How Educational Reforms Can Pay Part of the Reparations Bill to Slave Descendents

Reparations for Black Communities through Educational Reform

Introduction

Background. Just over four centuries ago, the first African slaves arrived in the United States, beginning what would become a rapidly growing and lucrative industry well into the 19th century. Indeed, by the start of the Civil War in 1861, there were nearly 4 million black slaves in the United States despite the federal government banning the importation of new African slaves in 1808 (Hacker, 2021). In fact, the importation of African slaves did little to stop the trade and the practice continued on a large scale after 1808 in defiance of federal law (Africans in America, 2022). Although precise figures are unavailable, current estimates indicate that during the period between 1619 and 1865, enslaved Africans in the U.S. contributed 410 billion hours of labor to the American economy (Hacker, 2021). Moreover, modern scholars routinely underestimate the economic value of these billions of hour of forced labor, and the value could easily run into the trillions of dollars depending on which calculation method is used (Darity et al., 2022).

Beyond the capital that was produced by slaves in the United States, the value of their physical bodies which were used to generate this capital was estimated to exceed all of the investments in the burgeoning republic’s railroads and factories combined (Ray & Perry, 2020). The net effect of these financial contributions to the U.S. was to further enrich American society in general and elite white slaveowners in particular at the expense of the blood and sweat of their human captives. In this regard, Ray and Perry (2020) emphasize that, “Slavery enriched white slave owners and their descendants, and it fueled the country’s economy while suppressing wealth building for the enslaved” (para. 6).

These are critically important points when discussing the issue of reparations in a modern context because they underscore the fact that not only did slavery unjustly enrich white slaveowners during its existence, it also helped to build intergenerational wealth among their descendants that would not otherwise have been possible. In other words, many of the descendants of slaveowners continue to benefit from the forced labor of their ancestors who were either brough to this country against their will or were born into lifelong servitude by virtue of the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, the post-Civil War scenario would have been nightmarish enough for the four million recently freed slaves in the United States, most of whom lacked the skills that were needed to secure meaningful employment, but their suffering did not end in April 1865.

As the research that follows will show, emancipated blacks continued to suffer from a constellation of unconstitutional stratagems that were specifically intended to prevent them from exercising their franchise or improving their station in life. Despite some progress over the past 70 years in helping African Americans secure their voting rights and equitable access to public institutions, blacks in the United States remain marginalized today as measured by every quality of life standard available. In fact, African Americans have much higher incarceration rates, die younger, poorer and less educated on average compared to their white counterparts, and these grim statistics have remained largely unchanged – or have even worsened -- for far too long. As Ray and Perry (2020) point out:

The United States has yet to compensate descendants of enslaved Black Americans for their labor. Nor has the federal government atoned for the lost equity from anti-Black housing, transportation, and business policy. Slavery, Jim Crow segregation, anti-Black practices like redlining, and other discriminatory public policies in criminal justice and education have robbed black Americans of the opportunities to build wealth (defined as assets minus debt) afforded to their white peers. (para. 7)

The foregoing issues directly relate to the problem of interest to this study which is explicated below.

Problem Statement. The history of black oppression in the United States is well documented. From the days of slavery through the Jim Crow era and into the present, black Americans have faced discrimination and violence at the hands of their white counterparts. This long history of racism has left black communities at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to education. In order to begin to rectify this injustice, reparations should be paid in the form of educational reform.

Purpose. The overarching purpose of this study was to develop a timely and informed answer to the guiding research question, “In what ways can education reform serve as reparation for black communities?” To this end, the paper will show that educational reform should take many forms, including but not limited to: increased funding for black-majority schools, hiring more black teachers and administrators, and increasing curriculum options that focus on the experiences and contributions of black Americans.

This purpose is highly congruent with the need for the citizens of the United States to achieve a reckoning with the lingering legacy of segregation in its public education system. School districts should be desegregated in order to promote diversity and equity in our schools. It is important to remember that reparations are not a handout; they are a way to begin to make up for centuries of oppression and maltreatment. Educational reform is one small step toward justice for black Americans. It is time for the country to make things right as discussed further below.

