Victory Briefs

Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to
pay reparations to African Americans.

September-October 2015 PF Brief*
*Published by Victory Briefs, PO Box 803338 #40503, Chicago, IL 60680-3338. Edited by Jake Nebel,
Chris Theis, and Abraham Fraifeld. Written by Matthew Feng, Abraham Fraifeld, and Arjun Rao. Evidence cut by authors. For customer support, please email help@victorybriefs.com or call 330.333.2283.
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Contents
1
Introduction by the Editors
Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng
2.1
Opening Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3
Framing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4
Affirmative Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11
2.5
Negative Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13
2.6
Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14
Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld
15
3.1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
3.2
Argument Guide 1: Plans? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16
3.3
Argument Guide 2: Rawls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23
3.4
Argument Guide 3: Utilitarianism and the Benefits of Education . . . . . . . . .
29
3.5
Argument Guide 4: Lack of Culpability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
37
Argument Guides by Arjun Rao
42
4.1
Argument Guide 5: Complacency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
42
4.2
Argument Guide 6: Commodifying Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
50
4.3
Argument Guide 7: Racial Backlash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
53
4.4
Argument Guide 8: Reparations are impossible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
60
4.5
Argument Guide 9: Health Reparations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
63
4.6
Final Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
68
The Case for Reparations? by Dr. Tommy J. Curry
69
5.1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
69
5.2
On the Justification and Need for Reparations under the Present . . . . . . . . .
71
5.3
Is Moral Reconciliation Possible if Reparations are Given? . . . . . . . . . . . . .
74
1 Introduction by the Editors

This brief is a bit different from our usual Public Forum briefs. Our usual briefs consist of some
topic analyses and a packet of cards. This brief starts similarlyi.e., with an evidence-based analysis of the topic. The topic analysis is written by Duke University freshman and VBI instructor
Matthew Feng. Fengs analysis breaks down the resolution and provides recommendations for
research areas.
It then departs quite radically from our usual structure. Instead of additional topic analyses
(which have diminishing marginal value) and a bunch of cards (which are most valuable with
context and analysis), weve integrated these components into sets of argument guides. These are
evolved topic analyses that build, attack, and defend arguments on each side with evidence. Our
hope is that the topic analysis and first two argument guides will provides students with enough
background to engage with the topics basic concepts and provide a springboard for further research.
Do not be fooled by the thinner table of contents: in addition to containing more evidence (over
100 cards in this brief), we believe that these argument guides provide far more comprehensive
analysis than loose cards. The first four argument guides are written by VBI Curriculum Director Abraham Fraifeld of Georgetown University. The next five are written by Arjun Rao of the
University of Miami, who also taught with us at VBI this summer.
At the end of this brief youll find an original scholarly contribution to the topic by Dr. Tommy J.
Curry, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. This particular article has not
been published elsewhere, although Dr. Curry has published other articles on reparations in other
venues. The article is deeper and more complicated than much of the scholarship used in Public
Forum debate, but this is a distinctly philosophical topic. Like much philosophy, you may have to
read it more than once to understand the arguments well enough to run them. You can use this
article as practice for reading, diagnosing, cutting, running, and answering such arguments.
Our initial topic briefs are, we hope, useful for getting you started on the topic. But topics evolve.
So subscribers will receive a booster pack later in September/October with additional, more advanced, argument guides. For even more evidence, please subscribe to our free Card of the Day
1 Introduction by the Editors

service.
We greatly value your feedback on our products, so that we can make Victory Briefs better every
month. Please let us know what you think about our briefs by filling out this short survey.
2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

Matthew Feng competed for Plano West Senior High School in Plano, Texas. In
Public Forum, he reached the final round of the Harvard Round Robin and also
placed in the top six at the NSDA National Tournament. He also had competitive
success in Extemporaneous Speaking, competing in the final rounds at St. Marks,
the University of Texas, and the ETOC. Upon graduating, he taught at the University
of Texas National Institute in Forensics, National Debate Forum, and Victory Briefs
Institute. He currently attends Duke University, where he plans to pursue studies in
both economics and political science.
2.1 Opening Words

The September/October topic for PF is different from any in recent memory and for more than just
one reason not only does the wording deviate from what has become the norm for Public Forum
but the discussion will take place in a context that many may not be familiar with. Questions of
policy have always more of less been at the heart of PF, but most debaters will not be familiar with
race-based conversations because resolutions have seldom confronted them. Even beyond that,
while the other topic option regarding civil unrest dealt with contemporary issues, the debates
of these two months centered on reparations will be juxtaposed with the debates of decades and
centuries ago. My analysis of the resolution will begin with some background on racial justice
by examining issues that still represent the plight of African Americans in the United States. I
will then frame the average round that competitors will have before delving into a few approaches
that both sides can take when tackling the topic. I will emphasize throughout the topic analysis
that all debaters keep in mind that this is a highly sensitive topic area where some terminology
and mindsets are not okay. We have an opportunity within the forensic community to expose a
problem that our country faces, but everyone should remember that our platform must be used
responsibly, not maliciously.
2.2 Background
To be absolutely clear, racism is still a very pervasive issue in todays America. While there are
those who believe that slavery was an issue of the past, the mindset that was perpetuated still very
much persists in the policies of today. Therefore, it is prudent to approach the resolution with the
implicit mindset that one of many objectives at hand is to ameliorate the consequences of racist
policies, both past and present, while preventing the continuation of racism for the future.
That being said, it would be wise to also have a general understanding of just how exploitative
slavery was in the past. Ta-Nehisi Coates explains:1
The wealth accorded America by slavery was not just in what the slaves pulled from
the land but in the slaves themselves. In 1860, slaves as an asset were worth more
than all of Americas manufacturing, all of the railroads, all of the productive capacity of the United States put together, the Yale historian David W. Blight has noted.
Slaves were the single largest, by far, financial asset of property in the entire American economy. The sale of these slavesin whose bodies that money congealed,
writes Walter Johnson, a Harvard historiangenerated even more ancillary wealth.
Loans were taken out for purchase, to be repaid with interest. Insurance policies were
drafted against the untimely death of a slave and the loss of potential profits. Slave
sales were taxed and notarized. The vending of the black body and the sundering of
the black family became an economy unto themselves, estimated to have brought in
tens of millions of dollars to antebellum America. In 1860 there were more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi Valley than anywhere else in the country.
Even after the abolition of slavery following the Civil War, it was clear that African Americans still
faced many problems. In fact, the problems that occurred following emancipation were largely
due to complacency. Lawrie Balfour gives us historical context:2
Writing in the shadow of a deep disappointment, Du Bois ([1903] 1997, 40) apprehends the paradox of formal equality: The guarantees of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth,
and Fifteenth Amendments, though incalculably precious, engendered a kind of public forgetfulness about slavery and fed the Southern fury against the former slaves.
The War Amendments, he observes at the turn of the twentieth century, made
1Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic. Atlantic Media, Jun. 2014. Web. 24 Aug. 2015.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
2Balfour, Lawrie (Asst. Prof. of Politics, University of Virginia). Unreconstructed Democracy: W. E. B. Du
Bois and the Case for Reparations. American Political Science Review, Feb. 2003. Web. 25 Aug. 2015.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3118219?seq=1# page_scan_tab_contents

the Negro problems of to-day (Du Bois [1903] 1997, 45). While he would not relinquish those amendments, Du Bois ([1903] 1997, 125) perceives that the constitutional promise of rights that apply regardless of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude assured liberal-minded citizens that enough had been done, perpetuating
the carelessness that characterized the national attitude toward the former slaves.
Much the same can be said for the post-civil rights predicament. Black Americans
fought hard for the formal guarantees embodied in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and, like other vulnerable populations, they do not
have the luxury of dispensing entirely with the language of formal equality in which
those guarantees are framed.2 At the same time, the promise enshrined in those laws
has come to be interpreted in ways that allow white Americans to disown the past and
its implications for the present, thereby compounding the disadvantages faced by the
very people the laws were passed to protect. For example, Derrick Bell writes that
the courts have collapsed the distinction between race-based remedies for decades
of racial injustice and the segregationist policies of the Jim Crow period. The result
of such interpretation is that, for equal protection purposes, whites become the protected discrete and insular minority (Bell 1993, 80). Thus it becomes all the more
difficult to summon the collective will to respond when activists and scholars identify
disturbing trends in residential and educational segregation and the disadvantages
they engender or when the wealth gap that white and black Americans have inherited
from previous generations is exposed.3
What Balfour makes clear is this: historically it seems that every time we seemingly make progress
regarding racial justice, the movement runs out of steam and allows those who aim to discriminate to pass racist policies. In this sense, it is then clear why African Americans continually are
disadvantaged in the status quo, even though slavery no longer is an issue.
2.3 Framing
Now that we have confronted the ugly truth, we should discuss the technical nuances of within
the debate space. Like I said before, this resolution offers a lot of new experiences for even the
most seasoned of Public Forum debaters. For starters, the use of the word ought will pose to be a
huge obstacle to overcome for many teams in the coming months. Heres what Merriam-Webster
has to say about the words definition:3
3ought. Merriam-Webster.com.
webster.com/dictionary/ought
Merriam-Webster, 2015.
Web.
25 Aug.
2015.
http://www.merriam-

used to express obligation , advisability , natural expectation , or logical consequence
Even from this, it remains difficult to come up with a singular definition. Does ought imply a
moral obligation? Maybe ought indicates a level of capacity for an agent to act. On the other
hand, maybe we can just ignore the word altogether and assume that we default to a cost-benefit
calculus. In any case, your interpretation as the debater of the word ought will have enormous
implications for the debate round, so much so that it will affect the cases you construct. For
example, if you assume that ought has a moral flavor to it, you will likely look at more moralbased arguments. Following that logic, your cases will vary as the definition you inherently adopt
varies. We will explore how each interpretation of ought can change the way you frame the round
and thereby influence the arguments you present in both your constructive as well as your later
speeches.
The next definitional debate that will happen in many rounds is how to conceptualizing what a
reparation is. The purest, simplest definition that pertains to the context of this resolution can be
provided by Merriam-Webster:
something that is done or given as a way of correcting a mistake that you have made
or a bad situation that you have caused
This implies that a lot of things could be considered reparations; however, I urge debaters to
proceed with caution. While the literature proposes many different ways in which reparations
could be provided, historically there does not seem to be a precedent for anything but a direct cash
payment. In 1988, the United States paid $20,000 in reparations to Japanese Americans for the
harms inflicted as a result of internment camps during World War II. Internationally, Germany
began a reparations program that began following World War II intended to make amends for the
Holocaust that still continues to this day, adding to a sum of $89 billion. The argument then can
be made that a reparation paid to African Americans would similarly be a cash payment of some
form. This can be useful for both sides the Affirmative can reasonably support an advocacy
without much discussion of what is allowed in Public Forum while the Negative can also use this
assumption to draft a case that does not need to adapt to many different kinds of reparations
since they would know which one would be the likely advocacy. The conversations and dialogue
reparation. Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2015. Web. 25 Aug. 2015. http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/reparation
Molotsky, Irvin. Senate Votes to Compensate Japanese-American Internees. New York Times. New York
Times Company, 21 Apr. 1988. Web. 25 Aug. 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/21/us/senate-votes-tocompensate-japanese-american-internees.html
Eddy, Melissa. For 60th Year, Germany Honors Duty to Pay Holocaust Victims. New York Times. New York Times
Company, 17 Nov. 2012. Web. 25 Aug. 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/world/europe/for-60th-yeargermany-honors-duty-to-pay-holocaust-victims.html?_r=0

in policymaking surrounding reparations typically mirror what should be likely for Affirmative
teams. Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule highlight:
The word reparations does not pick out a natural kind; there are no clear conceptual boundaries that demarcate reparations from ordinary legal remedies, on the one
hand, and other large-scale governmental transfer programs, on the other. Paradigmatic examples of reparations ordinarily discussed in the relevant literatures in law,
politics, and moral theory, such as proposals for slavery reparations, do tend to share
certain major features: They typically refer to schemes that (1) provide payment (in
cash or in kind) to a large group of claimants, (2) on the basis of wrongs that were
substantively permissible under the prevailing law when committed, (3) in which
current law bars a compulsory remedy for the past wrong (by virtue of sovereign
immunity, statutes of limitations, or similar rules), and (4) in which the payment
is justified on backward-looking grounds of corrective justice, rather than forwardlooking grounds such as the deterrence of future wrongdoing. However, a wide range
of policies, programs, and decisions have been described as reparations, and the various cases are connected only by a series of family resemblances. Any of the typical
features we have listed can be quibbled with; we might, without linguistic impropriety, use the word reparations to describe a scheme that dispenses with any of them.
A payment to a small group rather than a large one, for example, might without absurdity be described as reparations if justified as remediation of wrongs committed
under a previous legal regime.
All of that being said, there are also other reasons for why Affirmative teams should look to direct
cash payments as the only meaningful reparation that would be paid. While many teams will find
a lot of research and many articles regarding different programs education, health, housing, or
otherwise the distinction between a reparation and a general social program seems to be rather
clear. Posner and Vermeule again explain:
Second, we will say that reparations schemes are justified on the basis of backwardlooking reasons-remediation of, or compensation for, past injustices-rather than on
the basis of forward-looking reasons-increasing utility, deterring future wrongdoing, or promoting distributive justice. In dispensing with fully individualized remediation, a reparations scheme resembles large-scale governmental transfers, which
Posner, Eric (Kirkland & Ellis Prof. of Law, University of Chicago) and Vermeule, Adrian (Prof. of Law, University
of Chicago). Reparations for Slavery and Other Historical Injustices. Columbia Law Review, 2003. Web. 25 Aug.
2015. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2787&context=journal_articles
Ibid.

frequently take from A to give to B regardless of whether A inflicted harm or B suffered it. Any number of transfer programs are justified or rationalized on the ground
that the transfer will increase total or average utility, promote distributive justice, or
(more vaguely) make society better off. We distinguish reparations schemes from
this class of transfers by stipulating that reparations schemes pursue, not welfare
maximization or end-state distributive justice, but rather backward-looking justice
through rectification of past wrongs. 4 In this regard reparations schemes share the
corrective justice focus of many ordinary legal remedies. It is also true, however, that
ordinary remedies are sometimes justified strictly on forward-looking, incentivebased grounds, and the second stipulation excludes those as well. An example is
the vicarious liability of government for the torts of its employees, which would otherwise be counted as reparations by virtue of the non-identity of wrongdoer and
payer.
While I have presented a few reasons for why reparations should be looking at only direct cash
payments, Affirmative teams should not feel compelled to only consider that avenue of advocacy.
There are varying interpretations for what a reparation could be. For example, Jamelle Bouie
interprets it as such:
On the other end is the policy approach. Instead of cash, the federal government
would implement an agenda to tackle racial inequality at its roots. This agenda
would focus on major areas of concern: housing, criminal justice, education, and
income inequality. As for the policies themselves, they dont require a ton of imagination. To break the ghettos and reduce the hyper-segregation of black life, the
federal government would aggressively enforce the Fair Housing Act, with attacks
on housing and lending discrimination, and punishment for communities that exclude low-income residents with exclusionary zoning. Whats more, it would provide
vouchers for those who want to move, subsidized mortgages for those who want to
own, and huge investments in transportation infrastructure, to break urban and rural isolation and connect low-income blacks to jobs in wealthier, whiter areas. On
the education front, state governments could end education budgets based on local
property taxeswhich disadvantage poor communities and disproportionately hurt
blacksand the federal government could invest in school reconstruction, modernization, and vouchersfor parents who want their children in private schoolsin
addition to higher education subsidies for black Americans. These in-kind benBouie, Jamelle. Reparations Are Owed: Here are a few ways to pay the bill. Slate Magazine. The Slate Group, 22
May 2014. Web. 25 Aug. 2015.
10

efits have the virtue of freeing up disposable income, thus acting as de facto cash
payments.
The last part of the Bouie excerpt is what is really important these programs could be argued
to be de facto (re: effectively) cash payments. The definition debate could go back and forth, so I
encourage everyone to continue to consider both sides because many more arguments could be
made from both ends as to why one is more comprehensive or true than the other. This advice
goes for both the definitions of ought and reparations.
2.4 Affirmative Arguments

The Affirmative is the side that depends more on framework victories in order to get their point
across. In discussions for the case though, there does not need to be that much framework, if
at all; rather, the Affirmative should just be prepared to encounter responses from the Negative
that question their own arguments topicality. That being said, I believe that there are two pretty
sound Affirmative strategies that can be pursued.
2.4.1 The Moral Impetus

This might be the easiest way for the Affirmative to win as long as the framework battle is won,
the substance debate (re: the arguments) should not really have much room for debate. The idea
with this approach is to demonstrate that historically African Americans have been denied basic
rights that have not been made up for. In essence, you are to show that the United States Federal
Government has a moral debt that it owes to African Americans. To make that point, we can look
again to writing from Ta-Nehisi Coates:1
Terrorism carried the day. Federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877. The
dream of Reconstruction died. For the next century, political violence was visited
upon blacks wantonly, with special treatment meted out toward black people of ambition. Black schools and churches were burned to the ground. Black voters and the
political candidates who attempted to rally them were intimidated, and some were
murdered. At the end of World War I, black veterans returning to their homes were
assaulted for daring to wear the American uniform. The demobilization of soldiers
after the war, which put white and black veterans into competition for scarce jobs,
produced the Red Summer of 1919: a succession of racist pogroms against dozens
1See Coates, supra note 1.
11

of cities ranging from Longview, Texas, to Chicago to Washington, D.C. Organized
white violence against blacks continued into the 1920sin 1921 a white mob leveled
Tulsas Black Wall Street, and in 1923 another one razed the black town of Rosewood, Floridaand virtually no one was punished.
Beyond political participation, there have been socioeconomic differences as well.
David
Williams and Chiquita Collins document:11

