I could not possibly have been more alarmed, as an old political warhorse, to hear that candidates Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Julian Castro are considering a program of reparations for African-Americans (as payments for centuries of slavery and discrimination), to be paid by everybody else (and let’s face it, that’s what it means). Before you get upset with me, hear me out:
--I understand, as a former history teacher, that black Americans face a huge burden of discrimination that, while it has been lessened considerably from the dark days of Jim Crow and urban redlining, is still very real. And I know something about the terrible history of racial discrimination in this country. You do not need to remind me of it. I have much still to learn, but what I have taught myself already has shaken me to the core (especially learning about the survival of black servitude in the South into the 1940s.)
--I understand that many blacks start from a position of economic disadvantage. For example 50% (!) of all black net wealth evaporated in the 2008 economic meltdown.
--I understand that blacks have often been systematically excluded from the “old boy” networks that still govern much of American business.
--I understand that there are two separate and unequal “justice” systems in the United States, and that the rich are often given preferential treatment while the poor—who are disproportionately people of color—are often treated with savage brutality.
I get it, OK? I don’t understand in the raw, warm-blooded, real world way that many blacks understand it, but I know enough to know I was lucky to be born a white male.
But we need to understand some things.
A lot of working class and lower class white voters are just barely hanging on economically. No, they DON’T have $400 to spare for an emergency. No, they DON’T have $1,000 in retirement (ha!) savings. Yes, they DO live paycheck-to-paycheck. Yes, they DO often have to decide which bills to pay in a given month. We have solid evidence that some rural white voters, some non-evangelical white women voters, and some disillusioned Trump supporters in general are ready to jump ship and vote for us (as they did in 2018). A reparations proposal will drive those people back into Trump’s corrupt, criminal embrace. Nothing we propose--NOTHING—would guarantee a second term for Trump more than this.
I’ve got some news for some of you. A lot of white voters bitterly resent the term “White Privilege”. They do not feel privileged when they are just barely scraping by. They do not feel privileged being forced to shop at Walmart because they can’t afford anything else. They do not feel privileged because they have to put off getting medical care because they can’t meet the co-pays. They do not feel privileged when they have to patch up their old car yet again because they can’t even afford to buy a better used car. You tell them that you intend to take some of their meager resources and hand them over to people on the basis of skin color to rectify injustices that happened before these white people were born, and you will lose them forever.
The reparations proposal is a Right Wing Propaganda Hack’s dream. The term itself is deadly to us. Our enemies will use it not just to drive white voters away from us, but to drive Latino voters away, too. (Haven’t Latinos suffered bitter discrimination as well?) This proposal is political suicide, and it needs to be jettisoned. There are positive moves we can make:
Criminal justice reform. The extension of greater educational opportunities through revived work training programs, trade schools, and community colleges. Universal health care. Economic solutions that are class based and not race based. (Key!) We need to lift up ALL Americans in the Middle and Lower classes. We need UNITY. Reparations proposals will destroy that unity. Barack Obama opposed them for a reason. Maybe we need to listen to him.
The survival of the United States is at stake in 2020. WE. MUST. WIN. There is no alternative. A second term for Trump, with a Republican Senate (which reparations proposals will also help guarantee) hands the Federal Judiciary to the Radical Right for the next 40 years. (What will that do to women’s rights, corporate reform, LGBTQ rights, unions, and criminal justice?) Such a Republican victory means our climate and extinction crises will be ignored. It means our standing in the world will be destroyed. It will give the radical Right Dominionists power they could never have dreamed of. We cannot let this happen. There are other ways to ameliorate the injustices of the past. Reparations are one of the worst ways to do this.
Go ahead and dump on me if you wish. But I’m old. I won’t survive a second Trump term. The stress of the first one is killing me already, and no I’m not exaggerating. I urge us to PLEASE abandon this politically suicidal reparations idea—and embrace new, imaginative solutions.
Just my two cents.