Beyond the Rising Tide: Reparations for Slavery Have to Be More Than a
Symbol
Briahna Gray
February 20 2019, 12:31 p.m. The Intercept
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., listen as Sen.
Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on
Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Friday, Sept. 28, 2018, on
Capitol Hill in Washington. The committee advanced Brett Kavanaugh's
nomination for the Supreme Court after agreeing to a late call from Sen.
Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., for a one week investigation into sexual assault
allegations against the high court nominee. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP
When hip-hop radio host Charlamagne tha God asked Sens. Cory Booker and
Kamala Harris if they had a "specific agenda" for black Americans on his
show, "The Breakfast Club," earlier this month, it was clear that neither
did.
"I have a specific agenda for the American people," started Booker. But for
Charlamagne, and many other black Americans, a generalized American agenda
isn't a substitute for a plan that specifically addresses the needs of black
folks.
"They always say a rising tide lifts all boats," Charlamagne interrupted,
"but we don't really see that in our communities."
Charlamagne elaborated on this idea during his interview with Harris: "I
think when it comes to black people in America, Democrats, for whatever
reason, when you ask them . usually we get that whole 'rising tides raise
all boats' or 'all Americans' rhetoric, and I think black people just want
to hear specific things for them, and I always wonder, 'Why are people
afraid to say what they would specifically do for black people?'"
The desire expressed by Charlamagne is understandable and legitimate. After
committing overwhelmingly to the Democratic Party for decades, black
Americans have seen the racial wealth gap widen, not shrink. As a result,
some are increasingly skeptical of the value of programs that aren't
narrowly tailored to accrue to our benefit.
While it is true that the neoliberal strategies embraced by the Democratic
Party since the 1980s have failed to close the racial wealth gap, the
growing disdain for programs that don't accrue to the exclusive benefit of
black Americans is a red herring.
The problem isn't that universal or economically driven programs can't
significantly close the racial wealth gap. It's that the means-tested
programs backed by the Democratic Party simply don't go far enough.
Sen. Bernie Sanders was buffeted repeatedly by criticism that he didn't do
enough to connect with black Americans in the course of his 2016
presidential run. Much of that criticism was fair. But Sanders's failure was
in articulating how his policies would benefit black Americans, not in
advancing policies that would benefit us.
Prior to the 2016 election, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who ultimately voted for
Sanders, wrote, "Sanders's basic approach is to ameliorate the effects of
racism through broad, mostly class-based policy - doubling the minimum wage,
offering single-payer health-care, delivering free higher education. This is
the same 'A rising tide lifts all boats' thinking that has dominated
Democratic anti-racist policy for a generation."
But the Democratic Party has never backed anything approaching the
redistributive goals contemplated by Sanders's 2016 agenda. The party's
economic plan has historically focused on economic mobility, "access" to
"opportunity," and removing barriers to participating in a capitalist
economy. Child care programs, paid sick leave, and job training initiatives
are promoted as strategies to ensure that all Americans can participate in
what most Democrats see as a fundamentally functional system.
By contrast, politicians like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren challenge
the system itself, because they view it as fundamentally inequitable.
Leftists support traditional interventions that meaningfully ease the
burdens of those struggling under capitalism. But they also seek to change
the fact that profits in this country currently flow disproportionately to a
privileged few at the very top - at the expense of wage growth for the
workers whose labor generates those profits. As Sanders argues, if 90
percent of profits go to the top 1 percent, having technical "access" to the
1 percent isn't enough; the system itself must change.
This structural approach is a game changer for African-Americans. Because
the value of wealth compounds, capitalism rewards the historical possession
of wealth; the ability to invest today is worth more than the ability to do
so in the future. That being the case, how can black Americans, first
enslaved and then legally barred from participating in capitalism for the
overwhelming majority of this country's history, begin to catch up with a
systemic adjustment to the system?
The answer is we can't. There will be no racial equality under capitalism.
It would take an estimated 228 years for black Americans to earn as much
wealth as white Americans possess today, at which point blacks still would
not have drawn even, because whites would presumably have accrued more
wealth during that time as well. Simply put, closing the racial wealth gap
demands a systemic approach.
It is true that universal programs without race-specific interventions are
not enough. The failures of the New Deal illustrate how universal solutions
can inadequately provide for the needs of the marginalized. But the reality
that universal programs don't always go far enough should not be perverted
into an argument that universal programs aren't integral to the task of
closing the racial wealth gap.
During his "Breakfast Club" interview, Booker tried to explain that the
issue with the "rising tides raise all ships" argument is not that the
thesis is fundamentally flawed, but that universal programs historically
were designed to either exclude African-Americans or, at best, were
indifferent to structural reasons why African-Americans were less able to
access benefits. "A lot of the programs that built the middle class in this
country, African-Americans were excluded from," said Booker, pointing to the
Fair Housing Act and the GI Bill. "You had devaluations of American
communities through mortgage lending and the like."
