01: What can the world tell us about U.S. reparations?

[0:00:05 Speaker 0] Welcome to the American Ingredient – a podcast that examines race in American society from an academic perspective. Focusing on the work from social scientists and legal scholars, The American Ingredient demonstrates that race is not the only ingredient in making America – but in order to make America you need two heaping spoonfuls. Requiring individuals and groups to make amends for past wrongs is a critical part of human society. If individuals could

[0:00:31 Speaker 1] just harm someone without being required to help in the healing process, societal relations would break down quickly. African Americans have argued that in order for American society to functionally operate, the U.S government must formally make amends for support for slavery, Jim Crow and numerous other discriminatory practices. To this point, the call for African American reparations has not produced the desired outcome at the federal level. However, local movements have been able to gain leverage. They have been able to convince local officials to provide reparations for past misdeeds as a way to help heal old wounds and power and prevent these wrongs from occurring again. For example, City of Chicago has provided $5.5 million in reparations to numerous individuals who were subjected to torture by Officer John Berg from the 1970’s to the early ’90s. Further, the city concerted a monument to the victims of Berg’s torture and incorporated this case into the U.S. History curriculum for 8th and 10th grade students. Our guest on this episode is Professor Kathy Powers of the University of New Mexico. Professor Powers is currently researching how groups and nations have sought reparations from the misdeeds of their government as well as other nations. We start this episode with Professor Powers discussing how she became interested in this topic and some of the challenges of the African American case.

[0:01:48 Kathy] So at that

[0:01:49 Kathy] time I was teaching classes on international political economy, international relations, and I had a student who was bi-racial, African American and Jewish, who walked into my IPE class and asked a very simple question. He said “I want to do a project on why my Jewish grandmother got reparations for the Holocaust but my African working grandmother did not for slavery.”

[0:02:13 Kathy] And so I said, you know, this is an internationally oriented class. Can you find other cases?

[0:02:19 Speaker 1] Professor Powers, after this experience with a student, where did you go to next?

[0:02:23 Kathy] Aborigines in New Zealand and Australia have had a similar battle. Indigenous people in Ecuador and Peru have the same battle – because

[0:02:33 Kathy] they weren’t considered human beings or citizens. It took years

[0:02:39 Kathy] before they were able to get legal standing to be able to pursue reparations and legal venues, policy venues within a country.

[0:02:50 Kathy] I think we need to be clear that the African

[0:02:53 Kathy] American case represents the most difficult cases on the planet,

[0:02:58 Kathy] but not unique. And those are historical injustices. Where if we’re talking about slavery, one of the main critiques is why should there be reparations? How can you demonstrate what happened then

[0:03:11 Kathy] connects to harm today? Okay, so

[0:03:13 Kathy] one of the things I’ve come to understand is we have to consider the African American reparations case

[0:03:21 Kathy] in a

[0:03:21 Kathy] global context, to understand why it is so difficult. It sits inside of a global hegemon.

[0:03:29 Speaker 1] So we understand a hegemon as a state or nation that can dominate other states and nations, and usually this is through economic or military power. So what is it about the United States that makes it so difficult for African Americans to seek reparations from other from international bodies,

[0:03:47 Kathy] Usually, in other

[0:03:49 Kathy] countries, human rights activists – part of their strategy is to get the attention of the U.S. If the U.S knows about this, the U.S will put pressure on our government, try to hold them accountable in a war crimes tribunal, and put pressure, as US did with Japan and the comfort women in Southeast Asia who were forced into sexual slavery during World War Two, the U.S government passed domestic legislation in U.S Congress to put pressure on Japan to pay.The U.S was responsible for apprehending Pinochet in Chile, for example, or Charles Taylor in Liberia. One of things I think African Americans understand is that no one will come when you are inside of a hegemon and human rights violations are happening. What country or group of countries will come and help or put pressure on the U.S, I mean even in the cases, we have 50 cities in the U.S under investigation for police brutality. The United Nations put forward a report that outlined the human rights violations, but it’s not like there’s some sort of force that’s gonna come in and compel the U.S government to change its behavior. So the strategies of individuals in the African American reparations movement are very different than the global trend that’s happening right now. The global trend is there are now international courts, international treaties, domestic courts, community organizations. There is an institutional and legal landscape that has emerged globally for individuals to bring reparations claims against their governments, and the rest of the world is using them. Minorities in the United States are not because I’ve talked to some of the lawyers on these cases and they say, even if we want a judgment against the U.S government for slavery and mass human rights violations, if the government chose not to comply, how do you make a hegemonic or very powerful country comply?