For almost 200 years, research has documented that Blacks report poorer health than
Whites for a broad range of indicators of health status (Krieger, 1987). In 1999, the
life expectancy at birth of 77 years for Whites was 6 years longer than that of African
Americans (National Center for Health Statistics [NCHS], 2002). Contributing to
this life expectancy difference is an elevated rate of illness and death for African
Americans compared to Whites for almost every indicator of physical health. Higher
mortality rates for Blacks than Whites are especially marked for heart disease, cancer,
stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, homicide, hypertension, and AIDS (NCHS, 2002).
And while there are technical biological differences, these do not come close to explaining the
disparate health of the two communities. Williams and Collins further:12
Existing racial categories do not capture biological distinctiveness, and genetic differences at best make a small contribution to racial disparities in health (Goodman,
2000). For example, sickle cell disease accounts for three tenths of 1% of the BlackWhite differences in mortality (Cooper, 1984). Research has identified socioeconomic status as one of the strongest determinants of variations in health in general
(Link & Phelan, 1995; Williams & Collins, 1995) and the major contributor to racial
differences in health, in particular (Williams, 1997). SES accounts for much of the
racial differences in health, and it is frequently found that SES differences within
each racial group are substantially larger than overall racial ones (Williams, 1999).
2.4.2 A Practical Problem

A second approach that Affirmative teams can take is one regarding policies that can address specific grievances within the African American community. This kind of case would correspond
11Williams, David (University of Michigan) and Collins, Chiquita (University of Texas at Austin).
Reparations: A Viable Strategy to Address the Enigma of African American Health.
American Behavioral Scientist, pp. 977-1000.
Sage Publications, Mar.
2004.
Web.
26 Aug.
2015.
http://www.isr.umich.edu/williams/All%20Publications/DRW%20pubs%202004/Reparations.pdf
12Ibid.
12

with the framework that defends other means of implementation that act as de facto cash payments (e.g. education vouchers, minimum sentencing reductions, health services).13
2.5 Negative Arguments

The Negative can get pretty creative when crafting cases, but above all else, teams must remember
the importance of creating inclusive cases. What I mean by that is that it would be unwise to
spend four minutes making arguments about why direct cash payments are bad if the Affirmative
never spends time advocating for them. Instead, Negative teams should look to implications
and outcomes that occur regardless of what specific reparation is paid. Here, there can be two
approaches to the resolution.
2.5.1 Institutionalizing Racism

A problem many Negative teams will realize that is inherent to their side of the resolution is a
lack of quantifications. That being said, an approach that argues that reparations would create a
stronger sense of racism would be effective because it would co-opt the offense generated by the
Affirmative heres how. The Affirmative presents a world rife with problems that African Americans face. These problems are implied to be the product of a racist government (re: institution).
In that sense, if more racism becomes institutionalized, then it clearly would result in even worse
policies in the long-term, so even if the Affirmative could prove that short-term benefits could
occur, they could be rolled back in the long-term.
Even beyond that, teams could adopt a nihilistic mindset, stating that reparations are not a fixall, in which case racism will always return in some form and re-escalate. Rhonda Magee, citing
then-Professor of Law at Harvard University Derrick Bell, underlines:1
For Bell, the reason that such proposals fail is simple: Self-interested whites who must
make the ultimate decisions on whether or not to transfer property (land or currency)
to African-Americans have no incentive to make such self-defeating decisions.253
[R]acial subordination has served so many white interests well that the implicit
consideration of race as a factor in public policy decisions is likely to continue for
the foreseeable future.254
13See Bouie, supra note 9.
1Magee, Rhonda (Prof. of Law, University of San Francisco). The Masters Tools, from the Bottom Up: Responses to
African-American Reparations Theory in Mainstream and Outsiders Remedies Discourse. Virginia Law Review,
pp. 863-916. Virginia Law Review, May 1993. Web. 27 Aug. 2015.
13

There are many ways for Negative teams to link the payment of reparations to an outcome of
entrenched racism, so I encourage a serious level of research into those arguments.
2.5.2 Rights Above All

The second Negative approach is one that I personally am not that familiar with but is one that
does have merit. While the typical Public Forum resolution boils down to a cost-benefit analysis,
the use of ought gives the resolution a more distinct moral flavor. To that end, teams should look
into the philosophy of deontology as an alternative means of evaluating the resolution you can
follow the footnote to read a comprehensive explanation of the position.1 The kinds of arguments
that can occur with a deontological lens include discussions that putting a price tag on suffering
is never justified and instead creates a precedent that future oppression can occur as long as there
is redress in the future in the form of payment.
2.6 Final Thoughts

This resolution will test even the most seasoned debaters, and I have no doubt that new arguments
will be broken as the two months progress. While I hope that those who strive for competitive
success may achieve it, I want to once again stress two things. First, this is an opportunity to learn
more about issues that are pervasive yet under-covered, so research for both your cases but also
your general knowledge. Second, even if competition is your priority, please do not let that cloud
your judgment when it comes to using harmful rhetoric. As a community, we should strive to
have civil and productive discussions, not hateful or harmful conversations.
1Deontological Ethics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 12 Dec. 2012. Web. 27 Aug.
2015. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/
14
3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

Abraham Fraifeld competed for Trinity Prep in Winter Park for four years. Over
the course of his career, he accumulated 12 TOC bids and advanced to five final
rounds. In 2014, Fraifeld coached a Walt Whitman Public Forum squad that won
eight tournaments, including a close out of the TOC. He currently attends Georgetown University.
3.1 Introduction
Before diving into arguments, lets lay out a few observations about the topic, which is Resolved:
The United States Federal Government ought to pay reparations to African Americans.
Two things to note.
First, ought is a buzzword. Most public forum debate resolutions ask whether an actor should
do something, or whether an actions benefits outweigh its costs. While theres no real denotative
difference between the words should and ought, the debate community has assigned conventional significance to the latter. In PF, most resolutions lend themselves to debates that assume
a decision making paradigm roughly following pragmatic utilitarianism (i.e. every weighable argument links back to lives and/or money). But ought encourages debaters to explore different
paradigms and think deeply about governments moral obligations. So, the strongest debaters will
build frameworks that describe governmental morality before diving into the reparations debate.
Second, while the resolution is large, most affirmative advocacies will likely be small. In a forthcoming article for Briefly (the Victory Briefs blog), I track PF rules and resolution writing trends
and argue that the way topics are being written makes the events rules nearly meaningless. Essentially, while debate topics are getting more and more general, the events rules have been stripped
down to the essentials - what a resolution is, the time allocations and expectations for each speech
and crossfire, and a rule prohibiting plans. But how can this resolution be debated without a specific advocacy? And what even constitutes a formalized proposal? Even teams advocating to
repair for slavery, the most commonly written about argument on the topic, will be making the
15

resolution far smaller than it initially appears. And negative teams will likely press the affirmative
to provide a model for reparations (cash? entrepeneurship superfund? schools?) because without this specification, the con will argue, pro cannot solve the problems they claim reparations
will solve.
Resolutions used to be far more specific. Take the NFL Nationals 2006 topic, Resolved: That the
United States government should ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Or November 2008, Resolved: That
the United States government should implement universal health care modeled after the French
system. Or January 2009, Resolved: That, by 2040, the federal government should mandate that
all new passenger vehicles and light trucks sold in the United States be powered by alternative
fuels.
These topics specify a plan for the affirmative to advocate. In an event that outlaws plans in one of
its three rules, the old resolutions make for much cleaner and more productive debates. So I argue
that either resolutions need to be written as they once were, or the plan rule should be rolled back
or seriously clarified. Debaters will have to tip-toe around this regulation for September-October,
so I thought Id detail how I forsee those debates going in an argument guide for the Pro.
3.2 Argument Guide 1: Plans?

The typical affirmative case will be structured as follows: Framework (what principles ought governments to follow?), Injustice (problem), Reparation (solvency). Some affirmative cases will
hide behind the conventions of PF and skip framework. Others will use the rules of PF to their
advantage and skip solvency, claiming that providing solvency would constitute providing a plan,
while avoiding many of the disadvantages the negative specifies.
But for those who want to build a more conventional case, there are two opportunities for plans,
as understood by the typical PF judge. The first is at the injustice level: who should be provided
reparations? Descendants of the victims of slavery? Victims of Jim Crow? African American
victims of police brutality? The resolution does not ask the affirmative to provide reparations for
all African Americans, which means the affirmative can make the topic far smaller by advocating
reparations for a specific injustice.
The other opportunity, as is normally the case, is at the solvency level. While argument guides later
in this file will describe in detail some of the more popular solvency mechanisms, this section will
help debaters handle the prior, often overlooked debate: is making the topic smaller even allowed?
16
3.2.1 Predictive Advocacy AFF

Our argument is not a plan, it is a predictive advocacy. Prefer the affirmative advocacy because
the CON specifies disadvantages of a particular plan (ex. monetary reparations for slavery, more
on this below) that has little to no chance of being implemented if you treat an affirmative ballot
as a policy directive. If politically plausible policies exist within the scope of resolution, neither
side should advocacte for or against policies that wont be considered in the status quo.
This restricts the debate to legislation with public support. More sneakily, it restricts debate to
plans that havent been proven divisive because they havnet been talked about much. Though
in order to avoid the obvious answer this would be divisive if ANYBODY TALKED ABOUT IT
IN PUBLIC, affirmatives should prove that there is a reasonable chance of the policy not being
too divisive for Congress. Using this, the affirmative could advocate for particular plans (medical
vouchers, community building, etc.) for victims of very particular injustices.
A couple of predictive advocacies
Here are two nascent ideas to build on.
A) According to the Sentencing Project, not only are African Americans are disporportionately represented in prisons, they are also disporportionately proven innocent after being
ruled guilty.
In 2008, 38 percent of state and federal prisoners were Black compared to 34 percent
of Whites. Yet, Blacks accounted for 50 percent of the exonerations while Whites
accounted for 38 percent of the false convictions. Negatives could try to argue that
African American exoneration indicates that people are working hard to help African
Americans, and the fact that many they go free is enough.
But as Freddie Allen of District Chronicles, citing Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan Law
School notes, an enormous percentage of false conviction goes under the radar, and exoneration,
when it happens, is rarely immediate.
In most cases we never learn about them. University of Michigan law professor
Samuel Gross, editor of the registry, said: The defendants serve their time and try to
put it behind them or die in prison. In those cases that we do we find out about years
after the fact, sometimes decades after the fact, its very hard to go back and figure out
17

what happened.1 The article goes on to tell the story of Edward Carter, one of the
hundreds who were freed after serving time for crimes they didnt commit. Edward
spent 35 years in prison.
Repairing for this at the Federal level is arguably polictically plausible. Twenty four states already
offer reparations to the wrongly imprisoned according to CNN2. Almost any framework describing governmental morality would dictate that governments ought to do this.
B) Recent events have highlighted police brutalitys prevalence. And there is precedent for
reparations. This year, the City of Chicago granted $5.5 million in reparations to victims
of Police Commander John Burges reign of terror. Next City reports,
From 1972 to 1991, over 100 suspects, mostly African-American males, were tortured and forced into confessions by Burge and officers under his command. Joey
Mogul, an attorney for the Peoples Law Office, the firm representing the victims, said
there are at least 118 victims, many of whom were not guilty of the crimes they were
coerced into confessing. At the council vote, Mayor Rahm Emanuel thanked the victims and their families for their persistence in fighting for what was right. What
happened here in this action today is that Chicago finally will confront its past anxd
come to terms with it, Emanuel said. This stain cannot be removed from our history
but it can be used as a lesson of what not to do and the responsibility that all of us
have.3
President Obama seems determined to do something about police brutality. He proposed a $263
million DOJ allocation to improving local Law Enforcement Agencies.
The White House factsheet on the proposal read,
In August, President Obama ordered a review of federal funding and programs that
provide equipment to state and local law enforcement agencies (LEAs). Today, the
Obama Administration released its Review: Federal Support for Local Law Enforcement Equipment Acquisition, and the President is also taking a number of steps to
strengthen community policing and fortify the trust that must exist between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve. By some definitions, even this
1Allen, Freddie.
2012.
Half Of Wrongfully Convicted Are Black, New Study Shows.
District
Chronicles. http://www.districtchronicles.com/news/view.php/426705/Half-of-wrongfully-convicted-are-Blackn# .UgjtxKxqPe4
2CNN. 2012. Wrongful Conviction Compensation Statutes. http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/03/us/table.wrongful.convictions/
3Stanley, Jenn. 2015.Chicago Makes History With $5.5M In Reparations For Police Brutality Case. Next City.
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/chicago-pays-reparations-police-brutality-case-burge
White House. 2014. FACT SHEET: Strengthening Community Policing. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2014/12/01/fact-sheet-strengthening-community-policing
18

plan could constitute a reparation. Leading reparations scholar Alfred Brophy wrote
that reparations can be thought of as programs that are justified on the basis of past
harm and that are also designed to assess and correct that harm and/or improve the
lives of victims into the future. Under this definition, couldnt police training be a
reparation?
Using Predictive Advocacy to Answer Disadvantages of Slavery Reparations
Estimates vary, but overwhelmingly, whites do not support cash reparations. Alfred Brophy of
the University of Dayton wrote,
When the Mobile Register polled Alabama citizens on the issue of reparations in the
summer of 2002, it found that the question of reparations was the most racially divisive issue since it began polling. (See Table 1.) The differences between whites and
blacks outstripped even the gap seen during the civil rights struggle over integration.
Why is it that only five percent of white Alabamians support reparations for slavery,
while sixty-seven percent of black Alabamians support them? Why did some whites
become so enraged at the mere suggestion of reparations that they could not complete the survey? Lest one think that Alabama is out-of-step with attitudes in the
United States, that racial gap is fairly constant nationwide.According to a study by
Harvard University and the University of Chicago that researchers reported in the
spring of 2003, only four percent of whites support reparations payments.
To further demonstrate that legislation tied to slavery reparations will not pass in the status quo,
since 1989, Rep. John Conyers has failed to generate support for HR 40, his legislation that would
set up a comission to study the impact of slavery. Our Congress cannot even get behind legislation
to study slavery. As Nkechi Tarifa, who helped found NCOBRA noted, People who talk about
reparations are considered left lunatics. But all we are talking about is studying [reparations]. As
John Conyers has said, we study everything. We study the water, the air. We cant even study
the issue? This bill does not authorize one red cent to anyone. GovTrack gives HR40 a big
fat 0 percent chance of passing this session of Congress. So, the affirmative could easily avoid
Brophy, Alfred L. 2006. Reparations: pro & con. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press.
Alfred L. Brophy, The Cultural War over Reparations for Slavery, 53 DePaul Law Review 1181-1213, 1182-1184
(Spring 2004) http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara29a.htm
Ta-Nehisi.
2014.
The
Case
For
Reparations.
The
Atlantic.
Coates,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/.
H.R. 40:
Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.
GovTrack.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr40
19

the reparations for slavery debate (the debate the negative will be most prepared to debate) by
claiming the predictive advocacy high ground. One could say something like this:
The disadvantages of monetary reparations for slavery are not reasons to vote Con
for two reasons. First, we arent advocating for monetary reparations for slavery. If
you accept their arguments, you are allowing them to force us to advocate a plan that
is not inherent to the resolution. This is majorly unfair. Second, there is no reason to
believe that the pro world includes reparations for slavery. We have laid out a crystal
clear prediction of the affirmative world. It includes [whatever the aff advocates], but
it doesnt include monetary reparations for slavery. So the cons arguments against
monetary reparations for slavery are not reasons to reject the pro world.
3.2.2 These are just examples AFF

What if running multiple plans allows the AFF to skirt the plans rule? Seems messed up, but this
is how most plan/anti-plan debates get resolved on the circuit:
AFF: We advocate medical vouchers as reparations.
NEG: THATS A PLANILLEGAL
Alternatively,
AFF: We advocate monetary reparations for slavery, medical vouchers, community
building, and police training.
NEG: (Pulls out the answers to the various plans), and by the way these are
plans/illegal.
AFF: They arent plans, theyre examples of reparations. We cant predict which one
will get passed, so we decided to give the judge a menu, each of which is independently enough to affirm.
Needless to say, LDers would drop damning theory on this sort of argumentation. As will be
explained in the answers to plans, this strategy skews ground so heavily to the affirmative that it
should be illegal. Imagine having to speak first on the negative against a case like this, and none
of the criticisms leveled against reparations apply to the specific plans the affirmative advocates!
That would be tragic. Fortunately, this strategy is easy to flag as unfair.
20
3.2.3 Four Answers to Plans

Two General Answers
First, according to the NSDA, In Public Forum Debate, the Association defines a plan or counterplan as a formalized, comprehensive proposal for implementation. Neither the pro or con side
is permitted to offer a plan or counterplan; rather, they should offer reasoning to support a position of advocacy. Debaters may offer generalized, practical solutions. It is certainly possible to
discuss reparations in the general sense. We know because experts have done it. Brophy writes,
even one of the most recent major books on this topic, Raymond A. Winbushs Should America
Pay? has hundreds of pages of discussion on whether the U.S. government and corporations
should pay reparations but very little discussion on what they would pay, if they were going to do
so, or of the form the reparations would take.1
Second, since nothing in the rules or conventions of PF grants the affirmative the power to win
off of the advantages of a particular advocacy, if that power is granted to the affirmative, it should
also be given to the negative. For example, if the affirmative preaches the advantages of medical
vouchers, and the negative argues against monetary reparations for slavery, the affirmative cannot
simply dismiss the negatives argument because it doesnt interact with their advocacy (a common
strategy among plan-running affirmatives). If the affirmative wins that vouchers are good and the
negative wins that monetary reparations for slavery are bad, then we both ought to and ought not
to provide reparations. The best way to avoid this potential irresolvability is to drop the plan
privilege all together.
AT: Predictive Advocacy
There is no way for our opponents to predict the future, so they cannot claim that they are performing predictive advocacy. Even experts cannot do this. According to John Lehrer of Wired
Magazine,
The dismal performance of these pundits inspired Tetlock to turn his small case study
in to an epic experimental project. He picked a few hundred political experts people who made their living commenting or offering advice on political and economic
trends and began asking them to make predictions about future events. He had a
National Tournament Operations Manual.
National Speech and Debate Association.
2015.
http://www.speechanddebate.org/DownloadHandler.ashx?File=/userdocs/publicDocs/201415_National_Tournament_Operations_Manual.pdf
1Brophy, Alfred L. 2006. Reparations: pro & con. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press, pp. 17
21

long list of pertinent questions. Would George Bush be re-elected? Would there be
a peaceful end to apartheid in South Africa? Would Quebec secede from Canada?
Would the dot-com bubble burst? In each case, the pundits were asked to rate the
probability of several possible outcomes. Tetlock then interrogated the pundits about
their thought process, so that he could better understand how they made up their
minds. After Tetlock tallied up the data, the predictive failures of the pundits became obvious. Although they were paid for their keen insights into world affairs,
they often performed worse than random chance. Most of Tetlocks questions had
three possible answers; the pundits, on average, selected the right answer less than
33 percent of the time. In other words, a dart-throwing chimp would have beaten
the vast majority of professionals.11
The takeaway is that the predictive advocacy strategy is a farce. The Pro cannot prove that their
advocacy will materialize, nor can they prove that the negatives disadvantages wont come to
fruition. Nate Silver of FiveThiryEight writes in his book The Signal and the Noise, A long-term
study by Phillip E. Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania found that when political scientists
claimed a political outcome had absolutely no chance of occuring, it nevertheless happened 15
percent of the time.12
AT: Examples
First, if the affirmative advocates multiple plans, theyre almost certainly underdeveloped and
vulnurable. Many will fall under even minimal scruitiny.
Second, they argue that each of their plans independently affirms. This is unfair because it makes
the debate irreciprocal. The affirmative only needs to win one of their underdeveloped arguments,
whereas the negative has to answer all of them back and win an argument in its own right. Debates
need to be reciprocal to be fair. Their strategy structurally increases the likelihood that they win
without exercising better skills. Reciprocal debates are more educational because they produce
productive discussions instead of dwelling in underdeveloped and petty mini-advocacies that are
specifically designed to avoid clash.
11Lehrer, Jonah.
2015.
Do Political Experts Know What Theyre Talking About?.
WIRED.
http://www.wired.com/2011/08/do-political-experts-know-what-theyre-talking-about/.
12Silver, Nate. 2012. The signal and the noise: why so many predictions failbut some dont. New York: Penguin
Press.
22
3.3 Argument Guide 2: Rawls

