The Case Against Reparations

“Our justice system—and accompanying moral philosophies—wouldn’t dream of punishing people for the crimes of others, so why should our public policy?”

Reparations for slavery aren’t just a bad idea; they are an abysmal idea. On Juneteenth, or June 19th of this year, Congress held a hearing to discuss Bill H.R. 40 and the possibility of reparations for slavery. Journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee, invoking the historian Ed Baptist: “enslavement ‘shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics of America, so that by 1836 more than $600 million, almost half of the economic activity in the United States, derived directly or indirectly from the cotton produced by the million-odd slaves.” This argument is in a similar vein to the claim by Los Angeles resident, Legrand H. Clegg II, who suggested in his recent Los Angeles Times letter to the editor, that slavery, “‘made America great’ in the first place.” But opinion on the issue is sharply divided, even within the black community, with more than one-third of blacks opposing reparations—myself included.

Their arguments vary. Some believe it would be an insult. Others, who also critique affirmative action along similar lines, believe that it would devalue accomplishments by Black Americans, while also creating a mindset of victimhood. And then there are those who believe, philosophically, that it is unreasonable to pay one person for the suffering of another. And then more pragmatically, there is the risk of driving further racial resentment in the United States, given that opinions on reparations are sharply divided along racial and political lines.

These points aside, it is also worth considering that reparations (even if one ignores some of the philosophical objections to their implementation) invite a number of difficult—if not impassable—methodological issues. Are we talking about giving reparations to all black people? If so, a consensus must be met on what a “black person” is. There have been multiple definitions put forward, from the “one drop rule” to being visually identifiable as “black” to various proposed percentages of black ancestry. Then there is the question as to if reparations only go to direct descendants of slaves. Perhaps not, given that some proponents of reparations cite the overall, average differences in income between white families and black families (irrespective of whether a particular black family can trace its origins to having been slaves at some point in time) as a compelling reason to support reparations.