Reparations without Blow Back

Reparations for past and current systemic racism may work best if white people get a check at the same time

The idea of reparations or the idea of institutional racism can sound and look different from where and who you are, and these ideas can sound and seem to change from one moment to the next for the same person. While political candidates, with more attention to Bernie Sanders than others, have recently been asked to say “yes” or “no” to the idea of reparations, as a thought experiment, let’s see what might happen to the word “reparations” in the idea stew that is the mind of a poor white person. Then I would like to explain why the point of view of a poor white person is extremely important to keep in mind.

The little city of Rensalear NY has fiscally stressed schools. The median household income is about $34,730, about 59% of the national average, with an overall poverty rate just above the national average. The city is about 82% white, 12% black, maybe 5% Hispanic of all races, some Native American, Asian, etc. Within the city, there are people dealing with some of the worst crap America has to throw at people: failing schools, dead-end jobs, bad health care, lousy housing, crumbling infrastructure, ugly stuff all around you, drugs, despair, and the constant drumbeat of the media and the schools saying irrelevant stuff that is supposed to entertain you. I’m not saying that is the defining experience of everyone in the city, but you can map out a pretty messed up existence for a lot of people.

On a given day some white person close to or below the poverty line will meet a confederate flag waving, mechanic to get a part he needs to get his car working and then a black, Puerto Rican neighbor to borrow a tool or money. A white guy in the city somewhere will launch into a racist tirade that sounds like he’s recruiting for the KKK and a rant about the racist police harassing someone black and sound like he wants to join the Black Panthers — and it will be the same guy and the two rants may occur with the same hour on the same day.

Although the majority of the people in the city are white, the problems in the school are due to American institutional racism. Lots of white people end up on the wrong end of the system of racism and suffer individually and directly from racists laws. Specifically, the fact that a small city with a circumscribed tax base has to pay for the lion’s share of the education expenses for that jurisdiction is a racist system. If it is racist to draw a line and say that students from the Bronx can’t go to school in Scarsdale, it’s just as racist to say students from Renssalear can’t go to Averill Park or something, even if most of the students on both sides of the line are white.

The reason we have these lines on maps is to keep Black and Latino students out of predominantly white districts. If not for racism, you would not have such deep and abiding lines. But you can be white and end up on the wrong side of the line.

And you can be white and know it, and be ready to work with Black and Latino neighbors to change it, should the winds of real change blow through the neighborhood. But, that same person might also be willing to join the Nazi party, or whatever American version we have (and not “join” literally as no one really joins any party) if the winds blow that way.

Until the wind blows, most people barely vote and if they vote, then don’t really feel they have much skin in the game when they go through the motions of voting. If the wind doesn’t blow for another 30 years, then it just stays as it is and nothing happens but more steady, slow decline. But the wind does seem to be picking up. Not sure which way it’s blowing. Socialism, like overt confederate Nazi racism, has the advantage of being totally unacceptable on television and both are compatible with owning a gun.

Before we throw the word “reparations” into the neighborhood and see what happens, I’d like to suggest a point. This excellent report on race untangles the principle myths about money and race. The wage gap between white and black workers is the same in 2016 as it was in 1979. The wealth gap between white and black and Latino households is an order of magnitude, more than ten times the net worth for white households.

Median net worth. That still means that there are as many or more seriously poor white people than there are seriously poor black people, to make the statistics as simple as possible. If the bottom 25% of the white population has zero or negative wealth, like the bottom 75% of the black population, we’re still talking about one huge number of really poor people, all of whom do not need to be that poor, have such bad housing, bad jobs, bad schools and bad health care.

Both sets of statistics are true. White households have a tremendous amount of inherited wealth that black households don’t have. Black households will never catch up without redistribution. But poor white household will never catch up either.

I think you can see why Bernie Sanders doesn’t love the word “reparations.” He is worried about what happens when you throw the word into the soup in which a person can hear virulent racism and budding anti-racist sentiment in the same day, feeling him or herself to be like his poor black and Latino neighbors, the same as them, and also hate them, all at once. Maybe Bernie and some others of his ilk just want a left wind to blow through the neighborhood such that class consciousness blows stronger than fascism.

At some point, one might say, 400 years of racist discrimination might be enough. White households have had an order of magnitude more wealth than black households since 1609. That’s enough of that. Forty acres and a mule. That’s a good argument. But there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of white households that might not see it like that, because they are one illness or one traffic accident away from disaster.

Maybe a mix reparations into generalized wealth redistribution might work. It’s harder to be jealous of your black neighbor’s reparations check if you get a check too.

Millions of white people are hurting. Maybe not as fully as black people even with the very poor. Maybe there is more play and opportunity in the poor white demographic, many relative advantages. People not having what they need for good lives are hurting.

If reparations can be spun to mean something for black people and nothing for white people the political discussion could turn into the 2020 version of “welfare queen” and “end welfare as we know it” leverage right-wing talking point and become a wedge issue that prevents the development of class consciousness.

I honestly don’t know what is the right thing here. But I can see what Bernie is worried about. He might not be tone deaf to issues of race. He might be worried about how “reparations” sound in the mind of the poor white person in Renssalear in my thought experiment here. And don’t ask me what is the answer, because I’m just trying to puzzle through it here in an essay, thinking out loud.