Reparations advocate argues for redressing America's 'debt' to blacks

By Christopher Greaves '01

Randall Robinson, Harvard-trained lawyer and author of the best-selling book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, told an audience at David Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall Feb. 9 that the descendants of African slaves in America are entitled to compensation for the labor stolen from their forebears and the years of de jure discrimination that followed.

Randall Robinson, author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, speaks in Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall Feb. 9. Robert Barker/University Photography

"The descendants of slaves have been the victims of the greatest crime against humanity for the last 500 years," said Robinson, who has lately become the most visible proponent of reparations for African Americans. Robinson said that slavery and post-emancipation racism denied blacks the ability to generate and transmit wealth to their progeny, while white profiteers and America in general, cashed in on this woeful inequity. In his view, the appropriation of black wealth has had an enduring and deleterious effect on African Americans who have essentially been denied their inheritance. "There's a gap in America between blacks and whites which is static, economic, structural," he said. "It doesn't go away."

"Our young people go to colleges like these [Cornell]," said Robinson. "They finish college. They get a nice job. They buy a nice car, wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments. They look nice, but they have no financial assets. Whites have considerable financial assets," he said. "Poverty, like wealth, is intergenerationally inherited."

In Robinson's mind, the systematic malignment of blacks in America has perpetuated black impoverishment and provided economic benefits to the white majority. "Between 1929 and 1969, the consequence of wage discrimination to African Americans runs to $1.6 trillion dollars," he argued.

Robinson drove his point home to the crowd, largely peopled by minority students and faculty, by highlighting the records of Ivy League schools that benefited directly from the slave trade. According to Robinson, the Brown brothers, who founded Fleet Bank and endowed Brown University, got their seed capital from building and sailing slave ships. Harvard's legacy is similarly marred by its founder, Isaac Royall, who endowed the school with proceeds he received from the sale of slaves on an Antiguan sugar plantation, Robinson maintained. "Harvard's history is stained in blood," he said of his alma mater.

Robinson stressed that the plight of blacks in this country has had profound psychological consequences that must be addressed through any program of reparations. He calls for the provision of government funds for economic development in black communities and "massive programs of education ... [which] would start at birth and run through college." Robinson said the details of this proposal will not be fashioned before the end of this year.

Critics have sometimes characterized reparations as a divisive issue that will inevitably lead to increased conflict between the races. Robinson addressed this view by saying, "We cannot approach this issue in a segregated way. We have to approach this as Americans ... as a people capable of compassion."

Those interested in becoming involved with the movement for reparations can contact the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America at the web site www.ncobra.com , Robinson said.

His talk was sponsored by the African Latino Asian and Native American Students Programming Board at Cornell and by the Africana Studies and Research Center, and was supported by Cornell Law School.