Solomonia Archive: Reparations? Not a bad idea.

Monday, March 1, 2004

That's not something I would ordinarily say, not being a supporter of slavery reparations, but William Raspberry brings up an incident of far more recent vintage that I wasn't aware of that the tax payers of Virginia might consider.

Still Battling 'Massive Resistance' (washingtonpost.com)

...And then there is Prince Edward County, Va., where what we used to call the "white power structure" shut down the public schools rather than integrate them in accordance with the 1954 school desegregation decision. The schools remained closed from 1959 until 1964, during which time there was no tax-paid education for black children. (White youngsters were sent to a newly established "private" academy.)

Victims of this last gasp of American apartheid have an obvious (to me) claim for the educations they were forced to miss.

What's more, the Virginia General Assembly agrees. Both houses of the state legislature passed bills unanimously to provide scholarships for the victims of Virginia's strategy of "massive resistance" to desegregation orders.

Yes, Virginia, there are reparations.

But backers of the legislation say it would take at least $2 million to meet the expected claims. The most generous version of the state budget provides only $100,000...

It might sound funny, but $2 million on a state budget isn't exactly a huge bill.

Posted by Solomon at 9:50 AM on Monday, Mar 1, 2004 | Comments (3)
Click to share this post

3 Comments

#1 mal | March 1, 2004 2:13 PM

http://www.worldandi.com/newhome/public/2004/march/mtpub1.asp

#2 Bouncer | March 3, 2004 12:25 AM

Well it's not as simple as all that. VA has a serious deficit this year, AND is a state that (gasp) REQUIRES a BALANCED budget in it's Constitution. If they find 100000 for this then that's 100k that's NOT going to mental health work or road construction or police/fire agencies etc etc.

Their budget (as is any state Budget) is HUGE, however they must not and cannot go into deficit spending for any reason. In a time of serious cutting, finding 100K for this is impressive. It means that somewhere else someone else (maybe schoolkids, maybe grandma in her nursing home, but somewhere) services are being cut.

Regards,
-Bouncer-

#3 Solomon | March 3, 2004 9:24 AM

Interesting, thank you. I figured there had to be something more to the story - 2 million sounding like such small-time stuff in a state the size of VA. Maybe this is a chance for some creative payback. Since education was what the victims were deprived of, perhaps the state can offer education in return rather than cash - perhaps free tuition in state schools for the victims and/or their direct offspring. Just a thought.