More Mailbag on Slavery & Reparations

Inadequacy of corporate model for Reparations


I can't spend any more time on this, but I would like to leave you with one thought: Corporate liability is really not an adequate concept for the following reason: Certainly corporations (and whoever owns them at that moment in time) bear responsibility for legal wrongs, however, corporations and their shareholders are not given the responsibility for defining what is a legal wrong. Slavery was not a legal wrong prior to 1863 (in the South), and prior to 1865 (in the border states). It isn't whether the corporation and its shareholders can be held accountable, they clearly can, it's whether they should find themselves -- through their elected representatives -- liable, that is whether it is just for them to be held accountable. The issue is not statute of limitations, retroactivity or any other legal doctrine that normally limits the extent to which past wrongs can be preserved in perpetuity for possible redress (more than one of which would clearly limit the ability of current descendants to pursue legal action against the U.S. arising out of the civil war amendments to the Constitution). It is not evident to me, at least not yet, that justice will be served by reparations. First because it is doubtful that we can expiate the grievous injury inflicted on thousands of people over approximately 300 years by paying their putative descendants. Second because whether you admit it or not, those paying today didn't inflict the injury. If you want to convince me otherwise you would have to explain what, exactly, reparations will involve, and who will be paid, and so on.

>
> And if reparations don't entail the payment of money, what, pray tell, do they entail? Your the first person I've ever heard suggest that reparations involve something besides paying the descendants of the injured.

>
> Barbara


The "corporate" example I used in earlier post has to do more with a "corporate-like" relationship between individuals and an entity such as the State. While legal corporations are not responsibile for defining right or wrong, the State has a responsibility to ensure social justice. Even if slavery was not a legal wrong at a certain time, the State can acknowledge that its laws at a certain time are or were unjust.

Barbara is right in saying that grevious injury over that period of time cannot be expiated. For instance, reuniting a mother with her child is, like the commercial says, "priceless." But, I do think that steps can be taken in some form that would address injustices. This is also why I say that an official apology would go a long way, because at the present time the official ignoring of the State's sanction of slavery and legal segregation is pouring vineagar on the wound. It is impossible to give back to Africans and African Americans what was unjustly taken, but it would be unjust not to try to anything that can be done.

As for the point that people alive today were not slavers and thus shouldn't be made to pay, I think it still goes back to the fact that we are all a part of the State and it is the State that is making reparations. The State always does things in which substantial parts of the population are not involved, but that's the nature of the State. The U.S.benefitted tremendously from slavery, I think that is a well documented fact. This is not U.S. bashing but combine free land with free labor and you get a rich and powerful country. The U.S., could have gotten where it is now if there were no slavery, just by virtue of its philosophy, but it would have taken so much longer and would have been much more difficult. The U.S. built itself up on the labor of slaves, at least for a significant period of time, and so as a State it now has responsibilities to those it wronged. An all who are part of the State now bear both the burdens and the glory of its past.

My major point, which shouldn't be lost in all this, is the Catholic sense of Justice. The secular legal system or society as a whole may lack the resources to discuss this issue, if at all that is the case, however, the Catholic tradition has the language and ideas to do defend the notions of reparations adequately. And my point is that the Church needs to do more talking and penance about slavery. The whisperings are that the Maryland Jesuits are considering something in this regard, but I am happy to hear, even if it is a whisper, that some Catholic groups are falling back on our intuition of justice. (BTW the Maryland Jesuits and some orders in Southern Maryland were well documented slave holders.)

Another side point of interest is that there are lawyers, Johnnie Cochran et al, who are actually suing insurance corporations that were involved in slavery. The insurance companies were involved in insuring slave cargo brought from Africa during the middle passage. There are documented instances of captains drowning their entire slave cargo for insurance reasons. These legal actions would to some extent determine the shape reparations will take. but I can assure you that most reasonable commentators on the issue do not have money in mind, extremists might. The main issue on the table right now is to get acknowledgement that reparations are due and then the how can be addressed in public debate.