Starting here, I will essentially draft contentions and provide answers to some of those contentions
specifics.
The word ought in the resolution asks us to consider what is right for a government to do. Martin
Carcieri writes in the Michigan Journal of Race and Law
On this foundation, Rawls erects Justice as Fairness. His architectonic theory, on the
scale of Platos Republic, Aristotles Politics, and Kants Critique of Pure Reason, is
framed for a democratic society30 and consists of a cluster of related ideas. For the
present, six of the most basic will suffice: the original position, the veil of ignorance,
the two principles of justice, their lexical ordering, the basic structure, and the four
stage sequence. Since the original position is where the bargaining game takes
place, let us begin there.13
Rawls argues that through thought experiments, we can conceptualize justice. The original position is a theoretical pre-world state of nature that features nameless creatures who know facts
about basic economics, sociology, and the like, but who do not know anybody in particulars
situation. They are constructing the worlds social and economic legal infrastructure under the
veil of ignorance. Rawls deduces that benevolent self interest in this position would produce two
principles of justice. Martin Carcieri, again in the Michigan Journal of Race and Law:
The first is the equal liberty principle, which is Rawlss foundational constitutional
norm. It provides that [e]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive
total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for
all. 41 It is not surprising that such a principle would emerge, for liberty is the
goal of democracy while equality is its concep- tion of justice.42 In final form, the
second principle provides that [s]ocial and economic inequalities are to satisfy two
conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under
conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest
benefit of the least-advantaged members of society.1
Thus, if reparations level the liberty playing field or alleviate the burdens of economic inequality
for the least well off, then they ought to be paid.
This concludes the framework section. On to the Injustice portion of the case.
13Carcieri, Martin D. Rawls and reparations. 15 Mich. J. Race & L. 267-316 (2010).
1Ibid
23

We argue that one source of illiberty and suffering for the least well off is the war on drugs.
Michelle Alexander, author of the New Jim Crow, writes,
The drug war has been brutal complete with SWAT teams, tanks, bazookas, grenade
launchers, and sweeps of entire neighborhoods but those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought. This war has been waged almost
exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that
people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some
studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal
drug dealing than black youth. Any notion that drug use among African Americans
is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data. White youth, for example, have
about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their
African American counterparts.1
Alexander further explains the impact.
There are more African Americans under correctional control today in prison or
jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil
War began. As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to
felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was
ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race. A
black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child
born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due
in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.1
Incarceration takes productive members out of communities and facilitates the continuation of
the cycle of poverty. Rawlsian thought would reject the war on drugs and support reparations to
correct the imbalances it has left in its wake.
On to the reparations
We advocate three reparations to correct this problem.
First, the government should erect a War on Drugs truth commission. Brophy clarifies topicality
Phrased another way, reparations include truth commissions that document the
history of racial crimes and the current liability for those crimes, apologies that ac1Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: How The War On Drugs Gave Birth To A Permanent American
Undercaste. The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-alexander/the-new-jim-crow-howthe_b_490386.html.
1Ibid
24

knowledge liability, and payments to settle those accounts.1 These truth comissions
will reveal the extent of damage done to minority communities.
Zak Cheney-Rice writes for Mic,
Alexander suggests we begin with Truth and Reconciliation hearings, similar to
those held in post-apartheid South Africa. Designed to elicit truth about the past
rather than sweeping it under the rug, these measures allow perpetrators and victims
alike to publicly acknowledge the legacy of national tragedies. Such hearings are an
important first step in what will be a long healing process.1
Second, since community rehabilitation requires members to be present, President Obama ought
to pardon victims of the War on Drugs. The Green Party of New Yorks platform advocates, Freedom and amnesty for all drug war prisoners currently serving time in prison or on parole for
nonviolent drug offenses, and 79 percent of Texans and 73 percent of Floridians support it.1
President Obama granted clemency to 46 non-violent offenders earlier this year, and many predict more is to come.
The LA Times reported,
These men and women were not violent criminals their punishments didnt fit
the crime, Obama said in a Facebook video posted Monday that showed him signing
the commutations. I believe that America, at its heart, is a nation of second chances,
and I believe these folks deserve their second chance.2 (ellipses in original.)
Third, victims should be given the right to pursue a college education. Howie Hawkins of the
New York Green Party writes,
Every person in prison and on parole should have the opportunity to further his or
her education, whether its a GED program or a higher education program. Earlier
this year Governor Cuomo abandoned a plan to provide public money for college
courses at 10 prisons. Education reduces recidivism. As an example, Ohio reduced
recidivism rates by more than 60 percent among ex-inmates who completed a degree
in prison. We know that more than 50 percent of incarcerated people have children.
1Brophy, Alfred L. 2006. Reparations: pro & con. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press, pp. 9-10
1Cheney-Rice, Zak. 2014. There Should Be Payback To The Victims Of The Governments Mindless War
On Drugs. Mic. http://mic.com/articles/85529/there-should-be-payback-to-the-victims-of-the-government-smindless-war-on-drugs
1Redmond, Helen. 2014. Should the Victims of the War on Drugs Receive Reparations? Pacific Standard.
http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/victims-war-drugs-receive-reparations-93194
2Phelps, Timothy, and Colin Diersing. 2015. Obama Grants Clemency To 46 Nonviolent Drug Offenders.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-commutations-20150713-story.html
25

When parents participate in post-secondary education, the likelihood their children
will go to college increases, creating more opportunities to climb out of poverty.21
3.3.1 AT: War on Drugs as an Injustice

CON: Though it disproportionately affects African Americans, the war on drugs isnt just an exclusively black issue. In fact, in 2011, the amount of white and hispanic drug offenders was greater
than the amount of black offenders.22 Perhaps the affirmative is right that war on drugs victims
should be provided reparations, but that is a different resolution.
AFF ANSWER: The war on drugs disproportionately affects African Americans and is credited
with black disenfranchisement and a continuation of the cycle of poverty. There is no doubt that
the war on drugs holds back African American advancement. More technically, the resolution
does not ask the affirmative to defend reparations for African Americans and nobody else. Affirming does not mean that other victims of the war on drugs do not deserve reparations.
3.3.2 AT: Truth Commissions

First, even their advocates concede they arent reparations.
Hawkins of the New York Green Party writes,
The commission would be modeled after a South African commission established
following apartheid. It would investigate the ways the states drug policies and justice system have led to high incarceration rates. In particular, it would assess the
devastating impact on black and Latino communities. It would hear from the people most directly affected and recommend alternatives to mass incarceration. And
it would look at reparations for the communities impacted.23
These commissions are meant to analyze reparations options. They arent reparations themselves.
Second, the South African experience with Truth and Reconciliation Comissions has not been
positive. Jason Le Grange of The Institute for Upskill and Development writes,
22Carson, Ann and Gollineli Daniella. 2012. Prisoners in 2012 - Advance Counts. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p12ac.pdf
26

Elizabeth Stanley (2001, p.541) evaluated the TRC and summed up her findings
that, Yet, with no real change in social conditions and no clear attempt to address
perceptions of injustice and exclusion amongst certain groups, the TRC has lost its
impact. Stanley documented an in-depth evaluation of the TRC and believes that
the experience has failed and has not brought about the reconciliation which was
one of its primary goals. Unlike Minow, who looked at the overall objectives of truth
commissions and their efficacy, Stanley argues that the reality of holding those who
are accountable and achieving real engagement with the victims has not been fulfilled in South Africa. For Stanley (2001, p.527), The TRC is demonstrated to have
provided a partial truth, not only because of the Commissions limited mandate to examine gross human rights violations, but negotiation employed by those who gave
evidence. Stanley (2001) further argues that the TRC was flawed to begin with as
the focus had a limited mandate: With a mandate to deal principally with gross violations of human rights, the result of government imposed restrictions on the Commissions reporting time and finances, the TRC was never in a position to record the
full truth of South African life. (p. 530) Those implicated by the TRC are still in positions of power (Stanley, 2001, p.536) and those that should have been supported as
victims of state crime have not received reparation (p.537).2
3.3.3 Aff Answers

Truth commissions are topical. Brophy,
Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree, a leader of the Reparations Coordinating Committee, a group of lawyers and social scientists whose goal is to coordinate reparations lawsuits and political activism, has recently emphasized four
features of reparations: 1. A focus on the past to account for the present 2. A focus
on the present, to reveal the continuing existence of race-based discrimination 3. An
accounting of the past harms or injuries that have not been compensated 4. A challenge to society to devise ways to respond as a whole to the uncompensated harms
identified in the past16 Ogletree sees acceptance, acknowledgment, and accounting as central elements of reparations.17[[Brophy, Alfred L. 2006. Reparations:
pro & con. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press., 9].
2le Grange, Jason.
2014.
The Truth and reconciliation Comission: Did it Fail to Resolve Conflict Between South Africans?.
Program in Negotiation, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding.
http://www.ejournalncrp.org/the-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-did-it-fail-to-resolve-conflict-betweensouth-africans/# sthash.gCc0gMYD.dpuf
27

No matter what people say or imply, the leading reparations advocate in the world says truth
commissions are reparations.
In South Africa, there were problems with the implementation of the truth commission. The
commission as a concept was not the problem. Le Grange of The Institute for Upskill and Development (South Africa),
Further confirmation [of the TRCs failures] came from the 2nd Annual Desmond
Tutu International Lecture delivered by Graca Machel in 2012 who pointed out that
South Africa had still not healed after the end of apartheid and participation in the
TRC. As Machel notes, South African society is violent, intolerant, accusatory and
angry because it has failed to address the emotional mutilation wrought by apartheid.
Machel recommended additional TRCs to continue dealing with these issues.2
Moreover, the United States experience with Truth Commissions is markedly different than South
Africas. In Maine, where Native Americans faced intolerable discrimination and the forced removal of children from Wabanaki homes, Governor Paul LePage to establish[ed] a truth commission to investigate and document intergenerational trauma within tribal communities.2
The International Center for Transitional Justice compliments the Governors work, Since being
seated, the five Commissioners have been meeting regularly with Wabanaki communities, Maines
Department of Health and Human Services, and non-native community members. Performance
and oral storytelling, as integral parts of Wabanaki history and culture, are essential components
of the tribal-led TRC process. One tribal member noted, Having a place where my voice can be
heard has changed my life dramatically, helping me to heal and giving me the strength to forgive.
I still struggle to find a place in this world where I feel I belong. I believe I will find that place of
belonging when I let people see who I really am, not only the truth of what has been done to me
but what I have done to others. By acknowledging and sharing my truth, taking responsibility
and seeking forgiveness, I can show my beautiful children, my family and my people that we can
restore our hearts, minds and souls. And the Center concludes, Though the Commission is
focused with investigating only one aspect of the experience of Maines indigenous nations, its
contribution can be significant beyond an examination of the child welfare system, encouraging
future efforts to look into structural, historical wrongs.2
2le Grange, Jason.
2014.
The Truth and reconciliation Comission: Did it Fail to Resolve Conflict Between South Africans?.
Program in Negotiation, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding.
http://www.ejournalncrp.org/the-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-did-it-fail-to-resolve-conflict-betweensouth-africans/# sthash.gCc0gMYD.dpuf
2International Center for Transitional Justice. 2014. Maines Indigenous Truth Commission Marks First Year.
https://www.ictj.org/news/maines-indigenous-truth-commission-marks-first-year
2Ibid
28
3.4 Argument Guide 3: Utilitarianism and the Benefits of Education

(Again) The word ought in the resolution asks us to consider what is right for a government
to do. We argue that the government should seek to maximize net benefits also known as positive utilitarianism, while minimizing suffering, known as negative utilitarianism. Governments
should follow these rules for two reasons.
First, any moral theory that conflicts with utilitarianism arbitrarily assigns more importance to
one persons interests over anothers. Singer writes,
The universal aspect of ethics, I suggest, does provide a persuasive, although not conclusive, reason for taking a broadly utilitarian position. My reason for suggesting
this is as follows. In accepting that ethical judgments must be made from a universal point of view, I am accepting that my own interests cannot, simply because they
are my interests, count more than the interests of anyone else. Thus my very natural
concern that my own interests be looked after must, when I think ethically, be extended to the interests of others. Now, imagine that I am trying to decide between
two possible courses of action perhaps whether to eat all the fruits I have collected
myself, or to share them with others. Imagine, too, that I am deciding in a complete
ethical vacuum, that I know nothing of any ethical considerations I am, we might
say, in a pre-ethical stage of thinking. How would I make up my mind? One thing
that would be still relevant would be how the possible courses of action will affect my
interests. Indeed, if we define interests broadly enough, so that we count anything
people desire as in their interests (unless it is incompatible with another desire or
desires), then it would seem that at this pre-ethical stage, only ones own interests
can be relevant to the decision. Suppose I then begin to think ethically, to the extent
of recognizing that my own interests cannot count for more, simply because they are
my own, than the interests of others. In place of my own interests, I now have to take
into account the interests of all those affected by my decision. This requires me to
weigh up all these interests and adopt the course of action most likely to maximize
the interests of those affected.2
Second is the argument from necessity.
Goodin writes,
Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty, and this uncertainty is a very special sort at that. All choices- public or private alike - are made
2Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics, Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 13-14
29

under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their
own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might
have for them. Public officials, in contrast are relatively poorly informed as to the
effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do
known are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most
often to most people as a result of their various possible choices. But that is all. That
is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus - if they want
to use it at all - to choose general rules of conduct. Knowing aggregates and averages, they can proceed to calculate the utility payoffs from adopting each alternative
possible general rule. But they cannot be sure what the payoff will be to any given individual on any particular occasion. Their knowledge of generalities, aggregates and
averages is just not sufficiently fine-grained for that. For example, consider the case
of compulsory seat belt legislation. Policy-makers can say that with with some confidence that, on aggregate, more lives will be saved than lost if all automobile drivers
and passengers are required to wear seat belts. As always that aggregate conceals the
fact that some gain while others lose. Some people would be trapped by seat belts in
fiery crashes who otherwise would have been thrown to safety by the force o impact,
after all.2
So, if the affirmative demonstrates that reparations maximize net benefits for the United States,
an affirmative ballot is line.
Side note: Under this framework, identifying an injustice doesnt bolster the case because the government should act to maximize net benefits going forward regardless of past action.
White-black inequality is pervasive and results in extensive suffering. CNN reports that median
white family wealth is over 10 times that of the median black family. Black unemployment and
poverty rates are more than double white rates, and whites own homes at a rate 29 percentage
points higher than blacks.3
These metrics translate to worse black quality (and ultimately lower quantity) of life. Poor access
to healthcare combined with a number of external health factors adversley affect black wellbeing.
Smedley et. al. of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies write, 50% of black neighborhoods lack access to a full service grocery store or supermarket. Further 56% of residents
2Goodin, Robert. Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 63-64
3Luhby, Tami.
2015.
5 Disturbing Stats On Black-White Financial Inequality.
CNN Money.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/21/news/economy/black-white-inequality/.
30

in neighborhoods with commercial hazardous waste facilities are people of color.31 Moreover,
James Smith calculated that in the US, The fraction in excellent or very good health in the top
income quartile is often 40 percentage points larger than the fraction in those health groups in the
lowest income quartile.32. Ultimately, a CDC reports found, The researchers found that white
men with 16 or more years of schooling can expect to live an average of 14 years longer than black
men with fewer than 12 years of education 33
Education is another area for improvement.
Again, Smedley et. al. of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies,
Poor and minority school districts recieve less funding, have larger class sizes, worse
infrastrucutre, and more non-credentialed teachers than white districts, but fifty
years after the Brown decision, thre resegregation of our schools continues throughout the country. According to a 2007 Civil Rights Project study,Children in the
United States schools are much poorer than they were decades ago and more separated in highly unequal schools.3
Mckinsey and Company calculates, >If the gap between low-income students and the rest had
been similarly narrowed, GDP in 2008 would have been $400 billion to $670 billion higher, or 3 to
5 percent of GDP. Further, If the gap between black and Latino student performance and white
student performance had been similarly narrowed, GDP in 2008 would have been between $310
billion and $525 billion higher, or 2 to 4 percent of GDP. The magnitude of this impact will rise in
the years ahead as demographic shifts result in blacks and Latinos becoming a larger proportion
of the population and workforce.3
In addition to addressing shortages in food options and obvious problems with neighborhood
quality, African Americans deserve better education to break to cycle of poverty. Two proposals.
First the US Federal Government ought to focus on improving school infrastructure and pay to
attract better teachers to areas that need them. According to the Rand Corporation,
31Brian Smedley, Michael Jeffries, Larry Adelman and Jean Cheng.
Race, Racial Inequality and Health Inequities:
Separating Myth from Fact.
California Newsreel.
http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/assets/uploads/file/Race_Racial_Inequality_Health.pdf
32Smith, James P. (2004) : Unraveling the SES health connection, IFS Working Papers, Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS),
No. 04/02, http://dx.doi.org/10.1920/ wp.ifs.2004.0402
33Friedman, Lauren. This Chart Showing The Gap Between Black And White Life Expectancy Should Be A National
Embarrassment. Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/huge-racial-gap-in-life-expectancy-2014-1#
ixzz3kEw4MTZm
Race, Racial In3Brian Smedley, Michael Jeffries, Larry Adelman and Jean Cheng.
equality and Health Inequities:
Separating Myth from Fact.
California Newsreel.
http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/assets/uploads/file/Race_Racial_Inequality_Health.pdf
3Mckinsey & Company. 2009. The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in Americas Schools.
http://silvergiving.org/system/files/achievement_gap_report.pdf
31

