Why Reparations Are In Order For African Americans Summary

In, Documenting the Costs of Slavery, Segregation, and Contemporary Racism: Why Reparations Are in Order for African Americans, by Joe Feagin, covers several topics about the inequality that African Americans face. He also decides to discuss the differently types of reparations that would be beneficial for African Americans in order to improve the quality of life they are currently living. The examples are taken from interviews, political examples throughout the United States, and cases from the United Nations were used to help support the argument that African Americans need of the reparations. Feagin explains that the reparations can come in monetary and non-monetary forms and that will aid in the healing process created by discrimination …show more content…
Unjustified enrichment describes the conditions of African Americans who have suffered through slavery and Whites who have been unfairly enriched by it. In other words, Feagin argues that Whites have achieved economic stability and security during the slavery because of the free labor attained by the slaves. Blacks would not be able to attain any type of wealth or income that the slaves could have received from the work they performed. Also, Whites were the only ones who had access to all of the wealth being produced by the slave trade and labor. Since. Whites had all of the access to the wealth and African Americans became deprived, the economy shifted and favored whites. The white Americans of later generations would now be able to gain access to the gained wealth and be able to support their families for several generations to come. On the other hand, because African Americans did not have the access to the wealth, African Americans were not able to give any economic resources to later generations. White Americans became unjustly dependent by the exploitation of slave labor, which lead to African Americans to be severely …show more content…
This was both at the community and individual level. The first way the Feagin justified the reparations were owed to African Americans is the sheer number of discriminatory events that have occurred against African Americans throughout their lifetime. Those occurrences can reach and have reached into the thousands. For all recent and current lifetimes of African Americans, Feagin states, the amount into the tens of billions of racists, discriminatory acts and incidents. The second way that Feagin justifies the reparations is the fact that slave labor was what fueled the economy during slavery. The fact that much labor was being performed at minimal costs to slave owners is what gave the ultimate rise to agricultural exports in the Western dominated trade around the world. Feagins mentions that without the extensive slave labor, it was more than unlikely that there would have been a successful textile industry in the United States. Without that industry, Feagin states that it would have been nearly impossible for the United States to become an industrial superpower. The third things that Feagin uses to justify reparations is because of the Civil Rights laws that have been created do not justify the past. Many white Americans still believe that discrimination has been adequately corrected and if not been prevented since the Civil Rights Movement. Feagin does