An Inclusive Litany

4/29/00

The Chicago City Council approved a resolution urging Congress to consider a slave reparations bill. "I want 40 acres and a Lexus. You can keep the mule," added Alderman Carrie Austin.

Lerone Bennett Jr., an executive editor of Ebony magazine who has written many books on the subject of reparations, calls for an apology first, followed by "several hundred billion dollars" worth of payments in the form of a massive Marshall-style rebuilding of black communities, and "GI bill-type individual disbursements for scholarships and home purchases."

In response to critics who consider it inappropriate to offer reparations to people who weren't enslaved themselves, some black psychologists countered that slavery has had a lasting impact, and refer to it as "post-slavery traumatic syndrome."