Reparations Are A Good Idea — A White, Christian Conservative’s Perspective

I understand the moral and philosophical objections to the idea of reparations. I was not a slave owner. No one in my ancestry was a slaveowner (as far as I know). No one living today was a slave. Slavery was more than 150 years ago. It is unreasonable to penalize people who had nothing to do with the original sin by rewarding people who were not victims of the original crime.

All of that sounds fine on the surface until we grasp the widespread nature of systemic racism. Once we realize the systemic and generational realities of racism in the US, not only are reparations a reasonable option, but they also make economic sense.

Systemic Racism

Over and over again, black Americans are constrained to the most disadvantaged and vulnerable measurements of American society and economy. There are two possible causes for this consistent reality. Either black Americans are inherently weaker than white Americans (which is a racist perspective), or something is fundamentally flawed within the American system that traps and weakens black Americans.

Consider the proportion of black Americans in the US prison system. Black Americans make up 13.4% of the US population, but 38% of the federal prison population — nearly three times their share of the national population. Keep in mind the US has the largest prison population in the world. Imprisonment rates for black adults are 5.9 times higher than white adults. Black teenagers are 4.1 times more likely to be placed in secure placement for a crime than a white teenager is for the same crime.

The impact of the education system among black Americans compared to white remains separate and unequal — despite rigorous legislation and social engineering for more than half a century. High school dropout rates decreased significantly for all races since 2006 but remained nearly 50% higher among blacks than whites. More than 47% of white adults in America hold some type of college degree. That number drops to 30.8% for black Americans. After this inequality within the education system, the median annual income for a black household in 2018 was more than $20,000 less than the rest of the US.

Even the experienced reality of the family unit in America is different for black Americans than for whites. In the US, 74% of white children under the age of 18 live in a two-parent family. For black children the same age that number drops to less than 39% — nearly half! And black Americans are growing more unhealthy in these struggling homes. African Americans in all age groups are more likely to suffer from a variety of health issues, including diabetes, heart disease, and stroke than white Americans their same age.

Black Americans are not only less likely to succeed; they are far more likely to fail. The systemic structures keep sucking generations of black Americans to the lower status of various aspects of society. Failure on a variety of fronts from education to healthcare, income, and career to crime and imprisonment, has far more significant consequences among African Americans than it does for white Americans. A single misstep by a young white person in America is an opportunity to learn, grow, and mature. A single misstep by a young black person frequently means a lifetime of systemic consequences.

These realities and failings translate to lost economic output from African American individuals and homes, not to mention the generational costs passed down to their children. It also means higher costs in public expenditures for schools, prisons, healthcare, and yes welfare programs. Systemic racism is already costing Americans billions of dollars a year. We are spending those billions spent on inefficient, unproductive ends that frequently perpetuate the systemic problems. In other words, the American taxpayer is financing this dysfunctional and dehumanizing system.

Reparations

National reparations are not unprecedented. Germany paid reparations to Israel after the Holocaust. Japan made reparation payments after World War II. Even the US paid reparations to Japanese Americans held in World War II internment camps.

Granted, each of these examples is far smaller than what we are discussing when we look at reparations for slavery. A variety of proposals for reparations to African Americans discuss a wide range of figures owed to the descendants of former slaves. Among the most popular is a suggestion of $80,000 per person, or roughly $4.7 trillion total.

In light of government spending in recent decades, that level of expenditure is not as outlandish as it once was — and remember we are already paying a large sum to finance the broken system we currently possess. By the middle of April, the Trump administration already planned $2.5 trillion in spending on the pandemic. The price of America’s war on terror since 2001 surpassed $6.4 trillion and counting. Total direct costs for the bank bailouts in 2009 were a paltry half-trillion dollars.

In reality, $4.7 trillion is not enough to undo a system of racial injustice that is interwoven so tightly to America’s historical roots. If we want to unravel a system that perpetuates injustice generationally, we need to look at reparations for generations. Three generations of reparations would total $14.1 trillion paid out over 90 years.

Reparations should not target only individuals but the whole broken system. To that end, pay the annual reparation payments to programs that will transform the environment and community where black Americans live. Housing grants, small business grants, scholarships, education funding, strategic funding to revolutionize the black American experience from one of systemic entrapment to systemic empowerment.

The early stages of the reparations will be economically burdensome to Americans. That is part of the point of reparations. The higher value of reparations, however, is also about redemption. As black Americans are empowered, the costs spent maintaining the historical systems of inequality that confined them — prisons, welfare, healthcare, etc. will decrease. Additionally, the economic productivity of African American households will increase, eventually eclipsing the national costs of the reparations.

Still Not the Cure

A bold and strategic reparations effort toward black Americans (Native Americans deserve this too by the way) would benefit black communities and the broader American economy. Reparations will not, however, resolve racism.

We can and should change the system to become empowering rather than oppressive to black Americans, whatever the cost. But the victory against racism cannot be purchased. It is a fight that is won only within the human heart.