A modest "reparations" proposal

Robert Johnson, former owner of BET and a black man who has done just fine under evil American capitalism, wants $14 trillion for slavery “reparations”:

“Wealth transfer is what’s needed,” he argued. “Think about this. Since 200-plus-years or so of slavery, labor taken with no compensation, is a wealth transfer. Denial of access to education, which is a primary driver of accumulation of income and wealth, is a wealth transfer.”

$14 trillion dollars is about $466,000 per “African American.” (round numbers)

Nevermind that we have spent over $22 trillion on LBJ’s “war on poverty” since the 1970s, with blacks receiving an outsized share. And how do you measure the value of things like decades of affirmative action? Preferential admission to elite universities? The “black privilege” of claiming “racism” at every failure?

I think it’s good to keep in mind, when thinking about this (or any other) “social justice” movement, that no matter how many concessions are made, it will never be enough. Recall from my earlier email that “systemic racism” measured by outcomes is an unfalsifiable theory, unjustified by data. Since statistics and measurement don’t matter – only stories and anecdotes matter – how much will be enough for our sturdy social justice warriors? According to the tenets of identitarianism (identity politics), you can never do enough:

Making victimhood central to the identity of a marginalized group, however, complicates the work of rectifying disadvantages suffered by that group. Those who become ex-victims will no longer possess a firm identity. In the consummation of identity politics, the grievances that previously defined an identity will all have been addressed…

Its logic and rhetoric, however, demands that it be self-perpetuating: an identitarian life well lived requires going deeper and deeper inside the experience of being black, female, gay, disabled, etc. The social scientist Liah Greenfeld argues that a necessary component of nationalism is “dignity capital,” wherein individuals derive pride and meaning from the civilizational achievements of their national community. Identity politics offers those who feel themselves marginalized from such national communities an alternative: indignity capital. People take pride and meaning from belonging to a demographic group that has been disdained and abused. The dignity derives less from what the group you identify with has achieved than from what it has endured, which validates both the group’s resilience and its innocence in the face of its oppressors.

As Kaczynski and others have pointed out, this is precisely the point of a “social justice” movement:

The leftist seeks to satisfy his need for power through identification with a social movement and he tries to go through the power process by helping to pursue and attain the goals of the movement (see paragraph 83). But no matter how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals the leftist is never satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate activity (see paragraph 41). That is, the leftist’s real motive is not to attain the ostensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated by the sense of power he gets from struggling for and then reaching a social goal. Consequently the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has already attained; his need for the power process leads him always to pursue some new goal.

Kazcynski is describing not the blacks, who are merely trying to increase their power; but rather the white SJWs that are their dupes, and who protest (and riot and whatever else) for concessions and causes that directly oppose their own interests. Some right-wing provocateurs say that “liberalism is a mental illness.” Perhaps they do not understand what Kaczynski described: the vicarious experience of power that whites get from protesting and gaining concessions on behalf of blacks, gays, intersectional transgendered-werewolf-feminists, and environmentalists is exactly the point. From a perspective of self-interest these protests are irrational, since their demands harm whites in the long run; but in the short run, when you get to hold signs and march and chant and feel good about your “just cause,” and see it validated by CNN, senators, and even hostile foreign nations, who cares?

A more modest proposal

I have another, more modest proposal than ex-billionaire Robert Johnson. At the end of the so-called Civil War, which killed 1.5 million Americans, Sherman’s special field orders #15 famously proclaimed that every freed slave family would receive “40 acres and a mule” (subject to some provisos.) If that was considered just compensation by the Union conquerors, I cannot think of any argument that would make them more deserving now, after more than 150 years of concessions, transfers, and advantages of all sorts, when 40% of blacks are middle class (compared with 42% of everyone else.)

Taking also into consideration that, despite the legality of slavery when the Union was formed under the 1787 Constitution, the “Emancipation Proclamation” summarily destroyed $13 trillion in Southern property – to say nothing of causing their states to suddenly become demographically overrun, fundamentally changing the nature and structure of their polity (for example, South Carolina was 58% black in 1860.) Before the war, 2/3rds of the wealthiest families lived in the South. After the war, that proportion was reversed, and the South has never caught up. No compensation was ever given to whites who were summarily deprived of their property.

And if you think this doesn’t matter or the South deserved it because slavery is “wrong,” consider two things: one, the Civil War was about political and economic power, not the moral aspects of slavery, no matter what public school taught you. (Harriet Beecher Stowe is for the “little people.") Two, China thinks “democracy” is just as evil as you think “slavery” is, and as Christian conservatives think “homosexuality” is. Who gets to say what is “right” and “moral” for your nation? Whoever conquers it, I guess.

My proposal is that every black family in America shall be entitled to the 40 acres and a mule (or monetary equivalent, in local post-relocation currency) promised to them by General Sherman, who burned Atlanta to the ground, Dresden-style, on the following conditions:

1. That they immediately renounce their U.S. citizenship, and relocate to a (preferably sub-Saharan African) nation of their choice; and
2. that at least 99% of all “African Americans” in America must accept this deal, or else it is withdrawn

No other concessions will be made. Take it or leave it. This is the end of the anti-private property, anti-freedom of association, anti-white “civil rights” movement, once and for all. This law, which will take the form of a constitutional amendment, will also repeal the fourteenth, fifteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth, twenty-fourth, and twenty-sixth amendments, which were, with hindsight, clearly ill-advised. (The 16th amendment is negotiable.)

As far as which nation should they choose? I suggest Liberia, which has a sensible law governing citizenship which ensures that multiculturalism with its attendant ills will never be a problem. The Liberian constitution of 1847 states:

The great object of forming these Colonies, being to provide a home for the dispersed and oppressed children of Africa, and to regenerate and enlighten this benighted continent, None but Negroes or persons of Negro descent shall be admitted to citizenship in this Republic.

This isn’t really any different than the “back to Africa” or “black Zionism” movement of the 19th century, which unfortunately never really took off. I’m only proposing that we incentivize it to help it along. Given the recalcitrant, eradicable, unmeasurable and unverifiable nature of white racism and its deleterious effects on blacks, this should be a movement they can get excited about.

Even the Liberians should welcome the enormous influx of wealth and population this voluntary mass migration would represent. There’s plenty of space in Liberia, and the current GDP is about $3.2 billion as of 2019 (about $700/person.) Maybe with all the reparations checks, the New Liberians can make some infrastructure investment and improve the Liberian human development index, which is currently 176th in the world, despite being independent for over 170 years and never really experiencing colonialism. I’m sure the real problem is just that they’re poor.