[0:05:50 Speaker 1] Professor Powers have highlighted the difficulties we get in the federal government to respond to these causal reparations. Where have you seen success in these calls? Reparations?

[0:05:59 Speaker 5] There hasn’t dissatisfaction in the U. S. Supreme Court, nor and Congress. And so where the successes beginning toe happen is in city ordinances and also corporate reparations. So, for example, there’s a group called the Restitution Study Group and D A drop Allman is leading it. And she’s a lawyer who realized that who is the legal person who benefited from slavery that still in existence today? And that would be corporations like New York Life insurance, for example, or work cov a bank that, for instance, with New York life insurance. They offered forms of life insurance for slave owners to put enslaved people in more dangerous situations with a high probability of death, knowing that if they did that, they would be compensated for property lost. So what she has done is in her group is that they’re going after corporations for reparations, saying that you could not exist if you did not, for example, have that sort of insurance. At that time in New York, life insurance has paid reparations. So we’ve had successes that most people don’t even know about and very narrow places where they say, OK, we’ll give reparations to this group of people who are descendants of these and slave people in this day and it’ll be scholarships for college so that they can say that they did something. The other strategy has been cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and I know Cleveland and Columbus were considering. It is saying, if you are a corporation and you want a contract with the city to build any building, you are required first to do research into your background about whether or not you have any connections to slavery and reveal that truth before you can get this contract with the city. So it’s the opposite of a truth commission that is commissioned or created at the level of the national government where eminent people are put on and commissioned with doing an investigative report of the atrocities during a particular period of time, interviewing the perpetrators and the victims, as in Chile, Argentina, South Africa, that this report then it’s supposed to represent the truth of what happened. There isn’t the political will circumstances for that in the US because it would be very difficult to create a commission to deal with African Americans of slavery in this time, especially under President Trump. So what they’ve been doing is the city ordinances as a different method of documenting the truth of it, least the involvement of particular corporations, and it’s powerful that the political will to have such a requirement in order to be awarded a contract by the city has happened in these cities that have larger populations of African Americans.

[0:09:06 Speaker 2] So you’ve talked about why the U. S cases so distinct? What about other Western industrialized nations, such as France or United Kingdom, which have pretty strong economies and pretty strong militaries and also have a history of colonization? How have they dealt with issues of reparations? Or have they been like the U. S. People shot away from trying to take them to task about reparations?

[0:09:30 Speaker 6] Very similar. And in fact, the reparations claims that air coming out of the Caribbean and out of African countries are primarily being launched towards the UK and France. So really good example of this is hey, after to sound the overture led the flavor goal against him, please Army and Juan, and ousted France from Haiti at the time the US, the UK and France got together so we could not have this happen again in the Atlantic slave trade and imposed reparations on Haiti. It was 80% of the national budget for 100 50 years. So you can understand

[0:10:14 Speaker 1] example of Haiti is an extreme example of impeding the progress of other nations. Haiti, being a former French colony that was overthrown in a rebellion amongst the slaves, face scrutiny from both the U. S and France. The US imposed an embargo against Haiti, strongly restricting its ability to trade and develop. Furthermore, France demanded that Haiti hand over 80% of its budget for 150 years, and this is the equivalent of paying $21 billion over 150 year period. And Haiti is now making demands that France paid this back as a former preparations so they can rebuild and develop their

