Why Reparations to African Descendants in the United States Are Essential to Democracy

We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.Louis Dembitz Brandeis 1856-1941Democracy is not identical with majority rule. Democracy is a State which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.Vladimir Lenin 1870-1924State and RevolutionMan 's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man 's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.Reinhold Niebuhr 1892-1971Children of Light and Children of Darkness* 1I. IntroductionNumerous scholars have addressed the issue of defining democracy.2 As one can tell from the scholarship analyzing democracy and the quotes above, democracy means different things to different people. However, an increasing amount of scholarship focuses on Niebuhr Reinhold's view of democracy, concluding that democracy requires the correction of oppression or consequences of oppression-substantive democracy.* * 3Most of the world would agree that the United States is a democracy. Indeed, many tout the United States as being the most advanced democracy.4 Yet, significant portions of its citizens are living under conditions or vestiges of oppression. This seems like a non sequitur: How can democracy countenance oppression or allow people to be burdened by the consequences of that oppression?Groups of color, including Native Americans, Latino/as, JapaneseAmericans, and African peoples in the United States have all been the victims of government-created and supported oppression. This Article focuses on the exclusion of African descendants from U.S. democracy due to their oppression. It argues that the way to correct the oppression and continuing consequences of the oppression suffered by African descendants in the United States is to identify the injuries and formulate remedies that will make them whole-reparations.5Reparations have been advanced as a way to address the continuing inequities that flow from the history of slavery and the Jim Crow Era's de jure discrimination. Slavery and Jim Crow were the major occurrences of oppression and exploitation of African peoples in the United States that led to the current state of inequality. The demand for reparations to bridge this inequality is not new nor has it been relinquished. Indeed, reparations to African descendants in the United States for enslavement, Jim Crow, and continuing discrimination are the focus of numerous books and scholarly articles.6The major focus of these works has been the rationale for reparations to descendants of African peoples enslaved in the United States. Many works delineate the history of enslavement and the horrors of that institution as well as the continuing debasement and oppression experienced by African descendents in the United States during the Jim Crow Era. Other works suggest remedies for reparations. Many of the arguments put forth are couched in terms of morality or argue that reparations are a right because of the injury the federal and state governments caused African descendants and the benefits gained by whites.7 8The importance of making reparations to African peoples in the United States has therefore been presented as a benefit to whites. Scholars have presented the issue as a way of removing the stain of slavery, Jim Crow, and their continuing consequences, and as a way of absolving the country-and, in some cases corporations-of the debt owed to blacks. However, there is little scholarship that focuses on the essentiality of reparations to a democratic society or on how reparations must be given in order to maintain the equality promised in the evolving understanding of a true democracy.9This Article has democracy as its starting point. First, this Article will discuss the theories of democracy and argue that true democracy incorporates both majoritarian and substantive democracy. …