Is Now the Time for Reparations for African Americans? Essay

Is now the time for reparations for African Americans? The debate over the proposal for reparations for African Americans has generated even more controversy than affirmative action policies. But since the African Americans that live in America today didn’t experience slavery. They also didn’t experience racial segregation. To the few who don’t know what reparations are? They are proposals for compensations that people like Robert L.

Allen think should be provided to the descendants of enslaved people in the United States.This is in consideration of the unpaid labor their ancestors performed over centuries. The article says that Robert L. Allen favors reparations for African Americans. But The Economist is opposed to reparations. But in my personal opinion I would have to agree with The Economist.

The reason I agree is because even though my ancestors may have been enslaved. It would take too much time and effort to find the descendants of former enslaved people, time that we don’t have now in the United States. Our economy is already at risk of another depression.

So where would the money for reparation come from to pay the give to these people. Throughout my younger years I’ve always been taught about slavery. But never have I ever heard of reparations until now. Even as you grow older things you’ve never heard of began to surface. But even though reparations are for something good, money isn’t always the solution for everything, especially for people who have spent decades working for free. What about white Americans work for African Americans for free? How about whites go pick cotton, grow rice, or tobacco?Or should we crack the whip over white people? Then would whites call us master or would we be known as a cracker instead of a “nigger”. Those things run through my mind as I think of reparations. But Robert L.

Allen thinks otherwise. He says “reparations provide a framework for the redistribution of wealth within the economy, and thereby moving towards economic equality between whites and blacks”. It seems to me he just wants blacks to get paid, but that’s a lot of the issue today in America. 50 percent of most blacks are looking for a handout. Such as welfare, food stamps, money, etc.

This means they wouldn’t have to work for this, because it’s already given to them. Allen also states in his argument that reparations have been proposed and fought for by individuals and organizations since as early as 1854. So, why does the argument for reparations begin to sky rocket years later? This could have easily been avoided if the U.

S. would have decided years ago when the end of slavery was fresh, not now that we are in the 21st century. It would too difficult to even obtain such information about the descendants of for African American slaves. Robert L.

Allen also puts in his argument that “we believe this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. ” This said by the Ten-Point Program of the Black Panther Party. These are a group of people who voiced the quest for reparations. To me this is something that we African Americans have to put in the past, because of the past we are free today. People such as Dr. King, Rosa Parks, and Harriet Tubman fought for us to be free, so that we could have been able to have a black president today.

The government has nothing to do with our ancestors being enslaved.If anybody should pay should be the Europeans. Those are the ones who enslaved African Americans. We the people should know or history and know who we should blaming for that time our ancestors life. Also racism doesn’t always play a part in everything dealing with the government. The racism card is always thrown when blacks can’t get what they want or when they are trying to receive certain things. But everyone has their own opinion.

Although Robert L. Allen has good support to back up his reasons; I still wouldn’t agree with him, simply because this could just cause more controversy in the United States.The Economist says that “the lawyers have launched war upon firms such as FleetBoston, a bank, Aetna, and CSX, a transport company. ” The New York lawyers claim that these firms claim they profited from slavery. The lawsuits are being filed on behalf of all descendants of slaves in America.

The lawyer also estimates that the settlement will be about tens of billions of dollars. Which leaves the economist thinking not only do they want reparations for blacks; they’re trying to get money from themselves? If this is the case why sue these companies for something they had no control over.The economist says that calls for reparations date back to the 1960s. So my questions are, why wait until now to continue and get reparations when these could have been paid in the 60s? Even though some of those companies are willing to pay, but others are wanting the government to pay their part and to me this is where the issue begins. The government barely has enough money to pay back its own national.

So what makes these lawyers and other companies feel like they can pay millions of dollars to people who didn’t even work in the fields or even know what it’s like to be enslaved.The New York lawyer Mr. Fagan argues this should be a crime against humanities, but this can’t come into form because legal crime against humanities didn’t come into existence until years after slavery.

To conclude my essay, Robert L. Allen had great pointers and so did he economist. They were both good at supporting their argument, but I feel that the economist said it best. It is not time for African Americans to receive reparations for slavery; it’ll just be too much of a big confusion.