CEP

1

Temple University PAN-AFRICAN STUDIES COMMUNITY
EDUCATION PROGRAM (PASCEP)

• CEP371--Pre-requisites A Sense of Truth
  JusticeUnderstanding the Demand of
  African-Americans for ReparationsWeek 2
• Race Capital The Economics of Enslavement
  
  Instructor
  Brother Minister Ari S. Merretazon, M.S.CED

2
(Peeling the Onion) Race Capital The Economics
of Enslavement

• The Theory of Restitution
• The Race Problem
• Discussion
• Background History
• Discrimination
• Achieving Parity via Reparations

3
Race Capital The Economics of Enslavement
Theory of Restitution Applied to Enslavement

• To designate the result as unjust enrichment and
  estimate its present value and distribution and
• To the estimate the deviation from fairness
• To then draw policy implications usually in the
  form of lump sum or other re-distributive income
  and wealth transfers, in-kind subsidies, or
  investments in real and human capital

• Un-remedied historical economic injustices
• To specify fair standards, prices, wages, terms
  of trade, interest rates, return on investment,
  that was violated, usually by force
• To audit the historical pattern of transactions
  between the groups and compare the actual with
  the fair standard

4
Race Capital The Economics of Enslavement The
Race Problem

• For over 370 years, income and wealth were
  coercively diverted from Africans and African
  Americans to the benefit of European and European
  Americans
• Done through enslavement and subsequent
  discrimination in education, housing,, labor and
  capital markets,etc.
• Blacks have never received any group compensation
  fro the crime of slavery forced upon them/us by
  the people and government of the United States

• The race problem has been analyzed from every
  angle but have not produced changes or policies
  to correct the problem.
• The race problem is the coerced and manipulated
  diversion of income and wealth from Africans to
  Europeans
• Racism, whatever it might be, it is an instrument
  for creating and maintaining economic dominance
  and unjust economic relationships it is
  profitable. (Richard America, The Theory of
  Restitution, 1997 Paper)

5
Race Capital The Economics of Enslavement

• Discussion
• The Promise of 40 Acres and a Mule
• Moral Debt
• Measurable Unjust Enrichment
• Justice and Morality
• Unjust Enrichment
• Distribution of Income Wealth by Race
• Politically Feasible and Practical Reparations
• Discrimination continues through the 21st
  Century, and has produced greater benefits than
  those during the preceding 300 years

6
Race Capital The Economics of Enslavement

• Background History
• Agricultural
• Manufacturing
• Transportation
• Utility Emergency services
• Built infrastructures---roads
• Westward Expansion
• Benefited Europeans directly and indirectly thru
  human capital formation

7
Race Capital The Economics of Enslavement

• Discrimination
• Allowed millions of European-Americans and
  immigrants to enter high paying occupations
• Skilled Blacks were displaced by immigrants
• Black earnings were established and blocked by
  private practice, and conscious, active, wrongful
  interventionist public policy
• Whites enjoy a 5 trillion 10 trillion unjust
  enrichment at the expense of Blacks (Richard
  America, 1997)

8
Race Capital The Economics of Enslavement

• Achieving Parity via Reparations
• Payments from unpaid slave labor before 1863
• Payment from underpayment since 1863
• Payment to compensate for denial of human
  possibilities, denial of opportunity to acquire
  land and natural resources when they were widely
  available to European settlers and investors

• Achieving Parity via Reparations
• Per capita cash payment, based on a pro rata
  share of the reparations debt
• Investment of the reparations payments in
  income-earning assets, with income allocated
  annually on a per capita basis
• Use of the payment to bail-out education and
  skills levels, housing ownership, economic
  status, health, and behavioral pathologies

9
Race Capital The Economics of Enslavement

• Achieving Parity via Reparations
• What Should Reparations Accomplish?
• 1. To provide restitution for the unpaid labor
  of slave ancestors.
• 2. To re-direct to Blacks that portion of
  national income which has been diverted from
  blacks to Whites by enslavement and
  discrimination.
• 3. To provide the Black community with the
  wealth and income it would by now have had if
  it had been treated as other immigrants after
  Emancipation.