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The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks
Both an unflinching indictment of past wrongs and an impassioned call to America to educate its citizens about the history of Africa and its people, The Debt says in no uncertain terms what white America owes blacks—and what blacks owe themselves.
In this powerful and controversial book, distinguished African-American political leader and thinker Randall Robinson argues for the restoration of the rich history that slavery and segregation severed. Drawing from research and personal experience, he shows that only by reclaiming their lost past and proud heritage can blacks lay the foundation for their future. And white Americans can begin making reparations for slavery and the century of racial discrimination that followed with monetary restitution, educational programs, and the kinds of equal opportunities that will ensure the social and economic success of all citizens.
“Engaging...Robinson continues an important conversation...His anecdotes support his attempts to reclaim African American heritage and empower African Americans.”— The Washington Post
In this powerful and controversial book, distinguished African-American political leader and thinker Randall Robinson argues for the restoration of the rich history that slavery and segregation severed. Drawing from research and personal experience, he shows that only by reclaiming their lost past and proud heritage can blacks lay the foundation for their future. And white Americans can begin making reparations for slavery and the century of racial discrimination that followed with monetary restitution, educational programs, and the kinds of equal opportunities that will ensure the social and economic success of all citizens.
“Engaging...Robinson continues an important conversation...His anecdotes support his attempts to reclaim African American heritage and empower African Americans.”— The Washington Post
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
April 21, 2025
Could not have read two more diametrically opposed viewpoints than Buchanan's "Death of the West" and Robinson's book...but both are good, important reads. There were uncanny swaths of this book where I thought the man was writing the book so I wouldn't feel bad that I hadn't-whole sections worded precisely the way I'd always felt about racial issues, but couldn't articulate as perfectly. In particular he has a part where he takes the "life arc" of a hypothetical, newly emancipated slave and traces that slave's probable experience in the South, family life, move up north in the Great Migration, and difficulties with subsequent generations being trapped in the ghettos of Northern cities...He starts out eloquently describing his alienation from all these historic figures in DC museums that he'd like to admire, as an American- but his enthusiasm is tempered when he realizes how these typically lionized figures contributed to the existence and continuance of slavery. His argument for reparations is frankly compelling and convincing-I do not share his fervor for it, mainly because it isn't possible here, despite the compensation given to interned Japanese/Chinese during WWII for much less. But he is aware of this, and essentially scolds people like me for confusing what we may deserve with what we think is possible...personally some affirmative action, even on socioeconomic and not racial grounds, would satisfy me, lest we think a dollar amount could be put on the loss of capital, potential, and life quality that accumulates when an intellectual genocide is committed against a people...
Anyway, a must read.
Anyway, a must read.
April 21, 2021
I've had moments in my life where I felt the relentless pressure of odds stacked against me. But I'm white and those moments pass. Before I read Robinson's "Debt," I couldn't imagine a lifetime spent in that mode much less a series of lifetimes that stretch back further than I can see. I have a confidence that I carry around that's founded on family and a sense of lineage. I couldn't imagine looking back at generations of fathers who try as they might could never provide the kind of security that I take for granted. Robinson's book helped me to see these things where my black friends are concerned. I needed to read these stories in his book because we still can't really talk about them hard as we try. I still can't grasp the gravity of slavery and the ways its tentacles continue to pull us down today. It such a huge concept and so taken for granted in the day-to-day of living.
I think reparations is a conversation we need to have even in the face of such a monstrous past and debt. We mustn't focus on the impossibility of it. We must focus on the possibility a conversation like that holds for the future. The conversation will help us visualize a path forward that starts to work better. This book is a necessary guide and primer to start the thinking necessary to have a good conversation.
I think reparations is a conversation we need to have even in the face of such a monstrous past and debt. We mustn't focus on the impossibility of it. We must focus on the possibility a conversation like that holds for the future. The conversation will help us visualize a path forward that starts to work better. This book is a necessary guide and primer to start the thinking necessary to have a good conversation.
June 30, 2011
In this book, Robinson makes the argument that America can never get over the issues of racism unless we acknowledge the impact that slavery had on blacks. The first step is for the government to formally apologize. Even though the government, in many places, did not actively support slavery it both didn't actively fight against it and also benefited from it.
The next step that Robinson suggests is that reparations be paid, in the form of college scholarships, to black Americans. While his argument is logical, its not entirely realistic. African Americans are in a lower social/economic status because for 250 years they could not own property or get an education, and, therefore, they could not pass that property and education on to their children, which whites could. Provoding scholarships would, indeed, help even the score somewhat, but I don't think any politician could get a law passed to make it happen.
In the end, I gave this book 5 stars because it helped me understand the huge debt we owe to the slaves. I'm not sure about the current advocacy part, though.
The next step that Robinson suggests is that reparations be paid, in the form of college scholarships, to black Americans. While his argument is logical, its not entirely realistic. African Americans are in a lower social/economic status because for 250 years they could not own property or get an education, and, therefore, they could not pass that property and education on to their children, which whites could. Provoding scholarships would, indeed, help even the score somewhat, but I don't think any politician could get a law passed to make it happen.
In the end, I gave this book 5 stars because it helped me understand the huge debt we owe to the slaves. I'm not sure about the current advocacy part, though.
September 27, 2012
One of the most important books I've ever read. I can't overstate how much of an influence This book and Mr. Robinson's lifework has had on my thinking and writing.
Here is the argument, laid out in prose so beautiful and literary illustrations so elegant im almost tempted to break my fingers, that was always playing out in my head about the causes for the disparity between the races in the US and elsewhere, but was unable to quite put into words. With an economy of them, Robinson makes the case for reparations that ony someone who has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo could deny.