Need for Reparations for Black Communities

Argument. As noted above, it is critically important to note that reparations are not the same thing as restitution or compensation. In fact, the payment of reparations is specifically intended to address a serious legal wrong that has been inflicted on others. In this regard, Black’s Law Dictionary (1998) generally defines reparations as the, “Payment for injury or damage; redress for a wrong done” (p. 1298). In the context of American slavery, Green et al. (2017) define reparations as “a program of acknowledgment, redress, and closure of a grievance injustice [which in the case of blacks] include[s] slavery, legal segregation (Jim Crow), and ongoing discrimination and stigmatization” (p. 485).

In other words, most of the advocates of reparations are not suggesting that the United States pay the tens of millions of direct descendants of African American slaves cash money in return for their ancestors’ billions of dollars’ worth of forced labor, but rather to “redress a wrong done” by leveling the educational playing field. In fact, the Overton window has never been open as wide in public support for reparations. For example, according to Darity and Mullen (2022), “While the nation has not arrived at a political majority that approves of black reparations, there has been a marked growth in public and political support for it” (p. ix). Indeed, a confluence of trends seems to have created something of a sea change in thinking about the payment of reparations to the descendants of black slaves and Darity and Mullen (2022) suggest that there may never be a better opportunity to achieve this outcome. For example, according to Darity and Mullen (2022):

While most reports on public opinion toward black American reparations emphasize the still substantial opposition, a shift in support from 4 in 100 persons to 30 in 100 is a dramatic change. The trajectory is positive. Whether this support can be nurtured and sustained remains to be seen, but it does look like there is a much greater opportunity for redress than has been present at any previous point in our lifetimes. (p. X).

It is therefore essential for American policymakers to “strike while political iron is hot” if blacks in the United States are ever going to realize full equality with the mainstream population. The cumulative effects of the institutionalized racism that emerged following the end of the Civil War have diminished the expectations of most blacks in the United States that they will ever share fully in their traditional “American dream” (Ray & Perry, 2020). Moreover, longstanding negative stereotypes about blacks have created a national mindset, among some people of color as well, that the current state of affairs is the natural result of personal lifestyle decisions rather than a lifelong struggle against racism and the deleterious effects this can have on the entire spectrum of the human condition.

As noted above, blacks in the United States today generate about ten times less wealth compared to whites, and white college graduates enjoy seven times as much wealth compared to blacks who graduate from college. As Ray and Perry (2020) conclude, “Making the American Dream an equitable reality demands the same U.S. government that denied wealth to blacks restore that deferred wealth through reparations to their descendants … in the form of wealth-building opportunities that address racial disparities in education, housing, and business ownership” (para. 10). Taken together, the payment of reparations in the form of educational reforms is long overdue as discussed further below.

Literature Review

Educational Reform

There is little disagreement at present that the “peculiar institution” exacted an enormous toll on enslaved blacks in the United States, and these losses have been quantified as noted above. Several centuries of slavery is one thing and the payment of reparations to the descendants of slaves could be justified on these grounds alone; however, the adverse effects of slavery did not end overnight, and it is reasonable to suggest that the lingering effects of the prejudices that fueled the Civil War are still present in every aspect of American life today (Green et al., 2017).

Although the antecedents of suboptimal academic performance by black Americans today are multiple, authorities agree that blacks in the United States remain marginalized educationally and cite recent statistics in support (Royal 2022). For example, SAT scores provide some indication of academic performance at the conclusion of students’ secondary education. The research to date also confirms that SAT scores provide a valid prediction concerning the potential for academic success in college, meaning that SAT scores provide a useful measure of race-based inequalities that persist into adulthood (Reeves & Halikias, 2017) as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Race gaps in math Sat scores

Source: Reeves & Halikias, 2017 at https://i1.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ccf_20170201_reeves_1.png?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C9999px&ssl=1

As can be readily discerned from the breakdown depicted in Figure 1 above, blacks are primarily clustered in the lower half of the national SAT math score breakdown, and their average score of 428 is substantially lower compared to Asians with an average score of 598, whites with an average score of 534 and Latinos with an average score of 457 (Reeves & Halikias, 2017). Likewise, an assessment of the scores from the national 2013-2014 LSAT test showed that black Americans scored an average of 142 versus 153 for whites, representing an achievement gap of more than a full standard deviation point (1.06) which is significantly worse than the national SAT averages (Reeves & Halikias, 2017).

