The idea that reparations have already happened is one that John McWhorter has been defending for 20 years. He did it again Wednesday on CNN following the Juneteenth reparations hearing — but McWhorter also acknowledged that there’s room for what he calls “new reparations”.
The unwillingness of both Black people and white to acknowledge progress on racial equality is a long-running theme for McWhorter, a Columbia University linguistics professor and author or editor of 20 books.
In his 2000 book, “Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America”, McWhorter argued that “in most cases, (racism) is not an obstacle to people being the best that they can be.”
McWhorter sat down with Harvard philosophy professor and activist Dr. Cornell West and CNN commentator Don Lemon to talk about “new reparations” after Wednesday’s reparations hearing.
“I don’t disagree that there should be reparations in terms of slavery, in terms of Jim Crow redlining,” McWhorter said. However, he added that reparations have already happened in the form of the Great Society domestic policy initiatives. President Lyndon B. Johnson designed the programs in 1964 and 1965 to eliminate poverty and racial injustice.
“For example what happened in Bedford Stuyvesant during the Great Society, you look at all the programs and how much money was put in — those were reparations,” McWhorter said. “They didn’t happen to use the word.”
McWhorter said that reparations were already tried, and based on the aftermath of Great Society, “I don’t think it would be very effective.”
McWhorter predicted that “new reparations” won’t be effective either, so what’s the point?
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“The idea that we need to get a bunch of mostly white people in business clothes to say ‘I’m sorry’ and to cut some checks — I don’t think it would be very effective … I’m afraid based on how people felt after the Great Society … what we need to do now is do all sorts of things that can help poor Black people be less poor.”
If reparations happen, McWhorter said, “the smart thing would be to say reparations was just a beginning, that they better not think that they can treat us like animals for 400 years and then pay us off. The idea would be for smart Black people and fellow travelers to say that reparations weren’t really that important… The idea would be: be wary. It’s not over and that it didn’t matter.
“If that’s what people are going to say, why do it? Why not just fight Black poverty and then have a little thank-you session afterward where people say they’re sorry and cut some checks?”
Dr. West responded, saying that part of the discussion on reparations “is just having the courage to admit that we have a fragile experiment in Democracy founded on monstrous crimes against humanity.”
McWhorter said he sees the reparations testimony as a turning point. “I’ve been saying for 20 years now that I think reparations already happened. I can get behind this idea that we would have to have what I internally call “new reparations,” and I would apply my pen and my voice to it and I might even surprise a lot of people.
“I can get behind this. One must be open to things. But I really think that people who are arguing for this need to consider what it would feel like to admit — not that things are perfect, but — that America had turned a corner and, as Brother West says, that we have come to terms. When are we ever going to come to terms? As a Black person, I need to feel whole.
“If this isn’t going to be constructive we shouldn’t do it, but I’m afraid that a lot of Black people in the United States would be uncomfortable with the idea that something really significant had been done because I think a lot of us feel that being victims is the only way that we are legitimate. That’s because of what happened for 400 years. I understand but it worries me. Let’s do reparations and allow that it mattered and be whole or let’s just not do it.”
Nick Gillespie interviewed McWhorter in April on the Reason.com podcast. Listen to more of that interview here.