I cannot thank you enough for this book, Mr. Robinson. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand why America is the way it is and how the playing field could truly be leveled...an outcome that will benefit all involved, believe it or not.
Highest recommendation!
Here is the argument, laid out in prose so beautiful and literary illustrations so elegant im almost tempted to break my fingers, that was always playing out in my head about the causes for the disparity between the races in the US and elsewhere, but was unable to quite put into words. With an economy of them, Robinson makes the case for reparations that ony someone who has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo could deny.
I cannot thank you enough for this book, Mr. Robinson. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand why America is the way it is and how the playing field could truly be leveled...an outcome that will benefit all involved, believe it or not.
Highest recommendation!
June 16, 2020
4.5 stars Important read during these days of Black Lives Matter demanding that white America looks in the mirror. It is not a new book but it remains relevant.
November 29, 2020
Makes compelling argument for reparations and the damage done by separating black people from their culture, their past, their identity.
April 6, 2025
ONE OF THE ‘FOUNDATIONAL’ BOOKS ABOUT AFRICAN AMERICAN REPARATIONS
Randall Robinson is an African-American lawyer, author and activist, noted as the founder of the advocacy organization TransAfrica. In 2001, he resigned as head of TransAfrica and emigrated to St. Kitt (an island in the West Indies), where his wife was from, and wrote the book ‘Quitting America’ about this. More recently, he has returned to the U.S., and he is currently (since 2008) Scholar in Residence at the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2000 book, “At the dawn of the twenty-first century African Americans lag the American mainstream in virtually every area of statistical measure. Neither blacks nor whites know accurately why. The answer can be found only in the distant past, a past as deliberately obscured as the Capitol’s secrets. Solutions to our racial problems are possible, but only if our society can be brought to face up to the massive crime of slavery and all that it has wrought… To set afoot a new and whole black woman and man, we must first tell the victims what happened to them---before and after America was new.” (Pg. 7)
He continues, “No race, no ethnic or religious group, has suffered so much over so long a span as blacks have, and do still, at the hands of those who benefited, with the connivance of the United States government, from slavery and the century of legalized American racial hostility that followed it… This book is about the great still-unfolding massive crime of official and unofficial American against Africa, African slaves, and their descendants in America…
“Solutions must be tailored to the scope of the crime in a way that would make the victim whole. In this case, the psychic and economic injury is enormous, multidimensional and long-running. Thus must be America’s restitution to blacks for the damage done… I have tried in these pages to sketch the outlines of a story that stretches from the dawn of civilization to the present. The dilemma of blacks in the world cannot possibly be understood without taking the long view of history… Here my intent is to … pose the question, to invite the debate. To cause America to compensate, after three and a half centuries, for a long-avoided wrong.” (Pg. 8-10)
He argues, “In raising any defense of Jefferson, a powerful American cog in slavery’s long-grinding machine, are we not then subscribing to Jefferson’s view that a black life has lesser value, black suffering an inconsequential significance? … Does not the continued unremarked American deification of Jefferson tell us how profoundly contemptuous of black sensibilities American society persists in being? How deeply, stubbornly, poisonously racist our society to this day remains? Jefferson was a slaveholder, a racist, and---if one accepts that consent cannot be given if it cannot be denied---a rapist. Of course, Jefferson was only unusual in that he wrote copiously for posterity about his appraisal of the traits of those he owned as chattel. Countless others of high social status, if less famous than Jefferson, committed acts no less reprehensible than his.” (Pg. 52)
He points out, “George Washington is the quintessential American public ancestor… Trouble is, George Washington is not MY ancestor… He OWNED my ancestors, abused them as chattel and willed them to his wife, Martha, upon his death. I and mine need to know about George and Martha but, assuredly, we do not need to revere them… Blacks need to remember who we are, not remember with others who THEY are… What then was I doing visiting George Washington’s Mount Vernon years ago with [his wife] Hazel? Confused? Confessedly. How can any American who isn’t white not be?” (Pg. 55-57)
He states, “Give a black or white child the tools (nurture, nutrition, material necessities, a home/school milieu of intellectual stimulation, high expectation, pride of self) that a child needs to learn and the child WILL learn. Race, at least in this regard, is irrelevant… It is obvious that in any effort to balance America’s racial scales, education, defined in the broadest sense, must be assigned the very highest priority. Sadly, the very idea of public education, perhaps the most important load-bearing pillar of our society’s future, has been under assault for decades.” (Pg. 78-79)
He asserts, “Many blacks---most, perhaps, though I can’t be sure---don’t like America. Oh, we often like its wealth, its abundance of commodities, its markets of endless stuff, its constitutional freedoms, but we are angrier than many would think, having been treated so badly for so long. We are, indeed, at least full citizens with rights and we are not going anywhere else. But we are emotional defectors from a society whose white majority long ago smothered to death any notion of cultural co-ownership. And then papered the deed with lies. Lies of commission. Lies of omission. Lies to the world and to ourselves about the world and ourselves, told through the vast electronic machines of interrelated private interests by those who serve THEIRS and ignore anyone else’s. Lies about our various national social pathologies: urban, class, and racial.” (Pg. 134-135)
He says, “Our whole society must first be brought to a consensus that it WANTS to close the socioeconomic gap between the races. It must accept that the gap derives from the social depredations of slavery. Once and for all, America must face its past, open itself to a fair telling of all of the peoples’ histories, and accept full responsibility for the hardships it has occasioned for so many. It must come to grips with the increasingly indisputable reality that this is NOT a white nation. Therefore it must dramatically reconfigure its symbolized picture of itself, to itself… White people do not OWN the idea of America, and should they continue to deny others a place in the idea’s iconograph, those others, who fifty years from now will form the majority of America’s citizens, will be inspired to punish them for it.” (Pg. 173-174)
