CONCLUSION

      Many of the facts and relationships described in this Article have been well known for many decades.  In the introduction to a 1958 study of Black health care, Professor Everett C. Hughes wrote:

       One of our most serious questions of social policy is, then, this: Shall we merely try hard to act as if race had never existed?  Or shall we undertake to remove by special action the handicaps left over from our long history of racial discrimination? Disparities in Black health are an American Tragedy, taking far more lives annually than AIDS and automobile accidents combined.  These Black health disparities were created in a history of slavery, segregation and white supremacy.  Halting steps have been made towards amelioration, but current programs will require generations to close the gap; meanwhile, millions of Blacks suffer and 73,000 die prematurely each year.  Treating Black health disparities as a reparations claim may force the law to confront the substantive claims, rather than an easy dismissal on procedural grounds.  Applying the reparations heuristic to health disparities may challenge American society to move beyond token responses.  The goal must be to eliminate disparities in Black health.  These efforts would partially redress one of the great crimes against humanity, moving from tragedy to remedy.

Associate Professor, West Virginia College of Law. LL.M. University of Cambridge; J.D. Northwestern University.