Brown University announced that it will give a $10 million endowment to local public schools to atone for its involvement in the slave trade. But, Dana writes, reparations alone will not address the ongoing segregation of the American education system.
Like so many painful issues of race and class, the argument over slavery reparations hovers just beneath the surface of our everyday political consciousness, always ready to burst forth. Support for reparations wasn't always seen as radical. Back in the 19th century, reparations were understood as reasonable public policy. After all, how could former slaves, who had been denied basic rights and education, integrate into the free economy and society without some help? Large-scale reparations were never granted, but the idea has never really disappeared from American culture.Today the issue has become a sort of litmus test for black politicians, a way of determining if they are too radical for the white electorate. Last July during the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate, Barack Obama was asked if African Americans would ever receive slavery reparations. Clearly prepared to answer this exact question, Obama responded, "I think the reparations we need right here in South Carolina is investment, for example, in our schools." The crowd applauded.Given that Obama needed to appeal to the nearly two-thirds of African Americans who support reparations, as well as the 96 percent of white Americans who oppose them, it was a skillful pivot. But Obama isn't the only one to conceive of support for struggling public schools as a form of slavery reparations.
Read the rest (and comment) here. --The Editors
