Before the reparations question, how do we [black people] extricate ourselves from the ignominious legacy of slavery, colonialism and a slave mentality?

~ Dr. Benn Bongang, chairman, Department of Political Science, Savannah State University

On Monday, at Savannah State University, where I currently am a professor, I had the honor to participate in a fascinating panel discussion on the question of reparations for American slavery. The event was sponsored by the student organization "Black Students with a Mission" and was attended by about 50 students and about a half-dozen faculty.

On the panel were four SSU faculty, including Dr. Benn Bongang (chairman of the Department of Political Science), Dr. Stephen Asperheim (History), Kevin Hales (History) and myself.

The reparations forum was a big success not so much for the number of people who showed up, but from the profound statements emanating from the panelists and particularly insightful comments and questions from the audience.

Two noteworthy comments were from Dr. Deborah Fonteneau (Liberal Arts), who eloquently discussed "mental colonization" and stated that as of 2008 there are over 26 million slaves throughout the world (primarily in Muslim, Asian and African countries), and Dr. Mohamed Mukhtar (History), who challenged the panelists and the audience alike to raise the level of discourse beyond the "parochial" level of American slave reparations and to view this subject through the lens of an international paradigm.

After a brief overview of the reparations question by the moderator, professor Davida Harris, I gave a short synopsis of reparations from an historical perspective based on America's first attempt at repaying slaves for hundreds of years of free labor.

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Professor Kevin Hales (my colleague who played Barack Obama to my McCain in an earlier political debate I wrote about in "The day I took fire from 'Obama'") was in rare form; his ideas eloquently and passionately presented a pro-reparations argument and were delivered in his usual trenchant, historical, witty, interesting and piercing manner. For example, his retort to a woman who admonished the audience not to get stuck in the past waiting for reparations was, "You can't look forward until you look back!"

My comments regarding reparations were based on both a historical and a legal paradigm. Historically speaking, the reparations question goes back to 1865, at the end of Civil War and the vanquishing of the pro-slavery South. In Special Field Order, No. 15, Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman endeavored to stem the rampant poverty and despair black ex-slaves suffered after the war by giving them "40 acres and a mule." However, after Lincoln was assassinated, his predecessor, Andrew Johnson, cruelly rescinded Sherman's order and multitudes of black ex-slaves received no reparations.

I then moved from a historical perspective to a legal one where I outlined five legal arguments against reparations:

1. Since slavery was not illegal prior to the passage of the 13th Amendment (ratified 1870), consequently there existed no legal foundation for compensating the descendants of slaves for the crime against their ancestors when, in strictly legal terms, no crime was committed.
   
   
2. Since the U.S. government technically did not exist prior to June 21, 1788, determining the historical victims of slavery in order to justly apply reparations from the U.S. government exclusively to those who were enslaved under U.S. laws would be an unattainable policy.
   
   
3. Some areas of the South had communities of freedman, such as existed in Savannah, Charleston and New Orleans, while in the North, for example, former slaves lived as freedman both before and after the official creation of the United States in June 1788.
   
   
4. A reparations case in Chicago called In re African American Slave Descendants (2005) dismissed a high-profile lawsuit based on the fact that it was filed long after the statute of limitations had passed.
   
   
5. The Libertarian argument was stated in one of the party's press releases: "A renewed demand by African-Americans for slavery reparations should be rejected because such payments would only increase racial hostility." This is the reparation = societal anarchy argument.

Dr. Asperheim's argument for reparations came from the ideological left. Asperheim, an admitted liberal Democrat, based his reasoning for reparations on a historical paradigm. He thought that classical affirmative action remedies of the 1970s were not nearly enough. He called for the type of real, comprehensive reparations white people got from FDR's "New Deal" programs of the 1930s and the GI Bill of the late 1940s and '50s where official public policy designed government programs to benefit white men and to exclude and discriminate against black people of equal merit based solely on race.

Regarding the vaunted GI Bill first enacted in 1948, Dr. Asperheim quoted Ira Katznelson's book "When Affirmative Action was White" (2005) in arguing the program created the modern middle class and that the dirty little secret is black people were largely excluded from the GI Bill, even though black soldiers put their lives on the line in defense of America during World War II.

In short, Asperheim believes in reparations for all black people based on historical de jure and de facto racial discrimination while viewing slave reparations as unworkable for pragmatic and logistical reasons.

The climax of the reparations forum was when Dr. Bongang spoke on the reparations issue from a global perspective, addressing issues like:

• The Berlin Conference (1884) where the European powers met essentially to carve up Africa and confiscate its vast largely untapped resources by exploiting and abusing the African people;
  
  
• African colonialism causing the death of a once vibrant and strong African culture;
  
  
• Can the treacherous acts of colonialism actually be repaid?
  
  
• Bongang's theory of colonialism as "crimes against humanity";
  
  
• Slavery = national genocide;
  
  
• How do we assign the blame?
  
  
• Africa's historical and intimate ties with their past colonizers;
  
  
• Africa seemingly being locked in a perpetual state of poverty;
  
  
• Beginning in the 1980s, the U.N.'s World Bank made numerous loans to Africa with many strings attached in an effort to keep the money out of the dictator's pockets and directed to the African people. Therefore, who owns Africa? The people? The dictators? The U.N.? China? The U.S.?

As a metaphor to his narrative on viewing reparations through the lens of African colonialism, Bongang cited the classic 1959 novel "Things Fall Apart" by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The title of the novel comes from William Butler Yeats' poem "The Second Coming."

Bongang disseminated Achebe's work through the eyes of his fated protagonist, Okonkwo, a local village leader and champion wrestler. His ill-fated attempt to assimilate to the white colonizers' modes of society and religion led this proud African leader to commit suicide. A tragic death, Bongang said, was a poignant symbol of the tragic toll colonialism took against Africa and continues to exact against her to this day.

Bongang ended with this profound and haunting question: How do we [black people] extricate ourselves from the ignominious legacy of slavery, colonialism and a slave mentality? (Stunned silence from the audience) Bongang ended his magnificent critique on reparations with this irrefutable logic: Until we first deal with this problem [a slave mentality], no amount of reparations will ever cure our psychological, physical and spiritual condition.

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