'No One Responsible for Slavery is Alive' (Answering an Objection to Reparations)

In this post, I consider an argument against reparations. Unsurprisingly, the reparations movement faces various challenges. Three challenges are typical: the problem of political feasibility, the problem of economic feasibility, and the problem of moral defensibility. The first problem centers on the concern that reparations might falter due to a lack of political and public support. The second problem involves tricky questions about how to finance reparations. If reparations involve financial investments and compensation for the aggrieved, where will the money come from? Will reparations help or harm the economy? What kind of investments will adequately compensate victims and their descendants (e.g., housing subsidies, college tuition remission, baby bonds for descendants of the aggrieved, cash transfers, land conferral, etc.)? Challenges to the political and economic feasibility of reparations deserve ongoing consideration. In what follows, however, I focus on the moral defensibility of reparations. 

Specifically, I evaluate the following problem:

(The Problem of Past-Existent Transgressors) For most of the historic injustices committed against Black Americans, none of the original transgressors are alive. What moral justification is there for reparations if none of the original transgressors are with us?

How exactly does the absence of the original transgressors pose a problem for the moral defensibility of reparations? An argument I’ll call the "Only Transgressors Pay" makes the case as follows:

Only the original transgressors of historic injustices are accountable for making reparations––they (and only they) owe repair. None of the original transgressors for historic injustice against Black Americans are alive today. Therefore, reparations to Black Americans are not owed by anyone alive.

Focus on the premise that transgressors, and only the transgressors, owe reparations to the victims and their descendants. If that were true, it might follow that no person or group today owes reparations, because no person or group today is at fault for the relevant injustices. For example, no person alive today was an enslaver. Nor is it the case that any person alive today is at fault for the system of segregation, violence, and disenfranchisement that made up the Jim Crow era. And so on [1]. This matters for the moral viability of reparations because the resources (monetary or otherwise) for implementing reparations must come from somewhere or someone (in particular, through some tax revenue scheme). If the Only Trespassers Pay argument is right, however, no today one owes this compensation. It would seem, then, that transferring the financial burden of reparations to innocent people is morally objectionable. 

We need to ask an important question about this argument: why is it that only the transgressors of a wrongdoing owe repair?  Based on my conversations with others about reparations, I think support for this view comes from the initially appealing idea that it would be unfair if it was otherwise––if innocent people were required (by the state, for example) to shoulder the responsibility of repairing harms against others. There is something intuitive about this. Imagine that B, who is a stranger to you, hits A with her car. You are not at fault in any way for the incident. However, a local judge makes you pay some of the cost of repairing A’s injuries. This is unfair and thereby morally objectionable, though it would not be unfair if B––the transgressor––paid the cost of repair. Many people seem to think of reparations in a similar way. Like the case just mentioned, it would be unfair and thereby morally objectionable if the government used its coercive powers to make innocent people shoulder the cost of repairing injustices they did not commit. On pain of unfairness, therefore, only transgressors owe reparations. Call this "the Unfairness Argument.”

An Immediate Response (...that doesn't really engage the objection)

It's tempting to respond to all this by pointing out that a just society filled with non-perpetrators of the original injustice (those who "didn't do it") should nevertheless care about those who have been impacted by the injustice. If we aspire to be a caring society (and we should, no?), don't we have a responsibility (collectively and individually) to assist those who experience the ongoing injuries related to slavery? Relatedly, I often hear people ask, "don't you want to help African Americans recover from the devastating legacy of slavery? Why wouldn't you want to help?" Each of these reactions can easily be understood as appeals to collective and individual benevolence. Benevolence leads us to help victims of injustice, the idea goes, even if we are innocent of the wrongdoing (no?). Call this the "Good Samaritan" argument.

Even if the Good Samaritan argument is right about the responsibility to be benevolent, notice that it denies that reparations are required as a matter of reparative justice. To understand what I mean, let's distinguish between responsibilities of justice and responsibilities of benevolence. Roughly, one way an agent––call her A––can acquire a responsibility of justice to help an aggrieved person––call her B––is when A is blameworthy for B's suffering. If I culpably hit you with my car, it is a matter of justice that I help repair the damages. I am not being a good Samaritan. I am paying off a debt. Sometimes, when there is corporate blame, the responsibility belongs to a whole community or nation. Responsibilities of benevolence (or what I'm calling good Samaritan responsibilities), on the other hand, arise in circumstances where A is not blameworthy for B's harm but is nevertheless in a position to help alleviate it [2]. I have a responsibility to help you after A hits you with her car and drives off. Although I am innocent, your life is valuable and I have the ability to patch up your wounds. I ought to care for you, therefore, but not as a matter of justice. It's a matter of being a good Samaritan (see footnote 2 for nuance). 

