Might it nonetheless be worth the consequences? Perhaps — if we could know that demands for reparations would be limited to the descendants of slaves. But we can know no such thing. On the contrary, the dynamic of grievance politics in the United States tells us that reparations for African Americans would only be the start. Just as anti-discrimination law and affirmative action began with blacks and then spread to different races, ethnic groups, and other protected classes, so calls for reparations would quickly metastasize to different groups demanding recompense for past and present injustices.
If you doubt it, consider that just last week a resolution in the House of Representatives originally intended to single out those who traffic in anti-Semitism quickly morphed into a generic denunciation of “hate” directed against a laundry list of groups: “African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and others.”
The case for treating the injustices suffered by African Americans in the United States as sui generis — and worthy of a uniquely aggressive response, including reparations — is quite strong. But that doesn’t mean that activists who claim to speak for members of other groups will go happily along. They almost certainly will not. The one thing on which they are likely to agree is that the group that should be forced to pay repeated penalties for its collective sins is the white population of the country, and especially its supposedly most privileged class: straight, able-bodied white males.
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