Quick Fact: Fox News falsely claims Liu says "reparations [are] on the table"
Fox News' website, the Fox Nation, falsely claimed that in a video clip, Obama appeals court nominee Goodwin Liu said: "Reparations are on the Table." In fact, in the 2008 discussion to which the Fox Nation was referring, Liu actually suggested that people should deal with the legacy of slavery by working at the community level on issues like "access to food, health care, problems with their houses."
Fox: Liu "Says Reparations on the Table"
On March 29, Fox Nation's homepage displayed the following post:
The post linked to a March 23 a National Review Online post, which stated [emphasis added]:
In May 2008, Ninth Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu took part in a discussion of the documentary film Traces of the Trade, which explores the role of New Englanders in the slave trade.
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Let's expose the game that Liu is playing. Just as Liu completely ignores the innocent victims of racial preferences when he urges the perpetual imposition of racial quotas as a remedy for "societal discrimination," so he would make those who were not complicit in slavery pay the price of his grandiose reparations project.
Fact: Liu did not advocate for reparations during the discussion
Nowhere in the passage cited by NRO did Liu say he supported reparations. From Liu's comments during the 2008 discussion about race, as excerpted by NRO [emphasis in original]:
Then there's a further issue, which is that maybe there are white families who were not involved as directly or even indirectly with the slave trade, but who still benefited from it. And then there is the whole question, which you put on the table, about people who came to America after, and, you know, like my family. And why is it that this movie speaks to me so deeply yet?
And so, what I would do, I think I would draw a distinction between a concept of guilt, which locates accountability in a sort of limited set of wrong-doers, and, on the other hand, a concept of responsibility, which is, I think, a more broad suggestion that all of us, whatever our lineage, whatever our ancestry, whatever our complicity, still have a moral duty to ... make things right. And that's a moral duty that's incumbent upon everybody who inherits this nation, regardless of whatever the history is.
And I think, to add one more point on top of that, the exercise of that responsibility ... necessarily requires the answer to the question, "What are we willing to give up to make things right?" Because it's gonna require us to give up something, whether it is the seat at Harvard, the seat at Princeton. Or is it gonna require us to give up our segregated neighborhoods, our segregated schools? Is it gonna require us to give up our money?
It's gonna require giving up something, and so until we can have that further conversation of what it is we're willing to give up, I agree that the reconciliation can't fully occur.
In discussion, Liu actually argued for dealing with the legacy of slavery through working at the community level -- not through reparations. Rather than advocating for "reparations," later during the discussion Liu said that "instead of looking for the single national strategy" on racial equality, people should "think about what you can do on a much smaller scale in much smaller communities, around specific problems that people face, whether it's in their schools, in their workplaces, access to health care, in their housing -- whatever it may be":
LIU: I think for a long time, the -- we have been entranced by a certain image of civil rights progress, which is an image that was forged during the 1960s in the wake of Brown versus the Board of Education and in a time when we had all three branches of the government -- the national government supportive of a general civil rights agenda. I don't see that happening in the near future, however 2008 turns out. And so I'm not sure if we live in a time where we can transplant that model of national leadership to the present day. Instead, I think I agree with Ruth's comment that if this conversation is going to happen, it's gotta happen in much more localized settings around problems of local concerns to people. And that is a -- you know, there's a kind of entropy to that because you can't completely manage it and you can't direct it, but since we have, you know, about 100 different funders out there in our audience, I would say that instead of looking for the single national strategy, which is what everybody always looks for, think about what you can do on a much smaller scale in much smaller communities, around specific problems that people face, whether it's in their schools, in their workplaces, access to health care, in their housing -- whatever it may be. Because unless it's framed around a specific problem, the conversation will just be that: conversation.
Like, what's that all about? These guys make it easy-- it doesn't take Dr. Freud to figure them out....
This country obsessively discusses race. To assert otherwise, one must live in his or her basement, or some hick town with a population of about 100 hillbillies. This country's laws generally put all races on an equal footing, and when they deviate from this standard, they do so in favor of minority groups. It's disingenuous for any African American of my generation to use the legacy of slavery for his/her failings. . .
Liu was responding to a question about reparations (video at link shows this is the case).
Also, the idea of addressing reparations at the community level is not an alternative to reparations, it is reparations. In fact, the current thinking of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) calls for "reparations in the form of policies to correct racial inequalities and barriers to opportunity in black communities, such as resources for education, health care, and promoting economic growth." In other words, reparations advocates are calling for exactly the sort of thing Liu called for in this clip.
DeWolf's book, Inheriting the Trade, which is about coming to terms with the legacy of slave-trading in his own family, has interesting points to make about reparations and the continuing effects of slavery in America.