H.R.40

Until now, talk of reparations conjured up 40 acres and a mule in my mind. That’s not to say that I don’t understand the gravity of the situation. It does mean that it harkens back to an archaic concept bypassing other opportunities America has had to make Black America whole. There’s a saying about being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple. Nothing could be more true for reparation deniers.

The New Deal

Let’s start with the new deal. The new deal is touted as the major economic boost that allowed America to recover from the Depression. It ushered in prosperity for a large swath of citizens. However, “Most New Deal programs discriminated against Blacks. The National Recovery Administration (NRA), for example, not only offered whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for Blacks. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) refused to guarantee mortgages for Blacks who tried to buy in white neighborhoods, and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp, i.e. National Park Service maintained segregated camps. Furthermore, the Social Security Act excluded those job categories Blacks traditionally filled.”

Lack of job choices further exacerbated the situation. According to the University of Houston’s Digital History Project, “When the New Deal got Americans back to work, white Americans got the first pick at jobs, and when Black Americans did get jobs, they were given lower wages.” Redlining is also a by-product of the new deal policies. A great middle-class grew from the new deal leaving Blacks at an insurmountable disadvantage. But it didn’t stop there.

The G.I. Bill

Enter The G.I. Bill. Officially the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the G.I. Bill was created to help veterans of World War II. It established hospitals, made low-interest mortgages available, and granted stipends covering tuition and expenses for veterans attending college or trade schools. Although this was true for most white Americans, Black G.I.s experienced a different plight. In fact, economic, educational, and civil rights disparities increased.

Once again, southern democrats led the charge. Fearing that returning Black servicemen prosper, southern lawmakers fought to make sure states would have the final say in dispensing these benefits. Black servicemen, impacted by the millions, never reaped the benefits of their white counterparts.

Gentrification and Urban Renewal

Gentrification didn’t start overnight. Prominent Georgetown was once predominantly Black.

Most people know that Georgetown once had a large African American population that is, for the most part, not around anymore. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find that in the 1930s, Georgetown was the first neighborhood in DC to undergo a process later known as gentrification. – Greater Greater Washington

Gentrification’s evil twin is urban renewal. Touted as a way ” to give cities funding to clean up their impoverished areas and invest in affordable housing and urban infrastructure projects”, urban renewal was nothing more than the wholesale displacement of Blacks. Urban renewal devastated Southwest DC. My parents spoke of SW as a Black social hub for the city. It wasn’t uncommon to see Blacks reference early DC life by whether they lived in SW.

Whose Downtown writes “Prior to [the] 1950s, Southwest Washington, D.C. was home to a thriving African American community. Many of the District’s African American-owned businesses and residences were located in this area. By 1952, however, white business leaders and members of the federal government began to push for the large-scale clearance of these neighborhoods to make room for new development downtown.

There’s legislation currently pending to study reparations. Rep. Jackson Lee, Sheila [D-TX-18] Introduced H.R.40 – Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans on January 03, 2019. It will be interesting to see where this bill lands now that Democrats have control of all 3 branches of government. It will also be a test for the new president who swore to have our back.

It’s estimated that the value of 40 acres and a mule is somewhere between $640 billion and $6.4 trillion dollars today. I think that’s a good down payment on repairing the damage of centuries of disparity. I’d like my children or grandchildren to wake up one day on third base. In their case, their forefathers would really have hit a triple.

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