Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.04
E. Wrigley-Field
Reparations proposals typically target wealth. Yet slavery’s and Jim Crow’s long echoes also steal time, such as by producing shorter Black lifespans even today. I argue that lost time should be considered an independent target for redress; identify challenges to doing so; and provide examples of what reparations redressing lost lifespan could look like. To identify quantitative targets for redress, I analyze area-level relationships between Black lifespans and six measures of intensity of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial terror. Results reveal inconsistent relationships across measures, suggesting difficulties in grounding a target for redress in such variation. Instead, I propose that policies aim to redress the national lifespan gap between White and Black Americans. The article concludes with a typology of potential strategies for such redress.
{"title":"Stolen Lives: Redress for Slavery’s and Jim Crow’s Ongoing Theft of Lifespan","authors":"E. Wrigley-Field","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.04","url":null,"abstract":"Reparations proposals typically target wealth. Yet slavery’s and Jim Crow’s long echoes also steal time, such as by producing shorter Black lifespans even today. I argue that lost time should be considered an independent target for redress; identify challenges to doing so; and provide examples of what reparations redressing lost lifespan could look like. To identify quantitative targets for redress, I analyze area-level relationships between Black lifespans and six measures of intensity of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial terror. Results reveal inconsistent relationships across measures, suggesting difficulties in grounding a target for redress in such variation. Instead, I propose that policies aim to redress the national lifespan gap between White and Black Americans. The article concludes with a typology of potential strategies for such redress.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141406349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.03
Kamri Hudgins, Erykah Benson, Sydney Carr, Jasmine Simington, Zoe Walker, Jessica Cruz, Vincent Hutchings, Earl Lewis, M. Ostfeld, Alford Young
As a growing number of states and municipalities consider reparative policies for Black Americans, it is important to understand what shapes support for and opposition to these policies. We explore the role that awareness of racial inequality plays in shaping attitudes. Drawing on data from a large, representative survey in Detroit and one national survey, we find that awareness of racial inequality plays a powerful role in the likelihood of supporting reparative policies. Yet, in follow-up surveys, we find that exposing respondents to information on the rationale for and importance of reparations does not shift public support. These findings suggest that it is the awareness of racial inequality that is cultivated over time that appears to be the dominant force in building support for reparations. These findings are particularly important during a time when many school districts are severely restricting access to information about the history of Black Americans.
{"title":"Crafting Democratic Futures: Understanding Political Conditions and Racialized Attitudes Toward Black Reparations","authors":"Kamri Hudgins, Erykah Benson, Sydney Carr, Jasmine Simington, Zoe Walker, Jessica Cruz, Vincent Hutchings, Earl Lewis, M. Ostfeld, Alford Young","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.03","url":null,"abstract":"As a growing number of states and municipalities consider reparative policies for Black Americans, it is important to understand what shapes support for and opposition to these policies. We explore the role that awareness of racial inequality plays in shaping attitudes. Drawing on data from a large, representative survey in Detroit and one national survey, we find that awareness of racial inequality plays a powerful role in the likelihood of supporting reparative policies. Yet, in follow-up surveys, we find that exposing respondents to information on the rationale for and importance of reparations does not shift public support. These findings suggest that it is the awareness of racial inequality that is cultivated over time that appears to be the dominant force in building support for reparations. These findings are particularly important during a time when many school districts are severely restricting access to information about the history of Black Americans.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141396108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.07
Olivia J. Reneau
In this article, I document and analyze all municipal, state, and county-level efforts for Black reparations in the United States. Most efforts resemble H.R. 40’s exploratory commission model, possibly due to policy path dependency. Few geographies have allocated funding for committee recommendations, but some have allocated funds for committee activities. Only Evanston, Illinois, has allocated and distributed funds to qualifying residents. On average, cities with reparations efforts demonstrated mixed performance on metrics related to Black wealth, with insufficient evidence to suggest local Black-White disparities are more severe than the nation as a whole. Several proposals emphasize the Black-White racial wealth gap as emblematic of slavery-derived disparity, but no municipal or state proposal can rival the scale or potential of a federal program.
