Vice President Kamala Harris supports reparations for slavery, but Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee has yet to publish her plan to get them done. Whatever her plan, it will have to answer a bunch of thorny questions.
First, who gets reparations? Harris has left open the possibility of reparations to black Americans for both slavery and what she calls “systemic racism in the system.”
Slavery reparations, by definition, may go only to people who suffered because of slavery. Of course, no one alive today has suffered under legal slavery (although human trafficking is a serious problem).
So supporters of reparations for slavery say that payments should go to the descendants of those who were enslaved before the Civil War.
But how would Harris figure out who those people are? She can’t use the racial category “black” as a proxy for descendants of slaves, because a large and growing percentage of black Americans are recent African and West Indian immigrants or their descendants.
What’s more, according to Pew Research, only 41% of black Americans say that their ancestors were enslaved in America. Most of them must base that conclusion on family lore, because we have few reliable family records of slaves from so long ago.
To date, no proponent of slavery reparations has provided a good answer to these problems with the idea.
Still, if there’s one thing that’s certain about slavery reparations, it’s that they shouldn’t go to descendants of slaveholders. So what would Harris do about people such as former President Barack Obama, who are descendants of both?
No good answers to that one either.
Who would get “systemic racism” reparations? To answer that question, Harris first would have to define “systemic racism.”
People use a lot of different definitions of that term, all of which have suffered under withering criticism. But set that aside and assume that, whatever it is, systemic racism exists.
The next question is: Who has suffered from it? Again, Harris can’t give “systemic racism” reparations to everyone who is black. An African immigrant who arrived here yesterday hasn’t suffered anything.
And if we’re assuming that systemic racism exists, are we also to assume that it affects only black Americans? What of Chinese immigrants during the California gold rush who suffered discrimination and segregation? Or Japanese Americans whom President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put into internment camps?
While we’re rattling off all these racial groups, just who qualifies for group membership anyway? If reparations go to “black” people, do you qualify if you’re one-half black, or one-eighth, or one-drop?
Should the government issue certificates of blood quanta? Do you qualify if you merely “identify” as black, like Rachel Dolezal?
No good answers to any of these questions.
But let’s assume that reparations supporters such as Kamala Harris do have good answers. The next question is: Can Harris trace the harm that reparations must remedy?
Some black Americans whose ancestors were slaves or lived through segregation are poor. Would they be rich but for slavery or systemic racism?
Many black Americans whose ancestors were slaves or suffered through segregation are rich. What accounts for the difference?
Likewise, what accounts for the difference between native-born black Americans and African immigrants? These immigrants often arrive in America with close to nothing, but within one generation end up at the top of the socioeconomic chart.
Harris must account for these differences if reparations are to go to those who ostensibly deserve them.
Proponents of reparations in Harris’ home state of California have suggested that politically liberal organizations claiming to represent black Americans should hand out reparations as they see fit.
But that wouldn’t solve any of the problems we’ve identified. These organizations don’t have good answers to who gets the reparations, who has suffered, how much they have suffered, or who counts as “black” or whatever other category is used.
To give those organizations the power to dispense reparations would create a system of unaccountable cronyism.
Another question that Harris’ reparations plan must answer: How much would this spending cost taxpayers?
Assuming that anyone is entitled to anything, different people will be entitled to different amounts. For example, a black American whose grandparents came to America after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has suffered less than someone whose grandparents lived through segregation. But how much less?
No reparations proposal has developed a framework to account for those differences.
The next question is legal: How can Harris make a reparations proposal constitutional? Every reparations proposal has failed to give a good answer to any of the questions asked above, which makes all the proposals arbitrary.
The Constitution’s equal protection clause forbids arbitrary, race-based programs, so courts would strike down such a reparations plan.
Harris’ rejoinder might be that a reparations plan isn’t based on race, but based on harms. But to support that argument, she would have to identify with specificity the harm and who has suffered it. And she couldn’t use race-based proxies or rough approximations. In other words, she’d be back at square one.
The final question is a civics question: Is Harris willing to tear the country apart for this?
A racial spoils system—and that’s all these proposals really are—is the surest way imaginable to enflame race hatred in America. The cost would be immeasurable and the benefits imaginary.