[0:10:53 Speaker 6] infrastructures. So you can understand Haiti’s reparations claim to France if you don’t understand the historical impact. Now, the Caribbean countries as a whole have been very influential in reparations efforts globally because they’re going after the UK for colonialism in the Caribbean, and they’re using an international organization to do it. It’s called Keira Calm, and it is a trade organization among Caribbean countries to facilitate international trade among them, and they also use it to deal their security issues, military security issues. Also, they are engaged in some really institutional innovation by saying individually were small. But if we mulled allies our leverage through care. Com and use it as an instrument. We can bring reparations claims against the U. K collectively rather than individually. And the Caricom points, like 10 points that have been outlined for the kinds of reparations that are necessary, have had a global influence. And in fact, individuals who are participating in the African American Reparations movement have adopted these 10 principles, which include recognizing not only the economic impact of colonialism and slavery on Caribbean countries but also economic impact. Want individuals the psychological and health impact on individuals in the Caribbean as a function of poverty as a function of lack of access to medical care for Haiti, the repeated natural disasters that have happened in addition to be the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. So what makes African Americans different from folks in the Caribbean and African countries is that we don’t have control of the apparatus of the states. Belinda Wallace is the one that pointed this out to me, she says. Caribbean countries in African countries have control of the state and then can use international organizations and courts

[0:13:12 Speaker 5] to bring claims against the U. K. But because African Americans don’t control state. I can’t determine

[0:13:21 Speaker 6] or or decide to bring a claim as the United States against the UK four colonialism or four slavery and the International Court of Justice or any other court. We lack one important mechanism or resource for reparation seeking and nets as a state actor. How would say, Ta

[0:13:43 Speaker 1] State actors? A person was acting on behalf of governmental body. So the police, military or elected official,

[0:13:49 Speaker 3] the success we’ve seen is in G a negotiations. African and Caribbean countries

[0:13:58 Speaker 6] have made an argument that there should be some debt forgiveness as a form of reparations for colonialism and slavery. And they were successful at doing that. And it was because they had the apparatus of the state to be involved in at the table

[0:14:15 Speaker 3] of negotiations. Those were approved

[0:14:18 Speaker 1] professor powers. It seems like the international method for seeking reparations of state actors has been fairly successful. How long is the strategy been used?

[0:14:26 Speaker 3] As far as using international organizations to seek reparations, this is a fairly new strategy that the Caribbean countries have recently

[0:14:37 Speaker 6] watched, so it remains to be seen whether about it’s worked, I can say the degree to which has had an impact this far is those points there. 10 points that lay out the ways in which individuals and states have been impacted by slavery and colonialism have been adopted by other states and by individuals. And so even in, um,

[0:15:05 Speaker 5] African American academia Journals in education, history, sociology and then also in education focused on Children, decided two years ago to do special additions on African American reparations and invoking the Caricom points that I’ve described asking scholars to weigh in and write about the African American reparations pursuit and how we might incorporate these points that may help us to be more successful. So

[0:15:41 Speaker 3] I was say, many of these strategies are

[0:15:43 Speaker 6] new and largely because of the evolution of international law and the international legal system

[0:15:51 Speaker 5] that involved has been primarily focused on protecting the sovereignty meeting authority of countries. And so there were a few venues available for individuals to bring claims or even international organizations to bring claims and bring the target of them. Theo International Court of Justice was really it, and it on Lee allows states to be the target and sender of claims and if, for example, your assets you’re living in a foreign country. Your assets were taken away by another country’s government. You don’t have the power or the standing, the legal capacity to bring a claim against that government and the International Court of Justice. You had to convince your own government that its sovereignty was violated in the process and to bring a claim Thorn you. What’s happening now is the recognition, especially with the Holocaust in the Nuremberg trials that orders air not cover. So there’s individual accountability, but also that there are limits to state sovereignty. And so countries cannot simply commit genocide or atrocities towards their citizens and claim that they have our sovereign right to do so. With this norm emerging that there’s limits to state sovereignty but also on the United Nations put forth a document called the Right to Remedy in 2005 that said that governments also have a responsibility that if their citizens have suffered human rights violations, even if they’re not responsible, they are obligated to pay reparations. So they’re these new norms happening that say that states have limits and that individuals have human rights that are separate and not interpreted in terms of state sovereignty.

