History 111

Fall 2019

First short essay: Reparations

Download this assignment as a Microsoft Word doc.

Each of the three short essays in this course is designed to scaffold your learning in historical research and writing, as well as provide you with an opportunity to get significant feedback from the professor and TA well in advance of your submitting the higher-stakes Upstander assignment. This first essay in particular is a way for me (Dr. Madsen) to see how you approach a new topic. More specifically, I’ll be looking at what kinds of sources you find, how you construct an argument, and how you use sources to support your argument.

The prompt

Write a 1,200- to 1,500-word essay in response to this question: Should the U.S. offer reparations to African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the U.S.? 

How your essay will be evaluated

This is a very complex topic. I am interested in:

  • how you approach a new topic.
  • how you focus in on a single part of it to make an argument.
  • what kinds of sources you find.
  • how you construct an argument in a relatively short essay.
  • how you use sources to support your argument.

Noah and I will evaluate your essay according to this simple rubric. I have designed the rubric to make it relatively easy to earn an A and difficult to fail, although if your essay earns an F, you may rewrite it until you get an A.

There is no single correct answer to this question, nor is there a clear “politically correct” answer. Support or opposition for reparations does not fall neatly along political party lines. While those who support reparations are more likely to be politically progressive, there are both progressives and conservatives who oppose reparations, and polls have revealed a significant minority of black Americans (one-quarter to one-third) oppose reparations in the form of cash payments to descendants of slaves.[1] (If you’re worried about choosing a side that is different from the instructor’s and being penalized for it, you should know that Dr. Madsen has not yet formed an opinion on this topic; she sees good arguments coming from both sides.)

Tips for effective and efficient research and writing

  • You’re welcome to look for sources anywhere you think is appropriate for an undergraduate history course, but if you’re stuck or want some background, start here: “America is having an unprecedented debate about reparations. What comes next?”
  • Don’t spend more than 2-3 hours doing research on reparations. I’m more interested in how you get started thinking and writing about this topic than how extensive your research is.
  • Define what you mean by “reparations.” Are you thinking of reparations as cash/checks sent to individual African Americans? Do you imagine reparations being provided as financial assistance in buying a home or paying for college? Or are you defining reparations as a suite of social reforms to, for example, the criminal justice and health care systems? Or are you considering reparations in an entirely different form, such as truth and reconciliation commissions?
  • Look into the past, both for statistics and precedents. Depending on the focus of your essay, you might ask one or more of these questions:
    • What was the value of uncompensated labor provided by enslaved people at the time, and in 2019 dollars?
    • In U.S. courts, how much are victims of physical or emotional stress awarded for “pain and suffering”?
    • How relevant to the reparations discussion are the payments the U.S. government made in 1988 to Japanese-American survivors of U.S. concentration camps during World War II?
    • Is it fair to ask people whose ancestors perpetuated an injustice to compensate the descendants of the victims of that injustice? Is it fair to ask all of us, even if our families immigrated after the Civil War, to compensate those victims? If you can’t easily find precedents of private citizens compensating victims (either directly or through government tax revenues), are there relevant precedents for such payments from corporations that, for example, polluted and sickened a community or that benefited from slave labor?
    • How relevant are Jim Crow laws and the racial inequities of the U.S. criminal justice system to this discussion? Are they part of the legacy of slavery, or are they separate?

Guidelines

  • Your essay should be between 1200 and 1500 words. 
  • You can double- or single-space.
  • Proofread your essay carefully.
  • Submit your essay as a Google doc to your student folder.
  • Cite sources in footnotes, using the Chicago Manual of Style.

Due date

Your essay must be uploaded to your Google Drive student folder by 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, September 17.

[1]Mohamed Younis, “As Redress for Slavery, Americans Oppose Cash Reparations,” July 29, 2019, https://news.gallup.com/poll/261722/redress-slavery-americans-oppose-cash-reparations.aspx. Marist, “Reparations for Slavery in the United States?,” May 10, 2016, http://maristpoll.marist.edu/510-reparations-for-slavery-in-the-united-states/#sthash.LVF8NtwI.dpbs.