Why White People (and others) Don’t Qualify for Freedmen Reparations
Insights about the badges and incidents of slavery
The recent Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case about affirmative action has the media cycle on fire. Most notably, some are surprised by the fact that American Freedmen history is all over the SCOTUS majority opinion, concurrences and dissents. That’s because affirmative action came out of the need to redress the badges and incidents of slavery that arose from chattel slavery and continued into the Jim Crow era for the freed slaves (Freedmen) and their descendants, like Martin Luther King Jr (a Negro/Freedmen).
But the real shocker for most was the prevalence of case law that outlined the reparatory nature of government actions, laws, and programs targeted specifically and even exclusively at multigenerational Black Americans (Negroes/Freedmen).
People are coming to learn the term “Freedmen” … a protected class status conferred to emancipated slaves/freed people. Though the term was prevalent during the post-civil war era and framing of the post-civil war 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, mostly the Freedmen community now uses it consistently.
The SCOTUS decision has people asking, what is a Freedmen and are white people American Freedmen or entitled to reparations?
