The idea of reparations has been reignited in recent years within the United States—which most agree would consist in monetarily compensating black Americans who can verify slave ancestry in the US. While there have been very long articles written for reputable outlets on the reasons why reparations are a worthwhile endeavor, the prospect of repaying living black people for something that legally ended in 1863 seems to be a bit more complicated than most supporters are willing to admit.

CNN published a piece in late 2019 which said that “while nearly 75% of black respondents in an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll said they believe the US government should pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved black people, just 15% of white participants supported the idea.” The article went on to say that “about 29%” of all those questioned supported the idea. 

It is not difficult to see why the majority of black people would be in favor of such an idea: they are set to receive free money, land, and perhaps other assets, while white people (and non-black minorities) would make up the majority of those paying out cash and possibly relinquishing said possessions. Not only is the idea of reparations impressively unpopular across the nation, it is almost exclusively deployed by pandering political candidates within the Democratic Party—a political party that reeled in 89% of the black vote in the 2016 presidential campaign.

White people are not the only ones pushing back against the prospect of having to pay black people money based on nothing more than their skin color. Coleman Hughes, a young black American man who delivered a testimony at a US House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Bill HR 40 in the summer of 2019, said that people are spending time “debating a bill that mentions slavery 25 times but incarceration only one, in an era with zero black slaves but nearly a million black prisoners—a bill that doesn’t mention homicide once, at a time when the Center for Disease Control reports homicide as the number one cause of death for young black men.”

Hughes continued by saying that installing a system of reparations would only divide the country further, adding “I understand that reparations are about what people are owed, regardless of how well they’re doing. But the people who were owed for slavery are no longer here, and we’re not entitled to collect on their debts. Reparations, by definition, are only given to victims. So the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that: you’ve made one-third of black Americans—who consistently poll against reparations—into victims without their consent, and black Americans have fought too long for the right to define themselves to be spoken for in such a condescending manner.”

The idea that Ta-Nehisi Coates and Hughes could sit beside one another in a well-mannered way, speaking their mind on the issue of reparations without death threats or the wholesale canceling and invalidating of their careers seems like a fairytale that has long disappeared behind the horizon of 2020. The death of George Floyd has only swollen the pride and false gospel of Black Lives Matter (BLM)—perhaps the most unreasonable organization that is currently allowed a portion of the airwaves in mainstream media. The rise of BLM has inspired a branch of black Americans to cut ties with all reasonable discourse in exchange for direct violence against those they perceive to be the perpetrators of their misfortune: white people.

Let me give a couple examples.    

The “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” (CHOP) in Seattle was a no-cop zone, which had made strides in implementing a low-grade form of reparations, with a gentleman announcing over a loudspeaker that all white people within the zone should give one black person in the zone $10 before they leave. No other race was targeted during this announcement—only white people. Besides, ten bucks is hardly enough to purchase a sandwich in Seattle.

Members in CHOP had also created a zone that was reserved for black people only—barring those of any other race from entering, including Columbian Italian Americans. The irony in this is that a bunch of white people were the ones monitoring the area to ensure no one with a different skin tone would overstep the boundary line. This was essentially the resurrection of Jim Crow, only with the roles reversed.

Fighting racism with more racism leaves, well, more racism.

It does not stop there. Much of the arson, assault, and burglary that has spread across the country has been done in the name of reparations. The vast majority of people who are looting stores in response to the death of Floyd are black people. What does stealing a flat-screen TV have to do with the death of a man living in Minnesota? It is viewed as a kind of retribution that evens the playing field. The sentiment is: “If you are going to continue to unjustly kill us, then we are going to forcefully take what is rightfully ours.” It is one thing to steal TVs and the latest Nike sneakers from retail stores, but it is a completely different thing to target and attack people for the mere fact of them being white.

Jim Goad recently published a piece for Taki’s Magazine that goes into a bit of detail about the psychology behind black people’s rage toward white people, and almost all of it has to do with the historical injustices that white people have enacted on black people (ie slavery and Jim Crow).

