"Obama Says No To Reparations"

 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama opposes offering reparations to the descendants of slaves, putting him at odds with some black groups and leaders.

The man with a serious chance to become the nation's first black president argues that government should instead combat the legacy of slavery by improving schools, health care and the economy for all.

"I have said in the past — and I'll repeat again — that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed," the Illinois Democrat said recently.

Some two dozen members of Congress are co-sponsors of legislation to create a commission that would study reparations — that is, payments and programs to make up for the damage done by slavery.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People supports the legislation, too. Cities around the country, including Obama's home of Chicago, have endorsed the idea, and so has a major union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Obama has worked to be seen as someone who will bring people together, not divide them into various interest groups with checklists of demands. Supporting reparations could undermine that image and make him appear to be pandering to black voters.

"Let's not be naive. Sen. Obama is running for president of the United States, and so he is in a constant battle to save his political life," said Kibibi Tyehimba, co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. "In light of the demographics of this country, I don't think it's realistic to expect him to do anything other than what he's done."

But this is not a position Obama adopted just for the presidential campaign. He voiced the same concerns about reparations during his successful run for the Senate in 2004.

There's enough flexibility in the term "reparations" that Obama can oppose them and still have plenty of common ground with supporters.

The House voted this week to apologize for slavery. The resolution, which was approved on a voice vote, does not mention reparations, but past opponents have argued that an apology would increase pressure for concrete action.

Obama says an apology would be appropriate but not particularly helpful in improving the lives of black Americans. Reparations could also be a distraction, he said.

In a 2004 questionnaire, he told the NAACP, "I fear that reparations would be an excuse for some to say, 'We've paid our debt,' and to avoid the much harder work."

One reparations advocate, Vernellia Randall, a law professor at the University of Dayton, bluntly responded: "I think he's dead wrong."

She said aid to the poor in general won't close the gaps — poor blacks would still trail poor whites, and middle-class blacks would still lag behind middle-class whites. Instead, assistance must be aimed directly at the people facing the after-effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws, she said.

"People say he can't run and get elected if he says those kinds of things," Randall said. "I'm like, well does that mean we're really not ready for a black president?"

Reparations for slavery is a proposal by some in the United States that some type of compensation should be provided to the descendants of enslaved people, in consideration of the labor provided for free over several centuries, without which (it is argued) the United States would never have attained its wealth and global power. This compensation has been proposed in a variety of forms, from individual monetary payments to community-based improvement schemes related to health and education. The idea remains highly controversial and no broad consensus exists as to how it could be implemented.

Some proposals have called for direct payments from the U.S. government. The question of who if any should receive such payments, who should pay them and in what amount, has been highly controversial, since the United States Census does not track descent from slaves or slave owners and relies on self-reported racial categories. Since all slaves have died and the statute of limitations has long expired no court has seriously supported these direct reparations.

Various estimates have been given if such payments were to be made. Harper’s Magazine has created an estimate that the total of reparations due is over 100 trillion dollars, based on 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865, with a compounded interest of 6%. Should all or part of this amount be paid to the descendants of slaves in the United States, the current U.S. government would only pay a fraction of that cost, since it has been in existence only since 1789.

Under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government apologized for Japanese American internment during World War II and provided reparations of $20,000 to each survivor, to compensate for loss of property and liberty during that period. For many years, Native American tribes have received compensation for lands ceded to the United States by them in various treaties. Other countries have also opted to pay reparations for past grievances.

The principal argument against reparations is that their cost would not be imposed upon the perpetrators of slavery who were a very small percentage of society with 4.8% of southern whites (only 1.4% of all whites in the country), nor confined to those who can be shown to be the specific indirect beneficiaries of slavery, but would simply be indiscriminately borne by taxpayers per se. Those making this argument often add that the descendants of white abolitionists and soldiers in the Union Army might be taxed to fund reparations despite the sacrifices their ancestors already made to end slavery. It is further noted that, while slavery prevailed, the principal indirect beneficiaries of American slavery were Europeans, who took possession of expropriated labor in the form of reduced pricing of American agricultural exports.

On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.

    Presumptive Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, has laid to rest any hopes or fears for reparations for American slavery  today with his publicly stated opposition to reparations. In my opinion, this stand by Senator Obama is not political pandering for white votes, as he has in the past held the same position on the subject. As I see it, every wrong can't be rectified. Some wrongs just have to be let go, especially if in trying to rectify the wrong, more wrongs are committed (two wrongs don't make a right). Even affirmative action, which has been and still is a form of black reparations, should now be ended, in my opinion (and I am a black American). Today all Americans, no matter of what race, are in the fight to restore our nation to it's Constitutional civil liberties and rights within a limited and non-interventionist Federal government committed to the "General Welfare" of it's citizens. Barack Obama's opposition to reparations for slavery rests on sound reasoning and is in the best interests of America, as I see it.

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