Reparations grandstanding comes to Capitol Hill

The House Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee held a hearing yesterday about a bill that would establish a formal study on the supposed need for, as well as the feasibility of, reparations for slavery.

It was full of grandstanding and moral preening, as you'd expect, and the faces you'd expect led the sanctimony-fest: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Danny Glover, Corey Booker.

Fortunately, some voices with a different viewpoint chimed in as well.

Take it, Burgess Owens:

A former NFL player testifying before Congress on Wednesday spoke out against the concept of reparations.

Burgess Owens, formerly of the Jets and Raiders, spoke during hearings for H.R. 40, a bill designed to study how to implement reparations for black Americans. The question of what, if anything, America owes to the descendants of slaves is at the heart of H.R. 40, and it’s a question for which Owens, along with a long list of other notable figures, offered an answer.

Speaking for five minutes, Owens noted his own lineage traces directly back to slaves. But, he added, “this is not about black and white, rich or poor, blue collar white collar. We’re fighting for the hearts of our nation.” Owens emphasized that his ancestors battled their way out of their circumstances following emancipation by hard work.

“I do not believe in reparation, because what reparation does, it points to a certain race, a certain color, as evil, and it points to another race, my race, as one that has not only become racist, but also beggars.”

During a portion of his allotted five minutes, Owens took the discussion in specific political directions. “I used to be a Democrat until I did my history and found the misery that party brought to my race ... Let's pay restitution. How about the Democratic Party pay for all the misery brought to my race?”

Owens continued, “And every white American, Republican or Democrat, who feels guilty because of the color of their skin, you can pony up also. Then we can get past reparations and recognize this country has given us greatness.”

A Quillette columnist who, for some reason, is still a Democrat nonetheless also gave the idea a thumbs-down, for which he was roundly booed:

Quillette columnist Coleman Hughes said reparation payments to the descendants of slaves would insult black Americans, further divide the country, and make him and other descendants of slaves “victims without their consent.”

The public present for the Democrat-led hearing did not take his opinion well, prompting Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen to tell them to “chill.”

“Racism is a bloody stain on this country’s history and I consider our failure to pay reparations directly to freed slaves after the civil war to be one of the greatest injustices ever perpetuated by the U.S. Government,” Hughes said.

He added, however: “Black people don’t need another apology. We need safer neighborhoods and better schools. We need a less punitive criminal justice system. We need affordable health care. And none of these things can be achieved through reparations for slavery.” 

Members of the crowd booed at this point.

“If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further, making it harder to build the political coalitions required to solve the problems facing black people today,” Hughes added.

“We would insult black Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors, and we would turn the relationship between black Americans and white Americans from a coalition into a transaction, from a union between citizens, into a lawsuit between plaintiffs and defendants.” 

Hughes pointed out that while he is a descendant of slaves who worked on Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, he was born into a privileged home in the suburbs and attended an Ivy League School. Reparations would give him resources, although he is not struggling financially, and withhold them from other black Americans “with the wrong ancestry” who might be poor. 

“I understand that reparations are about what people are owed regardless of how well they are doing,” he said.

I understand that. But people who are owed for slavery are no longer here. And we’re not entitled to collect on their debts. Reparations, by definition, are only given to victims. So the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that, you’ve made one-third of black Americans who poll against reparations into victims without their consent.

And black Americans have fought too long for the right to define themselves to be spoken for in such a condescending manner. The question is not what America owes me by virtue of my ancestry, the question is what all Americans owe each other by virtue of being citizens of the same nation.

And the obligation of citizenship is not transactional. It’s not contingent on ancestry. It never expires, and it can’t be paid off. For all these reasons, bill HR 40 is a moral and political mistake. Thank you.

Hughes was booed again as he concluded his testimony, causing Cohen to bang his gavel and hush the crowd. “Chill, chill, chill, chill,” he said. “He was presumptive, but he still has a right to speak.”

Not only would it be poisonously divisive, as Hughes points out, but impossibly complex to implement:

The questions surrounding this very old debate about historical redress for slavery are even more practical: Who is owed what? Michael Knowles of Daily Wire spoke about this on his eponymous podcast yesterday:

The first formally recognized slaveholder in America was black . . . [H]e was named Anthony Johnson, he was a black Angolan farmer, he was captured in Angola by Arab slave traders, [who] sold him off. He ended up in Virginia, and he was a slave [there]. He was eventually emancipated after his indenture was over, he was freed, and he himself became a successful farmer. He also owned slaves; so, he owned a black slave named John Casor . . . [T]he question is: are the black descendants of Anthony Johnson, a slave owner, entitled to reparations for slavery? Doesn’t make a whole of sense, does it? Are the black descendants of John Casor- the slave owned by Anthony Johnson- entitled to reparations from the black descendants of Anthony Johnson? So that means, when we have reparations for slavery, that some black descendants of slave owners have to pay reparations to some black descendants of slaves? How are we going to work that- are we going to be taking DNA tests, and Ancestry.com is going to get hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants just to figure out who was descended from whom? What if you’re descended from a black slave owner and a black slave- does it cancel out? Or a white slave owner and a black slave- how are we going to adjudicate your culpability today in 2019?

Knowles continued, describing further complexities that arise from the legions of slaves held by American Indians, whose ownership of slaves persisted even after federal abolition of the practice. Are the living descendants of Native American slaveholders (and 1/1024 of Elizabeth Warren, just for sport) required to pay too?

For these reasons this is surely destined to die on the vine, but not before the identity-politics jackboots milk it for all it's worth.