In addition, comparable trends that demonstrate inequities in the classroom also exist with respect to SAT scores for reading as well as standardized tests in other areas and the data confirms that blacks in America have even fallen behind their white counterparts academically faster as a result of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In other words, blacks in the United States remain at a disadvantage academically compared to other minorities and the white majority of the American population and this stark disadvantage is intensifying in severity (Davis, 2021). Therefore, identifying educational reform strategies that can address these academic disparities represents a timely and valuable enterprise (Green et al., 2017). There are a number of different strategies available for this purpose, including most especially increasing funding for black-majority schools as discussed below.

Increased funding for black-majority schools

The legal doctrine that was established by the landmark case, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) which held that “separate but equal” educational institutions were constitutionally acceptable and which was subsequently overturned by the equally historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) means that most of the white-majority schools in the United States were inherently academically superior to black-majority schools (Green et al., 2017). Although the Brown decision made it clear that separate schools for different races were inherently unequal more than 68 years ago, far too little has changed for the nation’s 8 million black students attending public schools today (Racial/Ethnic Enrollment in Public Schools, 2017).

One of the main sources of continuing educational disparities in the United States is the haphazard and disparate manner in which public schools are funded across the country. In this regard Green and his associates report that, “In spite of decades of school and school finance litigation in the aftermath of Brown, racial funding disparities still remain to the present day” (p. 490). These funding disparities are endemic to predominately non-white schools and even the best-case scenarios reveal fundamental differences in funding levels for blacks and whites.

Some indication of the profound disparities between black- and white-majority schools are the massive amounts of money that the latter receive compared to the former. For example, during the 2015-2016 school year, predominately nonwhite school districts in the United States received $23 billion less in taxpayer funding compared to white school districts. These figures mean that predominately nonwhite schools receive about $2,226 less per student that their white school counterparts and these disparities even remained after controlling for wealth (Green et al., 2017). In sum, “School finance reform should be a part of a reparations program for black Americans” (Green et al., 2017, p. 486).

Given that these funding disparities involve taxpayer monies, the question arises as to why these persist. Although the problem itself is enormous complex, the answer to this question is straightforward as involves the manner in which property taxes are assessed across the country and the respective values of the properties that are located in local school districts. In this regard, Green et al. (2017) point out that:

The most obvious source of race-based, particularly black-white disparities in school funding are those that result from differences in the taxable property wealth of taxing districts which provide revenue for schools serving Black versus those serving white students. Local public-school districts in many states continue to rely heavily on local property taxes to support their schools. (p. 491)

As noted throughout, black American families have not enjoyed the same wealth-building opportunities as their white counterparts as this has translated into lower home ownership levels and lesser values for those homes that are owned by blacks (Halcoussis et al., 2009). It is especially noteworthy that existing school district boundaries are the result of decades of gerrymandering by the public and private sectors that were specially intended to maintain racial segregation to the maximum extent possible within the letter of the constitutional law. As Green et al. (2017) emphasize:

Particularly through the first half of the twentieth century, numerous actors including government programs and officials as well as private developers engaged in highly orchestrated efforts to create and reinforce racially segregated housing development. Many of these forces persist to this day, through practices ranging from discriminatory mortgage lending practices to exclusionary zoning. (p. 491)

In fact, school districts with higher percentages of black students are less likely to benefit from voter-approved educational property tax increases compared to predominately white school districts (Alvord & Rauscher, 2021). These factors have combined to create a public school system in the United States that remains inherently unequal even if school districts are not overtly violative of constitutional and state laws. For example, a study by Leachman et al. (2018) examined the sources of funding for public schools and found that state and local governments provide almost 50% of the money, meaning that property tax laws at these levels have a direct effect on the quality of education in their districts.

