Where Fun Comes to Die

An LA Times article wonders what happened to the reparations movement:

Just a few years ago, at roughly the turn of the millennium, slavery reparations seemed the coming thing. A New York Times article in June 2001 reported that the movement to obtain compensation for slaves’ descendants had “taken on substantial force” and was “gaining steam” both in the nation’s universities and in the black community.

All the major black organizations had signed on, including the NAACP, the Urban League and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Randall Robinson’s book, “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” had hit the bestseller lists in 2000. Many state and local Democratic politicians started to talk up the idea.

Then: nothing. Today, reparations seem to have completely disappeared from the national agenda. Few mention them anymore. What happened?

With the election of Barack Obama, many have hoped for a reopening of the reparations discussion, however Obama himself opposes monetary reparations:

I have said in the past _ and I’ll repeat again _ that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed.

This response reminds me of those houses that give out toothbrushes and raisins for Halloween. The implicit acknowledgment in Obama’s statement is that this country owes reparations to ancestors of slaves, just that it shouldn’t be money. What is Obama so afraid of? People spending money on things they want instead of things he thinks they need? In the current economic climate, that might not be so much of a worry. Most people could probably find a lot of “needs” to put the money towards – mortgage payments, food, paying off debt, etc.  But is there anything wrong with people spending the money on wants as well? In the reparations scenario envisioned by the movie Barbershop, Cedric the Entertainer’s character argues that reparations “ain’t gonna do nothing but make Cadillac the number one car dealership in America.” Wouldn’t we rather have that than an American auto industry bailout?