our own interest to improve their outlook, their preparation, their life chances — spending whatever it takes in money and human effort?

Not out of guilt, not because someone owes someone else, but because we all owe it to ourselves to make America what it ought to be.

William Raspberry can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or willrasp@washpost.com.

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