Slavery Compensation Analysis

The human race has blood on its hands. We have segregated, subjugated, and slaughtered other humans due to something as small as race, a made social concept. This made up idea contributed to the scars of our history: Slavery, the Holocaust, Japanese Internment camps. We have made many horriable mistakes, but we have attempted to right the wrongs committed by our ancestors. These attempts, called reparations, often leave the problems unsolved. They are limited by the word “reparation” itself. A reparation is the attempt to of making amends in order to right a wrong, usually through monetary compensation. This, however, does nothing to fix social issues brought forth by the conflict. Oppression due to race was prevalent all over the world but …show more content…
At face value it seems like the best solution, provide financial support to those in need and watch then get better. That may be the intended effect but in reality it only solves the problem at face value. It may put the repressed people in a better position financially but does not address the issue in regards to social scars. When President George Bush wrote a letter of apology to the Japanese Internment camp survivor and provided each person with a check of 20,000 dollars, he is no way solved the problem completely. Bush’s initiative did help alleviate some of the financial pressure the survivors faced but how could it make up for the 4 years of property damage? How could it make up for the loss of 4 years of life? How could it make up for the 4 years of propaganda made to convince Americans that the Japanese were the enemies? It cannot.In The Emperor was Divine, when the family returned home from an internment camp, they found their house ransacked and destroyed. The poem My Mother and heart Mountain comments on the last emotional tension due to the internment camps. Even when the mother in the poem attempts to look past the horror, she is unable to overlook the confinement. After the war many Japanese Americans were left unemployed and were unable to move within society due to the immense social lockout. The social stigma was a major hurdle for Japanese Americans post World war II and the 20,000 dollar check was a ladder while the social stigma was a skyscraper. Black and Japanese Americans were not the only races to be affected by American subjugation. We cannot forget the Asians, Latinos, and Irishmen who were discriminated against. This complicates the issue of compensation as it is not plausible for the government to pay out every single individual affected and it would not be fair to compare the effects of slavery to the discrimination of