49 Comments

This isn't to say that I don't see any argument for reparations. I think there could be important (though hard to quantify) benefits to people seeing that, as a country, you've acknowledged the harms you did to their group and treated it like a bad act that you made up for. Unfortunately, this is a two-edged sword because paying reparations for one past injustice has the immediate effect of saying the injustice suffered by this group is more important than those suffered by other groups.

And that has to be balanced against the concern that it encourages us to see racial groups as the appropriate unit of moral redress and raises further difficulties in discouraging us from seeing race as a salient feature of someone that we use in making generalizations about them.

However, what I'm quite sure of is that we absolutely shouldn't try and pay reparations right now. Much better, for the moment, to focus on the simple (but not as sexy) issues of improving the infrastructure, educational opportunities, decreasing crime rates, repealing unfair drug laws etc...

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Sometimes the cost of enduring conflict is lower than the cost of settling it. At least for some actors.

This is one of those times. Especially when the risk is considered; non-blacks would be signing up for potentially unlimited damages. No one is going to do that, not without a guaranteed payoff much greater than the vague promise of "settlement".

Or "Whilst this money goes some way to recognising the crimes of white people, we must understand that racism will always....yadda...yadda....yadda...."

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Let's distinguish two cases for reparations. The justice case and the practical case.

As far as justice goes I fail to see any argument whatsoever. The fact that your parents were poor do to the legacy of slavery is fundamentally no different than your parents being poor because they gambled and drank. In both cases you suffer based on choices you had no role in making.

As far as practicality goes I agree that if we could eradicate future concern over these past injustices that would be worth expending very large quantities of money but you simply offer no evidence that such a payment would have this effect.

I worry that instead such a payment would have the effect of validating the notion that groups are the proper unit at which we should analyze claims of justice, fairness and recompense which could very well increase, not decrease, the level of conflict.

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Brexit may be analogous -- questionable finality, many problems.

On this issue it does seem that a single high profile reparation to one particular group and then no more is not likely an equilibrium.

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"On 4, this issue has world attention"

You people really need to get over yourselves.

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And to avoid having all of my comments be negative, let me point to the workers' compensation system as a potential reparations model.

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I find that unconvincing (but of course that doesn't make you wrong). Thanks for replying!

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As always in law, after a resolution both sides can say "that case has been resolved, let it go", and reasonably expect many observers to support them in this.

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I drafted a response regarding 2 that unhelpfully repeated my appeals to the concepts of finality and and standing. So, let me put it more concretely instead. You speak of a "legal resolution" that would "resolve" the harm caused by racism and slavery (I presume this is restricted to harms suffered in the U.S. exclusively). Assume a reparations scheme in which Group X gets cash payments from Group not-X. What, precisely, is resolved? I.e., what does Group X surrender in order to obtain these payments and what does Group not-X receive for its payments? I find it difficult to imagine answers to these questions, but perhaps (and I mean this sincerely) you can help me!

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I'm afraid that this is simply an aggression, a demand by a stronger group to receive a tribute from a weaker group. If this is the case, how would you apply your logic for historical conflict resolution?

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On 2, all legal resolutions are subject to the same criticism, that future folk might still complain again. On 3, creating precedents is one of the key goals of legal resolutions. That's good, because it disciplines behavior. On 4, this issue has world attention, and part of what we may want is the appearance of justice to a wider world.

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I see many problems, including:

1. "But we almost never refuse to have a legal proceeding on the basis of difficulty of judging." This is wrong. The concepts of standing and justiciability are fundamental to U.S. law.

2. More broadly, if one succeeded in eliminating concerns about standing and justiciability, what reason is there to suppose that any reparations process would achieve finality? There would always be future persons who could plausibly claim that he/she/they descended from a wronged group but had not been sufficiently compensated for that history. So why enter a process without any potential for finality?

3. Your post is very unclear as to who would be eliglble to receive reparation payments. I.e., would the process be restricted to identifiable descendants of persons formally enslaved under U.S. law, or would descendants of any wronged group also be in the mix? If the former, they what prevents the next historically-wronged group from demanding a similar reparations process? If the latter, how could any process end in a finite time?

4. The jury proposal --"randomly pick 13 adults from the whole world, let them each pick one legal advisor, then isolate them all in a room and have them work together as a jury to pick a resolution" is not workable. First, why should jurors "from the whole world" have a say in resolving a U.S.-specific issue? Assuming that this jury reflected the world population, the jury would be mostly non-U.S. persons. Second, and relatedly, how would this extra-U.S., ad-hoc "jury" decision achieve any level of political legitimacy in the U.S.?

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Maybe we would; why not try though?

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I think you would get a hung jury.

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"I'm willing to be convinced but it's far from clear that in the current political culture capitulating to the aggrieved will make the their grievances and others' go away."

This is something that could at least be asked of people on the street or polled.

There may also be something to be said of ceremonial gestures. Freed slaves were explicitly promised 40 acres and a mule. What's the current market price for a mule and 40 acres of farm land?

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Racial tensions have existed persistently since before the 13 colonies declared their war for independence. Creating new explanations for its existence isn't really necessary. Things are also at an all-time high in terms of civilly disagreeing with one another. Remember the Days of Rage: https://status451.com/2017/...

"Why, despite the demonstrable economic and social gains of blacks since then, has there been an escalation of grievance rhetoric?"Probably at least 50% the https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... . A large portion of the rest is probably the long term phenomenon where white intellectuals who successfully shift the overton window very slightly towards more progressive idealogies step-by-step win status competitions and prestige.

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