The Washington Post, January 24, 2020: What reparations mean to one American family
Japanese Americans received reparations — a presidential apology and a $20,000 check — more than four decades after their captivity. African Americans have not.
For Robyn, reparations are a meaningful way to acknowledge the loss that both sides of her family have experienced — the “loss of being able to live a normal life.”
“Our family is actually a case study in what would have happened if people had gotten their ‘40 acres,’?” said Scott, whose brother, Robert, is Robyn’s father.
Scott and Robert’s great-grandfather, Charles Sumner Syphax, became a Howard University dean and mathematician. Their grandfather, Charles Sumner Syphax II, became a doctor after graduating from the University of Michigan in 1924. Their father, Charles Sumner Syphax III, became one of the first African American developers in Detroit in the age of redlining.
But for Scott Syphax, compensating African Americans for the stolen wealth that their enslaved ancestors generated — as well as the government-sanctioned discrimination in employment, housing, lending, education and policing — just makes sense. Even the promises of the New Deal and the G.I. Bill, which helped lift White Americans into the middle class, were never fully realized for Black Americans.
“When we were freed, not only did Black people not receive anything,” he said, “there were active pieces of discrimination — both cultural and statutory — that blocked us from being able to create enough in assets to transfer onto successive generations.”
One afternoon at Mits and Jayne’s ranch-style home, Robyn unearthed a box of black-and-white family photos from the hall closet. Tucked inside was a Manila envelope containing the official apology from President Bush — a two-paragraph letter dated October 1990, 45 years after her grandparents’ imprisonment.
Robyn examined the embossed presidential seal and read the blue type for the first time:
“A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories; neither can they fully convey our Nation’s resolve to rectify injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals. We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II.”
Robyn contemplated the weight of those words, reflecting on both sides of her family. Internment — like slavery — had been sanctioned by the government and accepted by most Americans as normal, she said. “But only one side of the story has an ending.”