Many factors contribute to a students academic performance, including individual characteristics and family and neighborhood experiences. But research suggests
that, among school-related factors, teachers matter most. When it comes to student
performance on reading and math tests, a teacher is estimated to have two to three
times the impact of any other school factor, including services, facilities, and even
leadership.3
Second, free community college. Reducing costs increases access. Kyle Calvert of PBS reports,
Thomas Bailey, director and founder of the Community College Research Center at
Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, said Tennessee is making a big
political statement that two-year college is free. Generally, research has found that a
$1,000 reduction in tuition increases enrollment between 2% and 3%, he said.3
And, according to an aunauthored paper from the Teachers College of Columbia University,
Conchas said, but eventually, foundation officials came to believe that increasing the
number of low-income students who earn a credential or degree was the most effective way to end multigenerational poverty and promote social mobility. Conchas
outlined three reasons for that decision. The first was that esearch shows that education, particularly postsecondary education, is the best way to help young people
get good jobs and maintain stable, productive lives. Moreover, the benefits appear to
extend to future generations. Education creates a multigenerational cycle of prosperity powerful enough to push aside cycles of poverty. Second, an advanced education will become more essential as society grows more complex. Conchas said
that in the future more than half of all new jobs will require at least some college. If
educational attainment does not keep pace, the consequences for the country could
be dire. Finally, an expanded investment to include postsecondary education builds
on an already strong foundation presence in K12 schools. Given that involvement,
Conchas said the foundation is confident it can eventually make a difference.The
foundation will focus on ages 16 to 26. Getting students to complete their academic
programs by age 26 is crucial, Conchas said, because research indicates that if a credential has not been attained by then, the likelihood of completing one decreases
substantially. Key to the success of the foundations plan, he said, will be commu3Teachers Matter: Understanding Teachers Impact on Student Achievement. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2012. http://www.rand.org/pubs/corporate_pubs/CP693z1-2012-09.
3Calvert, Kyla. Obama: Community College Should Be As Free And Universal In America As High School. PBS
NewsHour., 2015. Web. 8 Feb. 2015. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/community-college-tuition-toptheme-stateunion-speech/
32

nity colleges. These tend to be the institutions of choice for millions of people who
would otherwise have no access to higher education.3
Improved education lifts all boats; it addresses the college educated worker shortage while breeding a new generation of innovators and otherwise productive members of society
3.4.1 AT: Education-based plans

These arguments are (arguably) non-topical for two reasons.
First, the resolution asks the affirmative to advocate paying reparations to African Americans. The
programs described in the above contention constitute payments to teachers and schools for the
benefit of African Americans. Though education programs are laudable, they are not resolutional.
Second, this sort of program is compensatory, not reparatory. Bernard Boxill, UNC Philosophy
Professor, writes
The words reparation and compensation will appear often in this discussion.
They are related in meaning but not synonymous. Compensation is the broader term.
As suggested in Lockes discussion reparation along with punishment are parts of corrective as opposed to distributive justice. Logically, if someone deserves reparation
then necessarily someone has acted wrongly and harmed or injured him as a result.
To deserve reparation one must have suffered some harm or loss as a result of someones wrongful act. Compensation means making up for or counteracting some loss
or lack of something useful or valuable. The loss of lack may not be due to any wrong
doing. Thus though suffering some loss or harm does not necessarily make one deserving of reparation it may make one deserving of compensation. And a person
need not owe others reparation even if his actions caused them to be harmed; to owe
them reparation his actions that caused them harm must also have been wrongful.3
This is a catch-all response. Using this piece of evidence, negative teams should be able to dodge
helping people is good arguments. The aff s advocacy is compensatory, not reparatory unless
those providing reparations committed the harm.
3Teachers College: Columbia University,. Education As A Tool For Breaking The Cycles Of Poverty, 2008.
http://www.tc.columbia.edu/news.htm?articleId=6762
3Boxill, Bernard, Black Reparations, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/black-reparations/.
33

Aff Answers
First, paying reparations to African Americans is a phrase of art referring to programs that are
designed to improve the lives of African Americans due to past harms. The technicality identified
by the negative really doesnt matter. But even then, the government would be paying African
Americans in improved education, which translates to earnings and improved quality of life.
Second, the socio-economic status gap between Whites and African Americans has a whole lot
to do with federal policy or federal acceptance of state policy. Among other structural barriers to
advancement was the US Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson, which established the
doctrine (and farce) of separate but equal, famously setting predominately African American
schools up for poor performance.
3.4.2 AT: School Spending

A wealth of evidence shows that schools dont spend money well. CBS DC:
Decades of increased taxpayer spending per student in U.S. public schools has not
improved student or school outcomes from that education, and a new study finds
that throwing money at the system is simply not tied to academic improvements.
The study from the CATO Institute shows that American student performance has
remained poor, and has actually declined in mathematics and verbal skills, despite
per-student spending tripling nationwide over the same 40-year period. The takeaway from this study is that what weve done over the past 40 years hasnt worked,
Andrew Coulson, director of the Center For Educational Freedom at the CATO Institute, told Watchdog.org. The average performance change nationwide has declined
3 percent in mathematical and verbal skills. Moreover, theres been no relationship,
effectively, between spending and academic outcomes. The study, State Education
Trends: Academic Performance and Spending over the Past 40 Years, analyzed how
billions of increased taxpayer dollars, combined with the number of school employees nearly doubling since 1970, to produce stagnant or declining academic results.
The performance of 17-year-olds has been essentially stagnant across all subjects despite a near tripling of the inflation-adjusted cost of putting a child through the K-12
system, writes Coulson. Data from the U.S. Department of Education incorporating public school costs, number of employees, student enrollment and SAT scores
was analyzed to explore the disparity between increased spending and decreasing
or stagnant academic results. Congressional mandates and the provision of comprehensive special education, after school programs and increasing technology costs
34

have increased public education budgets. This is in contrast to private schools, where
students excel over public school peers, but manage to operate at budgets about 34
percent lower than taxpayer-funded schools, US Finance Post reports.
Heritage Foundation:
In many cities, spending per student exceeds $10,000 per year, yet graduation rates
are below 50 percent. For example, in Detroit, per-student spending is approximately
$11,100 per year, yet only 25 percent of Detroits students are graduating from high
school according to a recent estimate.[21] In these communities and across the country, policymakers should focus on reforming policies and resource allocation to improve student achievement.1
The affirmative will likely argue that they will direct schools to use the money well. At this point,
the affirmative is actually breaking the rules of Public Forum. If they specify how the money will
be used, they are advocating a formalized proposal.
Aff Answers
While aggregate student performance has remained stagnant over the past thirty years, the same
cannot be said for poor students at reformed. schools. Holly Yettick of Ed Week cites an NBER
study
Between 1971 and 2010, the authors write, supreme courts in 28 states responded
to large gaps between richer and poorer school districts by reforming school
finance systems. Although the changes had limited consequences for children from
higher-income families, the paper says, they had large effects on the life chances of
low-income children who were exposed to sizable and sustained spending increases.
For low-income students who spent all 12 years of school in districts that increased
spending by 20 percent, graduation rates rose by 23 percentage points. Due to the
measurement error or noise found in almost any study of this type, the effect
could, very plausibly, be as low as 8.7 percentage points and as high as 37 percentage
points.2
CBS DC. 2014.
Study:
No Link Between School Spending, Student Achievement
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/04/07/study-no-link-between-school-spending-student-achievement/
1Lips, Dan; Watkins, Shanea; Fleming, John. 2008. Does Spending More on Education Improve Academic
Achievement? Heritage Foundation. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/09/does-spending-moreon-education-improve-academic-achievement
2Yettick, Holly. 2014. School Spending Increases Linked to Better Outcomes for Poor Students. Ed Week.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/05/29/33finance.h33.html
35

Charlene Tow of UC Berkeley also found (in an undergraduate thesis) that there is a difference
between state and federal funding.
My findings differ from previous research in that I have found that school funding
can result in both a positive or negative effect on student academic achievement depending on where the money comes from. When using API scores as the dependent
variable, increases in federal revenue leads to higher student achievement while increases in the revenue limit and other state revenue actually lead to lower student
achievement, on average.3
3.4.3 AT: Free Community College

First, community college is not the ticket to the middle class that the affirmative claims it is.
According to Scott Butler of the Brookings Institution,
Whats more, community college is usually a dead end. Rather than being a firm first
rung on the higher education ladder, for too many, community college turns out to be
a broken rung. Just 20% of students who begin a two-year public community college
program actually graduate within 3 years, and typically only 60% of enrolled students
return the following year. As for being a low-cost gateway to a successful four-year
college, just 15% of students entering community colleges earn a bachelors degree
within 6 years. So rather than putting so many eggs in the flimsy community college
basket, it would be wiser to help states and school districts provide a fuller range of
opportunities at the high school and college levels, such as professional credentials,
apprenticeships and high-school career academies.
In fact, free community college undermines high school in two ways.
A) Pulled resources
The Orlando Sentinal reports,
While the goal is laudable, if the federal government really has $60 billion more
to spend on education, it would be better directed toward the need to make highschool graduates ready for college without first having to take remedial classes. It is
3Tow, Charlene.
2006.
The Effects of School Funding on Student Academic Achievement A Study of California School Districts 2000-2004.
University of California Berkeley.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.170.170&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Butler, Stuart. Obamas SOTU Free College Plan is Bad for Poor Americans. The Brookings Institution., 2015.
36

a national disgrace that so many high-school graduates lack the math, reading and
writing skills they need to succeed as college freshmen.
B) Less pressure to push students
Lindsay Burke of the Heritage Foundation writes,
Then there is the impact on the K-12 system. More than one-third of students have to
take remedial courses when they enter college, as they leave high school unprepared
for university-level work. Free community college would put even less pressure on
high schools to produce graduates who are prepared for college-level work, as they
could expect the new free community colleges to fill in what the high schools are
failing to do. The proposal is more likely to produce a six-year high school system
than a two-year gratis workforce preparation experience.
Finally, community colleges are already overcrowded, making them free will only undermine the
quality of education for those who are already there.
According to Grace Chen of the Community College Review, Many community colleges in California and across the nation are struggling to cope with a recent surge of new students who have
chosen to pursue higher education in hopes of bettering their chances in todays grim job market.
Unfortunately, few community colleges have been adequately prepared for this sharp uptick in
enrollment. As a result, many students may find that courses they need to take to fulfill transfer
requirements are already filled to maximum enrollment. This can significantly set back a students
plans of transferring to a four-year university by months or even years.
3.5 Argument Guide 4: Lack of Culpability

This guide will go into specifics on a few injustices. Of course, there are more to prepare against.
The affirmative must demonstrate that taxpayers are culpable for the harms they identify for two
reasons.
First, topicality. As mentioned above, Boxill argued that any payment scheme in which the people
or organization paying did not commit injustice being repaired for can be considered compensation rather than reparations.
Orlando Sentinel,. Free-Tuition: Laudable, Unaffordable: Editorial, 2015.
Burke, Lindsey. Obama Administrations Free Community College Will Shift Significant Costs To Taxpayers. CNS
News., 2015. http://dailysignal.com/2015/01/09/free-community-college-anything-free/
Chen, Grace. 2014. Why 60% of Community College Students Never Transfer. Community College Review.
http://www.communitycollegereview.com/blog/why-60-of-community-college-students-never-transfer
37

Second, obligating non-culpable parties to help those in need creates a near-infinite and insurmountable moral burden, which is ethically paralyzing and draining. This is why while maximum
philanthropy is morally praiseworthy, in few circles is it morally required.
Importantly, taxpayers would pay in any Federal reparations plan. Brophy wrote for the New York
Times, The sad truth is that the harms of slavery and Jim Crow are greater than the wealth they
created. Moreover, the primary beneficiaries of those systems are now gone. Payments will have
to come from taxpayers, who have no culpability for those past crimes and little, if any, of the
benefit.
3.5.1 No culpability for slavery

Thomas McCarthy of Northwestern Law writes that its not fair for present taxpayers to pay for
the misdeeds of past wrongdoers, particularly when their own ancestors were not among them
as the more than fifty million new, first- and second-generation Americans since the 1960s are
likely to object. Bernard Boxill, UNC Philosophy Professor furthers,
Americans were not complicit in the crime of slavery that claim can only be based
on the morally repugnant idea that individuals can be burdened with the duties that
other people incurred. Present day American were not even born when the transgressions involved in slavery were being committed. They cannot possibly have committed these transgressions, or consented to them, nor as far as I can tell have they ever
promised to pay for the harms the transgressions caused.
Given the title of Boxills article, the evidence above may seem straw-manned. Its not. He writes,
In no case do I appeal to the false idea that present day Americans are guilty of slavery or must
pay reparation simply because the American government was once complicit in the crime.1
3.5.2 No culpability for Jim Crow

Jim Crow laws were practiced in Southern and some borders states. They were not federal laws,
so todays taxpayers are not culpable. Moreover, some would argue that taxpayers no longer owe
Brophy, Alfred.
2015.
Who Would Pay For Reparations, And Why?.
New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/08/are-reparations-due-to-african-americans/who-wouldpay-for-reparations-and-why
McCarthy, Thomas. 2012. Repairing Past Injustice: Remarks on the Politics of Reparations for Slavery in the United
States. World Dialogue. http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=540
Bernard.
2003.
A
Lockean
Argument
for
Black
Reparations.
Boxill,
http://www.unc.edu/~gsmunc/EthicsGroup/Reparations_for_Slavery.pdf
1Ibid
38

for Jim Crow. John McWhorter writes for the New York Times
For one, no amount of resonant argumentation about collective responsibility will
convince the modern American populace as a whole now composed of a great
many immigrants and their children that they owe black people for slavery and
Jim Crow. The issue is not whether the argument should convince them, but whether
it will. But lets say we actually could create some kind of consensus perhaps over
the heads of constituents themselves that payments must be rendered on behalf of
America today. But then, many would assert that affirmative action, the expansion
of welfare in the 60s, and even efforts such as empowerment zones and No Child
Left Behind have been reparations. Some black leaders in the 60s even used that
language.2
3.5.3 No culpability for school segregation.

First, Plessy vs. Ferguson is generally where reparationists point to implicate the federal government for sanctioning segregation. Christopher Buck of the University of Toronto writes,
Plessy was regressive.
Plessy, in fact, was the ultimate deconstruction of
Reconstructionthe final judicial nail in its historical coffi n. Far worse were
its social and historical consequences, for the decision legitimized legal segregation.
Plessy was a pact with the devil of Jim Crow, and it legitimatized the American
apartheid of systemic segregation. Plessys separate but equal doctrine was an oxymoron. Yet, as the supreme law of the law, it held sway for well over a half-century.
It would take the Brown decision to successfully overturn it. Brown v. Board of
Education exposed the Plessy decision as a contradiction, ruling that separate but
equal is inherently unequal.3
But Supreme Court Justices are not elected officials. And todays taxpayers did not vote in the
President who appointed the Plessy justices. So todays taxpayers cannot be culpable for Plessy.
Affirmatives will fall back and argue that modern day defacto segregation (as opposed to Plessy
allowed dejure segregation) implicates whites. But modern day segregation is not structural; it is
the highly unfortunate result of a collective action problem and the consequence of the disparity
in the quality of schools between predominantly white and predominantly black neighborhoods.
2McWhorter, John. 2015. No Consensus on Need or Possible Results of Reparations. New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/08/are-reparations-due-to-african-americans/who-would-payfor-reparations-and-why
3Buck, Christopher. 2010. Plessy vs. Fergusonhttp://christopherbuck.com/pdf/Buck_2010_Plessy_Ferguson.pdf
39

Individuals insignificant contributions to collective action problems are not morally blameworthy. By refuting alternate theories, Walter Sinnot-Armstrong of Duke Philosophy argues that although the totality of joyrides in gas guzzlers meaningfully contributes to global warming, since
individual joyrides do not, they are morally permissible. Similarly, no one white family sending
their child to school in their neighborhood meaningfully contributes to defacto segregation, so
they cannot be held individually culpable.
3.5.4 No culpability for legislative injustices

Even when injustices come from todays federal legislation, it would be unfair to implicate taxpayers. Giles and Page of Princeton University discovered,
A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another
set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on
an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables
for 1,779 policy issues. Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts
on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens
have little or no independent influence.
3.5.5 AT: Lack of Culpability (Generally)

First, most lack of culpability arguments assume that the taxpayer is paying for reparations. Often
this is not the case. The affirmative can advocate reparations that do not involve extra taxes and
criticize the negative for forcing them into a plan.
Second, the argument does not contest that reparations help people in need. So long as that is
governments obligation, the affirmative can hold true.
Third, taxpayers elect politicians who maintain initiatives, such as the war on drugs, that prevents
African American advancement.
Sinnot-Armstrong, Walter. 2010. ITS NOT MY FAULT: GLOBAL WARMING AND INDIVIDUAL MORAL
OBLIGATIONS. http://sinnott-armstrong.com/uploads/6383/media_items/it-s-not-my-fault-global-warmingand-individual-moral-obligations.original.pdf
Martin and Page,
Benjamin.
2014.
Testing Theories of American PoliGiles,
tics:
Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.
American Political Science Association.
http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
40

