Giving back what isn’t yours is a fundamental way of righting a wrong. Admitting mistakes and making amends is another. These are not controversial statements. But when it comes to American history and the fraught question of who profited from slavery and what, if anything, should be done about it now, the question is often framed as “reparations,” and the debate turns acrimonious and, to many, impossible to resolve.
We are a nation that held other humans in bondage through much of our history, and yet we are also a nation of immigrants, people who came here long after the Constitution was amended to ban slavery. To many of these Americans, slavery and its aftereffects are horrible sins of the past but just that — in the past — and neither they nor their ancestors had any part in it, or in any way profited. So to them, “reparations” make no sense. At any rate, how could you possibly know who owes and who is owed? The question is too broad, too vague, too abstract. But now comes a fascinating, deeply reflective study by Harvard University on its own awful history with slavery and discrimination. It is quite specific and because of that, might offer a way forward.
In “Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery,” one of the richest, most revered universities in the world admits that its “very existence depended upon the expropriation of land and labor — land acquired through dispossession of Native territories and labor extracted from enslaved people, including Native Americans and Africans brought to the Americas by force. And, long after the official end of slavery, intellectual clout of influential Harvard leaders and distinguished faculty would be a powerful force justifying the continued subjugation of Black Americans.”
