Prof. William “Sandy” Darity, an economist and researcher at Duke University, said that reparations isn’t a way to appease guilt. It’s a responsibility. Darity, one of the voices spearheading the reparations movement, testified at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the long-standing Reparations bill H.R. 40 in June. “For too long the nation has refused to take steps to solve an unethical predicament of its own making—the problem of the unequal status of black and white Americans,” he said during his testimony. “A policy of reparations is a set of compensatory policies for grievous injustice.”
There are people who are inclined to feel like personal guilt is at play here, Darity said. “But since the culpable party is the federal government, it’s not a matter of guilt or individual responsibility, but it is a matter of national responsibility.”
