U.N. Panel: U.S. Owes Reparations To African-Americans

A United Nations-affiliated panel released a report calling for reparations for African-Americans whose ancestors were enslaved, calling the history of slavery one of “racial terrorism.”

The United Nations’ Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a panel that reports to the UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights and includes top international human rights lawyers, announced the study’s conclusion during a meeting with the United Nations Human Rights Council on September 26, reports the Washington Post. The panel said that their findings demonstrate a clear connection between America’s history of slavery and racial injustices that still exist in present times.

“In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report stated. “Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.”

The panel pointed to the many unarmed African-American men who have been killed by police officers in recent times, saying that there is a “human rights crisis” that must be dealt with “urgently.”

The UN’s recommendation to provide reparations is nonbinding and will have no concrete legal effect on Washington legislation.

“Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another, continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African Americans today,” the panel said in a statement in January regarding efforts to make the American justice system more fair for all. “The dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion amongst the US population.”

Immediately following the Civil War, the U.S. announced a plan to offer reparations for freed slaves by giving all newly-freed families forty acres of farm land and a mule from the Union Army, notes PBS. Union General William T. Sherman proposed the idea after meeting with black community leaders, but President Andrew Jackson nullified the reparations and returned the land to plantation owners.

Sources: Washington Post, PBS, United Nations Office of The High Commissioner of Human Rights / Photo Credit: Patrick Gruban/Flickr