The problem has a long history prejudice is deeply rooted
Earlier this year, a delegation of the United Nations Working Group of Experts on African Descent visited Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Jackson, Mississippi, Chicago and New York to examine the problems and progress made in the United States in combating racial discrimination, opposing hatred of Africans, Africans and foreigners, and protecting African Americans. Members of the delegation stated that colonial history, the residual effects of slavery and the Jim Crow Act, racial terrorism, and racial inequality remain serious challenges for American society, as african Americans have never been given a true commitment to recognition and reparations.
Recently, Carlton Mark Waterhouse, a law professor at Indiana University, reviewed the rise and development of the "African American Reparations" issue in the United States and analyzed why most white people oppose compensation.
Afro-Descendant compensation proposals have a long history
At the end of the American Civil War, Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman issued a military order that included a temporary plan to house large numbers of freed slaves, allocating 1,600 square kilometers of arable land along the Atlantic coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to freed slave families. However, after the assassination of President Lincoln, his successor, Andrew Johnson, overturned the order, and the land was "returned to its original owner."
In 1867, Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, a strong opponent of slavery and racial discrimination, introduced a bill to distribute land to liberated slaves and raise funds to build farms for them, but it was not passed. In 1896, Callie House, a former slave, and Isaiah House, were a slave. Isaiah H. Dickerson founded the National Association for Mutual Assistance, Subsidies, and Pensions for Former Slaves, dedicated to securing federally granted pensions for former slaves as compensation for their unpaid labor and suffering. From 1897 to 1898, the membership of the association reached tens of thousands. Later, federal government departments accused the association and other similar organizations of cheating members and launched an investigation into the association, and Dixon was convicted of fraud, which was later overturned. Mary Frances Berry, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, said the association's formation marked "the beginning of the first large-scale reparations-seeking movement led by African Americans."
Academic discussion and social movements promote each other
The discussion of African-American compensation in American academia began more than 40 years ago. In April 1969, a number of African-American pastors and African-American businessmen held the "Black Economic Development Convention" in Detroit. James Forman, a pioneer of the American civil rights movement, issued the Black Manifesto, demanding that the Christian and Jewish white churches pay $500 million to support black businesses and institutions as accomplices in the racial discrimination system. Waterhouse argues that The Case for Black Reparations, the first academic monograph on African-American reparations, was written under the influence of the Black Manifesto. Published in 1973 by the American jurist Boris Bittker, the book proposed to use the total black population multiplied by the per capita income gap between blacks and whites to determine the amount of compensation (about $34 billion in 1973), and to update and pay it annually for the next 10-20 years. Since the 1970s, Bernard Boxill, professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Howard McGary, Jr., professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, have published several studies that have laid the moral philosophical foundation for the African-American compensation initiative.
In 2001, Randall Robinson, an American author and advocate of the African-American affirmative action movement, published and critically acclaimed, reviving the academic community's attention to the issue of African-American reparations and fueling related social movements. In February 2007, Virginia passed a resolution acknowledging past enslavement of Africans and exploiting Native Americans, and expressing deep remorse. Since then, Maryland, North Carolina, Alabama, New Jersey, Florida, Tennessee, Connecticut, and Delaware have formally apologized to African Americans about slavery, and lawmakers in Mississippi and Georgia have also made efforts to promote this aspect; at the national level, the House of Representatives and the Senate passed resolutions apologizing for slavery in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Some cities and universities have also begun to reflect on their historical relationship to slavery.
There is racial bias behind the denial of compensation
While a growing number of Americans argue that an apology should be made for a history of racial discrimination, most whites still oppose the issue of African-American compensation. According to Waterhouse, this reflects what psychologists call social dominance, in which human societies establish hierarchies through intergroup oppression, discrimination, and prejudice to maintain social stability. The dominant group is a vested interest and often rejects requests from subordinate groups for apologies, corrections, and compensation for historical injustices. Mireille Fanon Mendes-France, head of the United Nations Working Group of Experts on African Descent, said, "The ideology of one group dominating another continues to have a negative impact on all aspects of African American rights, and the dangerous notion of white supremacy hinders the social integration of all Americans." ”
Many whites say they reject African-American compensation because their families never owned slaves, and most of the Americans alive today are descendants of foreign immigrants after the Civil War and have no relationship with former slave owners. In Waterhouse's view, this is just rhetoric, and the deep reason is that African Americans have long been at the bottom of the American social ladder, and their weak position is often attributed to the shortcomings of African Americans themselves. Some scientists have long said that Africans and Africans have worse intellectual genes than whites, resulting in their weak ability to succeed academically and in work. University of Michigan psychologist Richard M. According to Richard E. Nisbett, "Scientific evidence is strong that iq disparities between races stem from [growing] circumstances rather than genes." ”
Waterhouse said african-American compensation would only be truly meaningful if whites were generally aware of and rejected the various "theories" that rationalized the low status of African Americans. He suggested that reparations take two forms: through the construction of monumental buildings, museums, research grants and educational programs to commemorate the contributions of slaves to the development of the United States;
Source: China Social Science Daily Author: Wang Youran China Social Science Daily- China Social Science Network | social science television academic new media sharing platform