{"title":"Justice Delayed: An Analysis of Local Proposals for Black Reparations","authors":"Olivia J. Reneau","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.07","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I document and analyze all municipal, state, and county-level efforts for Black reparations in the United States. Most efforts resemble H.R. 40’s exploratory commission model, possibly due to policy path dependency. Few geographies have allocated funding for committee recommendations, but some have allocated funds for committee activities. Only Evanston, Illinois, has allocated and distributed funds to qualifying residents. On average, cities with reparations efforts demonstrated mixed performance on metrics related to Black wealth, with insufficient evidence to suggest local Black-White disparities are more severe than the nation as a whole. Several proposals emphasize the Black-White racial wealth gap as emblematic of slavery-derived disparity, but no municipal or state proposal can rival the scale or potential of a federal program.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141390970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.01
William Darity, Thomas Craemer, D. Berry, Dania V. Francis
This introduction seeks to perform two tasks: it provides a roadmap for readers yet to be initiated into the reparations dialogue and provides fresh insights for those already well versed in it. Reparations are a program of acknowledgment, redress, and closure for a grievous injustice. This edition deals with reparations for black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States for government policies that allowed centuries of chattel slavery and legal race discrimination. The articles in this double issue represent the most up-to-date rigorous social science, policy, and historical research on the topic. This introduction discusses the world history of reparations efforts and the history of movements for black reparations in the United States; compares various plans for black American reparations, including various monetary estimation approaches; and discusses who should pay and what form payments ought to take. It closes by looking toward the future of the black American reparations movement.
{"title":"Black Reparations in the United States, 2024: An Introduction","authors":"William Darity, Thomas Craemer, D. Berry, Dania V. Francis","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"This introduction seeks to perform two tasks: it provides a roadmap for readers yet to be initiated into the reparations dialogue and provides fresh insights for those already well versed in it. Reparations are a program of acknowledgment, redress, and closure for a grievous injustice. This edition deals with reparations for black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States for government policies that allowed centuries of chattel slavery and legal race discrimination. The articles in this double issue represent the most up-to-date rigorous social science, policy, and historical research on the topic. This introduction discusses the world history of reparations efforts and the history of movements for black reparations in the United States; compares various plans for black American reparations, including various monetary estimation approaches; and discusses who should pay and what form payments ought to take. It closes by looking toward the future of the black American reparations movement.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141400795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.02
Jesse H. Rhodes, Tatishe M. Nteta, Lilliauna Hopkins, Gregory Wall
During a period of rising partisan and racial polarization, how do partisanship, ideology, and racial antagonism influence attitudes toward reparations policies directed at the descendants of slaves? In this article, we use a wealth of public opinion data to examine trends in attitudes toward reparations and analyze the correlates of opposition to reparations proposals. We hypothesize that, given the ascendance over the past decade of a powerful racial justice movement and ensuing conservative backlash, racial attitudes should be particularly powerful in determining attitudes toward reparations. Using four original, nationally representative surveys, we show that negative racial attitudes play a central role in determining opposition to reparations, with effects that typically rival or exceed those of Republican partisanship or conservative ideology.
{"title":"Why Reparations? Race and Public Opinion Toward Reparations","authors":"Jesse H. Rhodes, Tatishe M. Nteta, Lilliauna Hopkins, Gregory Wall","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.02","url":null,"abstract":"During a period of rising partisan and racial polarization, how do partisanship, ideology, and racial antagonism influence attitudes toward reparations policies directed at the descendants of slaves? In this article, we use a wealth of public opinion data to examine trends in attitudes toward reparations and analyze the correlates of opposition to reparations proposals. We hypothesize that, given the ascendance over the past decade of a powerful racial justice movement and ensuing conservative backlash, racial attitudes should be particularly powerful in determining attitudes toward reparations. Using four original, nationally representative surveys, we show that negative racial attitudes play a central role in determining opposition to reparations, with effects that typically rival or exceed those of Republican partisanship or conservative ideology.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141409649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.05
A. Pfau, Kathleen Lawlor, David Hochfelder, Stacy Kinlock Sewell
By describing how the federal urban renewal program harmed displaced tenants and property owners, this article intends to encourage discussion of potential remedies by study groups, commissions, and community activists. In addition to loss of property, these harms include inadequate reimbursement payments, diminished business and rental income, and higher post-relocation housing costs. Using Kingston and Newburgh, New York, and Asheville, North Carolina, as case studies, the article demonstrates how researchers can document the need for reparative justice policies using historical data drawn from local archival collections.
