Injecting Nuance into the Reparations Debate

“But when addressing a problem of justice, popularity is neither the sole nor the primary factor for adjudication.”

In a September article for Merion West, Solomon Green provided an eloquent and well-argued case against reparations for slavery. While analyzing every argument and minute detail would be excessive for our purposes here, Green’s essay, on the whole, offers both pragmatic and philosophical arguments against the idea of providing reparation payments to the surviving descendants of American slaves. As someone who also opposes race-based reparations payments, I can certainly sympathize with Green’s intentions. It is a cogent and well-considered case for restraint when addressing the politics of race in America. But there are a few misconceptions embedded within Green’s argument, which I’d like to address here.

Green’s argument starts off by addressing the technical complexities emerging from implementing reparations, namely the logistical difficulties of implementing such a policy today. He cites the complexities of ascertaining “guilt” and apportioning compensation, given the vast amount of time that has passed since the abolition of slavery. In the few instances when the United States government has implemented reparations programs to victims of discrimination or government wrongdoing (i.e. Japanese internment, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, etc.), those victims were usually still alive and, therefore, capable of receiving compensation for their suffering. Needless to say, the same cannot be said for slavery-based reparations; implementing a reparations program would require “innocent bystanders” to shoulder a disproportionate share of the cost. As Green and other conservatives have argued, millions of immigrants have immigrated to the United States since the end of the Civil War; from both a legal and a moral standpoint, taxing them for the crimes of long-deceased slave-owners borders on extortion.

Moreover, given the multiracial realities of modern American society, any race-based reparations program would have to ascertain which descendants qualify for compensation. Millions of Americans claim to be “mixed-race,” sharing only partial black ancestry. The sheer complexity of adjudicating such “exceptions” alone dooms any reparations program, as well as imposing difficult questions of racial identity (and belonging) that conservatives and moderates (particularly of the “colorblind” sort) would rather avoid.