Although every school district’s demographic composition and resource needs are unique, there are general measures that can be taken to help reduce the inequities that result from disparate property tax laws, including the following:

1. Change the property taxation structure: At present, 45 states have property tax laws in place that require lower income households to pay a higher share of their incomes in local and state taxes compared to households with higher incomes. Therefore, a good place to start reducing the disparities in educational funding is the manner in which state and local taxes are assessed. The regressive tax policies in these 45 states mean that households with less wealth such as those of minorities actually pay more in taxes in terms of a percentage of their income. In response to these disparities in taxation rates, Leachman et al. (2018) note that state lawmakers can implement a number of strategies, including: 1) strengthening their income taxes and otherwise improving the structures of their tax systems, 2) better taxing wealth, 3) enacting or expanding tax credits for low-income families, and 4) eliminating various fees used to raise resources for the courts, and other parts of the justice system, that can trap low-income individuals — often people of color — within cycles of debt and criminal justice involvement (para. 5).

2. Change taxation laws to increase funding for all schools and provide investments in a future educational infrastructure: States should increase taxation rates and modify schedules to generate enough revenues to ensure that all schools provide high quality educational services and to pay for investments in educational infrastructure that will be needed to help students realize their full academic potential and improve their competitiveness in the 21st century workplace. This is an especially salient issue since this outcome has not been an educational priority in recent years. Some concrete steps that states can take to this end include: 1) eliminating wasteful subsidies that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes on their profits; 2) raising income tax rates for the most affluent; 3) modernizing state sales taxes; 4) more realistic taxation policies for carbon pollution and natural resource extraction; and 5) better target their current spending by reforming their criminal justice policies and using the savings from reduced incarceration to finance investments in low-income communities — particularly communities of color — and by reforming their school funding formulas to invest more in such communities.

3. Educate taxpayers concerning the importance of school funding to facilitate improved fiscal policies: Few Americans actually want their taxes increased even if it is for legitimate and compelling reasons. Therefore, lawmakers should ensure that more affluent taxpayers understand the need to eliminate regressive taxation policies in favor of more equitable approaches. Some of the steps that lawmakers can take to achieve this outcome include: 1) reforming or repealing constitutional limits on property taxes; 2) overturning other formulaic restrictions on revenue raising; 3) eliminating supermajority requirements for raising taxes or eliminating unproductive, inefficient tax breaks; and 4) improving the rules governing their “rainy day” funds (Leachman et al., 2018).

Besides providing schools with sufficient revenues to deliver high quality educational services, some other steps that educators can take to help reduce the inequities in the U.S. school systems include hiring more black teachers and administrators as well as increasing curricular offerings that focus on the empirical experiences and contributions that have been made to the country by black Americans over the past 400 years as discussed further below.

Increasing curriculum options

A growing body of scholarship confirms that students perform better academically on curricular offerings that are relevant to their lives. For instance, Briggs (2014) points out that, “Students need a personal connection to the material, whether that’s through engaging them emotionally or connecting the new information with previously acquired knowledge. Without that, students may not only disengage and quickly forget, but they may also lose the motivation to try” (para. 5). Therefore, increasing curriculum options to include the experiences of and the contributions that have been made by black Americans will make learning more relevant and improve academic interest and performance as a concomitant result.

Many subjects, however, such as math or science, may not be especially amenable to reshaping to make them specifically relevant for black students, but there are some general steps that they can take to this end, including the following:

· Discussing how theory can be applied in practice;

· Making a link to local cases;

· Relating subject matter to everyday applications; and,

· Discussing and finding applications in current newsworthy issues and events (Briggs, 2014).

In addition, far too many American school districts set the bar low for black students by providing less rigorous curricular offerings compared to predominately white schools. In this regard, Colgren and Sappington (2015) cite the academic achievement disparities between black Americans and other minorities and white students as firm evidence that the United States is failing to provide appropriate curricular offerings that motivate young black people to learn, most especially at the primary levels. Based on their analysis, Colgren and Sappington (2015) emphasize that, “Achievement equity is not currently a reality in American public schooling. This problem is perhaps most visible as a result of achievement disparities across racial and socioeconomic backgrounds (p. 26).