Plausibly, as a society we have a responsibility to embody good Samaritanism at a public level. Through government and non-government institutions, we ought to care about those who experience barriers to social flourishing. Perhaps this creates a public responsibility to address the inequalities and harms lingering from the days of slavery and Jim Crow, even if we didn't cause those inequalities and harms (and there are many such inequalities and harms; see the Darity and Mullen reference in footnote 7 for a place to start). 

For the most part, however, when people talk about reparations they aren't (merely) talking about the responsibility to be good Samaritans, even at a corporate level. Rather, the argument is that we must pursue reparative justice. The situation is not merely like the innocent person who helps the person hit by the car. Rather, a past debt is owed, and we have an obligation, rooted in the demands of justice, to address it [3]. Benevolence––even corporate benevolence––inadequately frames the responsibility to help, therefore. The responsibility is fundamentally a matter of reparative justice. 

Why does the framing matter? It matters because it impacts the way we think about solutions to the enduring inequalities and harms of historic injustice against African Americans. For example, if we think of the responsibility to repair merely as a matter of social good Samaritanism rather than a matter of reparative justice, it may impact (a) the amount of investment and compensation we are willing to make to victims, (b) the kinds of policies we think are appropriate for addressing ongoing racial inequalities, and (c) the urgency with which we pursue all of these actions (stop and think about why this is so).

So I think the right way of thinking about the reparationist position is to view it as a demand for justice––for the U.S. to pay off a debt––and I even think this is how most defenders of the Only Transgressors Pay argument think about reparations. They stress that no one today is blameworthy for the wrong of slavery, and, hence, that no one alive today owes reparations as a matter of reparative justice. If so, then while responses stressing the importance of benevolence and good Samaritanism have some force, they do not tackle the original objection head on. They seem to concede that reparations are not owed as a way of making up for past wrongdoings. But reparationists probably won't (and shouldn't) frame the issue any other way. Reparations are owed as a matter of correcting for past justice (at least, in my view) and not as a matter of good Samaritanism (and not even as a matter of so-called "distributive justice"; that's a debate for another time). Hence, the good Samaritan response does not really engage the Only Transgressors Pay argument head on. In the rest of this article, I summarize three responses that tackle it head on. 

Response 1: The Problem of Past Debts

For all its prima facie appeal, I think the Only Transgressors Pay argument faces important challenges (in future posts, I offer further reflections). First, if we apply the same reasoning to other cases where debts exist, we end up with some counterintuitive conclusions. Consider that the U.S. has various debts related to war, infrastructure, development, international loans, and so on. Myriad of these debts were the result of individual choices made before you or I were born. In fact, numerous federal, state and local debts were created by people who are no longer around. Does it follow therefore that no one alive today has a responsibility to help pay off such debts? That seems mistaken, and I bet most of us do not endorse that conclusion. 

So the defender of the original objection faces an obvious question: if reparations are not owed on account of the absence of the original transgressors (as the argument above claims), why wouldn't the aforementioned debts cease to be owed as well? Just imagine that everyone responsible for the decisions that led to the billions of dollars of debt related to the Vietnam war suddenly passed away. Are these debts annulled merely because none of the original debtors are alive? That seems mistaken. More plausibly, the debt persists, and citizens––even innocent citizens––can acquire responsibilities to help pay off these debts (through taxation, for example). Why would prior debts related to the exploitation and forced labor of enslaved persons be any different? 

There's a dilemma here. If you think reparations for slavery are not owed because none of the transgressors are alive, then you should think that payment of various federal, state and local debts are no longer owed either (since, in the cases I have in mind, the original debtors are not alive) [4]. On the other hand, if you think that various national, state, and local debts persist even after the original debtors are long gone, and that you and other citizens have a responsibility to help pay off these debts, then you should think the same about the national, state, and local debts to victims of historic injustice (and their descendants) [5]. 

Response 2: Institutional Transgressors are Still Around

Second, the Only Transgressors Pay argument overlooks the distinction between individual responsibility and institutional responsibility. It is true that none of the individual transgressors responsible for upholding or allowing the institution of slavery are alive today. However, it is hard to deny that the corporate transgressors (i.e., institutions) responsible for slavery are still around. The same corporate entities––federal, state, and local institutions––that were either responsible for or negligent of the wrong of slavery are still with us. For example, the corporate, political institution known as the State of South Carolina is still around, and it was culpable for allowing, sanctioning and encouraging slavery. Likewise, the U.S. federal government permitted slavery for nearly a century and was both negligent of and cavalier about the matter for far too long. On top of that, the federal government was complicit in 20th century housing discrimination that segregated Black Americans from whites and prevent Black Americans from participating in important wealth-building opportunities (see Rothstein, The Color of Law). The very same federal government is still around, even if the individuals occupying federal positions have changed. 