Fourth, Brophy writes,
Reparationists have two responses. First, governmental bodies, like corporations,
have a continuing existence. Governments are liable for the judgments issued against
themand, unfortunately, they have to satisfy those judgments with taxpayer money.
New immigrants take their new government subject to the liability existing at the
time. We all take America with the good and the bad at the same time. There are a
lot of opportunities here; so there are some disadvantages.[[Brophy, Alfred L. 2006.
Reparations: pro & con. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press., 79]
Finally, again Brophy,
As Professor Ogletree has recently phrased it, while black folks were sitting at the
back of the bus, generations of white immigrants go straight to the front. Now, it
is substantially debatable how much privilege some immigrants received, particularly those from southern Europe, Asia, and the Spanish Americas. But the point is
important and worthy of significantly more study. If currently living whites are beneficiaries of past discrimination against blacks, then convincing claims of innocence
are hard to make. Someone may be the beneficiary of a system of discrimination,
even if he had no role in setting up that system.
Ibid
41
4 Argument Guides by Arjun Rao

Arjun debated for four years at Trinity Prep (FL). As a senior, he served as captain
of the Forensics team. During his four years at Trinity, Arjun qualified to TOC three
times, reached finals at the Florida State Tournament as a sophomore, finals of Blue
Key as a junior, semifinals at Minneapple as a junior, and won Minneapple as a senior.
Arjun was ranked as high as 3rd in the nation by the NSDA his senior year. Arjun has
been ranked among the top speakers at tournaments including Laird Lewis, NDCA,
and Lexington.
4.1 Argument Guide 5: Complacency

Reparations would hurt the US governments ability to pass policy that actually reduces racism.
This is because reparations resemble a final apology for slavery, telling the constituency that the
issue of racism is over. Eric Posner of the University of Chicago explains the nature of prior
reparations:
Similar confusion surrounded the reparations program for Japanese American internees. In order to receive reparations the claimant had to agree not to pursue legal
remedies against the U.S. government. Some victims and politicians argued that this
requirement forced victims to sell out.1
This facet of reparations engrains the idea that the US Federal Government is trying to rid themselves of guilt from slavery, proving that the US government is working to advance their own
interests, and not sincerely apologizing for slavery. Lawrie Balfour of the American Political Science Review explains the detriment of this mindset:
Writing in the shadow of a deep disappointment, Du Bois ([1903] 1997, 40) apprehends the paradox of formal equality: The guarantees of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth,
1Eric Posner & Adrian Vermeule, Reparations for Slavery and Other Historical Injustices, 103 Columbia Law Review 689 (2003). http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2787&context=journal_articles
42

and Fifteenth Amendments, though incalculably precious, engendered a kind of public forgetfulness about slavery and fed the Southern fury against the former slaves.
The War Amendments, he observes at the turn of the twentieth century, made
the Negro problems of to-day (Du Bois [1903] 1997, 45). While he would not relinquish those amendments, Du Bois ([1903] 1997, 125) perceives that the constitutional promise of rights that apply regardless of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude assured liberal-minded citizens that enough had been done, perpetuating
the carelessness that characterized the national attitude toward the former slaves.
Much the same can be said for the post-civil rights predicament. Black Americans
fought hard for the formal guarantees embodied in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and, like other vulnerable populations, they do not
have the luxury of dispensing entirely with the language of formal equality in which
those guarantees are framed.2 At the same time, the promise enshrined in those laws
has come to be interpreted in ways that allow white Americans to disown the past and
its implications for the present, thereby compounding the disadvantages faced by the
very people the laws were passed to protect. For example, Derrick Bell writes that
the courts have collapsed the distinction between race-based remedies for decades
of racial injustice and the segregationist policies of the Jim Crow period. The result
of such interpretation is that, for equal protection purposes, whites become the protected discrete and insular minority (Bell 1993, 80). Thus it becomes all the more
difficult to summon the collective will to respond when activists and scholars identify
disturbing trends in residential and educational segregation and the disadvantages
they engender or when the wealth gap that white and black Americans have inherited
from previous generations is exposed.2
Essentially, reparations would halt political motivation to solve for racism because people view it
as the end of racism.
The impact is lost criminal justice reform. Ruth Delaney of the Vera Institute of Justice explains
that
Mandatory penaltiessuch as mandatory minimum sentences, automatic sentence
enhancements, or habitual offender lawsrequire sentencing courts to impose fixed
terms of incarceration for certain federal or state crimes or when certain statutory
criteria are satisfied. These criteria may include the type or level of offense, the number of previous felony convictions, the use of a firearm, the proximity to a school, and
2Balfour, Lawrie. Unreconstructed Democracy: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Case for Reparations. JSTOR. American
Political Science Association, Feb. 2003. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3118219
43

in the cases of drug offenses, the quantity (as calculated by weight) and type of drug.
If a prosecutor charges under such laws and a defendant is found guilty, judges are
usually barred from considering a defendants circumstances or mitigating facts in
the case when imposing the sentence, creating rigid, one size fits all sentences for
certain types of offenses and offenders. In the 1980s and 1990s, policymakers viewed
mandatory sentences as one of their most effective weapons in combating crime
particularly in the war on drugs.7 These policies encapsulated the then prevailing
belief that longer, more severe sentences would maximize the deterrent, retributive,
and incapacitative goals of incarceration..3
These sentences have been overwhelmingly racist. Families Against Mandatory Minimums:
Federal sentencing laws in the United States impose heavy burdens on defendants
of color. The impact of mandatory minimum sentencing, both directly by its operation and indirectly in its effect of trumping and driving up guideline sentences, has
fallen heavily on minority communities. The percentage of minorities charged in
federal court has grown since the imposition of the guidelines and crime bills of the
1980s. The proportion of Hispanic defendants has doubled. The majority of federal
defendants prior to that time were White while today they are Black and Hispanic.
While the difference in average sentences between Whites and minorities was relatively small before, it began to widen with the dawn of mandatory and 31 guideline
sentencing. In the five most recent years, and controlling for legally relevant considerations, the Sentencing Commission reported that a typical Black drug defendant
was 20% more likely, and a typical Hispanic drug defendant was 40% more likely,
to be imprisoned than their White counterparts. Typical Black and Hispanic drug
offenders received sentences 10% longer than whites.
As a result, Faizal Misra of York University writes that The retention and expansion of mandatory
minimum prison terms for serious offences could serve as a powerful means of perpetuating
systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Reparations prevent us from passing meaningful
reform at a Federal level, entrenching racism at the highest level.
3Subramanian,
Ram,
and Ruth Delaney.
Playbook for Change?
States Reconsider Mandatory Sentences.
VERA. VERA Institute of Justice, Feb.
2014.
Web.
http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/mandatory-sentences-policy-report-v3.pdf
Disparate Impact of Federal Mandatory Minimums on Minority Communities in the United
States. National Council of La Raza. Families Against Mandatory Minimums, 10 Mar. 2006. Web.
http://www.nclr.org/images/uploads/publications/38367_file_IAHRC_statement_FNLNWQC__2__fnl.pdf
Mirza, Faizal R. Mandatory Minimum Prison Sentencing and Systemic Racism. Osgoode Hall Law Journal 39.2/3
(2001) : 491-512. http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol39/iss2/11
44

This argument is especially effective in responding broadly to entire affirmative cases. It allows the
negative to explain why no progress will be made after reparations are passed. If this argument is
won, the affirmative is essentially left with the burden to prove that they can completely stop institutionalized racism; an unrealistic idea. Arguments about complacency are strategic in nearly any
negative case, and have some rather devastating impacts concerning the lack of further social reform.
4.1.1 Extensions
People will dismiss reparations as a gift to African Americans, destroying the success of the
reparation.
Jelani Cobb, the New Yorker
Even in early 2008, at that heady moment when the thought of a black President became a real possibility, there was a cynical murmur among African Americans that
Obamas electionlike so many other examples of putative racial progress would be
widely understood as a kind of gift to black people. Jonathan Chait, of New York, betrayed that tendency earlier this spring, in the midst of a heated debate with Coates
on the subject of black pathology. Chait argued, from on high: It is hard to explain
how the United States has progressed from chattel slavery to emancipation to the end
of lynching to the end of legal segregation to electing an African-American president
if America has rarely been the ally of African-Americans and often its nemesis. It
is one thing to notice the persistence of racism, quite another to interpret the history
of black America as mainly one of continuity rather than mainly one of progress.
This kind of rhetoric is akin to an abusive husband who cites the number of times
he stopped beating his wife as a testament to his own high character. The tendency,
in selective recollections of history, is to choose the version that looks most like an
alibiand it is for this reason that the conversation Coates has restarted is not really about reparations. It is, more fundamentally, about acknowledging the bastard
history that would warrant reparations in the first place.
Cobb, Jelani. What We Talk About When We Talk About Reparations. The New Yorker. The New Yorker,
29 May 2014. Web. http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-aboutreparations
45

Unless reparations can change the mindset of generations of Americans, no progress will be
made after each policy. The way we perceive reparative justice would make reparations fail.
Salim Muwakkil, In These Times
These efforts seek to make the case for reparative justice and compensation based
on the horrific crimes of slavery, its legacy of racial oppression and social exclusion,
and the unjust enrichment of whites from the structural misdistribution of resources.
Slavery, say CARICOM and its fellow travelers in the United States, casts a long
shadow. But that shadow is getting harder to discern for slaverys beneficiaries. Many
Americans now interpret those sordid annals of slavery and Jim Crow as a narrative
of triumph. In their minds, the Civil Rights Movement has expunged America of its
original sin. Its time to move on. After all, weve got a black president.
Reparationists focus too heavily on slavery, deflecting attention away from current
oppression.
Wilson, Carter, A Radical Critique of the Reparations Movement, in Beyond the Boundaries:
A New Structure of Ambition in African American Politics 2008, ed. Georgia A. Persons (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.), 205
Over the past decade the movement for reparations has gained visibility and popularity. Although the movement is stronger today than it has been in the past, as a
movement for social justice it is most problematic. It is problematic because even the
most symbolic reparations proposals are stalled and unlikely at this point to succeed.
It is problematic because racial oppression persists and because the current dominant racist culture prevailing socioeconomic and political arrangements stand like
a brick wall between the movement and the attainment of reparations. Moreover,
there are problems endemic to the movement. It has failed to address the dominant
racist culture, to construct an effective counter ideology and to develop the type of
coalition s strong enough to challenge the dominant power arrangement. At its best,
this movement explains current patters of racial inequality in terms of the past history of slavery. This explanation shifts public attention away from current problems
of racial oppression.
Muwakkil, Salim. Revisiting Reparations. In These Times. In These Times, 13 July 2014.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/16948/revisiting_reparations_marshall_plan
Web.
46

Reparations keep the discussion about race in history, meaning that they symbolically hurt
our ability to look forward.
Alfred Brophy of DePaul University
But there are significant costs to reparations. They may tend to divide people
along racial lines, for recalling past tragedies are, indeed, painful. Even more
than recalling the past tragedies, however, reparations will require the government to draw further lines on the basis of race. For many reparationists see reparations not as a way of achieving integration and a color-blind society; they see it as
a way of achieving further race-conscious action.
Reparations would allow us to forget violations of human rights by pretending they are
repaid.
Peter Flaherty of the National Legal and Policy Center
Reparations certainly would not make the patient well. Far from solving racial problems in America, reparations would exacerbate them. The reparations issue is
a smoke screen for those unwilling to tackle the real problems affecting blacks,
such as failing schools, crumbling inner cities and family disunity. It is an attempt at
easy moneyby taxing the innocent, by litigation, or by shakedown. The American
people, as well as the various corporations and other institutions targeted by reparations advocates, must not give in to such injustices. If they do, expect the floodgates
of more reparations demands to open wide. Each argument presented throughout
this report is a sufficient reason in and of itself not to support slave reparations: innocents would be forced to pay; money would go to non-victims; race relations
would be exacerbated; a bad precedent would be set for other groups; reparations
would play into greed; the list goes on.
Alfred L. Brophy, The Cultural War over Reparations for Slavery, 53 DePaul L. Rev. 1181 (2004)
http://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review/vol53/iss3/10
Flaherty, Peter. The Case Against Slave Reparations. NLPC. National Legal and Policy Center, Oct. 2004. Web.
http://nlpc.org/sites/default/files/Reparationsbook.pdf
47

Reparations shift the focus away from African American progress and towards how they
have been hindered.
Marybeth Gasman of the University of Pennsylvania1
In many ways, Jencks and Riesman followed a long line of research (including the
Moynihan Report) by generally liberal thinkers who did a disservice to Blacks by attributing all of their current problems to the legacy of slaverythereby denying
them agency and overlooking Black accomplishments since slavery (Moynihan,
1965; Stuckey, 1987). The problem with this understanding is it has a tendency to
see Uncle Tomlike behavior (and other forms of self-hatred) in current Black leadership: hence Jencks and Riesmans mischaracterization of Black colleges as not being
incubators of civil rights protest. This understanding also tends to ignore the contemporary contextthat is, the effect of recent history, and the role that Blacks
played in these events. This is not to say that Blacks did not suffer debilitating
effects, both from slavery and segregation. Nor is it to say that Blacks have only
themselves to blame for current troubles. But to characterize these problems as
an unchanging holdover from a time long passed is to deal African Americans a
double blow: first, to depict them as putty in the hands of an oppressor, then to
deny them the ability to grow and adapt to freedom. For a fuller understanding of
Black agency, researchers must look at the situation from multiple perspectives.
4.1.2 AT: Complacency

Racism is decreasing in America, we arent becoming complacent, we are becoming more
progressive.
Christopher Ingraham in the Washington Post 11
Those last two sentences are at once sad, hilarious and quantifiably true. If Barack
Obama had been born fifty years earlier, for instance, he would literally have had
zero chance of becoming president - in 1958, only 38 percent of Americans said they
1Gasman, Marybeth. SalvagingAcademic Disaster Areas: The Black College Response to Christopher Jencks and
David Riesman s 1967 Harvard Educational Review Article. UPenn Libraries. Journal of Higher Education, 1 Mar.
2006. Web. http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=gse_pubs
Chris Rock Is Right:
White Americans Are a Lot Less Racist
11Ingraham, Christopher.
than They Used to Be. Washington Post.
The Washington Post, 1 Dec.
2014.
Web.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/01/chris-rock-is-right-white-americans-are-alot-less-racist-than-they-used-to-be/
48

would vote for a black presidential candidate, according to Gallup. By 2012, that
number was 96 percent. That 58 percentage point change didnt happen because
blacks somehow became smarter and more qualified relative to whites during that
period, but rather because many although by no means all white Americans abandoned the overt prejudices that kept talented blacks from getting ahead.
Having reparations is a step in the right direction to stop the mindset that causes
complacency
Naim Maydun of the University of Minnesota 12
However, refusing to address the issue of the unpaid labor of slaves and the impact
the institution of slavery had on the African American community will be a mistake. Given the enormity and longevity of the current achievement gap in America,
continuing to ignore the likelihood that slavery has played a role would not only
be a miscalculation of its impact but a misapplication of logic. In addition, it will
feed into a climate that allows for the mistreatment of too many Americans based
on misconceptions and/or misunderstandings and thus misuse the many critical relationships that are available. If we are to ever become what we have the potential to
be as a nation, we must commit ourselves to truly addressing the negative prefix that
too many can attach to the root of America.
Reparations will spur racial discussion: Coates article itself started a racial discussion.
Giving it Federal legitimacy will only make it more powerful.
Manuel Roig-Franzia in the Washington Post 13
For Ta-Nehisi Coates, here is bigger than a star turn on the stage of the Sixth and I
Synagogue, where hundreds lined up down the block to hear him talk last week about
his blockbuster Atlantic cover story making the case for slave reparations. No, here
is a place of prominence in the stream of American thought, a perch that positions
12Maydun, Naim. Reparations Watch - The Impact of the Reparations Discourse on the Achievement Gap. The
BrownWatch. The BrownWatch, 21 June 2012. Web. http://brownwatch.squarespace.com/reparationswatch/2012/6/21/the-impact-of-the-reparations-discourse-on-the-achievement-g.html
With Atlantic Article on Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates Sees Pay13Roig-Franzia, Manuel.
off for Years of Struggle. Washington Post.
The Washington Post, 18 June 2014.
Web.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/with-atlantic-article-on-reparations-ta-nehisi-coates-seespayoff-for-years-of-struggle/2014/06/18/6a2bd10e-f636-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html
49

him as an ascendant public intellectual with a voice that stands out in the white noise
of a wired and word-flooded era, an object of praise and a target.
The much-lauded piece set a single day traffic record for a magazine article on Atlantics Web site, and the attention it has garnered has given Coates a greater forum
to wrestle with questions of identity both blackness and whiteness. The print edition shattered the magazines previous best sales figures at Barnes and Noble, where
many stores sold out within days.
This entire article explains how Coates came into the spotlight with this article about reparations,
and how the article allowed the discussion about reparations to be uncovered.
4.2 Argument Guide 6: Commodifying Slavery

