by BRUCE BARTLETT
The long-standing idea of paying reparations to Black Americans for the costs of slavery, segregation, and other racist policies has lately gotten a boost. President Joe Biden has endorsed a commission to study the subject, and on February 17 the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony on H.R. 40, which would create such a commission.
The purpose of the commission would be threefold: to examine the role of the federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery; to review forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants; and to document lingering negative effects of slavery on living African Americans and society.
It goes without saying that the idea of somehow forcing the current generation of citizens to pay for policies that no living American was responsible for to Black Americans who may or may not be descended from slaves is very, very controversial—even in this magazine. Many people believe that the 140,414 Union soldiers who died on the Civil War battlefield paid the debt that was owed to the slaves, giving them their freedom. (The true death toll undoubtedly was much higher.) Abraham Lincoln said as much himself in his second Inaugural Address.
But this view clearly is wrong. If a mugger beat you up and caused you serious injury, you would hardly deem it sufficient for him merely to stop. To be made whole, you would need compensation as well as protection from further injury. All of our tort laws are based on this premise, and there is a vast system of personal injury lawyers, insurance companies, and courts that attempts to redress the harm that people incur from accidents, corporate malfeasance, and other suffering that can be traced to parties that are liable.
As Boston University law professor Keith Hylton has noted, “Slavery involves some obvious torts, such as assault and battery, conversion, and wrongful confinement. A person held as a slave today could surely collect damages.” But he also contends that after enough time has passed “tort doctrine shuts the door on compensation claims based on old and distant injuries.”
Bill Moyers for more