Goad starts out by referencing a tweet that was posted by Paul Joseph Watson, which features a black woman saying that “the less white babies on this planet, the less of you [white adults] we got! I hope they kill all the white babies! Kill ‘em all right now! Kill ‘em! Kill your grandkids! Kill yourself! Coffin, bitch! Go lay in a coffin! Kill yourself!”

Why would a black person wish the virtual extinction of all white people?

Yusra Khogali, the co-founder of the Toronto chapter of BLM, said that “whiteness is not humxness. In fact, white skin is sub-humxn…. White ppl are recessive genetic defects. this is factual. white ppl need white supremacy as a mechanism to protect their survival as a people because all they can do is produce themselves. black ppl simply through their dominant genes can literally wipe out the white race if we had the power to.”

During a 2017 BLM rally in Seattle, a black woman yelled: “White people, give your fucking money, your fucking house, your fucking property, we need it fucking all. You need to reparate [sic] black and indigenous people right now. Pay the fuck up, pay the fuck up. It ain’t just your fucking time, it’s your fucking money, and now your fucking life is devoted to social change… We’re all operating under white supremacy… And we need to start killing people.”

This boils down to the fact that there are many black people who have a deep and swelling hatred for white people. Countless videos have been published online that show black people targeting innocent white people for nothing more than their skin color. This does not have to do with equality or freedom from oppression—this is about the desire to strip innocent white people of all they have, and if white people are killed or die along the way, so be it. There is only so much one can watch of kids, women, and elderly people being pushed, beaten, and sucker-punched for having white skin.

I digress.

If the threshold for those who receive reparations is based on whether members of their family suffered under slavery in the US, there is a significant burden on that individual to substantiate the claim that their family suffered under slavery in the US. How is one to do this if one does not have paperwork to provide proof? And what if a black person finds out that their ancestors owned slaves (as there were 180 black slave owners in South Carolina alone by the year 1850)? Would they be penalized and have to pay out reparations to those their family enslaved? What about the black people who moved here and did not have family under slavery in the US? And what about non-black people who were enslaved or acted as indentured servants—would they also receive reparations? 

The mountain of questions that would require substantive answers seem to be too much of a burden to make reparations a meaningful effort. 

These questions do not even scratch the surface of the logistics that would need to be ironed out on an economic scale, such as how black people would receive the reparations. Would they be in the form of cash, check, or card? Or is it something that could be implemented through a free-college-tuition operation to aid in income disparity? Forbes contributor Seth Cohen side-stepped the solution to these questions in late June by saying that “if America can fly humans to the moon, it can find ways to redress the injustice of people who toiled on its own land.” That is a non-answer, if there ever was one.  

The issue of who would have to foot this bill is another important concern that does not have a neat answer. Newt Gingrich recently addressed the fact that the California Assembly “voted 56-5 to set up [a] reparations study committee. How they explain to first- and second-generation Latinos and Asians why they should be taxed to transfer their money to Black neighbors who were never slaves will be fascinating.” If reparations were to proceed on a national scale, there will almost certainly be a lot of non-black minorities (much less working-class white people) raising their eyebrows at the prospect of having to give over money that is essential for them to continue providing for themselves and their families.

And on a purely philosophical level: how do we navigate a situation like this where a price tag is quite literally put on lives that suffered in the past? That is the fullest expression of exploitation, which is what we should be trying to avoid. Is a black person’s great-great-grandmother worth $100? $1000? $10,000? Forty acres and a mule? How do we come to a non-arbitrary solution to this question? And just as importantly: is it only non-black people footing this bill? If so, how is that not racist?

In order for this country to operate in the way that it is supposed to, there must be absolute equality under the law. This means that you do not get special privileges or exemptions based on anything, much less immutable qualities such as skin color. If the US were to move forward in giving black people reparations, the US would also have to discuss the potential for handing out reparations to every group that has experienced oppression and discrimination in the past, such as the Irish, Chinese, and Jews (et al).

Installing a piece of legislation that favors one race over another appears to be what many black people want so long as it works to their advantage, and there is no reason why any other race should have to sit by and watch this overt act of racism and discrimination proceed uncontested.