Justice for All?

1761 Words4 Pages

America has committed a terrible sin. It has once decided to own people as property and deprive them of their liberties and enslaved them based on the color of their skin. The United States must repair the wounds that have resulted from the social injustice committed against the African American community. Many have argued that this must be done through reparations. However, African Americans have faced a plethora of legal complexities in attempts to obtain legal reparations for past injustices committed against their ancestors. The problem that African’s face in their attempt to obtain legal reparations stems from their historical devaluation in the American legal system. Since the days of colonial America, it was not only law that African Americans were inferior to their Anglophone whites, but also custom (Westley, 82). The prejudice of early America, which has stretched to recent days, has handicapped African American’s ability to exercise their legal rights that navigation of the legal and public complex procedures has made it impossible for them to correct social injustice and obtain reparation

When Slavery existed in the United States, African’s were bought and sold as commodities at current Market values, like products or farm tools (84). Unlike their white counterparts, they were viewed as less then human, unworthy of any civil or legal rights. The civil war and the abolition of slavery that came with it did little to alleviate the prejudice and the suffering that Africans suffered during the period of slavery. The south circumvented the intent of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments that attempted to guarantee ex-slaves their rights by enacting Jim Crow laws that continued to subjugate African Americans ...

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...ing reparations that appear even in today’s society and attempt to repair those inequities in order to write the wrongs of the past.

Works Cited

Craemer, Thomas. "Psychological 'self-other Overlap' and Support for Slavery Reparations." Social Science Research 38 (2009): 668-80. Print.

Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda E., and Anthony P. Lombarado. "Framing Reparations Claims: Differences Between the African and Jewish Social Movements for Reparations." African Studies Review 50 (2007): 27-48. Print.

Westley, Robert. "The Accursed Share: Genealogy, Temporality, and the Problem of Value in Black Reparations Discourse." Representations 92 (2005): 81-106. Print.

“What Was Jim Crow?" Ferris State University: Michigan College Campuses in Big Rapids MI, Grand Rapids MI, Off Campus Locations Across Michigan. Web. 19 Mar. 2010. .

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