Reparations are unjust

Scott Bushee

Let us say, by way of example, that a young white person is mugged by a black person. This white person then goes on to form the opinion that black people are not to be trusted. This is clearly an example of a racist belief. The person is forming a belief about an entire group of people based on the behavior of one individual.

When we reflect upon this example, we can see that the essential error committed was the assignment of guilt to a group based on the guilt of an individual member of that group.

Upon further reflection, we can see that, at its foundation, all racism is based on collectivism. The racist claim is that certain people are inherently bad because of their membership in a certain group.

I argue that all forms of collectivism are wrong because they blur out the individual. Once the principle is established that people are means to social ends, and not ends in themselves, soon we have to accept the Stalinesque notion that it is acceptable to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Racism is a particularly crude and low form of collectivism both because of the great harm it has caused historically and that it focuses on a particularly meaningless attribute of the individual, namely the color of his/her skin.

Instead of judging people based on membership in a group, we ought to judge people by who they are. Or, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, not “. . .by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Now, when we turn to this issue of reparations for slavery, we can see that the argument in favor of reparations is based on the same flawed premise that racism itself is based, namely, collective guilt.

Those who argue in favor of reparations openly acknowledge that no living American has owned slaves. I have never owned a slave. You, the reader, have never owned a slave. Furthermore, no living American has been a slave.

Because it is fact that no living individual is guilty, the argument must be built on a foundation of collective guilt. It is not what individual people owe other individual people that matters, it is what this group owes another group.

Because this premise of collective guilt is flawed, so too is the argument in favor of reparations for slavery.

---

Scott Bushee can be reached at: [email protected]

Email Story to a Friend        Printer Friendly Version