4/7 Slavery Reparations and Racial Justice
Thomas Craemer, associate professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut, traced slavery reparations proposals from the founding of the United States to the present. He also addressed historical precedents for slavery reparations, albeit in the wrong direction–that is, to the descendants of slave owners rather than the enslaved. Various estimation methods have been developed for the outstanding debt to African American descendants of the enslaved, land-based, price-based, and wage-based. Dr. Craemer presented the wage-based method to calculate what the enslaved lost by not being paid for their time. Historical reparations precedents can help us in the design and implementation of future federal reparations policies with the goal of closing the racial wealth gap.