Before I lay out that argument, though, let's revisit the definition. According to Wikipedia, the generally accepted definition of reparations is "a political justice concept that argues that [monetary] reparations should be paid to the descendants of slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa who were trafficked to and enslaved in the Americas as a consequence of the Atlantic slave trade."
There are immediate concerns here that pop straight out of the definition itself. For example, who exactly are the descendants of slaves? There are people alive in the United States today living and identifying as whites who are in fact descended from such slaves. They have never suffered personally from racism, nor do they face institutional or systemic barriers to success based on their ancestors' experience. Are we going to pay them? And if not, are we admitting that this is thus not at all about past slavery but about current racism?
If we are saying it is in fact more about racism than slavery, then do we simply pay reparations to all black people? Would Barack Obama, whose father was from Kenya and whose ancestors therefore never knew slavery in the Americas, be entitled to such a payment? The part of his family that reaches back to the 19th century in America is white. They were more likely to be slaveholders than slaves.
So already things are getting very muddied, and we haven't even broached the subject of what exactly reparations would accomplish. What exactly are we hoping to achieve here? Let's say we somehow magically solve the problem of identifying the whom: no one seems to be giving much thought to the consequences of making such payments. As a white male born and raised in the South, I can tell you that the plan would backfire horribly, because I know racists and I know how they think. But more importantly, the payments simply would not solve anything.
Let's walk through the scenario.
It's January 1st, 2025. After five years of exhaustive vetting and screening, the government has finalized its list of recipients for reparations. Today, the first payments hit their accounts. Let's say we settled on $10,000 a year for 10 years.
You're a young, African-American male named Marcus Washington (more on that soon) who has just graduated college the prior spring. It's no small miracle you accomplished that feat, given that in America, many more African-Americans per capita live in poorer areas than whites do, and we fund our schools almost entirely through the local tax base, leaving you set up to fail from the day you walked into kindergarten. You were also at a disadvantage in college because of the resource challenges you faced in high school.
Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.
Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.
But finally, after plugging away at it for another couple of months, you get it: a coveted job in your field. Congratulations! But if you're like the average black man in America, you're earning only about 70% as much as your white peers. What's worse is that this gap has in fact widened in the past generation: your father earned on average 80% of what his white colleagues earned. We're actually going backwards on the racial wage gap. And no, you cannot dismiss this gap based on differences in levels of education: blacks earn less than whites even when adjusting for education. In other words, a black man with a PhD is on average doing worse than a white man with the same degree, so we are indeed comparing apples to apples here.
Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.
Still, despite earning less than your white colleagues, you're doing OK. Engineers do pretty well financially, after all, even at a 30% pay cut. So it's time to get a place of your own! No more living with Mom and Dad. So let's go apartment-hunting. Despite the fact that your community has no shortage of nice apartments, you seem to be hearing that places have no availability when you email the leasing offices. Well, maybe they do, maybe they don't, but studies show that if they see a "black-sounding" name or hear a voice on the phone they believe is that of an African-American, they are more likely to refuse to rent to you.
Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.
Eventually, of course, you do find an apartment. So now you have your job and your apartment. Time to relax! Let's go to the movies. As you exit your vehicle, you walk past a white family getting into their car. Is it your imagination, or do they seem to quicken their pace and lock the door as you approach? Maybe, maybe not. Hard to judge an individual situation like that. But what you do know is that many whites associate young black men with violence and danger. And racists like to trot out statistics that show that black men do indeed get convicted for more crimes than white people do. But there are two problems here: one is "get convicted for" as opposed to "commit:" blacks are more likely to be convicted or forced to plea out when charged with crimes compared to whites. The other issue is why we are looking at race as the determining factor here to begin with: it's not that blacks commit more crime than whites, it's that poorer and less educated populations commit more crimes than do wealthier and more educated ones. And for reasons that should be painfully obvious even if this is the very first time you have read about racism in America, blacks face far more hurdles to getting an education and becoming economically upward-mobile compared to whites. But of course, people don't wear t-shirts saying, "Lock Your Doors, Folks, I Grew Up Poor and Was Deprived of a Good Education by a Racist System." So people look for other visual cues to identify perceived dangers, and skin color is a very easy one to flag in a person's brain.
Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.
But you brush aside your irritation at this white family's caution. It's winter. Maybe they were just in a hurry to get out of the cold? So you go into the cinema and watch your movie. And as you watch, you notice something. The more violent characters and the ones depicted as being more brutish and of lower socioeconomic standing all have names Americans associate with people of color. You're trying not to see racism everywhere, but it's disturbingly obvious. The more sympathetic characters have names that sound "whiter." Why is that, you wonder? Probably because the American scriptwriter is as subject to the same hidden prejudices and racist assumptions that so many white Americans suffer from. This isn't paranoia: it's a proven fact: white America in general - and yes, that includes even those who swear they don't have a racist bone in their bodies and actually believe that about themselves - tends to automatically conjure up images of aggression and failure simply at the mention of names that they associate with people of color, as Dr. Colin Holbrook found to his dismay in the cited study.
Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.
You exit the theater feeling a bit shaken. You head back to your car: your pride and enjoy: a brand-new BMW 3-series you treated yourself to as a reward for graduating and landing that great job. (Little do you know, by the way, that you paid more for that car than your white peers would have and your car insurance rates are also higher.) As you approach your vehicle, you stand in front of your shiny new Beamer and look for your keys. That's when a bright light flashes in your face and a tense-sounding voice tells you to back away from the vehicle. As a young African-American male in America, you know the drill by now. You're in an affluent neighborhood, approaching a nice car, and you're guilty of that most unforgivable of crimes, EWB: Existing While Black. You know that your life is in grave danger right now. Move your hands too quickly and you could be shot dead by an officer who most likely would not even be indicted, never mind convicted, for your execution. You acknowledge the officer verbally and very, very slowly raise your hands. He checks your identity and you prove ownership of the car. No violence this time. But what about the humiliation? The idea that you are not really even a full citizen in your own country? That every single day you have to prove both who you are and who you are not in ways that no white person will ever be asked to do in this nation? That you cannot even feel safe around the very people whose sole job is to keep our citizenry safe?
Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice. They will do nothing to facilitate change of any kind, save one: reparations will be the new "America can't be racist, because look, we voted for a black president" meme to white America, except that the effect will be permanent and more damaging this time. And this is where I come back to my perspective as a white man raised in the South around overt racists. I know how their brains work. The day that first reparations check is mailed, racist white America will declare all racism permanently atoned for and eradicated. Think of it much the way you might think of a lawsuit settlement for a wrongful injury that debilitates a man physically and mentally for life. You write the check and you walk away. You go and live your life, feeling you've paid your debt. But what has the money changed if the victim is no longer able to function or enjoy a decent quality of life? Your guilt may be assuaged, but can the victim now magically care for himself? Walk? Think clearly? Clean up after himself? Money changes none of that. It just makes you feel less guilty.
And that in a nutshell is why I oppose reparations: it's just too damn easy. It's a way for white America to just cut a check and walk away from its responsibilities to change all the horrible injustices and barriers to success and well-being cited above (and so many more that I would literally need a book to document them all).
I can't end an objection to reparations that centers on racism without offering some alternative. It is not enough to just say "no" to reparations. We must say YES to something else. And for me, that something else is to use that same amount of money to fund an Equality New Deal, not just for African-Americans, but for all minorities and women, all the groups that to this day continue to see their success blocked by centuries-old barriers. Among the features of this Equality New Deal must be:
1) The ending of reliance on local tax bases to fund schools. Few things reduce upward economic mobility as severely as our unequal schools. If you are poor, you likely live in a place with a smaller tax base. If you have a smaller tax base, your schools get less money and fewer resources. As a result, you get a lower-quality education, and the cycle is perpetuated on down the generations. I am not suggesting anything so radical as the federalization of the American school system. Such an approach would never get off the ground and if it did, it would likely get shot down in the courts. What I am suggesting instead is that we target the poorest 33% of American school systems (as measured not by current expenditure, since that is a choice, but by per capita property tax collection in their districts, adjusted for local cost of living) and simply give them annual grants that equate to the funds needed to provide them the same resources as enjoyed by the average American school system. No strings attached: allow them to retain full, local control. The only caveat would be that progress must be demonstrated each year, and that systems that fail to improve would have to submit to temporary oversight boards in order to keep receiving the funds.
Furthermore, for the next generation, as we wait for the effects of the above measures to permeate throughout the affected populations over the coming 20-30 years, we must offer federally-funded "catch-up" programs for qualifying students. These programs would be one to two semesters of pre-college preparatory training to help students who wish to attend college, but who, because of the poor quality of the education they received, are not fully ready, despite having high school diplomas. To qualify, a student would take a standardized exam in reading, writing, mathematics, civics/history, and basic science. Based on the scores in those four areas, they would then be offered remedial courses to correct any deficiencies and ensure that they are truly ready to attend college. This will help close the performance gap we so often see in our colleges and universities when comparing the outcomes for students from poorer v wealthier school districts. It is hoped that after 30 years, this program could be scaled back or even ended if we achieve more uniform quality of education.
2) For all companies over 100 employees, make job applications race-, ethnicity-, and gender-blind. Initial applications would be submitted on line (as most are these days anyway) and assigned a number specific to to the candidate. Only after a candidate has moved to the interview round would names be required. Salary histories must be banned entirely, since they perpetuate unequal pay (given than employers often make offers based on past salaries versus what is necessarily appropriate for the job, and that perpetuates the cycle of certain groups under-performing in pay). Salaries should be based strictly on job title, education/relevant credentials, and numbers of years of related work experience.
