Let’s Heal America’s Wounds — With Reparations for White People

The unresolved cruelties of America’s past are a common topic in our politics, and many believe Native Americans and African Americans deserve compensation for the injustice suffered by their ancestors. While in no way denying the merit of these prior claims, we might also consider those things about to happen — the things we know lie ahead. Aside from reparations for things in the past, we should also consider reparations for things in the near future, and compensate in advance for an injustice which has not yet happened, but certainly will.

This impending, gross injustice is the inexorable demographic shift that will, within decades, make white people a minority in America. Yes, the people who discovered America, explored the vast continent and built this nation from nothing (or so they like to insist), will at some point be less than half our population. From the birth of this nation, white Americans have been able to dominate the country by a combination of our grotesque political structure, our byzantine election laws and their aggressive, often unapologetic suppression of other groups. But now, white dominance is slipping away by the force of immigration and disproportionate birth rates, and the day looms when their tenure of dominance will end. And when that day comes, we can imagine them crying out, as they always do when things don’t go their way, that it’s just not fair.

If they did no more than mewl and whine about it, adding to the general din and clamor on the right, we might ignore it as background noise. But these people are dangerous and will act out their frustrated fantasies, as we all learned last Jan. 6. So, in the spirit of reparations for the injustice of this pending historical shift, and in the hope of preventing more outbreaks of violence — for which the white population is fully armed and prepared — we should consider payment to white Americans before demographics do their damage. Yes, pay them beforehand, soften the blow in advance and conciliate their good will while we still have the chance.

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In the last election, 74 million Americans voted to continue a racist, corrupt and incompetent administration, and the most vehement among these voters, supposedly convinced that they had been cheated of their election victory, acted out their frustration in a violent insurrection at the nation’s Capitol. These people, too, are Americans — indeed, they insist they are the only real Americans, the living embodiments of American values— so we must appeal to them in a way they will understand. We must make them an offer they cannot refuse, or at least one they are highly unlikely to, while calling on what they prize most — the highest of all American values: money.

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Once the qualified pool is identified, how are we to determine the amount to pay? For reasons explained below, I suggest $5,000 — paid every two years, coinciding with federal elections, for a period of 20 years. This would spread out the financial burden over an extended period of time. {snip}

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{snip} If we are to provide them with reparations for an injustice that has not happened yet, and which some might describe as no injustice at all — this dreaded demographic shift which they call replacement, neglecting to mention the millions of people who were already here but replaced by Europeans — and if they insist on the principle of no free lunch, then they should be willing to meet one simple condition: In exchange for these payments of $5,000 every two years, they must agree not to vote in federal elections for the next 20 years. That’s it: Take the money, and give up your vote.

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{snip} With the votes of the white right neutralized over a 20-year period, Americans may at last put an end to the Electoral College, voter suppression, gerrymandering, the filibuster and other forms of electoral chicanery that have perpetuated minority rule since the founding of this country. Indeed, we might even decide to pay reparations to those other Americans who believe the debt to them is long overdue.

Moreover, there will be the added benefit of a greater sense of security, with the hope that the white right, having received reparations before demographics makes them a minority — not to mention long before any hypothetical discrimination or oppression — will accept its new status with equanimity. And perhaps, just perhaps, with this system in place we may even hope that the white right will at last give up its vision of crushing the rest of America under their boots.