He comments, “Perhaps I should say a bit here about why the question of reparations is critical to finding a solution to our race problems… There is no linear solution to any of our problems, for our problems are not merely technical in nature. By now, after 380 years of unrelenting psychological abuse, the biggest part of our problem is inside us: in how we have come to see ourselves, in our damaged capacity to validate a course for ourselves without outside approval… The issue here is not whether or not we can, or will, win reparations. The issue is whether we will fight for reparations, because we have decided for ourselves that they are our due.” (Pg. 205-206)
He asks, “Until America’s white ruling class accepts the fact that the book never closes on massive unredressed social wrongs, America can have no future as one people. Questions must be raised… Which American families and institutions, or instance, were endowed in perpetuity by the commerce of slavery? And how do we square things with slavery’s modern victims from whom all natural endowments were stolen? What is a fair measure of restitution for this, the most important of all American human rights abuses?” (Pg. 208-209) Later, he adds, “only slavery, with its sadistic patience, asphyxiated memory, and smothered cultures, has hulled empty a whole race of people with inter-generational efficiency… It is a human crime without parallel in the modern world. For it produces its victims ad infinitum, long after the active stage of the crime has ended.” (Pg. 216)
He proposes, “With respect to the question of compensation to African Americans, it has been proposed… that a private trust be established for the benefit of all African Americans. The trust would be funded out of the general revenues of the United States�� all blacks who qualified academically and were found to be in financial need would be entitled to attend college free of charge. On the private side, a study funded by the trust would be undertaken to determine the extent to which American and foreign companies, or the existing successors to such… Compensation would then be sought from these companies, institutions, and individuals… The broad civil rights advocacy necessitated by a persistent climate of American racism would be generously funded… Lastly, I would urge the United States government to begin making amends to Africa and the Caribbean… with an American commitment toward full debt relief, fair trade terms, and significant monetary compensation. The ideas I have broached here do not comprise anything near a comprehensive package. Nor was such my intention. What I have proposed does constitute a new starting point for a discussion with and among those who should feel some moral obligation to atone for slavery and what followed it, along with a commitment to close the social and economic gap between the races…” (Pg. 244-246)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the issue of reparations.
Randall Robinson is an African-American lawyer, author and activist, noted as the founder of the advocacy organization TransAfrica. In 2001, he resigned as head of TransAfrica and emigrated to St. Kitt (an island in the West Indies), where his wife was from, and wrote the book ‘Quitting America’ about this. More recently, he has returned to the U.S., and he is currently (since 2008) Scholar in Residence at the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2000 book, “At the dawn of the twenty-first century African Americans lag the American mainstream in virtually every area of statistical measure. Neither blacks nor whites know accurately why. The answer can be found only in the distant past, a past as deliberately obscured as the Capitol’s secrets. Solutions to our racial problems are possible, but only if our society can be brought to face up to the massive crime of slavery and all that it has wrought… To set afoot a new and whole black woman and man, we must first tell the victims what happened to them---before and after America was new.” (Pg. 7)
He continues, “No race, no ethnic or religious group, has suffered so much over so long a span as blacks have, and do still, at the hands of those who benefited, with the connivance of the United States government, from slavery and the century of legalized American racial hostility that followed it… This book is about the great still-unfolding massive crime of official and unofficial American against Africa, African slaves, and their descendants in America…
“Solutions must be tailored to the scope of the crime in a way that would make the victim whole. In this case, the psychic and economic injury is enormous, multidimensional and long-running. Thus must be America’s restitution to blacks for the damage done… I have tried in these pages to sketch the outlines of a story that stretches from the dawn of civilization to the present. The dilemma of blacks in the world cannot possibly be understood without taking the long view of history… Here my intent is to … pose the question, to invite the debate. To cause America to compensate, after three and a half centuries, for a long-avoided wrong.” (Pg. 8-10)
He argues, “In raising any defense of Jefferson, a powerful American cog in slavery’s long-grinding machine, are we not then subscribing to Jefferson’s view that a black life has lesser value, black suffering an inconsequential significance? … Does not the continued unremarked American deification of Jefferson tell us how profoundly contemptuous of black sensibilities American society persists in being? How deeply, stubbornly, poisonously racist our society to this day remains? Jefferson was a slaveholder, a racist, and---if one accepts that consent cannot be given if it cannot be denied---a rapist. Of course, Jefferson was only unusual in that he wrote copiously for posterity about his appraisal of the traits of those he owned as chattel. Countless others of high social status, if less famous than Jefferson, committed acts no less reprehensible than his.” (Pg. 52)
He points out, “George Washington is the quintessential American public ancestor… Trouble is, George Washington is not MY ancestor… He OWNED my ancestors, abused them as chattel and willed them to his wife, Martha, upon his death. I and mine need to know about George and Martha but, assuredly, we do not need to revere them… Blacks need to remember who we are, not remember with others who THEY are… What then was I doing visiting George Washington’s Mount Vernon years ago with [his wife] Hazel? Confused? Confessedly. How can any American who isn’t white not be?” (Pg. 55-57)
He states, “Give a black or white child the tools (nurture, nutrition, material necessities, a home/school milieu of intellectual stimulation, high expectation, pride of self) that a child needs to learn and the child WILL learn. Race, at least in this regard, is irrelevant… It is obvious that in any effort to balance America’s racial scales, education, defined in the broadest sense, must be assigned the very highest priority. Sadly, the very idea of public education, perhaps the most important load-bearing pillar of our society’s future, has been under assault for decades.” (Pg. 78-79)
