Slavery, Racist Violence, American Apartheid: The Case for Reparations

LIKE THE PROVERBIAL COMET, over the last year the demand for reparations has blazed across the political skyline. Few current issues burn as brightly among African Americans. The movement's surging growth has predictably provoked renewed opposition. Recently critiques of the escalating reparations movement have come from two very different sources: Adolph L. Reed, Jr., a justly-respected African American radical, and David Horowitz, an unrespected neoconservative ideologue. This paper has three interconnected objectives: (1) to explicate Reed's and Horowitz's arguments; (2) to contextualize their arguments; and (3) to suggest an alternative reading of the reparations movement. The first, explication of their arguments, has two aspects: explanation and critique of their positions. The second objective requires that their arguments be located in the current socio-historical and political moment. The third objective attempts to meet the requirement that social analysts move beyond rejection toward projection: that is, that social critics offer an alternative to the theories and practices that they repudiate.