But that's not to say that a new New Deal shouldn't be a goal. After all,
New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian
Conservation Corps employed over 600,000 African-Americans. The Public Works
Administration established quotas for the number of blacks to be hired for
construction jobs, and New Deal education programs taught more than a
million African-Americans how to read and write. It was in part because of
the New Deal that African-Americans shifted their political allegiances to
the Democratic Party in the first place. In the course of ensuring that we
improve upon the New Deal's mistakes, we shouldn't lose sight of its
benefits and the potential benefits of similar programs.
Unfortunately, in some circles, that's exactly what's happening.
Some liberal commentators affect indifference to the racial implications of
policies that directly target the wealth gap because they aren't explicitly
cast as race policies. "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that
end racism?" Hillary Clinton famously asked in the course of her 2016
campaign. "I would love to wake up in the morning and have my first thought
be 'I hate Wall Street,'" tweeted journalist Imani Gandy. "That's the
whitest shit I've ever heard."
Similarly, when Booker offered up his baby bonds plan as part of a
black-centric agenda, Charlamagne was skeptical on the basis that it
wouldn't exclusively help blacks. It "addresses all Americans," Booker
explained, "but it actually helps the racial wealth gap in a significant
way," by creating a savings account for low-income students.
Booker went on to make the case for his criminal justice bill, the
beneficiaries of which are overwhelmingly African-American: "When you fix
the system, you help poor white folks who get screwed by the system as well,
but disproportionately, you're gonna help those people who are most affected
by an unjust criminal justice system," he argued.
Booker is right. The unfortunate overlap between poverty and some
historically marginalized identity groups means that when programs are
equitably designed, a rising tide will disproportionately improve their
fates: Since 1 out of 3 non-elderly Latinos and 1 out of 4 non-elderly
blacks lack health insurance, those groups stand to be some of the biggest
beneficiaries of "Medicare for All." Blacks and Latinos are more likely to
rely on Social Security benefits as an exclusive source of retirement income
than whites, meaning attacks on Social Security threaten those groups
disproportionately as well. Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented among
minimum wage jobs, meaning we stand to gain more from a $15 minimum wage.
And on, and on, and on.
In fact, most programs embraced as "race-specific" are economic programs or
criminal justice programs - many of which, like bail reform, are
race-neutral. Various "welfare programs" may be coded as "for black
Americans," but few are narrowly tailored to exclusively benefit us.
Arguably, Affirmative Action is race-based, but the biggest beneficiaries
have been white women. And even though it was designed to address race-based
disparities, it's not clear that it has the intended reparative effect: The
beneficiaries of Affirmative Action are disproportionately recent African
and Caribbean immigrants, whose parents and grandparents were not victims of
the pre-civil rights-era discrimination for which Affirmative Action is
ostensibly supposed to compensate.
The one initiative that truly targets black people exclusively is
reparations, for which Coates famously made a compelling case. But although
he was incredibly successful at proving why African-Americans deserve
reparations, at the end of his argument Coates is honest about not having a
clear answer to how to deliver them, beyond Rep. John Conyers's H.R.40 bill,
which would provide resources to explore possible avenues for reparations.
It's a good start. But it's just that - a start. That being the case, a push
for reparations or any other unspecified, racially targeted policy shouldn't
come at the expense of the most radical redistributive policies this country
has seen since the New Deal.
That's especially true since the growing popularity of universal programs
may actually lead to increased support for race-based reparations.
In a recent article, Vann Newkirk II spoke to William A. Darity, a professor
at Duke University who is a foremost thinker on the question of reparations.
"I have to say that the policies that have received the [most enthusiastic]
reception are those that I might describe as universal policies that are not
race-specific, but they are race-conscious," Darity told Newkirk,
referencing Booker's baby bonds program as well as Warren's housing grant
initiative. But Darity thinks that the growing popularity of universal
policies might "begin warming Americans up to the idea of reparations."
As Newkirk tacitly admits, programs that target poverty do seem to be the
best way to target the racial wealth gap - at least until more research is
done. What's not clear, however, is whether that message will go over well
with a black electorate that is understandably skeptical of the notion that
universal programs will ever "trickle down to them."
For some, a black face heading a campaign will be reassurance enough that
African-American interests are being advanced. But following Barack Obama's
presidency, the assumption that a black president will put black interests
first has been complicated. Obama's approach to the mortgage crisis famously
bailed out big banks before homeowners, and black Americans were hit harder
than any other group - losing 40 percent of our collective wealth in the
crisis.
If online chatter is any indication, black voters are increasingly skeptical
of representation that ends at the epidermis. Widespread criticism among
African-Americans of Harris's criminal justice record seems to suggest that
identity isn't a perfect defense for anti-black actions, though some have
defended her on the basis that she had no other choice than to be tough on
crime as a black woman held to higher standards.
Still, during her appearance on "The Breakfast Club," Harris encountered
none of the pushback Booker received, despite the two giving similar answers
to the "black agenda" question. Harris argued that the black agenda "must
include HBCUs," and she pointed to her LIFT bill, which would give families
making under $100,000 a year a monthly tax credit. She also referenced
criminal justice reform and maternal mortality.