He asserts, “Many blacks---most, perhaps, though I can’t be sure---don’t like America. Oh, we often like its wealth, its abundance of commodities, its markets of endless stuff, its constitutional freedoms, but we are angrier than many would think, having been treated so badly for so long. We are, indeed, at least full citizens with rights and we are not going anywhere else. But we are emotional defectors from a society whose white majority long ago smothered to death any notion of cultural co-ownership. And then papered the deed with lies. Lies of commission. Lies of omission. Lies to the world and to ourselves about the world and ourselves, told through the vast electronic machines of interrelated private interests by those who serve THEIRS and ignore anyone else’s. Lies about our various national social pathologies: urban, class, and racial.” (Pg. 134-135)
He says, “Our whole society must first be brought to a consensus that it WANTS to close the socioeconomic gap between the races. It must accept that the gap derives from the social depredations of slavery. Once and for all, America must face its past, open itself to a fair telling of all of the peoples’ histories, and accept full responsibility for the hardships it has occasioned for so many. It must come to grips with the increasingly indisputable reality that this is NOT a white nation. Therefore it must dramatically reconfigure its symbolized picture of itself, to itself… White people do not OWN the idea of America, and should they continue to deny others a place in the idea’s iconograph, those others, who fifty years from now will form the majority of America’s citizens, will be inspired to punish them for it.” (Pg. 173-174)
He comments, “Perhaps I should say a bit here about why the question of reparations is critical to finding a solution to our race problems… There is no linear solution to any of our problems, for our problems are not merely technical in nature. By now, after 380 years of unrelenting psychological abuse, the biggest part of our problem is inside us: in how we have come to see ourselves, in our damaged capacity to validate a course for ourselves without outside approval… The issue here is not whether or not we can, or will, win reparations. The issue is whether we will fight for reparations, because we have decided for ourselves that they are our due.” (Pg. 205-206)
He asks, “Until America’s white ruling class accepts the fact that the book never closes on massive unredressed social wrongs, America can have no future as one people. Questions must be raised… Which American families and institutions, or instance, were endowed in perpetuity by the commerce of slavery? And how do we square things with slavery’s modern victims from whom all natural endowments were stolen? What is a fair measure of restitution for this, the most important of all American human rights abuses?” (Pg. 208-209) Later, he adds, “only slavery, with its sadistic patience, asphyxiated memory, and smothered cultures, has hulled empty a whole race of people with inter-generational efficiency… It is a human crime without parallel in the modern world. For it produces its victims ad infinitum, long after the active stage of the crime has ended.” (Pg. 216)
He proposes, “With respect to the question of compensation to African Americans, it has been proposed… that a private trust be established for the benefit of all African Americans. The trust would be funded out of the general revenues of the United States�� all blacks who qualified academically and were found to be in financial need would be entitled to attend college free of charge. On the private side, a study funded by the trust would be undertaken to determine the extent to which American and foreign companies, or the existing successors to such… Compensation would then be sought from these companies, institutions, and individuals… The broad civil rights advocacy necessitated by a persistent climate of American racism would be generously funded… Lastly, I would urge the United States government to begin making amends to Africa and the Caribbean… with an American commitment toward full debt relief, fair trade terms, and significant monetary compensation. The ideas I have broached here do not comprise anything near a comprehensive package. Nor was such my intention. What I have proposed does constitute a new starting point for a discussion with and among those who should feel some moral obligation to atone for slavery and what followed it, along with a commitment to close the social and economic gap between the races…” (Pg. 244-246)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the issue of reparations.
March 17, 2025
Point well made that when any one of us humans suffer, we all suffer. Reparations to give back what was stolen is a minimal expectation. When a person's ancestral past, culture and blood lineage from where each of us get a sense of who we are from where we came, are ripped from them and essentially and actually erased, there is a psychic loss of identity. When each succeeding generation flows from the economic impoverishment forced upon them by the ruling people, added to the psychological impoverishment, upward mobility and equality with the ruling people is so improbable to be impossible.
November 21, 2016
Even though this book was first published 15 years ago, it is still entirely relevant. Great read. Also an easy read, it's not dense and filled with facts, it's more like Iike a story with lovely prose. Robinson is often speaking directly to Black people in the book, but I would highly recommended it to White people as well. To anyone trying to understand America today. Robinson does not focus on Native Americans here but does emphasize that genocide in several places, though it's out of his scope. Class is also not ignored.
May 21, 2014
I've always look forward to reading Mr. Randall's books. The subject of reparations for blacks has always been a controversial one in America. Mr. Randall's thesis in favor of compensation for the horrors and economic benefits from slavery for its descendants--challenges the naysayers of this proposal. It's definitely a reference book for the rational and researched advantages of such a proposal which is also well documented and defended.
November 18, 2008
Most people don't know what it means to be deprived of historical roots. To be severed from a concrete past, unable to trace one's lineage, unable to connect one's origins to a specific place, an actual culture -- a culture that makes life meaningful in a tangible, unique, and universal manner. How would it feel to be severed from all that. And then on top of that also to be barred from full participation in a society bred on generations of slavery and quasi-slavery. What would it feel like to be severed and then barred in this way? What would that do to a person? To a community of people? And, what would it do to the people who make that severing and barring happen? What would it do to them?
Robinson answers these questions in clear, vivid, and passionate language. It would mean, he answers, not knowing oneself, expecting to fail, and then blaming oneself, feeling rage without knowing why, and not knowing from where the rage emerges nor where to put it. For the masters, on the other hand, it would mean denial as a way of life; a way of life unaware of its denial. True ignorance.