[0:17:47 Speaker 1] So

[0:17:47 Speaker 5] what does this mean for studying reparations? There was very little room historically to talk about human rights in the study of international relations, because that wasn’t considered high politics so hard. Politics was anything security related, low politics was economics, and it was largely about this. Human rights, especially when we’re talking about governments committee state repression towards their citizens was considered the purview of comparative politics. When scholars realized

[0:18:20 Speaker 7] that

[0:18:21 Speaker 6] state repression of their citizens was a global phenomena that we could see across the planet and regions across the world, international relations scholars became interested in in in

[0:18:33 Speaker 5] a World, and it’s called anarchic. From an international relations perspective, it doesn’t mean chaotic. It means that there’s no world government to protect stays. Nortel states what to do. And if we live in this sort of world where states are the primary actors, how do we hold them accountable? Has now become a central question.

[0:18:55 Speaker 1] Professor Powers, You’ve noted the difficulty of getting scholars of international relations to pay attention to questions such as these has has always been the case. And are there contemporary examples of international relations scholars paying attention to questions like these. There

[0:19:11 Speaker 5] are a couple similar books that came out last year that are showing us that we want always this way. The study of international relations did include the source of questions. Thirties because why was colonialism happening? What countries were imposing colonialism and slavery on what other types of countries so European countries imposing it, colonialism on Latin American, African and Asian countries, for example. So Arrow Henderson Penn State University has a book, African realism. And what he’s talking about is the theories of international relations don’t work the same way in the global South, primarily Africa. These were theories that were created off of interstate relations between European countries in Europe and the United States, and so what? He talks about his realism. And in Africa, countries are not mostly concerned about attacks from other countries. Their security threats are potential Cruz and civil conflict with in the country. So then he takes realism, And how does it then be applied In that context, Bob by Tallis at University of Pennsylvania has a seminal book out right now that then challenges race in the study of international relations, and he’s done this archival work at Howard and found that Ralph Bunche and other scholars, when they graduate from the Ivy weeds, they could not be hired at historically white institutions that could not be published in historically white journals. So they were hired at Howard, created the Sour School of International Relations and, along with Howard, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and, I Think, Colombia. These were the major centres to study international relations. So Bob by Telus argued that the move from study, race and colonialism, human security issues was purposeful. When Kenneth Waltz comes in and says, Well, if we focus on the structure of the international system, the distribution of military capabilities, where the countries have the majority of military capabilities and power and make some predictions about when we see more or less conflict between a una polar system, when there’s one major country as military power bi polar, where there’s two or multi polar, that we can understand war and security issues much better and it’s much more simple and its elegance. And so we lost this history of African Americans having a seminal impact on the study of international relations, which is profound for me because I didn’t know about this history, and largely thought that I was alone just to show you how small this world is today in this very specific world of the social scientific study of international relations. Christian Davenport of the University of Michigan, Arrow Henderson at Penn State University, Mark Sawyer recently passed at U. C. L. A. Finish A bond at the University of Maryland and Chicana Thomas and Michigan State University are examples as far, and this is important away. I say this. As anyone knows, I’m not the first black woman to get a PC in international relations. That would be Merced Tate, but I’m the first in quantitative international relations to be tenure in 2020. So we’re talking about in this small field. Nationally, we have less than 10 people.

[0:22:51 Speaker 1] This is, Ah, pretty strong project and can have large ramifications for not only internal politics in the US but also international politics. What do you hope is the main product of this book?

[0:23:05 Speaker 5] The book that I’m working on is called making amends, the new politics of global reparations. And so one of the things that are realizes there wasn’t sort of an effort to lay out how do you pursue reparations. Most people have no idea one that they suffer, especially in the United States. A human rights violation. And what does that look like? And in second, what are reparations? And then what are the venues in which you could pursue them domestically and internationally? And then, finally, some of the sort of political and legal issues that arise and pursuing reparations? So the first half of the book is sort of a primer that individuals on the research side it lays out the institutional and legal landscape. Four reparations. Seeking to start thinking about this is the broad question that shapes all of my work. Why does some victims for sue reparations? Others don’t. Why are some efforts awarded and others aren’t? And then what are some of the consequences of reparations? And he has practical implications. Where do individuals have legal standing to bring claims against different kinds of perpetrators, whether it be the state and international organization and other kinds of groups, And how would you get started? How does it work? What kinds of reparations might you seek So in the American context are sort stereotype of reparations is money and wants to get outside of the West. It’s very different. First of our reparations, serve several functions, and then I’ll give you some examples. First is restitution, which means to restore to the previous context. So if your land was taken away, giving your land back his restitution if your citizenship was taken away, restoring that, giving that back his restitution. But what happens if your family has been massacres? Restitution doesn’t work. So then, well, we more typically think about its compensation. And that’s often financial in terms of reparations. And that

