Understanding the BLM movement and the subsequent calls for slavery reparations.
In the past six months much of the world has experienced a wave of protests that echoes the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s in the US. Yet, for many the current struggle for racial equality within the US is much harder to comprehend and understand than it was in the past. 60 years ago, the civil rights movement was fighting against a racist system which was much more evident at the time - segregation - whereas today the systematic racism that exists within society is more abstruse and subtle yet nevertheless present. To understand the need for change and the movement itself, it is important to speak with those who live with the implications of racism or those fighting against it. We spoke with Dr Charlie Easmon, an educator on racial issues, to get to grips with the big questions and misunderstandings when it comes to the BLM movement (interview below).
In the US, where the BLM movement originated, some question why the movement exists given that legally both black and white people have equal rights. Yet one needs only to look at basic indicators of quality of life to see that in the US black people are one of the most seriously disaffected groups in the country. Out of the main racial groups in the US, Black people have the lowest median household income, lowest life expectancy and have the highest rates of unemployment. In addition, despite making up only 13.4% of the population, black people make up 38.4% of the prison population and 40% of the homeless population. Without even mentioning police brutality and discrimination against the black community, these issues highlight the need for change and for the BLM movement in general. In speaking with Dr Easmon, it was made clear that much of the cause of the current unequal system can be attributed to the US’s history of black enslavement and segregation, which placed the majority of the black population in a low economic class. With this low economic position came fewer opportunities resulting in the high homelessness, high unemployment and low-income rates still seen today within the black community. Whilst the cause of a current racial divide may be rooted in the past, it does not undermine the idea of current systematic racism as it is partly the fault of the current system, and specifically, its lack of social mobility, that has kept the black population in the position they were in decades ago.
Many policies are often suggested to combat the racial divide, including defunding the police and corporate diversity targets, yet one policy tends to stand out for the potentially powerful and far-reaching effects it would have should it be implemented – economic reparations. In the US, the case for economic reparations for the black community is relatively simple; The country must compensate the black community for hundreds of thousands of hours of unpaid labour from which the country profited and the black community was damaged by. Whilst it currently stands as an incredibly difficult policy to successfully administer, similar policies have been enacted in the past. In the US in 1988, people of Japanese descent who were forced into WW2 internment camps received $20,000 from the US government as an apology for their suffering. Yet, the policy of reparations that involves the blanket distribution of money to all members of the affected black community would be an incredibly complex and ambitious undertaking as it would raise extremely difficult questions to answer such as:
Who receives reparations?
- Not all black people living in the US today are descendants of slaves, so should they still receive reparations? How would the government then go on to trace and verify whose ancestors were subject to slavery?
Who gets what?
- It is likely that certain black families suffer more from the effects of slavery in their past then other families – therefore should these families be compensated with more money? If so, how would individual reparations be determined?
Are reparations fair to others?
- Should part of the population have to pay for the wrongdoings of previous generations? If so, how would the government go about determining which individuals had a past of slave ownership and would therefore be required to pay reparations?
- If reparations are being given to the black community, then shouldn’t they also be given to other ethnic groups that were exploited in the past by the US for economic gain such as Native Americans?
Yet economic reparations in the US for black people don’t have to be administered in this basic fashion, they can instead be distributed in more indirect ways. Investing more money in black neighbourhoods or black-owned businesses and supporting the incarcerated black population to prevent re-offenders would all help to shrink the racial inequality gap. Whilst reparations to the generations who suffer from the historical implications of slavery would be a massive undertaking, reparations on this scale have been seen previously in history; in post-WW2 Germany, 70 billion dollars in reparations were paid to Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the Israeli state, both through simple payouts and through organisations and schemes which aimed to improve the lives of Holocaust survivors, perhaps proving that large scale reparations can and have been done in the past.
Unsurprisingly, the support for reparations varies according to race, with one poll suggesting that 75% of African Americans and only 15% of white Americans support the policy. Yet, in such a divisive year politically, it is clear that any form of reparations will, of course, be vastly dependent on the incumbent of the white house come inauguration day. President Trump and Vice president Biden share drastically different views on the BLM movement as a whole and on the policy of reparations, with Biden claiming he supports studying how reparations would address systematic racism, and Trump calling the policy “A very unusual thing” and claiming that he doesn’t “See it happening”. These views on reparations mirror the respective politicians’ views on BLM, with Trump claiming that BLM was “A symbol of hate” and Biden supporting the movement. Whilst the future of the BLM movement and potential reparations remains unclear and in some way dependant on the upcoming presidential election, discussion and debate around systematic racism seems inevitable and unlikely to disappear any time soon.
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