Originally published on Forbes.com Oct 7th, 2012
In my interview with Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein I asked her about particular items in the Green Party Platform that I found interesting. A proposal that I found really intriguing, in part because of the incredible exercise in forensic accounting that the proposal would require, is:
We support the creation of a claim of action and a right to recover inherited wealth and other profits accumulated from the slave trade for the benefit of a reparations trust fund.
As with a couple of the other questions Dr. Stein indicated that although reparations is in the platform, it was not a focus of the campaign. She more or less used the question to talk about contemporary racial justice issues. I decided not to push further on the matter. Here is the clip
You might note that I suggest that it is conceivable that some of the endowment of Dr. Stein’s alma mater might be attributed to the slave trade. She is a graduate of Harvard and it is just a guess.
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