tldr: Actual white support for reparations is far lower than how they may like to talk about it and if push came to shove would get barely any support from whites.
Glenn, you ask about the Harvard/UNC cases’ potential effects in reparations, and I agree that the conservative six would never allow it at a national (or state/local**) level. But I’d like to offer a different approach. I think the vast majority of white America has no interest in reparations and would—mostly silently—rebel against any meaningfully large attempt at a wealth-transfer reparations measure, and vote any backers out if it actually seemed imminent. For support, I offer myself as a mostly-liberal white guy who moves in center-left-to-very-left circles, and I appeal to the Maher-tesian “I don’t know it for a fact … I just know it’s true” maxim. For center and right whites it’s a nonstarter. Among lefty whites I think agreement with reparations is no deeper than what face-saving requires—black people bring it up and whites get afraid of being called racist and are pissing themselves, to use John’s beautiful imagery, so they tepidly agree. I almost never hear lefty whites—in “mixed company”—raise reparations on their own and full-throatedly endorse it like those whites will do with talk of systematic racism or police oppression or even white supremacy (be that endorsement performative or sincere). With reparations they mostly just nod along to what their black friends say. Among groups of just whites I may have heard reparations raised maybe once or twice ever in my memory. In a super liberal city I could see whites feeling like they “have to” go along with blacks’ (or other “people of colors’”) reparations talk and maybe even city councilor types would vote with secret reluctance to avoid being called a racist. But I don’t see whites other than the most theatrically-performative-anti-racist die hards doing much active to push a measure through. Why such non-support? It’s simple: as much as whites may genuinely support racial preferences or police reform etc. etc., the idea of their money being taken from their pockets to be redistributed based on race is, at a brute fiscal level, has no appeal whatsoever. Because philosophically, however much they may buy in to systematic racism and acknowledge white privilege, it strikes whites (maybe whose ancestors owned slaves or were here in the 1800’s, and especially those descended from post-1865 immigrants) that having their money taken and given to blacks, when slavery ended almost 160 years ago, strikes as irreducibly illogical and at a more important gut/heart level entirely unfair.
**Assuming conditions like standing and jurisdiction are met.
tldr: Actual white support for reparations is far lower than how they may like to talk about it and if push came to shove would get barely any support from whites.
Glenn, you ask about the Harvard/UNC cases’ potential effects in reparations, and I agree that the conservative six would never allow it at a national (or state/local**) level. But I’d like to offer a different approach. I think the vast majority of white America has no interest in reparations and would—mostly silently—rebel against any meaningfully large attempt at a wealth-transfer reparations measure, and vote any backers out if it actually seemed imminent. For support, I offer myself as a mostly-liberal white guy who moves in center-left-to-very-left circles, and I appeal to the Maher-tesian “I don’t know it for a fact … I just know it’s true” maxim. For center and right whites it’s a nonstarter. Among lefty whites I think agreement with reparations is no deeper than what face-saving requires—black people bring it up and whites get afraid of being called racist and are pissing themselves, to use John’s beautiful imagery, so they tepidly agree. I almost never hear lefty whites—in “mixed company”—raise reparations on their own and full-throatedly endorse it like those whites will do with talk of systematic racism or police oppression or even white supremacy (be that endorsement performative or sincere). With reparations they mostly just nod along to what their black friends say. Among groups of just whites I may have heard reparations raised maybe once or twice ever in my memory. In a super liberal city I could see whites feeling like they “have to” go along with blacks’ (or other “people of colors’”) reparations talk and maybe even city councilor types would vote with secret reluctance to avoid being called a racist. But I don’t see whites other than the most theatrically-performative-anti-racist die hards doing much active to push a measure through. Why such non-support? It’s simple: as much as whites may genuinely support racial preferences or police reform etc. etc., the idea of their money being taken from their pockets to be redistributed based on race is, at a brute fiscal level, has no appeal whatsoever. Because philosophically, however much they may buy in to systematic racism and acknowledge white privilege, it strikes whites (maybe whose ancestors owned slaves or were here in the 1800’s, and especially those descended from post-1865 immigrants) that having their money taken and given to blacks, when slavery ended almost 160 years ago, strikes as irreducibly illogical and at a more important gut/heart level entirely unfair.
**Assuming conditions like standing and jurisdiction are met.