William Raspberry on Reparations

I've just tossed away another losing lottery ticket. This one would have

fetched the tidy pretax annuitized sum of $80 million. When the jackpot

builds up once more, I'll probably try it again.

I'm trying to make it clear, before I start to talk about reparations for

slavery, that I'm not above developing an interest in money I didn't earn.

If the group headed by Charles Ogletree, the Harvard law professor, can get me a few mil as compensation for the fact that my great-grandparents

(and many generations of their ancestors) made unrequited contributions the development of the country, I'll take it.

So why have I hesitated to become a full-fledged advocate of reparations?

In part, I suppose, because I have no way of figuring out - even of

thinking about -what the American people owe me for my grandparents'

unpaid labor. Or my parents' undercompensated labor. Or the jobs I

couldn't get, or the income I was denied based in large measure on race.

The whole reparations idea starts to sound like an appeal to national

guilt, but an appeal that requires me to assume the victim's role. That's

one hand. Here's the other: There are problems that black Americans

suffer that have their deep roots in slavery and racism. It doesn't seem

reasonable that the thing to do about this legacy is . . . nothing.

Which is why I'm glad I ran into James P. Comer the other day. The Yale University professor of psychiatry and extraordinarily successful public school reformer was at North Carolina State University, where the two of us were among the school's commencement honorees, when I broached the subject of reparations.

It's something he's thought about.

"My feeling is that we need an approach that is fair to everybody—that

allows the larger society to get off its unproductive guilt-and-defense

response and that allows African Americans not to feel victimized, while

at the same time making it possible to address the problem that was

created by the conditions of slavery.

"The problem manifests itself in underachievement and underpreparationin all the things that require high levels of development, and overrepresentation in such things as criminal activity and dependency.

This is largely the aftermath of slavery, the failure of African Americans

to have access to the same political and economic situation as everybody else when everybody else had it."

And what would he do about it now? He would enact legislation to allow

black taxpayers to direct up to 95 percent of their federal income taxes

directly to a series of foundations set up specifically to help those

blacks who have been most hurt by slavery and its legacy. These black-run foundations would have two main focuses: educating young people for work, family life and citizenship, and promoting economic development and economic access for the rest of us.

Here, as they used to say, is the beauty part. The proposal wouldn't take any money out of the economy, but merely redirect it. And, says Comer, "It would be in the interest of all of America. It's important to the health of the entire society not to have another generation of non-mainstream and nonproductive - even counterproductive - African Americans. It simply costs too much, economically, socially and civically."

One problem with his proposal would involve choosing which foundations and which leaders would become custodians of black America's redirectedtaxes.

Comer says it is the sort of problem private foundations deal with all the

time. "We'd have to have the same sort of process - very careful

selection of directors and officers, a careful development of a set of

criteria based on the understanding that the purpose is to bring our

people into the mainstream of society. It would be important to pick

people who have a track record for solid work in this area—perhaps

people who head similar organizations right now."

There might also be the logistical problem of determining which taxpayers would qualify to have their income taxes diverted. Perhaps the way around that would be to make the matter voluntary and nonracial. That is, any taxpayer could designate up to 95 percent of his or her taxes for the foundations. Presumably almost all African Americans would so designate, but a great many others might as well.

Comer may not have a perfect proposal, but I'd love to hear it discussed.

1 2002 The Washington Post Company

By William Raspberry, Monday, May 27, 2002; Page A23

"There are problems that black Americans suffer

that have their deep roots in slavery and

racism. It doesn't seem

reasonable that the thing to do about this legacy is . . . nothing."