Reparations versus Apologies versus Equality. (or, What's Your Financial Age?)

My home state of New Jersey finally got around to apologizing for their practicing of slavery!

An apology (even one that's 100+ years late) is good. It's better than none, but it doesn't do much. Reparations, some form of money or government assistance might make this more than just a symbolic (and therefore, mostly meaningless) gesture.

Unfortunately, while I am totally in favor of the concept of monetary reparations, I have no idea how it would be implemented in any way approaching fairness. So much time has passed, so many generations are removed, it seems impossible to make up for slavery. Could any payment be looked at as anything other than an insult? Who is going to put a price on someone's life that way?

A lot of arguments against slavery reparations sound like this: "My parents came from (European Country) and they had only the clothes on their backs. They ran from oppression. They worked seven days a week, they lived off worms, etc. Why don't I get reparations?"

I don't want to take anything away from anyone's determined and hard-working immigrant ancestors. It seems likely that most people who move to a completely different nation are going to have a tough time. The difference is that for those of European ancestry, they were allowed to earn property and money the moment they hit America’s shores. The rule of law did not restrict them. African slaves were unable to earn anything and they weren't exactly volunteers.

African slaves whose descendants were later named African-Americans had what I call their "financial age" stalled. What is "financial age?" It's not just your age, but the age of your ancestors, from the moment the first one started acquiring money, property, etc. that was handed down to you.

Introductory Finance teaches that money grows over time. You invest it and it earns a little bit; now it’s more money and that earns more. Faster and faster, bigger and bigger. It accelerates, compounds, grows not linearly but geometrically. However you want to say it, if you put a little bit of money in the bank and don’t touch it for several dozen years, it will grow, and it will grow faster and faster.

Assume an African-American man and a European-American man came to America in the same year (say, 1800.) 207 years have passed since then. The European-American man's ancestors have been earning money that whole time. So his living ancestors have a financial age of 207. The African-American man's ancestors couldn't own property until 1865 say. So their financial age is 142. That's a 65 year difference, about 2 generations. As any glossy pamphlet from the bank will tell you, sixty-five years of compounding savings is a LOT of money. That's money that African-American's distant relatives were unable to pass on. Thanks to slavery, a white girl who is physically five years old is financially older than a black man who is physically 40 years old.

So I've made the case for reparations, but I can't figure out how to implement it. Especially when you consider adding women into the mix. How long were their savings delayed? How much younger are they, financially speaking?

Then think about the current struggle for gay marriage or civil unions. Civil unity (aka marriage) results in tax breaks, and all kinds of money savings. A few decades from now, when it is signed into law, finally, that gays are human beings too, due all rights of others, will there be talk of reparations that (once again) come too late? Will they have to settle for an apology as well?

It would be much simpler if we could just do the right thing now. Let's skip the apologies and the debate of reparations. Let's get everyone treated equally NOW.

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Larry Nocella is the award-winning author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available at Amazon and Xlibris and other fine online book stores. Where Did This Come From? is also available as an eBook. For more info, visit Larry Nocella's website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.