According to Robinson, the crime of slavery is unmatched in the last 500 years. Unlike other genocides, this one has a recursive quality -- it is a crime that keeps happening, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
The solution proposed by Robinson is reparation. Western culture and US society owe a dept to African and African-American peoples for this largest of all crimes against humanity.
The theoretical, legal, and logistical apparatus of reparations, Robinson leaves to others. He is interested in making the argument stick into the body of his reader -- like a burr, or a dart, or a wound. And this he does with some rhetorical brilliance; his prose stays with you, sticks with you, doesn't leave you alone.
Chapter 3, "Race to Class to Race" is particularly clarifying to those who need a primer on how the legacy of slavery expresses itself in contemporary life. Chapter 5, "Demanding Respect" is powerful not just because it insists that blacks demand respect, but also because he demonstrates the betrayal of blacks by the Democratic Party. Robinson does not realize it but he is very close to demanding the kind of autonomy that we often associate with 3rd world nationalism. The chapter on Cuba, (ch. 6) is one of the few things I have found that focuses on race as the reason for the "success" and duration of socialist Cuba these last 49 years.
Robinson falls short of linking up his vision to the wider context of 3rd world movements; he is a bit wedded to the exclusive nature the African-American situation (is this not what it always means to be American [USian:]? Is this not also the blind spot of most African American theorizing?) And his anger is often mired in the endless sands of a righteous moralism when he might do better to offer an understanding of our impossible situation.
Nevertheless, Robinson moved me. Confronting this book is perhaps a necessary exercise for all who think themselves liberal. I came away far richer.
Consider this passage from page 218:
"Culture is the matrix on which the fragile human animal draws to remain socially healthy. As fish need the sea, culture, with its timeless reassurance and its seeming immortality, offsets for the frail human spirit the brevity, the careless accidentalness of life. An individual human life is easy to extinguish. Culture is leaned upon as eternal. It flows large and old around its children. And it is very hard to kill. Its murder must be undertaken over hundreds of years and countless generations. Pains must be taken to snuff out every traditional practice, every alien word, every heaven-sent ritual, every pride, every connection of the soul, gone behind and reaching ahead. The Carriers of doomed culture must be ridiculed and debased and humiliated. This must be done to their mothers and their fathers, their children, their children's children and their children after them. And there will come a time of mural injury to all of their souls, and their culture will breathe no more. But they will not mourn its passing, for they will by then have forgotten that which they might have mourned."
Reading this book is time well lived.
Robinson answers these questions in clear, vivid, and passionate language. It would mean, he answers, not knowing oneself, expecting to fail, and then blaming oneself, feeling rage without knowing why, and not knowing from where the rage emerges nor where to put it. For the masters, on the other hand, it would mean denial as a way of life; a way of life unaware of its denial. True ignorance.
According to Robinson, the crime of slavery is unmatched in the last 500 years. Unlike other genocides, this one has a recursive quality -- it is a crime that keeps happening, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
The solution proposed by Robinson is reparation. Western culture and US society owe a dept to African and African-American peoples for this largest of all crimes against humanity.
The theoretical, legal, and logistical apparatus of reparations, Robinson leaves to others. He is interested in making the argument stick into the body of his reader -- like a burr, or a dart, or a wound. And this he does with some rhetorical brilliance; his prose stays with you, sticks with you, doesn't leave you alone.
Chapter 3, "Race to Class to Race" is particularly clarifying to those who need a primer on how the legacy of slavery expresses itself in contemporary life. Chapter 5, "Demanding Respect" is powerful not just because it insists that blacks demand respect, but also because he demonstrates the betrayal of blacks by the Democratic Party. Robinson does not realize it but he is very close to demanding the kind of autonomy that we often associate with 3rd world nationalism. The chapter on Cuba, (ch. 6) is one of the few things I have found that focuses on race as the reason for the "success" and duration of socialist Cuba these last 49 years.
Robinson falls short of linking up his vision to the wider context of 3rd world movements; he is a bit wedded to the exclusive nature the African-American situation (is this not what it always means to be American [USian:]? Is this not also the blind spot of most African American theorizing?) And his anger is often mired in the endless sands of a righteous moralism when he might do better to offer an understanding of our impossible situation.
Nevertheless, Robinson moved me. Confronting this book is perhaps a necessary exercise for all who think themselves liberal. I came away far richer.
Consider this passage from page 218:
"Culture is the matrix on which the fragile human animal draws to remain socially healthy. As fish need the sea, culture, with its timeless reassurance and its seeming immortality, offsets for the frail human spirit the brevity, the careless accidentalness of life. An individual human life is easy to extinguish. Culture is leaned upon as eternal. It flows large and old around its children. And it is very hard to kill. Its murder must be undertaken over hundreds of years and countless generations. Pains must be taken to snuff out every traditional practice, every alien word, every heaven-sent ritual, every pride, every connection of the soul, gone behind and reaching ahead. The Carriers of doomed culture must be ridiculed and debased and humiliated. This must be done to their mothers and their fathers, their children, their children's children and their children after them. And there will come a time of mural injury to all of their souls, and their culture will breathe no more. But they will not mourn its passing, for they will by then have forgotten that which they might have mourned."
Reading this book is time well lived.
October 12, 2007
this is one of the books that made me militant! get this and keep it in your library. this will be a classic in a few years.
December 14, 2008
This books should be a requirement in all high schools and in college as well. If everybody read it, there would be more love in the world.
