Why Jews should support Reparations for Black Americans

Jews have benefitted from reparations, now it’s time we spoke up for Black Americans

Last month, I got a statement from the IRS in the mail. It wasn’t for me, but for my Father in law, who had forwarded his mail to my husband and I when he moved to Israel in the final years of his life. It was a statement detailing the payments he had received in the most recent tax year, from the German government, for the murder of his extended family.

Reparations are a legal tool to address crimes against a group of people, perpetrated by a government.

What they don’t do: bring back the dead, or the heal the pain of loss.

What they do: support the survivors and descendants of those murdered so their legacy will live on.

They function as an admission of guilt, an attempt at redress, and some tangible way for a society to atone for a collective harm.

By themselves, reparations are not enough, but that’s no excuse not to use them at all. The most frequent argument I hear against reparations, is that it is a slippery slope into historical oppression Olympics, until our legal system becomes drowned in the economic redress of historic harm. I am underwhelmed by slippery slope arguments at the best of times, but here it seems particularly pernicious. The transatlantic slave trade, and the multigenerational crime of chattel slavery, followed by the insulting window dressing of freedom that was Jim Crow and is mass incarceration and so much more, is a crime against humanity of historic proportions. In an attempt to monetize Black bodies, the United States government permitted or expressly acted to perpetrate an attempted genocide of the spirit. Black families were torn apart, Black religions, names, languages, and cultural practices were erased, and devalued. Black communities and communal leaders were targeted for intimidation, violence, murder, and destruction.

To argue that reparations are improper precisely because the harm here was of such magnitude, is like saying murdering one person will send you to jail, but murdering a huge group of people is just SO complicated, so… let’s call the whole thing off. But we sure are sorry.

Other groups have sought and received reparations, including Japanese Americans who experienced the horror of internment camps, and us; Jews. We know what we are asking, and why it matters. There’s a visceral satisfaction in that tax statement. Especially as anti-Jewish violence and Holocaust denial are on the rise. Holding that piece of paper from the IRS is acknowledgement. A link, however flimsy, to the murdered generations who will never hold their grandchildren in their arms, as my Father in law did when my oldest son was born.

I think the real reason we are reluctant as a country to issue reparations, is that then we’d have to admit that the systemic oppression of Black Americans never really ended. We’d have to wrestle with the hard questions of who deserves what, and on what basis, and how to put a price tag on an unimaginable crime. And if anything has characterized the United States’ response to dealing with racism, it’s a deep desire to look the other away and avoid discomfort.

So here’s our chance. Right now, there is a lawsuit pending. A survivor of the Tulsa massacre of 1921, at the age of 105, together with descendants of massacre victims and survivors, and several Black community organizations in Tulsa, have brought suit for reparations against the City of Tulsa. They have accurately described racial oppression as an ongoing public nuisance and threat to the physical, mental, emotional, and financial health and safety of Black Tulsans, perpetrated by the Government and its deputized actors, for the systematic purpose of oppression and financial exploitation. Let’s have their backs. American Jews, this is our fight. We need to stand with Black Americans demanding reparations. Whether it is donating to legal funds supporting lawsuits like the one in Tulsa, letting our legislators know that we care about this issue and will support reparations, or simply making the argument loudly and often, until there is no doubt where we stand. We received and benefitted from reparations.

Black Americans have received nothing but continued structural oppression. It's time to change that.