Reparations: Still Unjust

Judging by the headlines in the New York Post, reparations for slavery are back in the news. This time, Alameda County, California, which notably contains Oakland, is considering cash payments to black residents.

The conservative outlet, predictably, is against the idea and, just as predictably, focuses on the impracticality of the idea and its historical absurdity, while sloppily conceding the moral high ground to its advocates.

California’s Kamala Harris, the first black female presidential nominee, also reportedly has a slave owner among her ancestors.

Is she supposed to pay reparations to herself?

This is humorous for the second or two before one realizes that the very premise that makes it humorous goes completely unchallenged, which is quite a price for a giggle.

By contrast, an older opinion piece by Brian Phillips goes for the jugular, starting with his title of "California Reparations Task Force: Fighting Injustice with Injustice." (The piece also addresses what I suspect is a big factual miss by the Post: The reparations might not even be about slavery, but about racist policies.)

Phillips's central argument is clear, straightforward, and refreshing in an era when the conservative movement has gone so far astray that it has been sighted in the weeds of economic illiteracy and corruption:

Justice demands that the guilty be punished and they make restitution to the victim. To give restitution to those who were not victims is to grant unearned rewards. To punish those who did not participate in an injustice is to penalize the innocent. Neither is an act of justice. Neither restitution nor punishment should be dispensed simply because of skin color. Yet, this was what the task force wants to do.

So, regarding that joke: What is Kamala Harris -- or anyone else -- supposed to do regarding "reparations" that distribute money looted from individuals to others, based on accidental membership in a group, such as a race?

Oppose that idea as the evil, unjust proposal that it is.

-- CAV