February 14, 2024
Worth Reading
This book does a great job of laying out the reasons why restitution is due to the descendents slaves, why inter-generational trauma still plagues them, and how they still fight systemic racism today.
This book does a great job of laying out the reasons why restitution is due to the descendents slaves, why inter-generational trauma still plagues them, and how they still fight systemic racism today.
December 5, 2008
AMAZING!
March 27, 2018
The entire book is powerful, but I recommend that you read it for the last two chapters alone.
October 12, 2018
2018 Reading Challenge - A book about a problem facing society today
This book explore the need for reparations for people of African descent in the United States and more broadly throughout the African Diaspora. Robinson's argument, rightfully, goes beyond a simple monetary payout. He, through historical analysis, explores the extreme cultural evisceration of Africans who were enslaved and kidnapped to the Americas and how this reverberates through all the generations to follow, into the present. He argues that we are not just talking about the enormous monetary debt owed those previously enslaved, but that through the destruction of cultural ties, something greater has been stolen; the grounding point for peoples throughout the world - tradition and knowing where one is from. Robinson shows how this thievery was executed during the Antebellum years, most severely, but that every successive American president, in collaboration with the government has a whole has ensured the continued oppression and debilitation of people of African decent. Until the United States honestly faces the debt it owes to Black Americans, racial harmony can never be reached, because until it does that, Americans, of all races, are taught that Black Lives do not hold the value of their fellow citizens. I recommend this book, not only to those interested in arguments for reparations, but to people interested in anti-racist work and progress.
This book explore the need for reparations for people of African descent in the United States and more broadly throughout the African Diaspora. Robinson's argument, rightfully, goes beyond a simple monetary payout. He, through historical analysis, explores the extreme cultural evisceration of Africans who were enslaved and kidnapped to the Americas and how this reverberates through all the generations to follow, into the present. He argues that we are not just talking about the enormous monetary debt owed those previously enslaved, but that through the destruction of cultural ties, something greater has been stolen; the grounding point for peoples throughout the world - tradition and knowing where one is from. Robinson shows how this thievery was executed during the Antebellum years, most severely, but that every successive American president, in collaboration with the government has a whole has ensured the continued oppression and debilitation of people of African decent. Until the United States honestly faces the debt it owes to Black Americans, racial harmony can never be reached, because until it does that, Americans, of all races, are taught that Black Lives do not hold the value of their fellow citizens. I recommend this book, not only to those interested in arguments for reparations, but to people interested in anti-racist work and progress.
Read
April 13, 2010The history between America and Africans is undeniably full of tension. In this book, Randall Robinson dissects the core of this tension and asks the question, “What does America owe to Blacks?” In answering this question, a number of subjects are brought to surface, ranging from reparations for slavery, the proportion of blacks to whites who are being jailed, unequal education, and poverty among blacks. This book is more than about whites and blacks, it is about what ‘America’ (whites, blacks, and all in between) can do to right the wrong of the past that continues to be a burden among society today. It becomes obvious that Randall thoroughly researches his subject before he writes, which makes him reliable and makes for a very interesting and educational book. Though a little boring at times, this is a real eye-opening and mind opening read. I would recommend this book to all.
April 14, 2025
great read. I view white America as a slave state enslaving the entire world to insulate itself from the emotional discomfort of reconciliation with the legacy of genocide of the native peoples, and the legacy of four hundred years of slavery.
if anything about epigenetics is true, European Americans should be looking at themselves with a wild level of suspicion.
white people, anyone who self identifies as a white American, are quick to deploy insane levels of violence, defensiveness, dissociation.
the USA is an open air prison, with ppl of the global majority experiencing different levels of dehumanization and exploitation at every turn.
I am so sad for the world that the early European settlers managed to reproduce when they got to turtle island. :(
America owes everything to blacks. end the prison system, send police and domestic terrorists home. all land managed by municipal government could be instantly made available for improvements by any member of an enslaved class.
the money white Americans spend on prisons, police, bombs, would be redirected to any other purpose. food, shelter, community.
there's no way to make up to anyone for the legacy of slavery, but I wish we could all collectively start trying. white people need the emotional healing, too. suppressing the angst of slavery is destructive to even the oppressor class.
if anything about epigenetics is true, European Americans should be looking at themselves with a wild level of suspicion.
white people, anyone who self identifies as a white American, are quick to deploy insane levels of violence, defensiveness, dissociation.
the USA is an open air prison, with ppl of the global majority experiencing different levels of dehumanization and exploitation at every turn.
I am so sad for the world that the early European settlers managed to reproduce when they got to turtle island. :(
America owes everything to blacks. end the prison system, send police and domestic terrorists home. all land managed by municipal government could be instantly made available for improvements by any member of an enslaved class.
the money white Americans spend on prisons, police, bombs, would be redirected to any other purpose. food, shelter, community.
there's no way to make up to anyone for the legacy of slavery, but I wish we could all collectively start trying. white people need the emotional healing, too. suppressing the angst of slavery is destructive to even the oppressor class.
December 25, 2021
I could buy into The Debt 100% had I not a grasp on history, know that many Blacks like to play victim, know if Africans didn’t sell their own people there would have been no African slavery, and know many Blacks were in America long before the Europeans invaded America.
Being a student of Thomas Sowell and Dane Calloway has taught me much about history and social science. I have also learned that many of the problems in Black communities (Worldwide) are problems they refuse to correct because they prefer living in tradition instead of living in reality and learning.
