At a rally in Washington, D.C., last month, advocates of reparations for descendants of slaves rededicated themselves to the issue. But a new push for reparations can't alter the fact that the idea is a loser.
Those who suffered most from the cruelty of human bondage have long since died. And while only a fool would argue that the legacy of slavery and post-slavery discrimination has been eradicated, designing a fair compensation system would be an administrative and political nightmare.
Would reparations be paid to all African Americans, or only those with slave ancestors? Would affluent and middle-class people receive reparations? What about Americans of mixed ancestry?
Some of the advocates for reparations, such as U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and a speaker at the rally, are respected figures. Then there is Louis Farrakhan, who demands "millions of acres of land that black people can build." What does he mean by that? The state of Alabama, perhaps? A version of that approach has been tried, for American Indians, with the result that a large percentage of those living on reservations remain poor.
The payment of reparations to Japanese Americans who were forced to leave their homes and move to internment camps during World War II is not a good precedent for the far-ranging demands of advocates of reparations for black Americans. The money went to individuals still living who had directly suffered from the injustice of that act, which was inspired by a mixture of racism and wartime hysteria.
Reparations for slavery arguably have been paid in other ways. The nation endured a terrible Civil War to end the scourge of slavery. Abraham Lincoln, in his majestic Second Inaugural Address, observed that the nation could not complain if the war should "continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil" was sunk and until "every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword."
All too belatedly, the government and private institutions have grappled with the legacy of slavery, and those efforts are visible in everything from civil rights laws and anti-poverty programs to a host of targeted private initiatives.
Proposals for a grandiose reparations program, on the other hand, are divisive and impractical -- and centuries of injustice could not be repealed by such a program.
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