Underneath the feel-good politics of it, the practical questions sink the whole enterprise.
JOHN PERRY
Reparations, its proponents insist, are payments white Americans owe black Americans for enslaving them, a practice that ended 163 years ago. These advocates would have us believe that seven or eight generations after the fact, the limitations and inequalities of slavery still hold slavery’s descendants back and deny them their chance at the American dream. And somebody has to pay.
Setting aside the logic of that claim for the moment — while noting its similarity to the familiar liberal mantra: “Vote for us, and we’ll give you stuff!” — let us consider the practical question: Who exactly should pay whom?
Since only the wealthiest people could afford slaves, the legal and moral argument on the subject was academic, not practical, for the vast majority of citizens at the time. That being the case, few among today’s population, even in theory, should have to pay reparations to descendants of slaves.
According to the 1860 census, on the eve of the Civil War, under four percent of American households owned one or more slaves. That means about ninety-six percent of the population owned none. So the descendants of that ninety-six percent should be off the hook. But what about people whose ancestors were members of slaveholding families yet personally opposed slavery? On the other hand, what about people who would have liked a slave but couldn’t afford one?
If descendants of slaveholders should foot the bill, who among us today is descended only from former slaveowners? Odds are that after seven generations, it’s nobody. Why should descendants of non-slaveholders be liable financially for the decisions of others? What about those who are fifty percent descended from a slaveholder? Forty-nine?
The United States government as a whole isn’t liable for slavery; it fought the bloodiest war in its history in part to abolish slavery. It doesn’t owe a dime in reparations to anybody.
Plenty of former slaveholders have already paid reparations. Even figures in American history who are relentlessly condemned for their slaveholding views went to great lengths to emancipate and assist slaves. At the end of his life, George Washington not only freed all his slaves, but left a legacy to pay for their education and to support them in old age that paid out for more than thirty years. Robert E. Lee, who called slavery “an abomination” and who never bought a slave in his life, saw his wife’s plantation slaves freed before emancipation became the law of the land. Do their descendants still owe black people living today?
Then comes the all-important question of who has a claim to this historic windfall. Since not all black Americans were slaves before the Civil War, not all black Americans living today are descended from slaves. Even in colonial times, there were free blacks who owned property and ran businesses. Some blacks born in Canada or elsewhere came to America to seek their fortunes as free men. Some enslaved American blacks escaped to freedom in Canada and eventually moved back to the U.S. Some black Americans were themselves slaveowners. And not all slaves were black; native Americans were also occasionally forced into slavery. If a black person was a slaveholder, should his descendants be collecting reparations or paying them? What about today’s descendants of enslaved natives?
And then there are all the American blacks whose ancestors moved here after 1863. They have no evident basis for a claim.
Consider, too, that America didn’t invent slavery. On the contrary, from the earliest debates about colonial American government, the United States was a world vanguard in ending the slave trade. If Americans are financially liable to today’s black citizens, what about the English slave traders who sold slaves to Americans? What is their current liability? And what about the original slaves’ African neighbors, many of them Muslim or animist, who kidnapped them from their homes and sold them into slavery in the first place? How much should their descendants kick in?
What percentage of a black person’s family tree should be slave before he qualifies for a payment? More fundamentally, who qualifies as black? Should a person be all black to collect? Half, like former president Obama? One quarter? Any percentage? Completely non-African, like Kamala Harris? As Elizabeth Warren discovered, every American is at least 1/300 Native American. We’re all likely 1/300 black as well.
Americans white and black are many generations beyond slavery. Any disparity in opportunity between white and black resulting from slavery is long gone. What’s left today is the result of cultural pressures and personal decisions beyond the scope of our discussion here.
For decades, since the first federal affirmative action contract requirements to compensate for racial discrimination came into effect in 1969, the playing field has been tilted in favor of black Americans to make up for the disadvantages and evils of slavery. That debt has been paid. By any equitable measure, the leveling up is complete. Only recently, after more than fifty years, those discrimination rules are being changed to produce a fair, merit-based environment for all Americans. As Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts points out, the best way to end discrimination based on race is to end discrimination based on race.
But to finish up the exercise, what should being descended from a slave be worth in concrete financial terms? Theoretically, how much should reparations be? One viable solution is to compare what black Americans earn today to what they would earn if they had never been conscripted as slaves. A key source of slaves was the Ivory Coast in Africa. The average income there today is about $5,000 per year. The average black American working full-time earns about $50,000 annually. That being the case, it would appear that every black American owes the United States $45,000 for every working year of his career.
Of course, no one expects black American workers to turn over money they earned through their own hard work and enterprise. That’s as silly as claiming somebody should pay them for being here.
John Perry is a ghostwriter and collaborator, as well as the author of more than a dozen books including Sgt. York: His Life, Legend, and Legacy (Fidelis, 2021). His latest book is The Detroiting of America: What Happened to the Motor City, Why Other Cities Followed, How Detroit is Coming Back (Fidelis, 2024).
This article (Reparations: Who Pays Whom?) was created and published by American Thinker and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author John Perry
Featured image: tomaszmichalkania via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
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