Reparations for Conservatives
If conservative Americans and their elected representatives thought of their history of racism as a financial debt that must be repaid to their creditors, would they be more likely to support reparations for African-Americans? Paying off the national debt, though not headline news at the moment, has been the conservative rallying cry since the twilight of the Bush administration. America has a duty to its creditors, they say. It’s about fiscal responsibility and being accountable for your actions, they scold. By that standard, has the United States not incurred a great debt from its years of unequal treatment of African-Americans, from slavery to housing discrimination? Should they and their descendants be able to, in the words of Dr. King, “come to our nation’s capital to cash a check?”
On February 18th, Atlantic national correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke at Washington University at the invitation of WUPR. The focus of his lecture came from his blockbuster cover story, The Case for Reparations, which reframed the centuries of racial discrimination towards African-Americans in terms that should be more palatable to the “colorblind” types whose throats constrict when they hear the word “racism.”
Without delving into Coates’ extensive analysis, it is worth pointing out some of the more obvious “debts” this country has racked up in its relationship with its African-American citizens. For roughly 250 years, enslaved African-Americans worked for no payment, to say nothing of the brutality of slavery, while positioning the United States to become the wealthiest nation on earth. They have never been compensated for that labor (if you recall, Reconstruction didn’t quite make it)—add that to the debt. Slavery and Reconstruction were followed by Jim Crow, convict leasing, and federal mortgage programs, all of which are blatant violations of the Constitution, especially the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
If conservatives prefer a more market-oriented analysis, Jim Crow and racially discriminatory laws represent an inefficient and un-capitalist intrusion into the free market. The law imposes different costs on different parties, giving a comparative advantage to those unburdened by the weight of racism. Conservatives have railed against the government “picking winners and losers,” which is exactly what racial discrimination in the marketplace does (spoiler alert: whites win). A perfect market functions best when there is equal access to means of production, no barriers to entry, and full access to information by all participants in the market. The United States has historically violated each of those provisions with respect to African-Americans, and financial reparations are the only way to level that playing field.
To answer the practical question of, “what would reparations look like?” the example of the national debt can be illuminating. The 2011-2013 Tea Party temper tantrum over the debt ceiling resulted in the imposition of a budget sequester that indiscriminately cut government programs in order to lower the deficit and pay the national debt. Those cuts had the harshest impact on already disadvantaged groups like food stamp recipients, the elderly, and the unemployed. However, conservatives praised the cuts as the only way to reign in out-of-control federal spending (some, like John McCain, lamented their impact on military spending). Crucially though, a crusade against debt implies that we as taxpayers are responsible for the fiscal decisions of previous generations. It is not enough to balance the budget; we must actively pay down the debts incurred over the country’s history. Cutting spending, therefore, has proven to be a conservative-approved way to pay off longstanding financial debts. What programs should be cut in order to pay reparations?
If an individual is indebted to another, a court may order the garnishment of wages to finance restitution. Since this article attempts to imagine a case for reparations that would be palatable to conservatives, the fairly obvious answer of increasing taxation on the wealthy and on corporations (both of which have historically profited the most from racially discriminatory policies) unfortunately does not apply. But there is a difference between raising taxes and eliminating loopholes and corporate welfare. Though there is not sufficient space here for a line-by-line budget analysis, the funds for reparations should come from eliminating subsidies to banks, energy companies, and other large corporations. If welfare reform was the conservative cause of the ‘90s, corporate welfare reform can be the cause of the 2010s. And the governmental savings can then be reallocated to pay for reparations in the form of investments in education, infrastructure, and home ownership for African-Americans, all of which positively affect economic growth.
While this has been an attempt to craft a case for reparations acceptable to conservatives, it is worth noting that, ideally, a reparations program should go far beyond the conservative comfort zone. Reparations for African-Americans, along with a larger effort to lessen inequality and poverty in this country (the two are related but in no way synonymous), must include an entirely new tax regime rooted in redistribution that recognizes the predatory nature of extreme wealth and the exploitative reality of living in poverty. In the United States, equality of opportunity has only ever existed as a chimerical ideal, especially for African-Americans. To achieve that ideal, radically progressive policies will always be far more effective than reactionary, resistant conservatism.