Is Reparations The Answer?
...and mental pains and injustice. "Through keloids of suffering, through coarse veils of damaged self-belief, lost direction, misplaced compass, shit-faced resignation, racial transmutation, black people worked long, hard, killing days, years, centuries-and they were never paid "(Robinson 207). Many will argue that for these reasons stated above, some sort of reparation should be applied. What exactly is meant by reparation? Webster's Dictionary defines it as the act of making amends, offering expiation, or giving satisfaction for a wrong or injury.
The issue of reparations for African-Americans has its fair share of advocates, adversaries, strengths and weaknesses as well as its time in the United States, but its true value of recognition lies deeper than just which argument is stronger or weaker. African-American reparation is a stepping-stone to solving the American problem of denial and inability to talk about the true racial issues and divides of this country, that so firmly holds to the American dream (land of equal opportunity and justice).
The issue of to African-American reparations for slavery brings about both good and bad notions. Advocates such as Randall Robinson, Richard America and many others fight for reparation because they feel that it is owed to Blacks for all the wrongs and injustices of slavery and the issues that have spawned from it, like racial profiling, psychological damage and many others. Reparation advocates feel that such payments are a key to settling gaps between blacks and whites, which is rooted in the past. It could have an ameliorating effect upon race relations in our nation and others (Parker 2).
From the prospective of a pro-reparation activist, it is only morally right to have reparations. "For wasn't the practice of slavery at least as serious as a system of human–rights wrongs as the Nazi holocaust? Did not the...
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