Reparations: The Worst Fallacies are those that Trash Liberal Principles

In his essay "Dragon Slayers,"* Jerald Walker recounts a conversation with "a man who wanted me to hate him. I should hate all whites, he felt. ... 'How about slavery,' he asked. I explained, as politely as I could, that I had not been a slave. 'But you feel its effects,' he snapped. 'Racism, discrimination, and prejudice will always be a problem for you in this country. White people,' he insisted, 'are your oppressors.' ... 'After all,' I continued, 'slaves and their immediate descendants were by and large heroic, not pathetic, or I wouldn't be standing here.'The man was outraged. 'You're absolving them of responsibility, of the obligation to atone for past and present wrongs.'"

When I saw this passage yesterday, I realized that Ta-Nehisi Coates is presenting a concealed demand for atonement in The Case for Reparations:

Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge—that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it. ... What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is making essentially religious accusations and demands—"guilt," and atonement—which have no place in politics. Here is an outline of the arguments against Mr. Coates' fallacies:

• Courts determine guilt and punish the guilty. The political process does not.
• A reformer may ask fellow citizens to right wrongs, but not to atone for them.
• There is no political process which demands atonement or which enacts laws having to do with atonement.
• If there are laws inferring guilt from benefit, cite them. Absent evidence, have no doubt: Benefit is not guilt.
• One cannot otherwise be guilty for what someone else has done. Just as (Randall Kennedy notes) "I cannot feel pride in some state of affairs that is independent of my contribution to it," one likewise cannot be guilty for some past state of affairs that is independent of one's contribution to it. Therefore guilt does not inherit. There is no guilt—"white" or otherwise—for ancestors who owned slaves. There is regret. And sorrow.

Guilt does not inherit. Otherwise our attitude toward each other would be rife with baseless accusations. The law of averages being what it is, we all have ancestors, in many cases more recent than Washington and Jefferson, who were murderers. We hold ourselves entirely innocent of our ancestors' heinous felonies, and rightly so. Reality does not work that way.

Benefit is not guilt. Everyday life confers a tangled web of thousands of benefits—and burdens—relative to other individuals, groups, and nations. In most cases these benefits are independent of our wishes or our actions; we did not seek them nor can we avoid them. One could prove any sort of obligation by pointing to the correctly selected benefit. But an argument which can prove anything in actuality proves nothing. For example, it is practically impossible to live in a modern nation without making purchases of food or clothes sold by employees who are not making a living wage. To condemn ourselves for this does not make things better for anyone. Better the quest to right wrongs.

Abby Ohlheiser, in You Should Read the Case for Reparations, cites Ta-Nehisi Coates' assertion of "the fact that one of the oldest republics in the world was erected on a foundation of white supremacy." But discrimination is not supremacy. (Nor is advantage. Or benefit.) For example, a passage at Time.com documents society-wide discrimination by Temporarily Able Bodied people: "Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor." Would anyone take this as "proving" that "normal supremacy" is, as Mr. Coates claims concerning "white supremacy," "a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it?" If, as is likely, this form of disability discrimination was as widespread in Washington and Jefferson's time as slavery, could one conclude, following Mr. Coates' pattern, that the nation was "erected on a foundation of [able] supremacy"? In both cases, the conclusion exceeds the reach of the argument.

For that matter, what of Ta-Nehisi Coates' insistence that the Framers, and the principles of their Constitution, were hypocritical? He repeatedly charges that the fact that some of the Founders had slaves excludes the possibility that America was the first, and perhaps only, nation founded upon ideas rather than ethnicity. To claim that the character of the person who presents a principled argument, refutes the argument and denies the principle, is classic ad hominem.

According to Ta-Nehisi Coates, who rejects celebrating America as "the great democratizer," the eminent Historian Fritz Stern was wrong to hail the creation of his nation as an inspiration to the world:

“America's noblest traditions,” I insisted, often defined as a state of mind—had “transformed the world . . . [I]ts greatest victory has been the American Revolution; its greatest pronouncement, the Declaration of Independence; its greatest bulwark, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.”

The perfidy of  Ta-Nehisi Coates' mode of slanted example shows most clearly in the way he neglected to research The Great Emancipator. Lincoln thoroughly and devastatingly refutes Mr. Coates' claim that the intent of the Founders was to create "an empire based on slaveholding and white supremacy." Lincoln used textual analysis to demonstrate that the Founders were confronted by "the necessities arising from [slavery's] existence." He goes on to show that they carefully crafted the Constitution, therefore, to accommodate slavery (for the time being) without legitimizing it:

It is easy to demonstrate that "our fathers, who framed this Government under which we live," looked on slavery as wrong, and so framed it and everything about it as to square with the idea that it was wrong, so far as the necessities arising from its existence permitted.  ... If additional proof is wanted it can be found in the phraseology of the Constitution.  When men are framing a supreme law and chart of government, to secure blessings and prosperity to untold generations yet to come, they use language as short and direct and plain as can be found, to express their meaning  In all matters but this of slavery the framers of the Constitution used the very clearest, shortest, and most direct language.  But the Constitution alludes to slavery three times without mentioning it once  The language used becomes ambiguous, roundabout, and mystical.  They speak of the "immigration of persons," and mean the importation of slaves, but do not say so.  In establishing a basis of representation they say "all other persons," when they mean to say slaves--why did they not use the shortest phrase? In providing for the return of fugitives they say "persons held to service or labor." If they had said slaves it would have been plainer, and less liable to misconstruction.  Why didn't they do it? We cannot doubt that it was done on purpose.  Only one reason is possible, and that is supplied us by one of the framers of the Constitution--and it is not possible for man to conceive of any other--they expected and desired that the system would come to an end, and meant that when it did, the Constitution should not show that there ever had been a slave in this good free country of ours. (Emphasis added)

The Crafters of Ta-Nehisi Coates' nation, and the Framers of his Constitution, "expected and desired that the system [of slavery] would come to an end." Ta-Nehisi Coates asserts the contrary over and over again in the two "reparations" articles. His total silence concerning the way Lincoln obliterates this libel is a fatal omission. It calls in doubt Ta-Nehisi Coates' competence as a writer, and his intellectual probity.


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(*) In The Best American Essays 2007, p. 281 - 82