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Republicans: We Should Be Leading the Call for Reparations
Senator
Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is being excoriated for
remarks he made at a campaign rally with former President Trump last weekend. Discussing progressives' lax enforcement of the rule of law that many on the Right say led to an increase in crime across the nation, Sen. Tuberville made a racist argument that connected crime with Reparations for descendants of slaves.
"They want crime because they wanna take over what you got," Sen. Tuberville told a primarily white audience in Nevada. "They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bullshit! They are not owed that."
Tuberville's comments were deeply racist. They implied that every criminal is Black and every Black person is a criminal. They implied that white people are the only ones with any property, or any stake in the rule of law. They ignored the fact that 62 percent of bias crimes are motivated by racial hatred, with anti-Black hate crimes—always the largest category of all bias-related crimes—showing an
increase of 49 percent from 2019.
Sadly, only the Left-wing media saw fit to call Sen. Tuberville out. From the Right-leaning media, it's been crickets.
This isn't just a moral failure. It's a big missed opportunity. Because it is we
Republicans who should be leading the call for Reparations for Americans descended from slaves.
After all, it was founder of the Grand Old Party (GOP), President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the post-Civil War constitutional amendments with Americans freed from slavery, the intended recipients of emancipation, equal protections, and secured voting rights.
Moreover, it was Lincoln's Union Army that issued
Special Field Order 15, which promised direct economic resources and physical protections for emancipated slaves and their families. The order confiscated 400,000 acres of coastline in the South and redistributed it to newly freed Black families.
What President Lincoln knew that the GOP of today would do well to understand is that Reparations is not an entitlement; it's paying a debt—a conservative value if there ever was one. After all, fiscal responsibility starts with being debt-free.
A little girl attends a slavery reparations protest outside New York Life Insurance Company offices in New York City.MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
Of course, it goes beyond that. Republicans have been making a lot of noise about expanding their voter base. With the far-Left often out of touch with what descendants of U.S. slaves want, the Right has seen an opportunity. And nothing would make Black voters more likely to switch parties than a real commitment to Reparations, coupled with an end to racist rhetoric. After all, 77 percent of Black Americans support Reparations, a Pew Research Center study found.
And it's no wonder: The reality is that Black Americans descended from slaves have not received the equal protections that were constitutionally prescribed, nor the reparatory actions promised to our families. As a result, we face
an $840,000 lineage wealth gap, per economists like
Duke University professor Dr. William Sandy Darity. It's this gap that Reparations would help close.
Closing it should be a Republican priority. Republicans may have parted ways with the GOP of Lincoln, but in one especially crucial way, they haven't: They still see themselves as the party of patriotism. And nothing is more patriotic than making good on one's promises, healing wounds that have never closed, and ensuring Black Americans receive our equity in the country for which our enslaved ancestors were the economic engine.
Our party, the GOP, believes in "human dignity," yet we too often engage in a practice that withholds dignity from millions of Americans by denying the ways present day socioeconomic issues have historical roots. The case of Americans descended from slaves is a textbook example, while Reparations represents the opposite—as both an economic correction
and a complete enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments with their original intent toward Americans freed from slavery.
By acting on this principle, we honor the dignity of the enslaved and those who delivered our nation from the scourge of chattel slavery, and we make ourselves worthy of the rich human rights legacy we've inherited through spilled blood and ink.
It was our Republican Party that ensured Black Americans freed from slavery were a protected class in the United States. Modern Reparations, just like the post-Civil War constitutional amendments, Special Field Order 15, and the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, were designed to preserve the political power of Americans freed from slavery and make descendants of slaves whole economically.
Reparations will heal our nation and unify us by addressing the unfinished business that has haunted America for 150 years.
Pamela Denise Long is CEO of Youthcentrix® Therapy Services, a business focused on helping organizations implement trauma-informed practices and diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism (DEIA) at the systems level. Connect with Ms. Long online at www.youthcentrix.com or @PDeniseLong on social media.
What President Lincoln understood is that Reparations is not an entitlement; it's paying a debt—a conservative value if there ever was one.
www.newsweek.com