Hence, so long as institutions like these can wrong others, they can be held responsible for repairing those wrongs. And, on the highly plausible premise that these institutions have persisted with us from the time of slavery to today, their responsibility to repair injustice likewise persists. In sum, while individual transgressors responsible for slavery are no longer around, various institutional transgressors responsible for or negligent of slavery are still around. Therefore, contrary to the assumptions of the Only Transgressors Pay argument, it is false that no transgressing entities are around today. 

Response 3: The Demands of Civic Responsibility

This leads to a third and final point. Consider the following difference:

Joel pays because he is at fault

vs.

Joel (who is faultless) pays in order to fulfill his civic responsibilities.

One way to understand the claim that innocent people have responsibilities to assist in reparations (particularly through the use of tax-payer dollars) is to think of their responsibility as a civic responsibility. Roughly, these are the responsibilities we have to each other as citizens of the same civic society. Our identity as fellow Americans generates responsibilities to protect each other's freedom, to care about each other's rights, to invest into the common good, and so on. Most importantly, one's civic identify can create responsibilities to help one's country in time of need even when one is innocent with respect to the need [6]. Civic duties are probably what make it our responsibility to help pay off our nation's war debts, for example. I didn't cause the Vietnam war, but I am a member of this country, I reap all sorts of social goods and protections from it, and am thereby responsible for playing my part in addressing some of its debts.

These points might help us see another problem with the Only Transgressors Pay argument. While I am not at fault for slavery, I am a citizen of a country that both sanctioned and profited substantially from the forced, unpaid labor of millions of African Americans for nearly a century. Arguably, the descendants of enslaved persons are owed reparations for this state-sanctioned devastation and systematic exploitation; the institutions causally responsible for and negligent of these wrongdoings are the carriers of that debt. But paying off these debts will require citizens to work out their civic responsibility on behalf of their nation, state, and local governments, as well as on behalf of their fellow citizens who are descendants of enslaved persons [7]. In so far as you think we have a responsibility––rooted in our identity as legitimate citizens of this country––to help our country with various of its debts and projects (what I'm calling civic responsibilities), then why not think of the responsibility to support reparations as the same type of responsibility? 

In sum, once we begin to recognize the existence of civic responsibilities and what they often require of us, then claims like, "I didn't do it," and, "no one responsible for slavery is alive," should start to seem beside the point. Reframe things. Think of reparations as a call for you to work out your civic responsibilities rather than (wrongfully) faulting you for slavery and then demanding that you repair the harm. Fault and blame are not the grounds of your or my responsibility to help pay the cost of the debts of historic injustice. Civic bonds are. The Only Transgressors Pay argument overlooks all this [8]. 

On top of that, the Unfairness Argument loses thrust once we recognize the nature of our civic responsibilities. It would be unfair and mistaken to impute guilt and fault to innocent people. The reparations argument does not do that, however. Rather, it correctly assigns fault to the corporate institutions that protected, perpetuated, and passed over historic injustices against Black Americans, and it enjoins innocent citizens to live up to their civic responsibilities by holding these institutions accountable for their transgressions and by helping these institutions finance the cost of repair. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, I don’t deny that, in some sense, it is unfair that innocent people have to shoulder debts created by others. Perhaps it is unfair in the morally unobjectionable sense of being unfortunate. It is unfortunate that the moral failings of others sometimes requires certain sacrifices on the part of the innocent. But that does not undermine one's moral and civic responsibilities. Think of a comparison: you walk past a shallow pond and see an innocent child drowning. No one else is around to rescue them. If you jump in, however, you will ruin your new shoes. It is unfortunate (and in this sense “unfair”) that you have to ruin your new shoes by jumping in the shallow pond to rescue a drowning child. Maybe a lifeguard was on duty but was negligent or, worse, intended harm to the child. You are faultless, therefore, and your shoes end up ruined (in part) because of someone else’s moral failing. In some sense, that’s unfair. Clearly, however, you still have a responsibility to jump in the pond. 

The same applies to the matter of reparations. What is “unfair” to me (in the sense used above) is often irrelevant to what is morally and civically required of me. The pivotal question, then, is whether there is a civic responsibility to support and help finance national and local programs of reparations and to hold one's governing institutions accountable for discharging their debts to historically aggrieved people. If there is such a responsibility, then I cannot be resolved of this responsibility on behalf of millions of my fellow Black Americans on the grounds that “I didn’t do it." That would be unfair. 