{"title":"Using Urban Renewal Records to Advance Reparative Justice","authors":"A. Pfau, Kathleen Lawlor, David Hochfelder, Stacy Kinlock Sewell","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.05","url":null,"abstract":"By describing how the federal urban renewal program harmed displaced tenants and property owners, this article intends to encourage discussion of potential remedies by study groups, commissions, and community activists. In addition to loss of property, these harms include inadequate reimbursement payments, diminished business and rental income, and higher post-relocation housing costs. Using Kingston and Newburgh, New York, and Asheville, North Carolina, as case studies, the article demonstrates how researchers can document the need for reparative justice policies using historical data drawn from local archival collections.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141401999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.02
Linda J. Bilmes, Cornell William Brooks
Paying reparations to Black Americans has long been contentiously debated. This article addresses an unexamined pillar of this debate: the United States has a long-standing social norm that if an individual or community has suffered a harm, it is considered right for the federal government to provide some measure of what we term “reparatory compensation.” In discussing this norm and its implications for Black American reparations, we first describe the scale, categories, and interlocking and compounding effects of discriminatory harms by introducing a taxonomy of illustrative racial harms from slavery to the present. We then reveal how the social norm, precedent, and federal programs operate to provide victims with reparatory compensation, reviewing federal programs that offer compensation, such as environmental disasters, market failures, and vaccine injuries. We conclude that the government already has the norm, precedent, expertise, and resources to provide reparations to Black Americans.
{"title":"Normalizing Reparations: U.S. Precedent, Norms, and Models for Compensating Harms and Implications for Reparations to Black Americans","authors":"Linda J. Bilmes, Cornell William Brooks","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.02","url":null,"abstract":"Paying reparations to Black Americans has long been contentiously debated. This article addresses an unexamined pillar of this debate: the United States has a long-standing social norm that if an individual or community has suffered a harm, it is considered right for the federal government to provide some measure of what we term “reparatory compensation.” In discussing this norm and its implications for Black American reparations, we first describe the scale, categories, and interlocking and compounding effects of discriminatory harms by introducing a taxonomy of illustrative racial harms from slavery to the present. We then reveal how the social norm, precedent, and federal programs operate to provide victims with reparatory compensation, reviewing federal programs that offer compensation, such as environmental disasters, market failures, and vaccine injuries. We conclude that the government already has the norm, precedent, expertise, and resources to provide reparations to Black Americans.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141395872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.04
Asher Dvir-Djerassi
Since the end of the civil rights movement, the United States has not made meaningful progress toward closing the racial wealth gap. Without deliberate policy intervention, this gap will likely persist. Racial justice activists and policymakers, aiming in part to close this gap, have put forth various reparations programs. Others have proposed race-neutral wealth redistribution policies that also promise to address the gap, but as an indirect consequence of redistributing wealth in general. The potential impact of this second set of proposals on racial wealth inequality remains understudied. This article addresses this deficit through counterfactual historical simulation: By assessing the thirty-year impact of these race-neutral proposals, it finds significant reductions in the racial wealth gap over a generation. Yet these race-neutral programs have limitations vis-à-vis the broader goals of racial justice; this article concludes by emphasizing the unique capacities of reparations programs to address these limitations.
