Reparations Is the Only Choice
Marvin Slaughter 
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To address racial disparities faced by Black Americans, policymakers must prioritize a Black agenda highlighted by a federal reparations policy. For many scholars, reparations—as a policy—represent an initial attempt to acknowledge, redress, and provide finality of judgement for the financial hardships caused by slavery and Jim Crow.
In “Resurrecting the Promise of 40 Acres and a Mule,” Professor William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen consider reparations as a vehicle in addressing the immense Black-White wealth disparity that resulted from centuries of accrued economic disadvantage brought on by racially biased policies. The researchers examine reparations cost estimates to assess the intergenerational harm stemming from the racial wealth divide.
But scholars often disagree on the estimates. They vary broadly depending on what damages are being considered, how those figures are adjusted over time, and what method of calculation is used.
One approach is to examine modern-day shortfalls in the wealth of Black households. Remedying the Black-White wealth gap would address “the most glaring indicator of racial injustice in America.” According to Darity and Mullen, Black Americans constitute about 13% of the American population, yet possess less than 3% of the nation’s wealth. This translates to a mean differential of $800,000 in net worth per household that Darity and Mullen assert is directly tied to the legacy of slavery. Achieving the goal of dismantling the Black-White wealth gap is projected to necessitate between $10 to $12 trillion in federal expenditures.
A second approach is to calculate the value of reparations payments the US government has previously committed to, then project forward using standard estimates of appreciation. Utilizing the 40-acre land grant promise famously made by Civil War General William T. Sherman in 1865, Darity and Mullen argue that the newly emancipated slaves, as a group, were entitled to at least 40 million acres of land. Economists estimate that in 1865 an acre of land cost $10 on average. Thus, the overall up-front cost of the 40-acre grant program would have been $400 million.
How much would that initial $400 million be worth in modern day Black wealth? Computing the present value compounded at a 6% interest rate (the historical average rate of return on capital plus an inflation adjustment) amounts to $3.1 trillion. But computing the present value compounded at a 9% interest rate (the average return on an investment in the U.S. stock market from 1870 to 2020) yields an estimated reparations bill of $16.5 trillion.
Yet another method aims to calculate a dollar amount that provides fair compensation for the harm inflicted on slaves and their descendants. These estimates have trended upwards over time as scholars’ understanding of intergenerational trauma has evolved. Many early estimates measured the damages of slavery strictly in terms of extracted labor or in sale value of persons. These low-end estimates often considered labor costs alone, and took neither the psychological trauma inflicted on the enslaved nor subsequent issues, such as accelerated mortality and morbidity, into account.
Proponents of these low-end estimates argue the United States’ legal obligations towards slaves do not extend to their descendants. But Darity and Mullen assert that just as the stolen benefits of slavery have extended to the descendants of the American forefathers, the harms of enslavement extend to the Black American descendants of slavery. They estimate that by this metric, a $14 trillion sum is just as transferable to today’s descendants of the victims of chattel slavery as has been the intergenerational transmission of harm.
Bringing estimates from all of these approaches together reveals a full picture of scholarly estimates of reparations costs. Using a range of estimates from the 1960s to today reveals that $8 trillion is a rough average of the cost estimates, with a high-end estimate of $26 trillion.
Outside of academia, there have been political attempts to better understand the extent of the intergenerational harm and the debt owed to the Black American descendants of slavery. The “Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act,” a.k.a. H.R. 40, which was annually proposed by former Representative John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) from 1989 until his retirement in 2017, and since then by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), seeks to accomplish that goal. The bill recommended the formation of a commission to study the impact of slavery.
Critics of H.R. 40 contend that it fails to elicit compensation from the party culpable for enacting and perpetuating racially motivated policies that have aggravated the racial wealth gap. Darity and Mullen emphasize that while other parties such as states, counties, and individuals may share in the fault, the federal government is the most culpable for nationwide racial injustice. Consequently, seeking redress from them is the most effective way to bring about systemic change. H.R. 40 currently designates 1619 as the starting point for culpability. But, the authors argue, using 1619 as its starting point ignores that the fact that the federal government did not exist at the time, which weakens the logic that the bill is meant to address Federal culpability. Designating 1776 as the point of origin for the case of Black reparations would address this point by allowing the claimants to hold the federal government responsible.
Historically, support for reparations has been dismissed as a politically infeasible fringe policy. Despite being a unifying issue in the Black community since 1865, only recently has it been part of mainstream political discussion. But with the advent of rigorous reparations estimates and in the context of ever-more disturbing expressions of racial disparities in American life, Americans are becoming more convinced that reparations are necessary. Polling data show that while reparations remains highly polarizing along racial lines, support has steadily increased.
Policymakers would be wise to note the nature of compounding effects of generations of intergenerational trauma and economic disenfranchisement at play in Black communities. Although Black American descendants of slavery have been free, they have been historically exploited and shackled economically due to an extraction of trillions of dollars in wealth. Lack of access to wealth and capital both proliferate and perpetuate their status as an economic bottom caste. Informed by this reality, all policymakers who regard themselves as allies to the Black community should each keep at the forefront of their mind the effect that policy has on sustaining or dismantling systems and institutions that contribute to such immense wealth inequality.
Darity, William Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen. 2020. “Resurrecting The Promise of 40 Acres: The Imperative of Reparations for Black Americans.” The Roosevelt Institute. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/resurrecting-the-promise-of-40-acres-the-imperative-of-reparations-for-black-americans/.
Visualizations and cover graphic by Mark Sheppard
