ABSTRACT
Creativity, industry, humor, and a healthy will to survive have been evident throughout African American history. But living in an unjust world has been challenging. This final chapter will tackle the concept of “reparation,” both in its political/historical meaning, and as a psychoanalytic concept, described first by Klein, but more currently by Ogden, Carveth and Benjamin. The United States has persistently avoided considering any form of tangible reparation for slavery’s 200 plus years of unpaid wages, wage theft through the sharecropping system, and life under Jim Crow, resulting in deprivations of capital and opportunity through racial discrimination in education, health care, redlining, discriminatory home loans, etc. This avoidance makes all the more acute the psychological experience of injustice that has no resolution. Possible forms reparations may take must be openly discussed, negotiated, and implemented if a full reckoning of this country’s legacy of slavery and its aftermath is to be addressed and justice obtained for African Americans. Achieving such justice would have enormous mental health benefits.