3) Ban the box. African Americans (and other minorities) are disproportionately convicted of crimes and are forced into plea bargains at greater rates than are whites. When these involve felonies, that person is then tagged for life, and finding a job becomes exponentially more difficult. Every time an applicant has to tick that "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" box, the likelihood of being considered for a job plummets. We must embrace the idea that once you have paid your debt to society, it is fully paid and you should not be punished for life. There are of course cases where we must make exceptions: certain sex crimes, for example, must always be considered if an applicant is applying for a job in which s/he is responsible for children or involved with other vulnerable populations, and certain types of jobs must be exempted from the rule in order to ask about crimes related to fraud and financial malfeasance. But in cases of exceptions, the scope to ask about convictions must be narrow and focused on what is strictly relevant to that particular job.
4) We must take the profits out of prisons and refocus efforts on reducing recidivism by turning our prisons into drivers of opportunity, not despair. We currently have a system in which there is a strong financial incentive to incarcerate people, and African-Americans and other minorities are disproportionately impacted by this injustice. Furthermore, once incarcerated, such institutions not only lack any incentive to engage in rehabilitation, but are in fact strongly incentivized to do the opposite: after all, for them, recidivism is just a fancy word for "repeat business and higher profits," which is unconscionable and is one of the greatest moral outrages of our day. We must therefore completely end private prisons and refocus our system on turning out ex-convicts who are ready to start a new life, not go out and commit more crimes because they often lack the skills and education to do anything else. All prisons must offer job training, GED programs, and online college courses. This is not to "reward criminals," as critics often suggest, but to keep society safe, to keep all of us secure. A person who walks out of a 10-year prison sentence with a degree and a job skill is far less likely to end up committing more crime, after all. So who do you want getting paroled? A hardened criminal who's been brutalized for the past decade, who has no hope and no future, whose only means of survival is more crime? Or an educated, employable person with prospects and a path to success? Which one of those people is more likely to murder your child in an attempted robbery tonight?
5) Law enforcement must be reformed to stop targeting people of color and must be held responsible when it does. This requires three steps at the federal level: 1) Requirement that all police officers in the United States wear body cameras when on duty to keep them accountable. Failure to comply must result in dismissal upon the third violation, and immediate dismissal if it is deemed that the failure was both intentional and related to a violent encounter. 2) All police offers must take and pass a federally-run course on racial injustice awareness. The point of such a course is not to make everyone politically correct. The point is to train officers in the facts surrounding human bias and how it impacts their jobs as law-enforcement officers, and what they can do to mitigate it. Because the ugly truth is that we all have prejudice inside us. Only by becoming consciously aware of it and learning how to manage it can we overcome its negative impacts on others. 3) All instances of police shootings of civilians must be investigated as potential federal crimes. Leaving this to local systems of justice that are often at the very root of the problem is no longer acceptable. 4) All major police departments must pursue aggressive diversity hiring policies to ensure that they look like their communities. If a department serves a city that is 40% black, 40% Hispanic, 20% white, and 51% women, then that, as closely as possible, is what their police force should look like. 5) We must institute training programs that begin to change the culture of deadly force that is so pervasive in many law enforcement communities. While such violence affects everyone, it affects minorities disproportionately. Our 'shoot first, ask questions later' attitude must change. And it can. Police forces around the world have shown us this. We have even seen successful experiments here in the US. It can be done, with the appropriate amount of dedication, training, federal funding, oversight, and regulation.
6) We must increase both enforcement of and penalties associated with all anti-discrimination laws and regulations (which in turn must be strengthened) in the areas of housing, employment, education, and consumer affairs (including lending and insurance), and work to make sure that in every case where discrimination is proven, high-profile consequences are seen to follow. This isn't just about punishing wrongdoers, but showing society at large that we do not accept such behavior. We must not only punish it with fines, but stigmatize it and drag it into the light to demonstrate our collective commitment to change. We must also go further in our efforts to regulate economic activity that either negatively targets minorities or preys on the poor (a population where minorities are over-represented). Examples are predatory payday loans and high-interest/high-cost rent-to-own programs that increase the cost of so many goods in poorer communities. We must also address inequality in our credit, credit rating, and insurance sectors, as these, too, unfairly target many minority groups, resulting in higher costs for many financial products.
These six steps would represent a generation-long Equality New Deal. It likely represents no less economic cost than a reparations program, but will pay far greater dividends. Of course, no amount of legislation, regulation, or policy-making will ever eliminate the scourge of prejudice. Sadly, I believe it will always be with us in some form or another, always finding new ways to express its ugliness even as society moves past others. But such a New Deal can mitigate and, hopefully, eventually end the effects such prejudice has on a population that has been oppressed since the dawn of Western occupation of this continent. Along the way, the economic strength it will unleash will help our entire society and become a driver of growth and opportunity for all Americans.