Symbolically, reparations create a situation in which the powerful, predominantly white government tries to pay off their debt to the African American community. Passing reparations would
legitimize the viewpoint that it is ok to pay off centuries of oppression. Allen Cooper of Otterbein
University explains:
But independent of the legal argument, reparations for genocide poses a much more
powerful ethical argument. Up until now, the fundamental justification for reparations has been economic: African Americans are owed a debt. Reducing slavery to a
cost-benefit analysis connotes that the inherent indignity of being a slave is merely a
matter of unfair compensation for labor performed. If this was all it was, then the entire working class of America could demand reparations for their lack of fair pay. But
slavery was about much more than economic hardship; slavery related to an assault
on the humanity and dignity of African Americans.1
The delay in reparations also makes it hard to give substantial reparations. Human Rights Watch
argues,
That is, the right to reparations should not be extinguished with the death of the victim but can be pursued by his or her heirs. However, there are practical limits to
how long, or through how many generations, such claims should survive. Because
1Cooper, Allen. From Slavery to Genocide The Fallacy of Debt in Reparations Discourse. SagePub. Journal of Black
Studies, Mar. 2012. Web. http://jbs.sagepub.com/content/43/2/107.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr
50

human history is filled with wrongs, many of which amount to severe human rights
abuse, significant practical problems arise once a certain time has elapsed in building
a theory of reparations on claims of descendancy alone. If one goes back far enough,
most everyone could make a case of some sort for reparations, trivializing the concept. Moreover, the older a wrong, the less the residents of countries called on to
provide reparations will feel an obligation to make amends. 1
Finally, Danielson and Pimentel write in the Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and
Social Justice,
Placing a monetary value on the effects of slavery on African Americans is a difficult,
if not impossible, task. The numerous social and economic problems currently facing the African-American community are too complex and widespread for a simple
lump-sum cash payment alone to satisfy them. Any effort to quantify the consequences of centuries of insufficient economic resources, lack of basic educational
opportunities, and discrimination in society has many inherent difficulties.Some
African Americans might consider an effort to place a monetary value on the loss
of freedom and liberty suffered during slavery offensive. Others worry that a cash
payment for damages suffered under a tort theory of liability might allow the government to wash its hands of the social and economic problems of the African-American
community after tendering the payment. 1
This argument essentially explains that reparations trivialize the suffering that African Americans
went or go through. In order to win this argument, you must make sure you beat back arguments
about non-monetary reparations. You can make the case that everything has a monetary component,
but the evidence in this argument assumes that reparations would be in the form of money to African
Americans. This argument works well with arguments as to why passing a sufficient reparation
would be impossible.
1Racism and Human Rights: An Approach to Reparations. Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch, n.d. Web.
https://www.hrw.org/legacy/campaigns/race/reparations.htm
1Mishael A. Danielson and Alexis Pimentel, GIVE THEM THEIR DUE: AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN REPARATIONS PROGRAM BASED ON THE NATIVE AMERICAN FEDERAL AID MODEL, 10 Wash. & Lee Race &
Ethnic Anc. L. J. 89 (2004). http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol10/iss1/7
51
4.2.1 Extensions
Doak of Durham University1
Just as many transitional justice mechanisms have often failed to deliver effective
participation for victims, their efforts to provide effective redress to victims have also
fallen short on occasion. The nature of the difficulties present in many post-conflict
societies mean that the reparatory ideal is often difficult to obtain in practice owing to
the complexities of transitional environments, the scale and seriousness of the acts
committed; the blurred line between victims and offenders and the large numbers
typically involved in the conflict (Clamp, 2013).
Kora Andrieu in the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence1
Indeed, reparations in the aftermath of mass violence can be considered as trivial,
incommensurate with the horrors they are supposed to compensate for: no price
can be put on peoples suffering, and the attempt to monetarize a mass atrocity is
always morally problematic, as the debate over the restitution of Jewish goods and
reparations for the Holocaust has shown (Colonomos, 2001). There should not be
anything in a reparation program that invites either their designers or their beneficiaries to interpret them as an effort to put a price on the life of victims or on the experiences of horror, warns Pablo De Greiff (De Greiff, 2006a: 466). Indeed, how much
money is ones life worth? How does one materially compensate for the life of ones
children, ones arm, or ones sight? Incommensurability is one of reparation policies
main problems. Moreover, money shifts the issue from a moral to an interest-based
dimension, and thus risks raising ambiguities about the victims real motivations,
creating a victims competition (Chaumont, 2002). Asking for money inevitably
raises doubts about the victims intentions, something that was particularly prejudicial in the case of Jewish class actions, as greed is a commonly used anti-Semitic
argument. Money also has the effect of de-singularizing the event, of rendering it
ordinary. Reparations without truth-telling or prosecution measures could be seen
by victims as an attempt by the state to buy their silence. Reparative justice without
any attempt to reform institutions or punish perpetrators to prevent the recurrence
1Doak, Jonathan. Durham Research Online.
Durham University, 20 Apr.
2015.
Web.
http://dro.dur.ac.uk/15144/1/15144.pdf?DDC117+DDC71+DDD19+zfpx67+d700tmt
1Andrieu, Kora. Transitional Justice: A New Discipline in Human Rights.Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence.
Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, 3 Mar. 2015. Web. http://www.massviolence.org/Transitional-Justice-ANew-Discipline-in-Human-Rights
52

or the repetition of violence in the future can be seen as a form of payment, or,
worst, as blood money. The line is indeed thin between payment as acknowledgement and payment as alibi. Lets pay, but lets not talk about it anymore, often
seems the argument of the party who signs the cheque (Hazan, 1998).
4.2.2 AT: Commodifying Slavery

Not giving reparations puts a value of $0.00 on the suffering of African Americans, which is
much worse than acknowledging the problem.
Naim Maydun of the University of Minnesota1
However, refusing to address the issue of the unpaid labor of slaves and the impact
the institution of slavery had on the African American community will be a mistake. Given the enormity and longevity of the current achievement gap in America,
continuing to ignore the likelihood that slavery has played a role would not only
be a miscalculation of its impact but a misapplication of logic. In addition, it will
feed into a climate that allows for the mistreatment of too many Americans based
on misconceptions and/or misunderstandings and thus misuse the many critical relationships that are available. If we are to ever become what we have the potential to
be as a nation, we must commit ourselves to truly addressing the negative prefix that
too many can attach to the root of America.
Moreover, reparations dont necessarily have to be monetary; they could take the form of social
reform or simply a well-planned apology that incites discussion.
4.3 Argument Guide 7: Racial Backlash

By passing reparations, other groups would question why their suffering didnt justify reparations. Alarmingly, YouGov found that a mere 6% of White Americans believe cash reparations
should be paid to African Americans. 2 This is seen historically. Alfred Brophy of the University
of Dayton explains that, They revolve around a consideration that reparations talk divides the
country along racial lines. By talking about the past and by focusing on past injustices, blacks
1Maydun, Naim. Reparations Watch - The Impact of the Reparations Discourse on the Achievement Gap. The
BrownWatch. The BrownWatch, 21 June 2012. Web. http://brownwatch.squarespace.com/reparationswatch/2012/6/21/the-impact-of-the-reparations-discourse-on-the-achievement-g.html
2Moore, Peter. Overwhelming Opposition to Reparations for Slavery and Jim Crow. YouGov: What the World
Thinks. YouGov, 2 June 2014. Web. https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/06/02/reparations/
53

alienate themselves from the rest of the country. Reparations talk leads blacks to see themselves
as victims who deserve government payments. Brophy continues, It makes blacks think that
whites as a group are their oppressors; it makes whites who have no responsibility for the sins
of the past feel like oppressors and plays on feelings of guilt. That division falsely (in the minds
of reparations opponents) continues the harmful focus on race. At a time when the government
and everyone else should be moving toward a colorblind society, reparations talk reemphasizes
race. 21
This racism is a tangible impact. Marianne Bertrand of UChicago found that, when looking to
job markets, applicants with white-sounding names are 50 percent more likely to get called for
an initial interview than applicants with African-American-sounding names. Applicants with
white names need to send about 10 resumes to get one callback, whereas applicants with AfricanAmerican names need to send about 15 resumes to achieve the same result. 22 Deepening the
racial divide allows employers to demonstrate their racism through hiring practices, an already
existing problem that reparations exacerbate.
This argument essentially explains how other racial groups will feel left out or angered by reparations
given to African Americans and will take action against them. This argument works well with an
argument about government complacency because at that point the Federal Government wouldnt
curtail the backlash. The impacts of this argument are very alarming, as they concern exacerbating
racism on a personal level for people, which leads to things such as hiring discrimination.
4.3.1 Extensions
Eric Yamamoto in the Boston College Third World Law Journal23
There are other examples of the reparations dilemma. In 1970 James Forman interrupted Sunday services at the Riverside church in New York to demand 500 million
dollars from Americas churches and synagogues for the oppression of blacks. He demanded the beginning of the reparations due us as people who have been exploited
and degraded, brutalized, killed and persecuted. The backlash against Forman and
his Black Manifesto was swift and strong. Many were appalled at the idea. Others,
who agreed in concept, criticized Formans tactics. Among this latter group were
21Alfred L. Brophy, The Cultural War over Reparations for Slavery, 53 DePaul Law Review 1201-1211 (Spring 2004)
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara29c.htm
22Bertrand, Marianne. Racial Bias in Hiring. Chicago GSB | Capital Ideas. UChicago Booth School of Business,
Spring 2003. Web. http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html
23Eric K. Yamamoto, Racial Reparations: Japanese American Redress and African American Claims, 19 B.C. Third
World L.J. 477 (1998), http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/twlj/vol19/iss1/13
54

African American churches that acknowledged continuing racism against blacks and
pledged money for church programs to uplift blacks, while stipulating that none of
the money could go to Forman or his supporters. Forman, who issued the challenge
to repair the degradation, felt exploited and persecuted.
The transformative potential of reparations is therefore linked, ironically, to dissatisfaction and risk. Reparations for some does not necessarily presage reparations for
deserving others. Reparations for one group may stretch the resources or political
capital of the giver, precluding immediate reparations (or enough reparations) for
others. The very dynamic of reparations process, even where salutary for recipients,
can generate backlash and disappointment.
The third aspect of the underside of reparations process is the ideology of reparations. Reparations ideology is illuminated by Derrick Bells interest-convergence thesis. Bells thesis suggests that dominant groups only recognize rights of minorities
when the recognition of those rights benefits the dominant groups larger interests.
That is, a government will rarely simply do the right thing; rather, it is likely to confer reparations only at a time and in a manner that furthers the interests of those in
political power.
Reparations alienate the black population by making them seem different from everyone
else. In fact, even some reparations advocates publish language that is inherently racist.
William Grigg in RaceMatters2
Irrespective of geographic considerations, the reparations campaign like the
black nationalist movement that spawned it is intended to convince black Americans that they are inescapably part of a racial collective to which the United States,
its Constitution, and its culture are incurably alien. This point is made forcefully
and repeatedly by Randall Robinson in The Debt. Robinson [, a reparations advocate] maintains that blacks have no chance for significant group progress in the
United States, because we have been largely overwhelmed by a majority culture that
228. William Norman Grigg, The True Cost of Reparations, The New American, Vol. 17, No. 4, February 12, 2001.
http://www.racematters.org/reparations.htm
55

wronged us dramatically, emptied our memories, undermined our self-esteem, implanted us with palatable voices, and stripped us along the way of self-definition.
Reparations increase racially charged speech
Alfred Brophy of DePaul Unversity2
More than any other remedy, reparations transforms the material condition of recipients. Moreover, it connotes culpability: for a majority that rejects group hierarchy, harm, and responsibility, reparations is a radical redistribution of wealth,
rather than a disgorgement and reallocation of an unjust acquisition, that exacerbates unrest. Reparations thus yields resistance, backlash, and ethnic elbowing.
As it would strip their racial privileges along with their currency, reparations is
opposed by all but the most altruistic whites.
Reparations would create backlash as evidenced by the Affirmative Action policy.
David Frum of the Atlantic2
Affirmative action ranks among the least popular thing that U.S. governments
do. When surveyed, white Americans crushingly reject race preferences, Hispanic
Americans object by a margin of 2 to 1, and black Americans are almost evenly divided, with only the slightest plurality in favor. Now imagine how Americans will
feel when what is redistributed by racial calculus is not university admissions or
workplace promotions but actual, foldable cash.
Reparations just create a bigger divide among the races
John McCarron in the Chicago Tribune2
Rather than advance the cause of equal opportunity for African-Americans, the
spreading demand for cash compensation is more likely to tip public opinion
and possibly the outcome of the November electionagainst the long-term interests
2Alfred L. Brophy, The Cultural War over Reparations for Slavery, 53 DePaul L. Rev. 1181 (2004)
http://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review/vol53/iss3/10
2Frum, David. The Impossibility of Reparations. The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 03 June 2014. Web.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/the-impossibility-of-reparations/372041/
2McCarron, John. The Repercussions Of Reparations. Tribunedigital-chicagotribune. The Chicago Tribune,
01 May 2000. Web. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2000-05-01/news/0005010113_1_reparations-movementaffirmative-action-african-americans
56

of most American blacks. Backlash, not back pay, will be the majority reaction to
emotional displays such as that which occurred last week on the floor of Chicagos
City Council, and to angry debates soon to erupt in public forumsacross the nation. Not that black Americas reigning caste of politicians and professorsthe ones
stoking the reparations movementwill be all that discomfited by gallant failure. The
gospel of victimization from which the reparations movement springs has served
its preachers well. So much so they are oblivious to the mounting resentment
(some call it compassion fatigue) that is overtaking non-black America. But so
what? When the reparations effort dead-ends in Congress, or worse, triggers resentment that leads to the loss of hard-won affirmative-action programs, the movements
leaders still will have their city council seats and their tenured chairs in black studies.
4.3.2 AT: Racial Backlash

Other groups being angry is not an excuse to get scared away from trying to repair centuries
of damage caused by the US government. There was backlash when we ended slavery, but it
was a necessary step for society.
And, exposing the backlash is critical to racial progress.
Alfreda Robinson of Boston College 2
Notwithstanding the trepidation of reparations opponents, African-American reparations discourse and demands are significant issues that warrant substantial public
attention. I share Professor Westleys view that there is an enormous benefit to reflection and debate on African-American reparations, even if such reparations never become a reality. The conversation itself is worthy of pursuit. Admittedly, theoretical
and practical issues abound about the propriety and feasibility of reparative measures.
Nevertheless, Americans must address the thorny question of persistent disparities
between white and black Americans. In particular, we must focus on the widespread
perception and reality of racial inequality in this country.
Reparations may well expose the ugly side of America. Yet only through exposing the
ugly side of America and examining proposals for change have we historically been
able to reveal Americas greatness. The subject of African-American reparations will
2Robinson, Alfreda. TROUBLINGSETTLED WATERS: THE OPPORTUNITY AND PERIL OF AFRICANAMERICAN REPARATIONS. Boston College. Boston College, 2004. Web. http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/
files/schools/law/lawreviews/journals/bctwj/24_1/07_TXT.htm.
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provide the necessary public scrutiny to explore the persistent significance of race
in America and proposals for change. I am quite confident that the republic shall
survive that exploration.
Reparations would help racial coalitions, allowing for stronger influence in society.
Eric Yamamoto of the University of Hawaii2
These efforts, of course, do not mean that Asian Americans collectively have chosen
one path over the other. Asian Americans speak in many voices and act in disparate
ways. Indeed, particularized experiences can lead to perilous generalizations. Some
Asian Americans embrace model minority status, others are concerned with selfsurvival or group advancement. These efforts do indicate, however, that some of
the political organizations, insights and commitments derived from the process
of struggling for redress and reparations have far from withered. They hint at an
evolving, contingent social meaning of reparations with potential for transcending colliding salutary and critical views, a meaning linked to continuing efforts
toward institutional and attitudinal restructuring.
Martha Biondi of the University of Victoria3
The United Nations has emerged as an extraordinary stage for the reparations movement. Over a decade of advocacy and organizing at the U.N. Human Rights Commission by (among other African American groups) the December 12th Movement,
led the United Nations to convene the World Conference against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, in
September 2001. There had been other U.N. world conferences, including one on
human rights in Vienna in 1993 and on the status of women in Beijing in 1996.
In 1997, the lobbying of several African, Asian, Latin American, and Caribbean
nations secured a commitment by the U.N. for a world conference against racism.
In planning meetings, the African Descendants Caucus brought together reparations activists from across the diaspora, including representatives from many
U.S. groups: The December 12th Movement, NCOBRA, All for Reparations and
Emancipationa group associated with the Lost/Found Nation of Islamthe Black
2Eric Yamamoto, Friend, Foe, or Something Else: Social Meanings of Redress and Reparations, 1992,
http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/35330/Yamamoto_20Denv.J.Int%27lL&Pol%27y223.pdf?sequence=
1
3Radical History Review, Martha Biondi, The Rise of the Reparations Movement, September 16, 2003,
http://web.uvic.ca/~ayh/Biondi.pdf
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Radical Congress, and the National Black United Front (NBUF). They formulated
an agenda for Durban that stressed three goals: to characterize the institution
of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as crimes against humanity, (crimes
against humanity have no statute of limitations in international law); to assert
the economic motive of white supremacy; and to call for reparations. From the
earliest preparatory stages, the United States and the European Union worked aggressively to contain the political reach of the World Conference against Racismindeed,
the words xenophobia and related intolerance were added as a concession to the
West; the conference was originally intended to have an exclusive focus on Africa
and African descendants.
Arguments as to why reparations would create racial divides allow the current divides to go
uncontested.
Jacqueline Bacon in the Quarterly Journal of Speech31
As Horowitzs indictments of his critics illustrate, reparations advocates are frequently charged with fostering division and distracting attention from matters
presumed to be of common concern.
Proponents arguments are improper,
various commentators suggest, because reparations are not supported by most

(white) Americans and because, presumably, consensus on the issue will never
be reached. The main reason I oppose reparations, asserts PBSs Bonnie Erbe,
is the divisions it has created. It has opened a chasm between some African
Americans and other Americans as wide as the Grand Canyon. Horace Cooper
of the conservative Center for New Black Leadership similarly argued on the
television program Fox News Edge that the reparations issue is a way to nurse
resentment and to make sure that we cant get along in this country. On Fox
News Channels Hannity & Colmes, Alan Colmes remarked to David Horowitz, I
dont think [reparations is] a good place to put energy in terms ofbecause its not
going to happen in this country. Colmess comment is ironic because Fox News
Channel has devoted numerous hours to the reparations debate, and Horowitz has
frequently publicized the issue for over two years, yet beneath the irony lies a notable
disparity. Discussions of reparations, which are presumed to be unreasonable
when engaged in by reparations supporters, are not questioned if undertaken by
reparations opponents. Because they do not disturb whites power and privilege,
31Jacqueline Bacon (2003) Reading the Reparations Debate, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 89:3, 171-195,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0033563032000125304
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their discourse is presumed to be judicious and not divisive and they are deemed
to be acting in societys best interests. Thomas Sowell, for example, argues, Most
people seem to have responded to the demands for reparations for slavery either by
supporting the demands or maintaining a discreet silence. One of the few people to
treat these demands as a serious subject requiring a serious answer has been David
Horowitz. Those who support the demands of reparations supportersitself a
charged formulationdo not share the serious, judicious tone of those who oppose
them. As Steven Goldzwig and Patricia Sullivans study of newspaper coverage
of Milwaukee alderman Michael McGee suggests, African American leaders who
challenge the status quo are subject to charges by media commentators that they are
intemperate, irrational, unreasonable, or untrustworthy. Left unexamined
is the way in which definitions of reasonableness, unity, and the collective good
are influenced by power and whiteness. Those in power, Jamie Owen Daniel notes,
particularly white men, are assumed to have a mask of universality that allows
them to speak for everyone in general but no one in particular.
Reparations will spur discussion about righting the wrongs of the federal government. They
will start the discussion about equality as Coates article did (See AT: Complacency response
3)
4.4 Argument Guide 8: Reparations are impossible

