December 10, 2002
REPAIR WHAT?:
Study: Slavery's effects lasted just 2 generations (Lance Kramer, November 6, 2002, The Dartmouth)Economic disparities between the descendants of former slaves and free blacks largely disappeared within just two generations following emancipation, according to a study by Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote that may lend ammunition to opponents of slavery reparations."There's nothing positive you can say about slavery," Sacerdote said. "But what the study shows is how little slavery actually has to do with today's problems. It seems rather unlikely that slavery itself caused a lot of the racism problems present in the U.S. today." [...]
[S]upporters of reparations -- like Dorothy Benton Lewis, national co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America -- argued that the study's central question was irrelevant.
"The issue here isn't whether blacks could 'catch-up,'" Lewis said. "What [Sacerdote] is comparing here is victim to victim. Both of these groups were victims of white supremacy and that thanks to the attidudes of racist people, both groups have experienced the same outcome."
Ms Lewis is right, as far as she goes. But, isn't the corollary that we should compare American blacks to Africans to see what their relative post-slavery statuses were (and are). Only by doing so can we assess whether there was a net negative effect from slavery. If we're talking exclusively about economic outcomes here, one would be surprised not to find that American blacks benefited from slavery, as awful as that sounds. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 10, 2002 7:50 PM
Well, benefited from emancipation.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 10, 2002 7:03 PMI don't have the facts to hand, but is it not notorious that blacks immigrating from the Caribbean to the U.S.
score higher on just about any measurement of well-being than native blacks?
The low situation of U.S. blacks -- and of poor white
Southerners, too -- seems to be attributable not so much to their ancestors' status before 1860 but to the
agrarianism, class prejudice, lack of public investment (in, e.g., schools) in the South after 1865.
Polish or Russian immigrants, whose ancestors were serfs (a different word for slavery) just as recently as American blacks seem to have done
all right here.
And don't underestimate bad feeding. The slack-jawed
imbecility that my native land is famous for had an
organic cause. Three generations of that will put anybody in the hole.
Perhaps Caribbean blacks don't have it hardwired into their brains that doing well in school, etc, is to be avoided because it's "acting white."
As to the argument that blacks in America have benefitted by being brought here: David Horowitz is famous for using this argument on college campuses and it is not well-received, to put it mildly.
I think all Britons should demand reparations from Italy for the Roman occupation of these fair Isles... and why not demand compensation from the Norwegian government for the depredations of the Vikings?
Posted by: Perry de Havilland at December 11, 2002 7:23 AMI think it's clear that blacks have benefited by being in America, but have been hurt by the racial animosity that is the fallout from slavery and Jim Crow. Thus African immigrants to this country, who lack the animosity, outperform native blacks, but native blacks outperform Africans who are stuck in their primitive countries.
Grievances are destructive things.
Perry:
You aren't getting diddly from us. (The surname Judd is derived from the vikings of the Jutland Penninsula, who raped and pillaged their way through Britain).
Gee, as I think about the nice long list the Jews could make, I'm warming to the idea.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 11, 2002 3:47 PMAs someone of Franco-German-Irish descent, I could get reparations from the Germans (for my French ancestors), the French (for my German ancestors), and the Brits. I hope this European Union thing happens so I can file only one lawsuit.
Posted by: pj at December 11, 2002 9:50 PMFolks often refer to me as a Neanderthal and you all wiped the rest of my people out--show me the money.
Posted by: oj at December 11, 2002 10:14 PM