Footnotes:

[1] In this post, I bracket a related objection that goes like this: "reparations for slavery are not owed because none of the original victims are alive today." 

[2] For the myriad complications that arise when thinking about the scope of such responsibilities (more widely known as "humanitarian duties" or "duties of beneficence" in the philosophical literature), see the industry of research that emerged in response to Peter Singer's early work on poverty. 

[3] I recognize that this way of framing justice-related responsibilities elides an important distinction. On a different, fuller typology, we should think of responsibilities of justice in a two-fold manner: backward-looking responsibilities (rooted in blame) and forward-looking responsibilities (rooted in something other than blame). For more on this distinction, see Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice. Someone might argue that reparations are required as a matter of forward-looking justice (say, as part of creating a more fair, democratic, or equal society) but not as a matter of backward-looking justice (as a way of rectifying an injustice for which we are wholly or partially blameworthy). For simplicity, I leave this distinction out of the main text. My own view is that federal, state, and local institutions owe reparations as a matter of backward-looking justice, while individual citizens of these corporate entities have forward-looking civic responsibilities to see this corporate responsibility discharged. Besides, people who object to reparations on the basis of the original objection seem to deny that reparations are owed in any of these senses. Reparations are not a matter of justice in a backward-looking reparative sense or in a forward-looking distributive sense. And while we could resist the original objection by presenting and defending a theory of forward-looking justice, my sense is that most reparationists and their detractors think of reparations as a backward-looking responsibility(this is evidenced in the set of writings found in Redressing Historic Injustice in the U.S. See also the 1969 "Black Manifesto" and its discussion of reparations). I think this view of reparations is largely correct. So even though I'm sympathetic to the forward-looking argument, I find it worthwhile to push back against objections to the backward-looking argument. 

[4] In fact, if you buy the assumptions underlying the original objection, then you should think that any government decisions that resulted in debt––and of which you are innocent––should not be paid off on the basis of your tax payer dollars (you're not to blame for those debts, after all). That means that countless national, state, and local debts related to education, bridges, roads, military operations, and so on, are not owed and, moreover, cannot use your tax payer dollars to be paid off (on pain of unfairness). After all, in numerous of these cases, the original debtors are no longer around. Or, even if they are, you are innocent of the decisions that lead to such debts. Following the reasoning implicit in the above objection, it would be unfair for anyone other than the original debtors (and perhaps their supporters) to pay off such debts. This is highly counterintuitive, however.

[5] Someone might respond by saying, "but I approve of the causes for which these debts were incurred. I don't approve of slavery." But that response seems lacking. Sometimes, expenditures I approve of are not thereby ones I have a responsibility to help pay off. I approve of my neighbor's decision to go into debt in order to buy a new house. I don't thereby have a responsibility to help her pay it off. Moreover, sometimes the expenditures I disapprove of are ones I have nevertheless have a responsibility to help pay off. I disapprove of my school district's decision to invest into a new football stadium (I think they should build a new soccer stadium). Nevertheless, I still have a responsibility to pay taxes toward that end. Besides, surely no one approves of every debt incurred by their national, local, or state governments.

[6] For more on this, see Fullinwider's really fascinating paper, "The Case for Reparations," in Redress for Historic Wrongdoing in the U.S.

[7] It might be tempting to say that these other national debts are acquired on the basis of actions intended to benefit citizens. But then we must remember that slavery was intended to benefit America's white citizens, and it did benefit them substantially. For more on the benefits of slavery to white Americans, see Feagin, "Toward an Integrated Theory of Systemic Racism," and Darity and Mullen, From Here to Equality. For a survey of various calculations of the debt owed to descendants of enslaved persons, see Darity and Mullen. 

[8] Undoubtedly, there are nuances to the nature of civic responsibility. But we don't need to work out all the details just now in order to make a dent in the original objection above. The reason is this: the original objection trades on the idea that innocent people should not shoulder the responsibility for debts or wrongs they did not commit; only the transgressors shoulder that responsibility. As I argued in the section titled, "Objection 1: The Problem of Past Debts," there are numerous national, state and local debts that innocent people nevertheless bear some responsibility to help pay off. The point I want to make here is that this responsibility is best understood as a civic responsibility––the sort of responsibility acquired by virtue of being a proper member of a corporate identity, enmeshed in a web of mutuality, fraternity, benefits, and protections alongside others in the group. If such responsibilities widely exist and extend to debts for which we are innocent, then proponents of the original objection have to explain why we acquire civic duties to help pay off national, state, and local debts (like the billions of dollars owed in the wake of the Vietnam war) but lack a civic responsibility to pay off the billions of dollars owed to the descendants of enslaved persons in the wake of state sanctioned slavery that lasted nearly a century 

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