Why I’m skeptical of reparations. Part 4: Mitigations

Two: Many of the Actual Victims Can’t be Paid by the Actual Perpetrators.

In ideal reparations, the actual person who did the wrong pays the specific person harmed. This is the most straight forward way to do reparations. It avoids issues of the payer having nothing personally to do with the wrongs committed or only benefiting indirectly, and avoids paying the descendants of those wronged who would have been affected by the evil, but were not directly acted upon.

As explained earlier, it was American society and government that shat on blacks for generations, so it’s reasonable for us as a whole to pay reparations, but it certainly isn’t ideal to take money from recent immigrants, people who have taken no major racist actions in their lives, or who are just as, or more, poor than many of those we’re paying reparations to, in order to give that money to people who have experienced no slavery and have greater opportunities than many people around the world.

This isn’t a convincing argument against reparations in total, but it certainly is a mitigating factor, and justifies a relatively smaller reparation payment.

Three: Current Descendants of Slaves Benefited from Slavery

For a variety of reasons, African economies have struggled. While some have been growing nicely, the opportunities to flourish and do what one wants in life are much greater in the dynamic U.S. economy compared to that of African countries. Slavery made…