Passing sufficient reparations would require a massive amount of money, to the point that the
Federal Government wouldnt be able to afford it. An article in the LATimes notes that, Harpers
magazine estimated that it could require $97 trillion to pay for the hours of uncompensated work
done during the slavery era, which would require extracting, on average, about $300,000 from
every American of non-slave descent.32 These numbers, if anything, are deflated because they
dont take into account psychological harm and institutional racism in the government. This
expense by the US government would be catastrophic. Such an expense would be impossible, as
the US GDP is only around $20 trillion.33
32Olson, Walter. So Long, Slavery Reparations. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 31 Oct. 2008. Web.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/31/opinion/oe-olson31
The World Bank,
n.d.
Web.
33GDP (current US dollars). The World Bank.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD
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Reparations programs will undoubtedly expand to other groups, defeating their purpose.
But the others are now 25 percent of the nation and rising fast. Does the Fujianese delivery man pedaling through the brownstones of Fort Greene owe a
debt to the people whose food he carries? How much? The reparations ideaso
long politically outlandishhas become thinkable today because of the gathering power of the Obama political coalition. But nothing would blow that coalition
apart faster than the internal redistribution Coates contemplates from some constituencies to others. And if the idea is that the newest arrivals to America will
be persuaded to accept paying reparations as a cost of immigrationor that new
Americans can be cajoled to pay a symbolic something because the bulk of the
burden will be carried by the dwindling white majority (a majority that already
feels ever more culturally insecure and economically beset)well, thats a prescript for an even more dangerous political explosion.
Reparations programs will have to try to identify who deserves these reparations.
Under todays racial preference rules, a nephew of the King of Spain or the daughter of the chairman of the biggest bank in Chile would both qualify for Hispanic
preferences if they resided in the United States. Harvard can (and does) meet its
African American diversity requirements with the children of recent African immigrants, whose families never experienced slavery or segregation in this country. The problem of who qualifies? is explosive enough with hiring and admissions preferences. As the benefits at stake expand to the vast dimensions urged by
Coates, the question will become more explosive yet. Does a mixed race person
qualify? How mixed? What about recent immigrants from Africa or the West
Indies? What about future immigrants? What about illegal immigrants from
Africa who subsequently gain legalizationwould amnesty come with a check
attached?
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Reparations would highlight severe inequities in our community.
Affirmative actions quirks and injustices are notorious. But they will be nothing
compared to the strange consequences of a reparations program. Not all black
people are poor. Not all non-black people are rich. Does Oprah have a housecleaner? Who changes the diapers of Beyonces baby? Who files Herman J. Russells
taxes? Will their wages be taxed and the proceeds redirected to their employers?
Within the target population, will all receive the same? Same per person, or same
per family? Or will there be adjustment for need? How will need be measured? Will
convicted criminals be eligible? If not, the program will exclude perhaps one million African Americans. If yes, the program would potentially tax victims of rape
and families of the murdered for the benefit of their assailants. And if reparations
were somehow delivered communally and collectively, disparities of wealth and
power and political influence within black America will become even more urgent. Simply put, when government spends money on complex programs, the
people who provide the service usually end up with much more sway over the
spending than the spendings intended beneficiaries. The poorer the beneficiaries, the more powerfully this rule holdsand it has held strongest of all in programs intended to aid the black poor. The District of Columbia public schools have
excelled at delivering stable jobs to their unionized employees. They have failed their
students.
Reparations require the government to adequately apologize to people for the violations
they committed.
Thomas McCarthy of Northwestern University3
There are two ways in which the standard account of reparation fails in cases of
historical injustice (and, in fact, in many other cases). The first is that it is often not
possible, for both pragmatic and moral reasons, to return victims and their heirs
to the situation that existed before the injustice took place, or even to compensate
them by giving them something equal in value to what was taken from them by the
3McCarthy, Thomas. Repairing the Past: Confronting the Legacies of Slavery, Genocide, & Caste. Yale University.
Yale University, 29 Oct. 2005. Web. http://www.yale.edu/glc/justice/mccarthy.pdf
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injustice. Apart from the difficulty of determining a just compensation after time
has passed and social conditions have changed, there is the problem, discussed
above, of dealing with wrongs that cant be undone and are beyond compensation.
Gaus goes so far as to argue that there is no adequate material compensation for any
injustice. All injustice, he thinks, involves a lack of respect of perpetrators for
their victims, and an act of disrespect can no more be undone or compensated
for than can murder. Reparation merely provides the victim with possessions,
money, or new opportunities. It doesnt restore the moral balance.
This argument is effective when coupled with a framework about how the affirmative team has to
prove that reparations can be implemented. This is a quick and easy argument to run at the top of
any negative case, and brings up the discussion about feasibility.
4.4.1 AT: Reparations are impossible

1. There is no reason why reparations have to come in the form of money, we dont necessarily
have to pay back the money dollar for dollar.
2. If anything, this mindset perpetuates the idea that we can quantify how much racism is
worth.
3. We dont have to give $97 trillion at once. If anything, any reparation we give will multiply
in the local economies and eventually grow to that value. The resolution doesnt specify a
time range, so we can evaluate whether or not the economic impact will reach $97 trillion
over time.
4.5 Argument Guide 9: Health Reparations

Williams and Collins, 20043
Black-White differences in health are large, persistent, and in some cases, worsening over time. Racial segregation is a central determinant of Black-White differences in health. The physical separation of the races in residential areas is an institutional mechanism of racism that remains a primary determinant of racial differences in economic circumstances. These differences in social and economic condi3Williams, David R., and Chiquita Collins.
Reparations A Viable Strategy to Address the Enigma
of African American Health. SagePub.
American Behavioral Scientist, Mar.
2004.
Web.
http://abs.sagepub.com/content/47/7/977.abstract
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tions are largely responsible for racial differences in health status. Reparations are
a potentially effective strategy to rebuild the infrastructure of disadvantaged, segregated communities. Such investment would enhance the economic circumstances
of African American families and communities and also improve their health.
The payment of reparations is based on established legal principles, and there are
precedents both in the United States and internationally (Allen, 1998). Moreover,
given that the injuries caused by legal segregation persist and there has been systematic decapitalization of African American areas, reparations provides one strategy
to infuse capital and create economic opportunities in Black areas. Targeting reparations to investment in education and training, housing, health and business development (America, 1999) avoids most of the feared logistical difficulties in identifying
specific descendants of slaves for monetary payments.
According to government estimates, conditions linked to race were responsible for

the premature deaths of more than 1 million African Americans in the past two
decades. Reparations can break the cycle of racial economic inequality for the health
of the African American population. A Marshall Plan type of economic investment
funded by a reparations initiative or some similar mechanism is indispensable for
any effective effort that would markedly improve the economic well-being and the
health of the African American population.
Vernellia Randall of the University of Dayton3
The problem of limited resources is not new and has plagued the African-American
community since slavery. Historically, African-American communities attempted
to address the problem by establishing African-American hospitals. At one point
more than 200 hospitals were located in predominately black communities. AfricanAmericans relied on these institutions to heal and save their lives. Now, these institutions are almost non-existent. By the 1960s, only 90 African-American hospitals
remained. Between 1961 and 1988, 57 African- American hospitals closed and 14
3Randall, Vernellia R. Using Reparations to Repair Black Health. University of Dayton. University of Dayton, Nov.Dec. 2002. Web. http://academic.udayton.edu/health/01status/status07.htm
64

others either merged, converted or consolidated. By 1991, only 12 hospitals continued to struggle daily just to keep their doors open. As a result of closures, relocations, and privatization, many African-Americans are left with limited, and difficult
access to hospitals. Thus, reparations would provide for hospitals, clinics, alcohol
and Drug Detox centers, dental health clinics and mental health clinics in the African
American community.
In it is broader most expansive sense reparations restores hope and dignity because
it provides current descendants a way out of their seemingly dead-end lives caused
by the lingering effects of slavery, racism and segregation. Reparations ultimately
is about social justice since it is about undoing the harm that has been done to one
group in society. Reparations is not a one way action, it requires the African American community to undertake action and to rebuild itself. Reparations will rebuild
community and cleanse the soul of the nation. Most importantly, reparations could
restore the health of people of African descent in America.
Darron T. Smith, Ph.D. in the Huffington Post
Secondly, African Americans should receive free necessary health care in all areas
of life. As evidence based research documents, protracted exposure to chronic psychological stress is shown to be physiologically and mentally corrosive for health
and well-being. More importantly, exposure to race-based discrimination at the institutional and interpersonal level of society, coupled with grinding inequalities in
housing, jobs, education and income parity, keeps the bodys stress response in a
constant state of arousal.
Like black children exposed to the whiteness of public education, black Americans
have, likewise, been exposed to a two tiered racist health care system. Not too long
ago, Black disease was considered inherent to being black rather than the cause of
dehumanizing forces of systemic white racism. As health care providers pledge an
oath to treat all patients equitably and with integrity, how is it possible that health
Smith, Darron T. A New Case for African American Reparations: A Simple Three-Part Plan. The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 3 Dec. 2013. Web. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/darron-t-smith-phd/a-new-case-forafrican-am_b_4345768.html
65

disparities remain a major concern for communities of color? To lesson the burden
of disease for African Americans, they should be given federally-sponsored health
care and unencumbered access to high quality health care delivery services. This
would allow black Americans to gain substantial group toward group uplift with the
elimination of race-based health disparities.
This argument is especially effective at avoiding a lot of harms coming from the negative. Health
reparations are one of the few reparations policies that actually targets one of the biggest racial gaps
that can be solved. It is strategic while using this argument to focus on the idea of reducing the health
gap and not on the implementation of the policy.
4.5.1 AT: Health Reparations

1. There is no reason these reparations have to be targeted towards African Americans. If anything, having health vouchers based on race and not socio-economic status would trigger
the racial backlash argument. (See above)
2. Health reform doesnt have to come in the form of reparations, it can and should just be
a policy the government passes. Labeling it as a reparation creates the harms the negative
talks about.
Moreover, the Medicaid experience provides a glimpse into what a government sponsored
healthcare plan for African Americans would look like, but Medicaid patients fare worse
than their uninsured counterparts.
Scott Gottlieb, Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage at All, Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2011,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704758904576188280858303612.
Across the country, cash-strapped states are leveling blanket cuts on Medicaid
providers that are turning the health program into an increasingly hollow benefit.
Governors that made politically expedient promises to expand coverage during
flush times are being forced to renege given their imperiled budgets. In some states,
theyve cut the reimbursement to providers so low that beneficiaries cant find
doctors willing to accept Medicaid. Washington contributes to this mess by leaving
states no option other than across-the-board cuts. Patients would be better off if
states were able to tailor the benefits that Medicaid coverstargeting resources to
sicker people and giving healthy adults cheaper, basic coverage. But federal rules
say that everyone has to get the same package of benefits, regardless of health status,
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needs or personal desires. These rules reflect the ambition of liberal lawmakers who
cling to the dogma that Medicaid should be a comprehensive benefit. In their
view, any tailoring is an affront to egalitarianism. Because states are forced to offer
everyone everything, the actual payment rates are driven so low that beneficiaries
often end up with nothing in practice. Dozens of recent medical studies show that
Medicaid patients suffer for it. In some cases, theyd do just as well without health
insurance. Heres a sampling of that research:
Head and neck cancer: A 2010 study of 1,231 patients with cancer of the throat,
published in the medical journal Cancer, found that Medicaid patients and
people lacking any health insurance were both 50% more likely to die when
compared with privately insured patientseven after adjusting for factors that
influence cancer outcomes. Medicaid patients were 80% more likely than those
with private insurance to have tumors that spread to at least one lymph node.
Recent studies show similar outcomes for breast and colon cancer.
Major surgical procedures: A 2010 study of 893,658 major surgical operations
performed between 2003 to 2007, published in the Annals of Surgery, found
that being on Medicaid was associated with the longest length of stay, the most
total hospital costs, and the highest risk of death. Medicaid patients were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital than those with private insurance.
By comparison, uninsured patients were about 25% less likely than those with
Medicaid to have an in-hospital death. Another recent study found similar
outcomes for Medicaid patients undergoing trauma surgery.
Poor outcomes after heart procedures: A 2011 study of 13,573 patients, published in the American Journal of Cardiology, found that people with Medicaid who underwent coronary angioplasty (a procedure to open clogged heart
arteries) were 59% more likely to have major adverse cardiac events, such as
strokes and heart attacks, compared with privately insured patients. Medicaid
patients were also more than twice as likely to have a major, subsequent heart
attack after angioplasty as were patients who didnt have any health insurance
at all.
Lung transplants: A 2011 study of 11,385 patients undergoing lung transplants
for pulmonary diseases, published in the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, found that Medicaid patients were 8.1% less likely to survive 10 years after the surgery than their privately insured and uninsured counterparts. Medicaid insurance status was a significant, independent predictor of death after
67

three yearseven after controlling for other clinical factors that could increase
someones risk of poor outcomes. In all of these studies, the researchers controlled for the socioeconomic and cultural factors that can negatively influence
the health of poorer patients on Medicaid.
So why do Medicaid patients fare so badly? Payment to providers has been reduced
to literally pennies on each dollar of customary charges because of sequential rounds
of indiscriminate rate cuts, like those now being pursued in states like New York and
Illinois. As a result, doctors often cap how many Medicaid patients theyll see in
their practices. Meanwhile, patients cant get timely access to routine and specialized
medical care
4.6 Final Words

We hope you have enjoyed our inaugural argument guides. If you have an opinion one way or
another about loose cards vs. argument guides, please let us know by filling out this survey. We
are highly receptive to feedback and want to make sure you are satisfied.
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5 The Case for Reparations? by Dr. Tommy J.

Curry
Dr. Tommy J. Curry is an Associate Professor of Philosophy, Affiliated Professor of
Africana Studies, and a Ray A. Rothrock Fellow at Texas A&M University. He is the
author of over 40 articles, the editor of William H. Ferriss The African Abroad, the
current President of the oldest Black philosophy organization in the United States;
Philosophy Born of Struggle, and the editor of several ongoing projects on Black Male
Vulnerability and Death. His work focuses on Critical Race Theory, Anti-Colonial
Thought, Sexuality Studies, and Social Political Philosophy.
Dr. Curry was the first Black JV National Debate champion (for UMKC) and was half
of the first all Black CEDA team to win the Pi Kappa Delta National Debate Tournament with Diallo Brown (at SIUC); a tournament most famously known for denying
Wiley Colleges participation under the direction of Melvin B. Tolson because it was
reserved exclusively for white debaters.
5.1 Introduction
Despite decades of work by philosophers, legal theorists, economists, and historians demonstrating the case for Black Americans to receive reparations from the United States government, it
was not until Ta-Nehisi Coatess The Case for Reparations appearing in The Atlantic that reparations for slavery and Jim Crow became part of the national public conversation, and by effect
the pseudo-academic communities of which forensics is merely a small part.1 Such a realization
1For philosophers, see Bernard Boxill, A Lockean Argument for Black Reparations. Journal of Ethics 7 (2003): 6391, and J.Angelo Corlett, Race, Racism and Reparations. Journal of Social Philosophy 36.4 (2005): 568-585. For
lawyers, see Roy L. Brooks, Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Roy L. Brooks, ed.,When Sorry Isnt Enough: The Controversy Over Apologies and
Reparations for Human Injustice (New York: New York University Press, 1999); also see Alfred Brophy, Some
Conceptual and Legal Problems in Reparations for Slavery. NYU Annual Survey of American Law 58.4 (2002):
497-556, The World of Reparations: Slavery Reparations in Historical Perspective. Journal of Law and Society
69
5 The Case for Reparations? by Dr. Tommy J. Curry

