Abstract
The racial category of “white” was developed and persons with light skin were ascribed to this category through the processes that constitute the devastating histories explored in the two preceding chapters. The formation of a nation—U.S.-America—went with it: also inextricable from legacies of injustice and violence. Participation in such atrocities, which included cultural productions that enacted, celebrated, and identified with these atrocities, gave white U.S.-American identity content and meaning. The work of chapters two and three has been, therefore, a partial exploration of the question I posed in chapter one. That is, who are we as white racial subjects? One answer is that we are people whose humanity and moral self-hood was and has continued to be eviscerated as we became, and have continued to become, white. As Tim Wise puts it, the story of white supremacy is, in part,
a story of how those who profited so handsomely from… pain, in relative terms, lost something far more valuable in the process. It is a story about the loss not only of one’s innocence, but also a healthy portion of one’s humanity. Some relinquished it voluntarily; others did so on pain of rebuke and marginalization. But all paid for their privileges with the better part of their souls. 1
Morality must begin where immorality began.
—Vine Deloria, Jr.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
It is also the story of those persons “who have fought tirelessly for justice and equity and freedom in this land,” and who have refused to be confined and defined by white supremacist and imperial machinations. Tim Wise, “Debtor’s Prison: Facing History and Its Consequences,” in Should America Pay? Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations, ed. Raymond A. Winbush (New York: HarperCoUms, 2003), 241.
J. Angelo Corlett, Race, Racism & Reparations (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 149.
Joe R. Feagin writes, “The current prosperity, relatively long life expectancies, and relatively high living standards of whites as a group in the United States, as well as in the West generally, are ultimately rooted in the agony, exploitation, and impoverishment of those who were colonized and enslaved, as well as in the oppression and misery of their descendants.” Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots Current Realities, and Puture Reparations (New York & London: Routledge, 2000), 262.
Roy L. Brooks, “The Age of Apology,” in When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy Over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice, ed. Roy L. Brooks (New York & London: New York University Press, 1999), 6.
It is important to note several things in regard to invoking any kind of comparison with Japanese American redress. First, I do not (nor, I believe, does Trask) wish to use Japanese Americans as a foil; in other words, it is not appropriate to make a complaint against the United State vis-a-vis Japanese Americans. In no way am I arguing that Japanese American suffering was less than that of Native peoples or people of African descent and that, thus, they were “less” entitled to redress. Moreover, such negative comparisons are to be avoided as much as possible, not least in the interest of coalition-building. It is notable, in this regard, that arguments for reparations to African American communities often invoke, by way of comparison, not only Japanese American redress, but also settlements granted to Native peoples. This is a tendency that should be eschewed, especially given that settlements with Native peoples have, in many cases, furthered U.S. imperial occupation of the land and more deeply entrenched neocolonial relations. Second, in terms of Japanese American redress itself, it is important to note the meager compensation that was allotted and that was paid only to actual survivors of internment camps. Twenty thousand dollars did not replace the actual “cost” of internment. Finally, and relatedly, it was an intentional and much deliberated choice made by Japanese American advocates to pursue redress not reparations, and to recognize the redress offered by the United States as a symbolic measure and not a compensatory one. On this point, see JoAnne H. Kagiwada, “And Justice for All,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 56, no. 1–2 (2002): 126–36. For examples of the problem of comparisons, see Jon M. Van Dyke, “Reparations for the Descendants of American Slaves Under International Law,” and Raymond A. Winbush, “Introduction,” in Should America Ray?, 59 and xii, respectively.
See Marcia Y. Riggs, Awake, Arise, and Act: A Womanist Call for Black Liberation (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1994), especially chapter four.
Andrea Smith, “Reparations and the Question of Land,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 56, no. 1–2 (2002): 176.
Ward Churchill, Indians Are IJs? Culture and Genocide in Native North America (Monroe: Common Courage Press, 1994), 38.
David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), x.
It should be noted that, despite the formal cessation of policies of allotment in 1934 (with the Indian Reorganization Act), from 1936 to 1974, Native peoples continued to lose thirteen thousand acres of land a year, or another eight million acres. Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Cambridge: South End Press, 1999), 143. Donald Fixico documents the devastating impact that allotment and the subsequent discovery of oil had on the Osage peoples—many of whom became “rich” individually, and, thus, also prime targets for a variety of white schemes. See Donald L. Fixico, The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1998), chapter two.
As early as 1793 the U.S. Congress appropriated $20,000 a year to provide “educational services” to Native nations with whom they signed treaties— education, as the United States understood it, was for the purpose of development in the “arts of civilization.” By 1819, the Congress had established a “civilization fund” and was working with Christian denominations to establish a comprehensive system of boarding and day schools. By 1869, attendance at mission schools was mandatory for children between the ages of six and sixteen on most reservations. Jorge Noriega writes, “It was not unusual … for a child to be taken at age six or seven and to never see his or her home and family again until age seventeen or eighteen. At this point they were often sent back, but in a condition largely devoid of conceptions of both their own cultures and their intended roles within them.” In addition to being assimilated into white culture, conditions at many schools were terrible, regularly including, e.g., forced labor. The practice of taking children from their homes continued well into the twentieth century. See Jorge Noriega, “American Indian Education in the United States: Indoctrination for Colonialism,” in State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, ed. M. Annette Jaimes (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 391.
Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1969), 36.
Ibid., 37.
For primary documents in which the U.S. government first began to recognize this language as a result of Native activism and militancy (during the tenure of President Richard Nixon), see Alvin M. Josephy, Red Rower: The American Indians’ Tight for Treedom (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1971).
In 1974, Vine Deloria, Jr. wrote: “Rather than seeking a new social order or a new system of economic distribution and management, Indians are seeking no less than the restoration of the continent and the destruction, if necessary, of the white invaders who have stolen and raped their lands. As fantastic as such an aim may sound, it has deep roots in Indians consciousness.” This goal, he continues, emerges primarily from Native religiosity. Vine Deloria, Jr, “Religion and Revolution Among American Indians,” in Tor This Tand: Writings on Religion in America, ed. James Treat (New York & London: Routledge, 1999), 38.
I am not, here, advocating the pursuit of reparations strategies through domestic law. Indeed, one of the important gains of viewing Native American and African American struggles together in relationship to white supremacy is the possibility of strengthening the attempt to avoid some of the serious pitfalls intrinsic to pursuing reparations through a domestic strategy. Indigenous leaders in movements for sovereignty and self-determination are clear that the best strategy is an international one. See Smith, “Reparations and the Question of Land.”; and Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i (Monroe: Common Courage Press, 1993).
Boris I. Bittker, The Case for Black Reparations (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 23. It should be noted that there are substantial weaknesses in Bittker’s text. First, he repeatedly plays off the case of Native Americans—whom he says have been given reparations by the U.S. government—as the reason Blacks are entitled to reparations. Second, his exploration is limited to reparations for Jim Crow Segregation, around education issues in particular. He dismisses out of hand the possibility that reparations for enslavement should be pursued.
For a horrifying account of just one example of the audacity and brutality with which European countries ravaged the African continent and the peoples of the African continent, see Adam Hochschild’s work on Belgium and the Congo. Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998).
See Taiaiake Alfred, “Sovereignty,” in A Companion to American Indian History, ed. Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury (Maiden & Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 460–74.
See the work of Sharon D. Welch who writes: “The cultured despair of the middle class is ideological.” Welch’s concern is similar to my point here. She notes that it is privilege that makes it possible for justice-minded middle-class white people to “give up” in struggles for social justice when successful results are not quick and clear. To find oneself paralyzed in the face of overwhelming evil can be a sign that one is not experiencing one’s own life and survival to be at stake. Thus, one’s paralysis exists in a relationship of complicity with injustice. For those who are the targets of such evil, such paralysis is not an option. Sharon D. Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: FortressPress, 2000), 41.
This struggle emerged in the mid–1990s in response to a 1994 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled states could collect taxes on non-Native consumers at Native businesses, a decision that many nations claim violates sovereignty. In the New York Region, the Mohawk, Seneca, Dio, Oneida, and Cayuga, among several other nations, formed the First Nations Business League to fight New York’s attempts to implement a policy in this regard. Their first press release read: “The Iroquois Confederacy and the individual nations of the Confederacy and the Algonquin Nations have never relinquished our sovereignty. We have never consented to give any foreign nation the authority to tax our people [February 23, 1996].” New York officials see in this attempt an opportunity to generate revenue for the state of up to one billion dollars a year. To this point. First Nation peoples in the region have successfully blocked New York’s attempts. Indeed, despite the Court’s ruling that the State has a “right” to tax, sovereignty renders any mechanisms through which taxes might actually be collected constitutionally forbidden. The situation in New York is similar to those unfolding in Rhode Island, Maine, Oklahoma, and other states. See Pam Belluck, “States Moving to End Tribes’ Tax-Free Sales,” New York Times, September 28, 2003; “New York Lawmakers Consider Taxing Tribes,” NACS Online, April 22, 2003, online: http://www.nacsonline.com /NR/exerres/00002b5awmugjeuaoryegxt/NewsPosting.asp.
See Vine Deloria, Jr., “A Simple Question of Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of the Reburial Issue,” in ed. James Treat, For This Land: Writings on Religion in America (New York & London: Routledge, 1999), 187–202; Rick Hill, “Repatriation Must Heal Old Wounds,” in When Sorry Isn’t Enough, 283–87.
See LaDuke, All Our Relations; Jace Weaver, ed.. Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental Justice (MaryknoU: Orbis Books, 1996).
The NRCC was formed in part to serve as an organization body that could help coordinate the multiple facets of the reparations struggle. It recognizes that “legal and political strategies are fundamental to the success of this movement.” Dorothy J. Tillman, “Slavery, Reparations, and the Role of the Churches,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 56, no. 1–2 (2002): 217.
Emilie M. Townes writes: “i believe reparations are about the ability or inability of whites and their kin to recognize they have attained their power and privilege on the backs of the poor the darker skinned the feminine and it just might be the time to have an honest conversation about this …” Emilie M. Townes, “Empire and Forgottenness: Abysmal Sylphs in the Reparations Debate for Black Folks in the United States,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 56, no. 1–2 (2002): 114.
See David W. Chen, “Battle Over Iroquois Land Claims Escalates,” New York Times, May 16, 2000, p. 1.
Copyright information
© 2007 Jennifer Harvey
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harvey, J. (2007). The Imperative of Reparations. In: Whiteness and Morality. Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604940_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604940_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-53746-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-60494-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)