Banks Should Pay Reparations
The financial industry literally profited off the enslavement of black people
This past summer, for the first time in a decade, Congress debated the merits of paying monetary reparations for slavery, and just as one might expect, objections to the proposal followed a familiar train of warped logic. “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for which none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in June, on the eve of a House hearing debating the issue.
According to this well-worn argument, the descendants of slaveholders — and that includes McConnell himself — shouldn’t be held accountable for the sins of their ancestors, and no one else from that era is still alive to take the blame. But what if there were some immortal beings that profited from slavery, amassed the massive wealth needed to pay reparations, and maintain a clear liability for paying them?
Such entities do exist. They’re called banks.
At the turn of the 21st century, reparations activists pressured a number of big cities to pass laws that required businesses to disclose whether they profited from slavery. One of the biggest successes was Chicago, which passed such an ordinance in 2002.
