Yesterday, when asked about reparations,
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered
a familiar reply:
"America should not be held liable for something that happened
a hundred and fifty years ago,
since none of us currently alive
are responsible."
This rebuttal proffers a strange theory
of governance --
that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime
of its generations.
But well into this century, The United States was still paying
our pensions to the heirs of Civil War soldiers.
We honor treaties that date back
some 200 years despite no one being alive
who signed those treaties.
Many of us would love to be taxed for the things
we are solely and individually responsible for.
But we are American citizens
and thus bound to a collective enterprise
that extends beyond our individual and personal
reach.
It would seem ridiculous to dispute
invocations of the founders
or the greatest generation on the basis of
a lack of membership in either group.
We recognize our lineage as a generational trust --
as inheritance.
And the real dilemma posed by reparations is just that:
a dilemma of inheritance.
It is impossible to imagine America without
the inheritance of slavery.
As historian Ed Baptist has written, [enslavement]
"shaped every crucial aspect of the economy
and politics of America. So that
by 1836, more than
600 million, almost half of
the economic activity in The United States derived
directly or indirectly
from the cotton produced by the million odd slaves."
By the time the enslaved were emancipated
they comprised the largest single asset in America --
3 billion in 1860-dollars --
more than all the other assets in the country combined.
The method of cultivating this asset
was neither gentle cajoling
nor persuasion, but torture, rape,
and child trafficking.
Enslavement reigned for
250 years on these shores. When it ended
this country could have extended its hallowed principles:
life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness to all regardless of color.
But America had other principles in mind.
And so for a century after
the Civil War, black people were subjected to a
relentless campaign of terror.
A campaign that extended well into the lifetime
of Majority Leader McConnell.
It is tempting to divorce this modern campaign of terror,
of plunder, from enslavement.
But the logic of enslavement -- of white supremacy --
respects no such borders.
And the god of bondage was lustful and begat many heirs:
coup d'etats and convict leasing;
vagrancy laws and debt peonage;
redlining and racist GI bills;
poll taxes and state-sponsored terrorism.
We grant that Mr. McConnell was not alive for Appomattox,
but he was alive for the electrocution of George Stinney,
he was alive for the blinding of Issac Woodard,
he was alive to witness kleptocracy
in his native Alabama and a regime premised
on electoral theft.
Majority Leader McConnell sited Civil Rights legislation yesterday,
as well he should, because he was alive to
witness the harassment, jailing, and betrayal
of those responsible for that legislation
by a government sworn to protect them.
He was alive for the redlining of Chicago and the looting of
black home owners of some $4 billion.
Victims of that plunder are very much alive today.
I'm sure they would love a word with the Majority Leader.
What they know,
what this committee must know, is that while
emancipation dead bolted the door
against the bandits of America,
Jim Crow wedged the windows wide open.
And that is the thing about Sen. McConnell's "something":
It was a hundred fifty years ago
and it was right now.
The typical black family of this country has 1/10 the wealth
of the typical white family.
Black women die in childbirth at four times the rate of white women.
And there is, of course, the shame of this land
of the free boasting the largest prision
population on the planet, of which
the descendants of the enslaved
make up the largest share.
The matter of reparations
is one of making amends
and direct redress,
but it also a question of citizenship.
In HR 40, this body has the chance to both
make good on its 2009 apology for enslavement
and reject fair weather patriotism:
to say that a nation is both its credits
and its debits;
that if Thomas Jefferson matters,
so does Sally Hemmings;
that if D-Day matters, so does Black Wall Street;
that if Valley Forge matters, so does Fort Pillow.
Because the question really is, not whether
we will be tied to the "somethings" of our past,
but whether we are courageous enough to be tied
to the whole of them.
Thank you.