The centuries-old practice of forcing a nation that lost a war to pay reparations to the victor seems to have ended after World War II, with the exception of payments by Iraq to Kuwait in the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1990-91.
Was there ever an ethical case for the payment of reparations? Not really. War reparations are a form of victor’s justice. What about the citizens on the losing side who suffered great losses at the hands of the winning side? What about members of the winning side whose conduct of the war was atrocious at times (e.g., the USSR in World War II)?
Which brings me to reparations for slavery in the United States? Who pays? The descendants of Africans who sold other Africans to slave-traders? The descendants of the slave-traders who live in countries other than the United States? All Americans who pay federal income taxes, regardless of any benefites their distant ancestors might have derived from slavery? Only non-black Americans, even if their ancestors did not benefit from slavery and immigrated to this country long after slavery was abolished?
For the reasons implied in my questions — and other reasons that you can readily devise — it would be impossible to determine what living persons and estates benefited from slavery, and by how much. It would also be impossible to itemize the damage, given the tortuous path of personal circumstances and the (often counterproductive) “pro-black” government programs enacted since the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
If there’s an ethical problem with reparations for slavery, what about reparations for the victims of Jim Crow laws in the South, which persisted for a century after slavery? Jim Crow is still far enough in the past to eliminate the problem of identifying “winners” and “losers” and tallying gains and losses remain, despite the shorter passage of time. And why should the descendants of Southerners who benefited from Jim Crow bear the burden of reparations for practices that weren’t “official” but were condoned and encouraged in other parts of the country?
Ethically, reparations for slavery (or Jim Crow) would be on a par with war reparations: victor’s justice. When did American blacks become “victors” rather than “victims”? When, as individuals, they began to be excused — and even rewarded — for their personal failings and shortcomings (e.g., misbeaving in class, being insufficiently intelligent to merit admission to a college, rioting) because of the color of their skin.
But what about whites who enjoyed the same special treatment in the past, and even in the present (though less overtly)? Well, it was and is wrong. And I believe in the adage that “two wrongs don’t make a right”.
Penalizing an innocent white living today for the sins committed by a dead white 70 or 170 years ago isn’t justice. (It may be vengeance, but vengeance is justice only when it is visited upon a known wrong-doer.) Moreover, as I have explained, righting a past wrong on the basis of skin color (or any other general characteristic, such as country of citizenship) is an ethical impossibility.
Related post: The Myth of Social Welfare