Chapter 4 Self-Hatred opens with the following quote:
The greatest stumbling block in the way of progress in the race has invariable come from within the race itself. The monkey wrench of destruction as thrown into the cog of Negro Progress, is not thrown so much by the outsider as by the very fellow who is in our fold, and who should be the first to grease the wheel of progress rather than seeking to impede it. --Marcus Garvey
Being a student of Thomas Sowell and Dane Calloway has taught me much about history and social science. I have also learned that many of the problems in Black communities (Worldwide) are problems they refuse to correct because they prefer living in tradition instead of living in reality and learning.
Chapter 4 Self-Hatred opens with the following quote:
The greatest stumbling block in the way of progress in the race has invariable come from within the race itself. The monkey wrench of destruction as thrown into the cog of Negro Progress, is not thrown so much by the outsider as by the very fellow who is in our fold, and who should be the first to grease the wheel of progress rather than seeking to impede it. --Marcus Garvey
February 20, 2008
My notes and quotes:
Jews, Arabs, Turks, Russians, Finns, Swedes, Czechs, Uzbeks, Macedonians, Estonians, Malayans, Cathayans, Japanese, Sinhalese – one and all planetwide – have a nurturing access to the fullness of their myriad histories, histories that often seem as old as time.
African Americans must spiritually survive from the meager basket of a few mean yesterdays. No chance for significant group progress there. None. For we have been largely overwhelmed by a majority culture that wronged us dramatically, emptied our memories, underminded our self-esteem, implanted us with palatable voices, and stripped us along the way of the sheerest corona of self-definition. We alone are presumed pastless, left to cobble self-esteem from a vacuum of stolen history.
By default, we must define ourselves by our ongoing tribulations and those who mete them out to us. Otherwise, we have little in the way of a long-held interior idea of who we are. (p. 28).
I will not belabor the point here. Talk of the International Monetary Fund tends to induce sleep quickly. But certainly were it not for the blindness occasioned by Africa’s damaged self-confidence, Africa’s leaders would know from painful historical experience that money’s Western sorcerers can quickly change costumes when there’s money to be made, pawns to be fleeced. The Western strategy for five hundred years has always been to exploit until understanding dawns and economic circumstances alter, or sufficient public revulsion gathers to force a retreat. Thus, slavery was caused to morph into colonialism, and colonialism into the Cold War and the Cold War into the African Growth and Opportunity Act. (p. 183).
There is, I think, a useful lesson in this story. Those – nations, individuals, whites as a racial entity – who enjoy the privileges of disproportionate power and wealth will seldom voluntarily do more than render to the disadvantaged an appearance of helpfulness. It is not in their interests to school the disadvantaged on the origins of their dilemma. Nor would they ever be likely to take unforced measures that would tend to level the playing field, if you’ll forgive the tired metaphor. Never, in the march of human relations, has power behaved thus. Intrinsic to advantage is the drive to maintain itself. Aah, the advantaged. Careful, now, not to deify them. For such undeserved admiration, in and of itself, is for the disadvantaged a debilitating condition. (p. 198).
Perhaps it would help her place herself in context if she could read a letter I came upon in the wonderful book Strong Men Keep Coming by Tonya Bolden. The letter is dated August 7, 1865, and was written by Jourdon Anderson, once a slave in Big Spring, Tennessee, to his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson, who had written to the ex-slave in Dayton, Ohio, where he had resettled with his wife and children. The colonel had written to persuade Anderson to return to Big Spring and work for him as a free man:
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdan, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can …
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mnady, - the folks call her Mrs. Anderson, - and the children – Milly Jane, and Grundy – go to school and are learning well … Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my freedom papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshall-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.
I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-give dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to …
Please send the money by Adam’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for our faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises for the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense … Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire …
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
Colonel Anderson never paid Jourdon Anderson what he owed him for his labor, nor had any of the other slaveholders (including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) who had stolen the labor of tens of millions of blacks and, by so doing robbed the futures of all who would descend from them. (p. 241).
Jews, Arabs, Turks, Russians, Finns, Swedes, Czechs, Uzbeks, Macedonians, Estonians, Malayans, Cathayans, Japanese, Sinhalese – one and all planetwide – have a nurturing access to the fullness of their myriad histories, histories that often seem as old as time.
African Americans must spiritually survive from the meager basket of a few mean yesterdays. No chance for significant group progress there. None. For we have been largely overwhelmed by a majority culture that wronged us dramatically, emptied our memories, underminded our self-esteem, implanted us with palatable voices, and stripped us along the way of the sheerest corona of self-definition. We alone are presumed pastless, left to cobble self-esteem from a vacuum of stolen history.
By default, we must define ourselves by our ongoing tribulations and those who mete them out to us. Otherwise, we have little in the way of a long-held interior idea of who we are. (p. 28).
I will not belabor the point here. Talk of the International Monetary Fund tends to induce sleep quickly. But certainly were it not for the blindness occasioned by Africa’s damaged self-confidence, Africa’s leaders would know from painful historical experience that money’s Western sorcerers can quickly change costumes when there’s money to be made, pawns to be fleeced. The Western strategy for five hundred years has always been to exploit until understanding dawns and economic circumstances alter, or sufficient public revulsion gathers to force a retreat. Thus, slavery was caused to morph into colonialism, and colonialism into the Cold War and the Cold War into the African Growth and Opportunity Act. (p. 183).
There is, I think, a useful lesson in this story. Those – nations, individuals, whites as a racial entity – who enjoy the privileges of disproportionate power and wealth will seldom voluntarily do more than render to the disadvantaged an appearance of helpfulness. It is not in their interests to school the disadvantaged on the origins of their dilemma. Nor would they ever be likely to take unforced measures that would tend to level the playing field, if you’ll forgive the tired metaphor. Never, in the march of human relations, has power behaved thus. Intrinsic to advantage is the drive to maintain itself. Aah, the advantaged. Careful, now, not to deify them. For such undeserved admiration, in and of itself, is for the disadvantaged a debilitating condition. (p. 198).
