8. Addressing Common Counterarguments

VIII. ADDRESSING COMMON COUNTER ARGUMENTS  

(Preemptive Defense):

• "Current Players Aren't Responsible for Past Cheating."

• Rebuttal: This isn't about individual blame. It's about recognizing that current players (and the nation) benefit from the accumulated winnings of a rigged game. Basic fairness demands that those who benefited (even passively) contribute to rectifying the unjust advantages they inherited, and that the nation fulfills its constitutional obligation to remedy a systemic wrong.

• Monopoly Analogy Reinforced: Just as players who benefited from 300 rounds of a rigged game must contribute to resetting the board, citizens in a democratic society bear collective obligations. This is akin to paying taxes for services you may not personally use, but which benefit the entire society.

• The School Tax Parallel: Consider paying school taxes even if you have no children in the school system, or no children at all. You contribute because education benefits the entire community by creating a skilled workforce, fostering civic engagement, and supporting property values. Similarly, you contribute to Medicaid even if you're not personally using it, or pay taxes for fire and police departments that may never directly respond to your home. These are accepted civic obligations because they support the foundational well-being and stability of the society from which all citizens indirectly benefit. Reparations function on this same principle: they are a collective civic obligation to address a foundational injustice that continues to destabilize and burden the entire society, and whose resolution will ultimately benefit all. The 'debt' exists whether one 'chooses' to acknowledge it or not, much like the obligation to pay taxes for a collective good.

• "The Game is Fair Now (Civil Rights Laws Ended Discrimination)."

• Rebuttal: The game isn't truly fair if some players are bankrupt from previous rounds due to systemic cheating. Civil rights laws stopped new discrimination, but didn't reset the board or redistribute the massive wealth accumulated through centuries of unfair play. The persistent wealth gap is proof the game is still fundamentally unbalanced. The FHA stopped the "fire" but didn't "rebuild the destruction." As Malcolm X profoundly stated, "If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, that's not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made." Civil rights were the knife being pulled out; reparations are about healing the wound.

• "It's Too Expensive."

• Rebuttal: The tens of trillions debt is a reasoned estimate of accumulated harm, not an arbitrary cost. The multimodal approach makes implementation feasible over time, utilizing federal capacity. The cost of not fixing the rigged game—the ongoing drain of racism on the entire economy (trillions annually in lost GDP)—is far greater. Reparations are a strategic investment that will unlock trillions in economic potential for all Americans, ultimately creating a healthier, more prosperous economy for everyone.

• "It Creates Division."

• Rebuttal: The division already exists because the game was rigged for centuries. True reconciliation and unity can only begin when the historical injustice is acknowledged, the truth is confronted (through the Commission's work), and adequate repair is made.

• "Why only this group? Other groups suffered."

• Rebuttal: Because Black Americans were uniquely subjected to centuries of chattel slavery (inheritable human commodification, foundational wealth extraction) and its direct, legally mandated perpetuation (Jim Crow), constituting an unparalleled system of economic and human capital theft in U.S. history. Other groups have valid claims (and some, like Native Americans, have received reparations, supporting the precedent), but the specific nature and scale of this "rigging" are distinct.

• "These are just things the government should be doing anyway."

• Rebuttal: Yes, the government should provide equitable education, healthcare, and protection; that is its fundamental duty. However, the U.S. government, at federal, state, and local levels, did not merely fail to provide these things; it actively participated in, legislated, and enforced their denial and devaluation for Black Americans for centuries. This active prevention (e.g., segregated education, discriminatory healthcare, complicity in violence) and the resulting unjust enrichment of the nation transforms these basic obligations into acts of specific reparations, correcting a historical distortion of justice. As per the UN Basic Principles, "guarantees of non-repetition" are a core component, ensuring the government rectifies the structures of harm it previously built and sustained. Labelling these as reparations is essential for "satisfaction" and restoring dignity.

The question is simple: Is this fair?

If your answer is "no," then you support reparations - returning stolen wealth to restore basic fairness.

If your answer is "yes," then you're arguing cheaters should keep their winnings.

There's no third option.

Everyone in America today is either:

• A victim of the rigged system (entitled to reparations)

• A beneficiary of the rigged system (obligated to pay)

• Free to leave

The sophisticated objections all boil down to the same thing: "I don't want Black Americans to get that money."

But stolen money belongs to the people it was stolen from. Period.

That's not controversial. That's justice.