{"title":"Closing the Racial Wealth Gap: A Counterfactual Historical Simulation of Universal Inheritance","authors":"Asher Dvir-Djerassi","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.04","url":null,"abstract":"Since the end of the civil rights movement, the United States has not made meaningful progress toward closing the racial wealth gap. Without deliberate policy intervention, this gap will likely persist. Racial justice activists and policymakers, aiming in part to close this gap, have put forth various reparations programs. Others have proposed race-neutral wealth redistribution policies that also promise to address the gap, but as an indirect consequence of redistributing wealth in general. The potential impact of this second set of proposals on racial wealth inequality remains understudied. This article addresses this deficit through counterfactual historical simulation: By assessing the thirty-year impact of these race-neutral proposals, it finds significant reductions in the racial wealth gap over a generation. Yet these race-neutral programs have limitations vis-à-vis the broader goals of racial justice; this article concludes by emphasizing the unique capacities of reparations programs to address these limitations.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141399795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.05
Trina R. Shanks, Jin Huang, William Elliott, Haotian Zheng, M. Clancy, Michael Sherraden
Successful Black reparations require a policy for delivering payments, one that provides for effective identification, disbursement, asset protection, and asset growth over time. In this article, we suggest a structural solution (structured wealth accumulation of reparations payments) to a structural challenge (deeply embedded racial wealth inequality). Analyzing evidence from a longitudinal experiment, we find that Child Development Accounts (CDAs)—a carefully designed and tested asset-building policy for children—provide a model that can inform effective delivery and sustainable growth of reparations. CDA policy models a system of potentially lifelong, centralized asset building, with automatic enrollment, sensible investment options, structured asset protections, low fees, asset growth, and investment targets to achieve individual and family goals. Policy and research implications for Black reparations and reduction in racial wealth inequality are discussed.
{"title":"A Policy Platform to Deliver Black Reparations: Building on Evidence from Child Development Accounts","authors":"Trina R. Shanks, Jin Huang, William Elliott, Haotian Zheng, M. Clancy, Michael Sherraden","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.3.05","url":null,"abstract":"Successful Black reparations require a policy for delivering payments, one that provides for effective identification, disbursement, asset protection, and asset growth over time. In this article, we suggest a structural solution (structured wealth accumulation of reparations payments) to a structural challenge (deeply embedded racial wealth inequality). Analyzing evidence from a longitudinal experiment, we find that Child Development Accounts (CDAs)—a carefully designed and tested asset-building policy for children—provide a model that can inform effective delivery and sustainable growth of reparations. CDA policy models a system of potentially lifelong, centralized asset building, with automatic enrollment, sensible investment options, structured asset protections, low fees, asset growth, and investment targets to achieve individual and family goals. Policy and research implications for Black reparations and reduction in racial wealth inequality are discussed.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141409718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.06
Giuliana Perrone
This article considers a subset of lawsuits in which emancipated people sued to have their enslavers’ bequests to them honored. It contends that we should see these suits as contests over reparations. By exploring this unappreciated history, this article argues that enslavers themselves believed reparations were due and were willing to pay them, that there was a general agreement between enslaved and enslaver about the form reparations should take, and that there was a similar understanding that reparations should be generational. The article further suggests the promise of additional inquiry into historical testamentary records. Such a novel archive would add to contemporary arguments in favor of reparations by identifying an unacknowledged effort to provide compensation to formerly enslaved people.
{"title":"Rehearsals for Reparations","authors":"Giuliana Perrone","doi":"10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.2.06","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers a subset of lawsuits in which emancipated people sued to have their enslavers’ bequests to them honored. It contends that we should see these suits as contests over reparations. By exploring this unappreciated history, this article argues that enslavers themselves believed reparations were due and were willing to pay them, that there was a general agreement between enslaved and enslaver about the form reparations should take, and that there was a similar understanding that reparations should be generational. The article further suggests the promise of additional inquiry into historical testamentary records. Such a novel archive would add to contemporary arguments in favor of reparations by identifying an unacknowledged effort to provide compensation to formerly enslaved people.","PeriodicalId":516617,"journal":{"name":"RSF","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141397310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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