One thing that I’ve noticed is that many of the arguments for reparations invoke diffuse societal oppression as a vector of harm for which recompense is warranted. Once you open up this can of worms, you realize there is no particular reason to focus on solely racial reparations. They get so much attention in part because they concern a highly distinguishable social group with a fairly monolithic historical harm. But generally the same principle would apply to an person or group who was historically held back in an unfair way. What about the social class of kids who were awkward in middle school, thus bullied, thus permanently messed up socially such that they have trouble advancing into management positions? What about a kid who’s dad lost an unfair political knife fight at work, relegating him permanently to middle management, and the kid to an incrementally worse suburban public school because of lower family earnings? This examples seem silly, and I have intended that, because it illustrates that there are categories of people who through perhaps no fault of their own were disadvantaged in life, because of the adverse social actions of others. This is used in other cases as a justification for reparations, but the thing is, almost every person has suffered some unfair setback in life at the hands of others. The difference is that most classes of oppressed people don’t form coherent groups in the eyes of society and don’t have a sense of group identity, or the group is not large enough or the grievance too abstract.

I would note that this isn’t an argument against reparations per se. It is merely a critique of one strain of argument justifying reparations. I will further note that I am not at all denying the gravity of past harms that black people have suffered, nor the fact past harms have arguably knocked them (on average, mind you) into a disadvantaged social equilibrium, nor the fact that diffuse social harms and prejudice can contribute to sustaining this state of affairs.