- Joined
- May 14, 2019
A lot of the reparations arguments are based around the idea that modern Blacks suffer because their ancestors were slaves. It is believed that because their ancestors lacked opportunities for capital (including human capital) accumulation due to slavery and segregation, they had less to offer their children, and so there is an echo of poor economic performance that will outlast the initial cause for a long time unless artificial measures are taken to compensate for it.
This would be a valid line of reasoning, except for one thing. We have direct proof that slavery gave the modern Black a higher, not lower, standard of living.
Imagine if you were born Black in a world where the United States had never had slavery. Then you would have been born, aside from a tiny number of immigrants (equivalent to our real-world African immigrant ppulation) in Africa. The absence of American slavery would barely budge the numbers of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and slave raiding was already a time-honored tradition of the West African people, although intensified after the Columbian Exchange. So you can't really imagine that the destruction brought by the Slave Trade would be any worse just because the US specifically was not importing slaves, in this scenario.
So you would presumably have a living standard similar to a modern day African.
Now, let us compare Sub-Saharan GDP per capita (PPP) with median personal income of Black Americans. Mind you, median personal income will always be SMALLER than GDP per capita since no society can put 100% of its production into consumption.
So the Sub-Saharan African lives in shit compared to the American Black. It's a difference of at least four times.
So the American Black, living in the agony of a post-slavery, post-segregation world, is considerably better off than if he had been left in Africa.
A relevant quote from Booker Washington, one of America's top Black leaders back when most older folks were ex-slaves:
"I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction ... Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. ... This I say, not to justify slavery—on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive—but to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose. When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which, a good Providence has already led us.[36]"
en.wikipedia.org
This would be a valid line of reasoning, except for one thing. We have direct proof that slavery gave the modern Black a higher, not lower, standard of living.
Imagine if you were born Black in a world where the United States had never had slavery. Then you would have been born, aside from a tiny number of immigrants (equivalent to our real-world African immigrant ppulation) in Africa. The absence of American slavery would barely budge the numbers of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and slave raiding was already a time-honored tradition of the West African people, although intensified after the Columbian Exchange. So you can't really imagine that the destruction brought by the Slave Trade would be any worse just because the US specifically was not importing slaves, in this scenario.
So you would presumably have a living standard similar to a modern day African.
Now, let us compare Sub-Saharan GDP per capita (PPP) with median personal income of Black Americans. Mind you, median personal income will always be SMALLER than GDP per capita since no society can put 100% of its production into consumption.
So the Sub-Saharan African lives in shit compared to the American Black. It's a difference of at least four times.
So the American Black, living in the agony of a post-slavery, post-segregation world, is considerably better off than if he had been left in Africa.
A relevant quote from Booker Washington, one of America's top Black leaders back when most older folks were ex-slaves:
"I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction ... Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. ... This I say, not to justify slavery—on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive—but to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose. When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which, a good Providence has already led us.[36]"
Reparations for slavery debate in the United States - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
