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Reviews
| Long Overdue: The Politics of Racial Reparations. By Charles P. Henry. New York: New York University Press, 2007. x + 249 pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.95 (cloth).
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Talk of reparations for the eras of slavery and Jim Crow continues to grow in the academy and among African Americans even as white Americans refuse to participate in such debates. Charles Henry's Long Overdue offers one of the finest and most comprehensive discussions to date of the historical and international context for reparations claims on behalf of African Americans by explaining why reparations are rejected and describing the barriers facing those who ask for them. |
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First, the bad news. White people are tired of talking about how African Americans have been mistreated and even more tired of the programs intended—in however feeble and imperfect ways—to rebalance that legacy. Hence the popularity of David Horowitz's "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks Is a Bad Idea," which includes some laughable ideas such as the debt owed by black Americans to white Americans for ending slavery. Some of Horowitz's offerings may be true but are simply distracting and have little to do with the crimes of slavery and Jim Crow in our country (such as the fact that Africans sold each other into slavery). The good news, however, is that scholars, activists, and politicians are increasingly talking about how the legacy of history burdens our country. |
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One of the great pleasures of Henry's work is that he provides a scholar's-eye view of the debates over the 143 years since slavery ended, and particularly the last 20 years since the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 made reparations to Japanese Americans interned during World War II and invited serious thinking about reparations to African Americans. We see the conflicting approaches of scholars and activists whose mobilizing strategies range from seeking a Pan-African movement to those who work at the local level to get insurance companies and businesses to disclose their connections to slavery. Intellectuals such as Hannah Arendt, W. E. B. DuBois, Callie House, Henry Louis Gates, Randall Kennedy, and Charles Ogletree wander across Henry's stage. The scope is broad—from the American Revolution, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Reconstruction, and the Ex-Slave Pension Movement, which was inspired by the pensions that both United States and Confederate veterans received—to an intensive study of why victims of the Rosewood riot of 1923 received reparations while the thousands of victims of Tulsa's riot of 1921 did not, to an epilogue on responses to Hurricane Katrina, which serves as a Rorschach inkblot test of people's ideas about race and government. |
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Henry is correct that litigation is not likely to produce much progress. Courts are not well equipped to deal with these claims, nor are judges likely to be sympathetic to them. Surely this is a political and moral struggle. On this front Henry is sobering even as he is optimistic. Public opinion polls place support for reparations, generously, in the teens. This movement must gain general acceptance, yet "the success of the current reparations movement will be determined by factors that are easily theorized but very difficult to implement" (p. 176). The movement has to win voters. This means framing claims "in a way that attracts broad political support" (p. 111). In turn, that means working from modest starting points of discussion and education to make a moral and pragmatic case as we move toward a social and economic agenda like the Great Society. We are a long way from reparations now, but Charles Henry's deeply thoughtful and humane work gives us a map to get there if we have the energy and will to follow it.
Alfred L. Brophy
University of Alabama
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