This is the third and final post in a series of posts responding to the arguments made in favour of slave reparations by David Boonin in his book, Should Race Matter? Unusual Answers to the Usual Questions. The first post can be seen here and the second here.
A key reason why I think Boonin’s argument should be rejected is that he fails to treat people as individuals. He treats people as a part of a collective. And that collective is identified purely by the colour of someone’s skin. If we accept the premise that coerced slavery was wrong, it follows that those coerced into slavery or the direct descendants of those slaves are entitled to compensation. This would be in line with Robert Nozick’s theory of entitlement that he outlined in the second section of his 1974 book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Boonin specifically rejects the idea that the compensation should be to descendants of slaves. For as he states:
[T]he compensation argument, it’s important to emphasize doesn’t operate according to bloodlines. It claims that currently living black Americans are owed reparations not because they’re biologically descended from the victims of slavery and its aftermath, but because they continue to suffer the negative consequences of slavery and its aftermath.
This means that Boonin is not looking at a particular black American as an individual citizen but as a black citizen. He is lumping all black Americans together. He is suggesting African Americans from the homeless guy in Detroit through to Tiger Woods and Barack Obama continue to suffer the negative consequences of slavery. Boonin has not explained exactly in what way Oprah Winfrey is suffering. The reason he has not done so is that he could not care less about Oprah Winfrey as a person in her own right. All he cares about, in relation to his reparations argument, is the colour of her skin. He classifies people by skin colour and judges them by skin colour when it comes to entitlement to reparations. He sees black Americans “on the whole” and not as individuals in their own right.
Elsewhere, Boonin argues that he defends his claim on reparations “without appealing to any kind of objectionable racial collectivism.” This statement is patently false. He repeats in his book that he views black Americans as “a whole.” It is therefore, whether he likes it or not, as David Horowitz suggested, a racist argument and should be rejected.
