By Marcelle Richards
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
A reparations symposium at Covel Commons this Friday and
Saturday marks the collaboration of faculty efforts across the
nation to increase the UC’s role in studying perceived
wrongdoings that have occurred at an international level.
While the idea originated at UCLA, the forum is a testament to
the UC’s growing interest in reparations.
Speakers from Ivy League universities and various UCs will
ignite discussion on topics including the Armenian Genocide, the
Holocaust and the exploitation of indigenous peoples.
“It’s not simply a black and white conference,
it’s an international conference,” said political
science Assistant Professor Mark Sawyer, who served on the planning
committee. “It’s very broad-based.”
The issue of reparations hit close to home when an ad sent by
David Horowitz reached college newspapers across the nation,
denouncing the idea of reparations for African Americans.
The ad listed 10 reasons why reparations are “bad, and
racist too.”
The Daily Californian printed the ad ““ and an apology
after student protesters stormed its newsroom.
The list included the phrase “What about the debts Blacks
owe America?”
“No one’s been able to show that any of the claims
are false,” Horowitz said in a previous Daily Bruin interview
with columnist Ben Shapiro.
While organizers of the event hope to respond to
Horowitz’s contentions, the event will highlight the need for
reparations beyond slavery.
Dialogue on the issue was encouraged statewide when Gov. Gray
Davis signed two bills last September that may allow payment of
reparations to slave descendants.
“I think it’s becoming a topic on wider interest
nationally, on college campuses, and to some extent,
internationally,” said Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, speaker and
vice chancellor of graduate division. “There’s more
interest now than I saw in the ’60s.”
Under the Slaveholder Insurance Policies Bill, the state
insurance commissioner can demand to see slave insurance policies
from insurers as a means to bring past offenses to light.
Since the pre-Civil War era, slave owners were able to collect
life insurance for their slaves. Companies such as New York Life,
Baltimore Life Insurance Company and Aetna were among those cited
providing such plans. Aetna, founded in 1853, said archives on the
extent of their participation were incomplete.
“The company may have insured the lives of slaves,”
read a public statement released on March 10, 2000. “We
believe that any policy decisions made in the distant past are
today more than outweighed by our record of diversity and support
of fairness and equality for all people.”
Many believe these companies should pay reparations to
descendants of slaves, though Aetna’s apology stated no
further action needs to be taken.
The UC Slavery Colloquium Bill more directly involves the
university by giving UC permission to hold a conference on the
economics of slavery. Increased research and funding for research
in the UC system will be a side effect of the bill, Sawyer
said.
“UC research centers are going to be a part of that
research,” he said. “We would certainly hope the
university ““ since this is such a wonderful international
concern ““ will take an ongoing interest in it.”