Reparations Reinvented
Written By: Mark Crutcher, President Of Life Dynamics
Release Date: 2019
The Big Picture
Most Americans probably agree that reparations for slavery were owed and that the injustice of slavery was compounded when reparations were never paid. At the same time, there seems to be a perception that reparations is nothing more than the act of taking money away from people who never enslaved anyone and giving it to people who were never enslaved.
In order for the reparations effort to succeed, two things must happen. First, the American people have to be shown that the reparations movement is not about retaliation for slavery but justice for its victims. Second, the people seeking this justice must not allow their efforts to become seen as a philosophical pipe dream with no practical application. In short, the effort should not be abandoned but fundamentally redirected.
This needed change in direction may have been revealed in the documentary, Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America. This film documents that, in the 1800s, ultra-wealthy white elitists financed the eugenics movement as a way to rid the country of freed Blacks. It also documents that (a) this campaign has been in place every day since then, (b) it is still being carried out today, (c) it has inflicted demonstrable harm on the existing African-American community’s personal, societal, familial, financial and political well-being, (d) the plans for this effort – including its intentional targeting of this racial group – were widely publicized by those responsible, and (e) the perpetrators still exist, are easily identified and have enormous wealth in both cash and other assets.
The remainder of this report will be a look at how those realities could revolutionize the reparations issue.
A Fresh Legislative Initiative
The new direction proposed in this report is grounded in federal statute, 18 United States Code 1091, also known as the Proxmire Act. This legislation was signed into law in November of 1988 to address the issue of genocide; and its text is essentially identical to language that had already been implemented by the United Nations. In part, it reads as follows:
U.S. Code; Chapter 50A;
Section § 1091. Genocide
(a) Basic Offense. - Whoever, whether in time of peace or in time of war, in a circumstance described in subsection (d) and with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.
(1) kills members of that group;
(2) causes serious bodily injury to members of that group;
(3) causes the permanent impairment of the mental faculties of
members of the group through drugs, torture, or similar techniques;
(4) subjects the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause
the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part;
(5) imposes measures intended to prevent births within the group; or
(6) transfers by force children of the group to another group; or
attempts to do so, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b)
(b) Punishment for Basic Offense. - The punishment for an offense under subsection (a) is -
(1) in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(1), where death results,
by death or imprisonment for life and a fine of not more than $1,000,000, or both; and
(2) a fine of not more than $1,000,000 or imprisonment for not more
than twenty years, or both, in any other case.
(c) Incitement Offense. - Whoever in a circumstance described in subsection (d) directly and publicly incites another to violate subsection (a) shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
(d) Required Circumstance for Offenses. - The circumstance referred to in subsections (a) and (c) is that -
(1) the offense is committed within the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is a national of the United States (as defined in
section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101).
By any reasonable analysis, the post-slavery eugenics effort documented in Maafa 21 meets the threshold for genocide as defined in the Proxmire Act. It was created, “with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group” and it included the imposition of, “measures intended to prevent births within the [targeted] group.” It should also be noted that this law does not simply apply to those who actually engage in genocide, it allows prosecution of those who incite others to take such actions. Additionally, it has no statute of limitations.
At this point, it seems obvious that the future of the reparations movement lies in targeting the ultra-wealthy individuals, multi-national corporations, government funded agencies, foundations, institutions and other entities responsible for the genocide exposed in Maafa 21.
In order to appreciate this concept, consider another American reparations effort that has already succeeded.
Three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order mandating that people of Japanese ethnicity in the United States be rounded up and locked up in government “relocation centers” across the country. Despite the fact that no charges were brought, no trials were held and no convictions were rendered, approximately 120,000 of these people were incarcerated – two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. In 1944, Roosevelt rescinded the order and, by the end of 1945, the last of these internment camps had been closed. Then, in 1988, the U.S. Government issued an official apology for this campaign and paid $20,000 in reparations to each of the 60,000 victims who were still alive.
Proponents of reparations for slavery correctly point out that, even though the Japanese internment camps were both morally and legally indefensible, the reality is that slavery involved far more brutality, lasted almost 250 years compared to less than four and victimized tens-of-millions of people rather than 120,000. Yet reparations have been paid for one and not the other.
This phenomenon is most likely the result of two factors. The first one is that African-Americans have always faced more discrimination than any other ethnic group. The other one is the perception that reparations means compensating people for a crime of which they were not the actual victims. This second explanation may be supported by the fact that reparations for the Japanese internment were not paid to the descendants of the internees but only to the surviving internees themselves.
Additional support for this viewpoint might also be found in our criminal justice system.
DNA evidence is now routinely proving that there are people in our state and federal prisons who have served time – often decades – for crimes they did not commit. Whenever these cases are resolved, compensation is often paid to the person who was falsely imprisoned. The important thing to note is that compensation is not paid to their children, grandchildren, etc. This policy is applied with essentially no exceptions, despite the almost certainty that these descendants were harmed or disadvantaged by this situation.
From these and other examples, it is apparent that the public’s position on social injustice is that, regardless of any moral responsibility society may have, its legal obligations die with the victims. That is why seeking compensation for the racial genocide exposed in Maafa 21 has so much potential. By placing the focus on actual victims and perpetrators – both of whom are still alive – the reparations movement could no longer be off-handedly dismissed as some vengeful attempt to make “white America” pay for atrocities committed by their long-dead ancestors. Instead, it would be about holding a relatively small cartel of ultra-wealthy elitists financially liable for the harm they have intentionally inflicted on African-American people in the past and continue to inflict upon them today.
Since compensation paid under this legislation would not come from the public treasury, politicians who have traditionally opposed reparations may see this as an opportunity to “do the right thing” without having to face the wrath of the taxpayers. On a more cynical level, some may even support it as simply a way to “finesse” the issue and make it go away in as painless a way as possible.
On the other hand, it must also be accepted that a significant number of the politicians who have supported reparations in the past will reject this new direction. This opposition will be primarily driven by the fact that many of these people have known financial and/or political ties to the powerful corporations and individuals that Maafa 21 has linked to Black genocide. In some cases, these politicians may have been honestly unaware of these connections, while others knew about them but chose to look the other way for political reasons. In either case, when this new legislative approach is initiated, it will become a test to determine whether their personal integrity outweighs their political ambitions. Regrettably, this will be a test not all of them will pass.