The common definition of "reparations" has been distilled into the payment of money to the descendants of American slaves. The scholarly discussions around the matter most often revolve around arcane mechanics, determinations of the value of slave labor and the definition of ancestry.
"The Insufficiency of Reparations" contends that reparations as so defined are inappropriate, insufficient and dangerous.
Inappropriate, because it suggests that a check, regardless of the amount, is an adequate response to the enslavement and enduring abuse of an entire population of American citizens.
It is not.
Insufficient, because the concept falsely implies that the damage done by centuries of endemic racism has been limited to slavery and its specific victims.
It has not.
Dangerous, because it provides an excuse for white America to consider its obligation to the repair of what it has broken to be satisfied.
It must not.
Coming from an extensive background in business and finance, author Gary Adornato sets out a comprehensive set of programs for addressing the myriad deprivations inflicted on Black Americans, deficits that have their origins in centuries of racial injustice and inequity.
A business plan for building towards racial equality, "The Insufficiency of Reparations" demonstrates solutions formed within the government and empowered by a legislative mandate that will endure beyond the limits of political fashion. Specific responses to historic and pervasive inequities in education, poverty and health care, in social justice, business and political representation are integrated and supported within powerful structures and initiatives.
Understood in context, the book proposes an ambitious, but ultimately appropriate and fully justifiable recalibration of racial equality. In so doing, in the overdue and deliberate balancing of one eighth of U.S. citizenry, America emerges a stronger and more productive nation, infinitely more capable of asserting the mantle of leadership that has for so long been asked of it.