Perhaps it would help her place herself in context if she could read a letter I came upon in the wonderful book Strong Men Keep Coming by Tonya Bolden. The letter is dated August 7, 1865, and was written by Jourdon Anderson, once a slave in Big Spring, Tennessee, to his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson, who had written to the ex-slave in Dayton, Ohio, where he had resettled with his wife and children. The colonel had written to persuade Anderson to return to Big Spring and work for him as a free man:
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdan, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can …
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mnady, - the folks call her Mrs. Anderson, - and the children – Milly Jane, and Grundy – go to school and are learning well … Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my freedom papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshall-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.
I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-give dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to …
Please send the money by Adam’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for our faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises for the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense … Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire …
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
Colonel Anderson never paid Jourdon Anderson what he owed him for his labor, nor had any of the other slaveholders (including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) who had stolen the labor of tens of millions of blacks and, by so doing robbed the futures of all who would descend from them. (p. 241).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 5, 2025
After reading, ‘Should America Pay,’ I’m not sure this had as much zip. At some points I felt bored and disassociating, but then some of his examples were really good. I enjoyed his quick jaunt to Cuba. Provided some interesting historical context.
December 2, 2018
Thought provoking read. Premise is we owe the descendants of slaves pay for the work done by their ancestors.
May 29, 2023
Read this for class and found myself loving it.
Very eye opening, truly recommend
Very eye opening, truly recommend
September 21, 2015
I read chapter 9 for my grad class and here was my reaction to his take on reparations:
What really struck you in this reading?
This is a difficult question to answer because every line in the Robinson struck me in some way. Especially, his story of the Black man and how the lives (“if you could call them that”) of his great-great and and great-grandfathers strongly impact his potential and standing in today’s society. It is unbelievable that our government held a conference to discuss the status of the Black man in today’s society and they did not once consider how the treatment of past generations of Blacks plays a significant factor in their lack of stability and success today.
I was also struck by the comparison of White leaders today and a sexually abusing father that says:
“I know this has hurt and I won’t do it again, but don’t you tell anybody.”
This comparison shows the hypocrisy of our Nation and really highlights the damaging effects of our Nation’s actions…or lack of actions to pay back its debt to African Americans.
Even if it is unlikely that we will ever obtain reparations, why does Robinson say we should still seek them? Do you agree?
Robinson says that we should still seek reparations despite the fact that we will not obtain them because our Nation needs to be held accountable for their crime against Blacks as humans. The United States needs to acknowledge that they were wrong and that their actions, laws, policies, attitudes, etc. has damaged an entire race to the point that most cannot even see the damage that has inflicted them for over 300 years. I agree. This acknowledgement from the government will assist the Black race in healing from the crimes committed against them and help us to rebuild our identity and self-value. It is also a necessary step in having positive race relations within our society.
What really struck you in this reading?
This is a difficult question to answer because every line in the Robinson struck me in some way. Especially, his story of the Black man and how the lives (“if you could call them that”) of his great-great and and great-grandfathers strongly impact his potential and standing in today’s society. It is unbelievable that our government held a conference to discuss the status of the Black man in today’s society and they did not once consider how the treatment of past generations of Blacks plays a significant factor in their lack of stability and success today.
I was also struck by the comparison of White leaders today and a sexually abusing father that says:
“I know this has hurt and I won’t do it again, but don’t you tell anybody.”
This comparison shows the hypocrisy of our Nation and really highlights the damaging effects of our Nation’s actions…or lack of actions to pay back its debt to African Americans.
Even if it is unlikely that we will ever obtain reparations, why does Robinson say we should still seek them? Do you agree?
Robinson says that we should still seek reparations despite the fact that we will not obtain them because our Nation needs to be held accountable for their crime against Blacks as humans. The United States needs to acknowledge that they were wrong and that their actions, laws, policies, attitudes, etc. has damaged an entire race to the point that most cannot even see the damage that has inflicted them for over 300 years. I agree. This acknowledgement from the government will assist the Black race in healing from the crimes committed against them and help us to rebuild our identity and self-value. It is also a necessary step in having positive race relations within our society.
April 28, 2016
I learned a lot about other countries and how they have dealt with reparations to their citizens due to different kinds of enslavement.
It is nice when you read a book for one reason and come away with a global understanding of reparations.
As black people, after reading this book, I've come to understand there may never be reparations for us. Not until we learn to be a cohesive group of people who are not trying to get over. We must leave that "crabs in a barrel" mentality behind.
It is nice when you read a book for one reason and come away with a global understanding of reparations.
As black people, after reading this book, I've come to understand there may never be reparations for us. Not until we learn to be a cohesive group of people who are not trying to get over. We must leave that "crabs in a barrel" mentality behind.
May 23, 2009
Read it for my human rights seminar, freshman year at U of M. His viewpoint is extreme, but he makes a very compelling point. This definitely made me look at a lot of present-day realities that I had more or less ignored in a new light. It made me a lot more uncomfortable with and angry about the inequalities that I observed in my daily life.
February 27, 2007
For a Sociology of African Americans class, we had to do five glorified book reports; this was a sixth for extra credit. Obviously, I 4.0ed the class, but we had some radical discussions for our troubles.
February 20, 2008
I learned that I wasted my time reading this book.
February 4, 2012
Absurd. Unoriginal. Severely lacking in depth and legitimacy.
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