Reparations for slavery in the U.S. have been discussed contentiously, not only in the lead-up to this Monday’s Juneteenth holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the country. A survey carried out by Pew Research Center in 2021 shows that two thirds in the U.S. reject the idea of slavery reparations.
The picture is different among Black Americans, of whom three quarters support reparations. Support is also higher among Hispanics – where almost 40 percent are in favor – and Asians – one third is for reparations – than among white Americans. Only 18 percent in the group supported them, the survey showed.
A timeline of reparations in the U.S. put together by the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that payments to African-Americans as reparations for slavery are few and far between. While a few former slaves have actually won compensation in court cases – in the 18th-19th centuries – amounts varied and were sometimes quite low. In the 20th century, especially its first half, reparation payments centered on Native American tribes, which were compensated for their land being taken away.
In the case of Native Americans, the federal government was easily identifiable as the party that should be responsible for reparations as it had acquired the Native American lands in question. As for restitutions for slavery, 75 percent of Pew respondents in favor of reparations also saw the U.S. government as carrying all or most of the responsibility for them (as its laws upheld slavery). 65 percent and 53 percent also saw a lot of responsibility with businesses and banks as well as colleges and universities which had benefited from slavery, respectively. Fewer respondents – 44 percent – said descendants of those active in the slave trade should pay.
Around the turn of the 20th century, the attention of courts and governments refocused on restitutions for African-Americans. Settlements, laws and other resolutions on the topic often focused on reparations for specific events – the discrimination of Black farmers in Department of Agriculture loans, the historical underfunding of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the victimization of Black Americans in medical experiments and police torture, among others, with voluntarily adopted measures often converting reparations into scholarships, independent of whether the event triggering compensation had anything to do with education discrimination.
Only recently, more cases of reparation payments have addresses descendants of slaves or Black Americans in general. Direct payments have been rare, however, and include reparations by the Virginia Theological Seminary, which used slave labor on its campus, and those paid since 2022 by the city of Evanston, Ill., to its Black residents for home repairs and down payments on property. Several other cities and the state of California are currently exploring similar possibilities while on a federal level, a bill that would create a commission to study reparations by the U.S. government passed a house committee vote in 2021 – which was considered a major milestone despite it not going any further. The bill in question, H.B. 40, was named after the Civil War-era promise of 40 acres and a mule for Black Americas, which as the most well-know reparations promise in American history has remained unfulfilled.