[0:25:19 Speaker 6] can look like, ah, one time lump settlement or more like a Social

[0:25:23 Speaker 5] Security program where you’re paid monthly. And then there’s the cutting edge of reparations, which is called rehabilitation, so that if your hands and your feet were cut off, as in Sierra Leone, so that you could not walk, you could not work. You could not bows. Ah, love. Some payment or even a certain amount of money for the rest of your life might not be enough to deal with the medical problems that result so prosthetics can be reparations and were used in Sierra Leone. Or, if you have PTSD because you live in a context like Uganda, where there’s constant violence, access to psychological care or if you have been suffer sexual violence of multiple types consistently and have major medical issues over which or you were to other forms of torture. Access to medical care for the rest of your life is a form of reparations. And so we see this in Peru, for example, where community health centers have been created and put in communities where a large number of the people have suffered similar human rights violations. So it could be that the community health center is built, and they knew that free access to let the rest of your life politics comes into play. When you know in Peru you have to have a certificate that says that you’re a victim and that you can then use the community center or in Chicago. After police torture reparations were awarded by the City Council seven months ago and community health centers were created on the south side of the West Side of Chicago. Recognizing that went, Commander Burke had torture centers on the south side in the West side from 1972 to 1991 that the 100 men, black men and others who were tortured in those centers that impacted the entire community. So the communities have access to that health care. So in terms of the real world implications is that sensors like the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York, redress in the UK reparations efforts here in the United States are beginning to think more about what was the nature of the human rights violation. What kinds of reparations exist? Can we ask victims what they need? And can we craft them to more directly deal with the harm? So this has huge implications for, for example, I’ve just described to you reparations as a legal claim and domestic and international courts and reparations as a public policy as the vehicle for reparations. And that mechanism for reparations is spreading across the planet. Because we have 100,000 people who have suffered a similar human rights violation and the government is responsible, it would be judicially and inefficient to have them all bring legal claims. So what governments are beginning to do is to craft public legislation that funds the public policy that creates community centres, release access to medical care, the primary form of reparations in these public policies has three components. It’s the traditional compensation is monetary educational benefits, assuming that your educational prospects for your Children have been affected by the human rights violations you suffered and then finally, health benefits and access to healthcare. So Chicago police torture reparations were modeled after Chile, Argentina, South Africa. So the victims of police torture now can have access to free education. At the city colleges of Chicago and vocational schools, community health centers have been put in place. And then also the textbooks in the

[0:29:25 Speaker 4] Chicago public school system will

[0:29:27 Speaker 5] be re Britain as a form of educational reparations that the story of this torture will be put in the history books to ensure that it’s never for gotten We’re done again.

[0:29:40 Speaker 1] As Professor powers has demonstrated, the African American case of reparations is uphill battle, and we’ve seen that this is not just the case for African Americans, but also for other nations that have sought redress from what other nations have caused them. Over time, the history of colonialism, along with the history of racial discrimination within nations, has caused individuals to call upon their nations to not only apologize, but to make formal amends for what they’ve done. And what Professor Powers has highlighted here is a really discussion of the social contract and as well as the relationship between the citizens and their nations. What happens when the nation violates its citizens? And how should the nation respond in helping heal that wound? We have seen action take place in Chicago as an attempt to try to heal the wounds from Officer Berg’s actions. However, we’re still seeing calls all over the nation for the nation to make redress for what is allowed to happen in the past. And we will see if these new theories of these new strategies will have success in the long run.

[0:30:50 Speaker 0] Thank you for listening to the American ingredient. American Daniel, a professor in the department government, the University of Texas. I would like to think Michael Heidenreich and Jacob Weiss their assistance along with the Department of Government, the University of Texas and the University of Texas El E. I. T s development