(of the need to discuss reparations for Black Americans) should evoke anxiety on the part of the
reader that transitions into a physical and psychological pause. While some would suggest conversing about the need for reparations inspires celebratory rejoice, the reality is this opening to
discuss a topic like reparations is really a displacement of the historical realities over the last two
centuries, rather than a recognition of Black disadvantage in the United States. This opening, the
barely perceivable discursive space, was created not by the assertion of some moral truth that carries with it the recognition of Black humanity, but rather a doubling which is both an indictment
not only of American democracy and the white livelihoods that sustain America itself.
As currently situated, the discussion of reparations relies on the pleasantries of justice founded
upon an American Christendom reigned by God, or the sacraments of Lockean liberalism which
requires reparation for damage and past injury. In either case, the moral order sustained by God
or the political decree founded upon Lockes social contractarianism, Black people are third parties to the deliberations required to decide if their suffering and death for the last four centuries
constitute a compelling case for reparations. In other words, despite the unanimity amongst the
victims of slavery, Jim Crowism, and neo-slavery (de facto segregation, poverty, and incarceration), the suffering of the population and their political will is not sufficient to make reparations a
reality, because their lives are judged and measured by the very entities reparations aims to indict
as pillars of anti-Black racism. The effect of such dependency is that the arguments utilized in
favor of reparations appeal to values like justice, morality, and fairness, which are defined within
the religious and legal order of Americas political discourse, instead of a particular cultural logic
dedicated to nullifying the institutions preserving white supremacism.
Reparations have been commonly thought of as monetary payments compensating Black Americans for unpaid work and suffering from slavery. While this general idea may have some advocates, the actual scholarship on reparations is much more complex and nuanced. In Stratification
Economics: Context Versus Culture and the Reparations Controversy, William Darity argues
The general intent of any program of reparations for a grievous injustice should be threefold:
acknowledgment, redress (restitution or atonement), and closure.2 Acknowledgment involves
recognition and admission of the wrong by the perpetrators and/or beneficiaries of the wrong.3
In America, such a recognition is unlikely since it would require realizing the pervasiveness of
racism not only as reflected through individual attitudes towards Black Americans, but structurally, as reflected in the laws, policies, and institutions used to maintain social stratifications
and economic inequality between whites and Blacks. Such a realization would require not only
3 (2002): 105-117. The Cultural War over Reparations for Slavery, Depaul Law Review 53 (2004): 1181-1213;
Reconsidering Reparations. Indiana Law Journal 81(2006): 812-849.
2William Darity, Stratification Economics: Context Versus Culture and the Reparations Controversy, Kansas Law
Review 57 (2009): 795-811,795.
3Ibid., 795.
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a historical corrective, but an indictment of the values used to rationalize the exceptionalism of
the United States. Darity continues that Restitution means restoration of the victims to their
condition prior to the injustice or to a condition they might have attained had the injustice not
taken place, while atonement is an alternative form of redress, involves perpetrators and/or
beneficiaries meeting whatever conditions of forgiveness are acceptable to the victims. The result of the aforementioned acts would be closurethe ability of the wronged group to no longer
pursue damages or compensation for the wrong. While various authors have expressed an almost
inexhaustible archive of the need and justification for Black reparations, this article will argue a
much narrower position, namely that despite the efforts made to attain reparations, America can
never atone for racism.
In Section II, I will summarize the traditional concepts used to justify and explain the need for
reparations not only for American slavery, but also for the damages and injury accrued during
Jim Crow segregation. In Section III, I argue against the idea that morality can be achieved in
part despite the immorality of the whole is flawed moral reasoning. This section will suggest a
corrective specific to Black disadvantage that in no way seeks to redeem America as a whole.
5.2 On the Justification and Need for Reparations under the Present
Paradigms
The arguments in favor of reparations range from articulating longstanding concepts like unjust
enrichment, which holds that a person who has been enriched unjustly at the expense of others
has an obligation of restitution to those they have disadvantaged, to unjust impoverishment,
which describe the moral obligation societies have for reparations towards those who have been
historically oppressed by the exploitative relationships found between various groups. This latter
view, where the dominant race has benefited from the unjust theft of labor and resources from
the subjugated group, adequately summarizes the racial divisions in Americas present society
and history. While authors like Joe Feagin have consistently maintained the dynamics of unjust
enrichment and unjust impoverishment as the structural constitution of Americas democracy,
many of the debates advocating for reparations assert that a remedying of Black poverty and an
apology for slavery repairs American race relations. The complexity of racism in America makes
such positions doubtful. As Feagin argues in an earlier article entitled Documenting the Costs
of Slavery, Segregation, and Contemporary Racism: Why Reparations are in Order for African
Ibid.
Ibid.
Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (New York: Routledge, 2014), 11.
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Americans,
The basic rationale for group compensation lies in the stolen labor and lives of the
millions enslaved until 1865, the stolen labor and lives of those legally segregated
from the early 1880s to the late 1960s, and the continuing theft of labor and lives
of those who face much racial discrimination today. This theft of labor and lives
was carried out not only by whites acting as individuals, but also, for at least its first
350 years, by corporations and various local, state, and federal governments whose
actions were often backed by law.
A similar point is made by Ta-Nehisi Coates who argues that Liberals today mostly view racism
not as an active, distinct evil but as a relative of white poverty and inequality. They ignore the long
tradition of this country actively punishing black successand the elevation of that punishment,
in the mid-20th century, to federal policy. The liberal view tends to view the end of slavery as a
liberatory moment marking the end of draconian racist law. This view, while sympathetic to the
presence of racism throughout America, tends to view every legal victory as being synonymous
to social progress. The tendency both in society and the academy is to view Jim Crow as irrelevant to the claims Black people have for reparations. Quite the contrary, it is precisely with the
incorporation of Black Americans under the 14th Amendment that should warrant legal recourse
for the governments dereliction and deliberate discrimination against Black people well into the
20th century. As Darity and Frank argue The harms of Jim Crow practices are extensive; moreover unlike U.S. slaves, direct victims of Jim Crow practices are still living. Particularly in the U.S.
South, the post Reconstruction period gave way to a climate of terror that allowed whites to take
black lives and black-owned property with impunity. Thomas W. Mitchell supports this point
arguing that the taking of Black property was orchestrated knowingly by white institutions and
actors upon the death of Black owners through partition sales from Reconstruction forward. Poor
Black farmers and workers were victimized by this practice for decades without recompense.1
It is perhaps necessary to contextualize the comments made by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Joe R. Feagin
in relation to the phenomenon being addressed through reparations. Racism as discussed among
social scientists, race scholars, and historians (the only people academically qualified to do so)
Joe R. Feagin, Documenting the Costs of Slavery, Segregation, and Contemporary Racism: Why Reparations are
in Order for African Americans, Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal 20 (2004): 49-81.
Coates,
The
Case
for
Reparations,
The
Atlantic,
June
2014,
Ta-Nehisi
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/.
William Darity and Dania Frank, The Economics of Reparations, in African Americans in the U.S. Economy, eds.,
C.Conrad, J. Whitehead, P.Mason, and J. Stewart (Lanham: Rowman Littlefield, 2005, 334-338), 335.
1Thomas W. Mitchell, From Reconstruction to Deconstruction: Undermining Black Land Ownership, Political Independence, and Community through Partition Sales of Tenancies in Common, LTC Research Paper 132 (2000):167.
72

has a very specific and empirical definition. Racism is defined as the assignment of people to an
inferior category and the determination of their social, economic, civic, and human standing on
that basis.11 Conceptually racism does not have such nuance our everyday discussions of racial
inequality. Contrary to fact, our racial parlance usually depends on conflating American racism
with the identity designation of race to create safe space and dialogue with whites. According
to Barbara Fields, Race is a homier and more tractable notion than racism.12 Because race
is an identity, something shared and possessed by all, it is a linguistic bridge between difference
and towards an understanding that prefers mutual acknowledgment rather than structural reality.
Similarly, Fields continues that Substituted for racism, race transforms the act of a subject into
an attribute of the object. And because race denotes a state of mind, feeling, or being, rather
than a program or pattern of action, it radiates a semantic and grammatical ambiguity that helps
to restore an appearance of symmetry between speakers and individuals.13 Americas systemic
racism is the result of its historical dedication to creating the material conditions that offer proof of
Black inferiority. There is little understanding grasped by recognizing anti-Blackness in isolation
of the empirical conditions which enforce it, since anti-Blackness is merely a concept used to
mark the expression of an apriorism (an idea that requires no empirical proof) engineered to be
the purposive designator of Blackness in our social world. It is this reality that reparations has
the potential to remedy. Reparations can surpass many of the obstacles used to enforce Black
inferiority in society.
Notice how this definition of racism challenges the categorical (intersectional) accounts which
routinely present identity as the representation of social inequities. A systemic conceptualization of racism demands a consideration of economics, religion, sexual violence, and a myriad
of other practices that result in the construction and maintenance of institutions in the United
States. Reparations theorists, like William Darity for instance, insist that an economic lens of
reparations is necessary to not only calculate the actual financial losses, but to construct compensatory programs. In a co-edited article with Dania Frank entitled The Economics of Reparations,
Darity argues that three options become economically viable to Black Americans given the scope
of historical racial injustices: One approach would be lump-sum payments to eligible individual African Americans. A second approach would be the establishment of a trust fund to which
eligible blacks could apply for grants for various asset-building projects, including home ownership, additional education, or start-up funds for self-employment. A third option would be the
provision of vouchers that could be used for asset-building purposes, including the purchase of
11Barbara J. Fields, Whiteness, Racism, and Identity, International Labor and Working-Class History 60 (2001): 48-56,
48
12Ibid.
13Ibid.
73

financial assets.1 Darity entertains Robert Westleys recommendation that a private trust should
be established for the benefit of all Black Americans. According to Westley, The trust should be
administered by trustees popularly elected by the intended beneficiaries of the trust. The trust
should be financed by funds drawn annually from the general revenue of the United States for a
period not to exceed ten years.1 Randall Robinson, author of The Debt: What America Owes to
Blacks, concurs with Westleys proposal but suggests that such a trust would have to be funded
for at least two successive K-through-college educational generations, perhaps longer, as well as
establish residential programs for at risk children and future litigation against foreign beneficiaries of slavery.1 Robinson argues that we must understand our present day class realities as the
consequences of the legalized racist practice of slavery, so his recommendation focuses on addressing the inheritance of poverty. Ultimately, Robinson believes that Our whole society must
first be brought to a consensus that it wants to close the socioeconomic gap between the races. It
must accept that the gap derives from the social depredations of slavery.1
The question placed before advocates of reparations philosophically, is not whether or not Blacks
should get reparations given the history of racism in this country, but whether or not reparations
can address the magnitude of racism nurtured over the centuries in America. The legal and moral
arguments for reparations given the denial of wages, self-hood, and rights during slavery, and the
violence and usurpation of these rights during Reconstruction readily demonstrate that there is
no conceptual or empirical position that can legitimately deny the effect American racism has had
on the social, political, economic and legal position of Blacks in the United States. As such, the
aforementioned propositions stand as justifications for the awarding of reparations by the United
States government to Black Americans.
5.3 Is Moral Reconciliation Possible if Reparations are Given?

Despite the historical roots of racism, legally, the debate over unjust enrichment as the jurisprudential basis of obtaining reparations is doubtful,1 especially in light of the statute of limitation1
1William Darity and Dania Frank, The Economics of Reparations, in African Americans in the U.S. Economy, eds.,
C.Conrad, J. Whitehead, P.Mason, and J. Stewart (Lanham: Rowman Littlefield, 2005, 334-338).
1Robert Westley, Many Billions Gone: Is it Time to Reconsider the Case for Black Reparations? Boston College
Third World Law Journal 19.1 (1998): 429-476, 470.
1Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (New York: Plume, 2000), 244.
1Ibid., 173.
1See Emily Sherwin, Reparations and Unjust Enrichment. Boston University Law Review 84 (2004): 1443-1466; also
see Anthony J. Sebok, Reparations, Unjust Enrichment, and the Importance of Knowing the Difference between
the Two. NYU Annual Survey of American Law 58 (2003): 651.
1Alfred Brophy, Some Conceptual and Legal Problems in Reparations for Slavery, NYU Annual Survey of American
Law 58.4 (2003):497-556.
74

in the status quo. As mentioned in the introduction, the obstacle to reparations has never been
the lack of legitimate arguments or the absence of compelling facts. It has simply been an insufficient willingness, politically, to address the historical ills of American racism by the white public
and their officials. This reality however has had little effect on the theorization of reparations
as a moral philosophy that restores and bolsters values like: reconciliation, community, and forgiveness. For example, in Rhonda Magees article The Masters Tools, From the Bottom Up, the
case for reparations is made through a cultural equity theory constituted by forward looking acts
of transformative ethos that aims to bring into reality a new American dream where America
would live up to its promise of multicultural equality[and] respect the unique contributions
of various cultural groups[through] a national commitment to tolerance, and acceptance and
appreciation.2 This ideal society, which is taken to be the goal of integrationism, post-racialism,
and racial amelioration (no matter how small) has been historically tied to the spiritual metamorphosis many reparations advocates, both Black and white, argue follow from giving reparations
to Black Americans for slavery. 21
For the advocates of this view, atonement for slavery is necessary to transform America to a land
of true freedom and equality. Theorists like Roy L. Brooks hold that giving Black Americans
reparations leads to a fundamental change in the ways that Blacks and whites not only interact in
society, but organize themselves politically. Brooks contends that an atonement model of reparations centers on the core belief that redress should be about apology first and foremost.22 This
model differs somewhat from the previous work by William Darity which holds that first and
foremost reparations must be concerned with monetary compensation.23 Brooks suggests that
reparations theory and litigation needs some distance from tort conceptualizations of compensation and punishment. In fact, Brooks goes so far as to argue that such ideas do little to foster
racial reconciliation in a society like ours.2 Brooks is adamant that slavery and Jim Crow were
so dehumanizing that recommendations offering only monetary compensation without an apology acknowledging the tyranny of the acts would not permit this country to demonstrate new
moral aspirations.2 But do moral aspirations correct the structures created for the vitiation of
non-white peoples lives, or do these unrealized moralities make the formerly enslaved merely an
anxious participant in the system built upon his labor?2 Is it the belief that the Negro is so much
2Rhonda Magee, The Masters Tools from the Bottom Up: Responses to African American Reparations Theory in
Mainstream and Outsider Remedies Discourse. Virginia Law Review 79.4 (1993): 863-916, 874.
21Anthony Cook, King and the Beloved Community: A Communitarian Defense of Black Reparations. George
Washington Law Review 68 (2000): 959-1014.
22Roy L. Brooks, Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004), 142.
23See William Darity, Forty Acres and a Mule in the 21st Century, Social Science Quarterly 89.3 (2008):656-664.
2Brooks, Atonement and Forgiveness, 142.
2Ibid.
2This is W.E.B. DuBois criticism of integrating Black people into a capitalist system, see W.E.B. Du Bois, Whites
75

like the white that he too can suffer, or that she has a soul like the white and can be redeemed if
given that chance? Is the idea that the past can solely be remedied not by the destruction of empire built upon slavery, but the mobility of Blacks from the formerly enslaved to a citizen within
empire?
The assumption behind many of the logics justifying reparations has remained decidedly integrationist, focusing primarily on how the disadvantages created by slavery, Jim Crow, and contemporary racism continue to exclude Black Americans from participating in society to this day.
It is because of racism and poverty, these advocates suggest, that Blacks cannot have the same
life chances as whites; but is it the case that the life chances offered by reparationsparticipation
in this society culpable not only for slavery but also imperial conquest and genocideare truly
a remedy? Such questions usually do not factor into our political advocacies, they remain uninteresting and irrelevant to the goal at hand. As I have argued in The Political Economy of
Reparations,
atonement becomes a type of apathy; an apathy that urges the raced citizen to consider their recent political victory and its rewards over and against the continuing
transgressions of the government and its white populace against humanity. Stated
differently, it demands from Blacks their allegiance to the myths of American benevolence as the price for their partial inclusion into the mainstream of American society, where the desired moral community becomes moral by political consensus
rather than the demonstration of moral acts.2
The case for reparations then is not made by the performativity of Black suffering, any more
than the morality of those adjudicating the deficit Blackness has exacted upon the humanity of
Africans captured and confined to Americas geography. The case for reparations is justified for
Black Americans as a corrective to the concrete conditionsthe actual poverty, death, social isolation, urban apartheidspawned by racism. To suggest that reparations magically transforms the
character of the same America that created slavery, continues imperial wars, and will inevitably
deny its transgressions against other peoples in its march toward global supremacy, is to offer
Black America a bribe for its silence. In this sense, reparations pays Black Americans to deny
that America will still remain a white supremacist republic. While reparations may satisfy the
liberalist inclinations of Lockean social contract theory, the moral force of justice, or the legal
concepts of unjust enrichment, these justifications do not originate in the assumption of the inherent worth of Black peoples and their particular humanity. The question of material harm done
in Africa after Negro Autonomy, in The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader, ed. Eric J. Sudquist (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996), pp. 66970.
2Tommy J. Curry, The Political Economy of Reparations: An Anti-Ethical Consideration of Atonement and Racial
Reconciliation under Colonial Moralism, Race, Gender, Class Journal 18.1-2 (2011):125-146, 130.
76

to Black Americans is not considered primarily as a paramount violation, but as the consequence
of the measure (legal, ethical, economic) adopted to weigh and value Black life by comparison (to
white life).
This is not to say that Black Americans should not receive reparations for the past and present
injustices of racism. My argument in this essay is quite the contrary. I hold that while Black
Americans should receive reparations, the calculus used to justify such a program should have
little to do with the redemption of America, but, as Clarence Munford suggests, a forward looking program of Black self-determination which utilizes reparations to create new markets, new
political activity, and a revitalization of Africa through trade, investment, and exchange. 2 In
short, reparations should be rooted in Black America creating new systems of Black life, not the
redemption of the America dedicated to Black (social, political, and physical) death.
2For a discussion of a self-determined analysis of reparations, see Clarence Munford, Race and Reparations: A Black
Perspective for the 21st Century (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1996).
77

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Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to

pay reparations to African Americans.

Introduction by the Editors

Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

Argument Guide 1: Plans? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Argument Guide 2: Rawls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Argument Guide 3: Utilitarianism and the Benefits of Education . . . . . . . . .

Argument Guide 4: Lack of Culpability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Argument Guides by Arjun Rao

Argument Guide 5: Complacency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Argument Guide 6: Commodifying Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Argument Guide 7: Racial Backlash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Argument Guide 8: Reparations are impossible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Argument Guide 9: Health Reparations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Case for Reparations? by Dr. Tommy J. Curry

On the Justification and Need for Reparations under the Present . . . . . . . . .

Is Moral Reconciliation Possible if Reparations are Given? . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 Introduction by the Editors

1 Introduction by the Editors

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

2.1 Opening Words

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

2.4 Affirmative Arguments

2.4.1 The Moral Impetus

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

Williams and Chiquita Collins document:11

2.4.2 A Practical Problem

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

2.5 Negative Arguments

2.5.1 Institutionalizing Racism

2 Topic Analysis by Matthew Feng

2.5.2 Rights Above All

2.6 Final Thoughts

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3.2 Argument Guide 1: Plans?

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3.2.1 Predictive Advocacy AFF

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3.2.2 These are just examples AFF

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3.2.3 Four Answers to Plans

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3.3 Argument Guide 2: Rawls

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3.3.1 AT: War on Drugs as an Injustice

3.3.2 AT: Truth Commissions

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3.3.3 Aff Answers

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld

3.4 Argument Guide 3: Utilitarianism and the Benefits of Education

3 Argument Guides by Abraham Fraifeld