23-year-old black columnist says reparations would make young black people ‘victims without their consent’

A 23-year-old black columnist argued during a Wednesday Senate hearing that reparations should only be paid to those who lived in slavery and not their descendants.

Coleman Hughes, a writer for Quillette, argued that distributing reparations to young black people would make them slavery “victims without their consent,” an assertion that was met with an eruption of boos from those in attendance.

“I understand that reparations are about what people are owed, regardless of how well they’re doing,” Hughes said in his statement. “But the people who are owed for slavery are no longer here and we’re not entitled to collect on their debts. Reparations, by definition, are only given to victims. So the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that: you’ve made one third of black Americans who poll against reparations into victims without their consent.”


A columnist on race with pieces appearing in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times who is also studying philosophy at Columbia University, Hughes’ testimony was met with dissenting cries from the gallery with multiple individuals seen shaking their heads behind him. Hughes was part of the second panel of witnesses in the committee’s hearing on “H.R. 40 and the Path to Restorative Justice.” H.R. 40 is named the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act and allocates resources to the development of different solutions to satisfy the desire of some to establish restitution for the United States’ history of slavery and the lingering effects it had on the black community since its abolition, including Jim Crow laws that were ended in 1965.

Hughes was one of only two voices opposed to the idea of reparations on the panel and was joined by former National Football League player Burgess Owens, who won Super Bowl XV with the Oakland Raiders in 1980. The other six witnesses supported reparations in some form, including actor Danny Glover, the Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, and economist Julianne Malveaux.

“If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further. Making it harder to build the political coalitions required to solve the problems facing black people today,” Hughes said. “We would insult many black Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors. We would turn the relationship between black Americans and white Americans from a coalition into a transaction. From a union between citizens into a lawsuit between plaintiffs and defendants.

“Black Americans have fought too long for the right to define themselves to be spoken for in such a condescending manner. The question is not what America owes me by virtue of my ancestry, the question is what all Americans owe each other by virtue of being citizens of the same nation. And the obligation of citizenship is not transactional. It’s not contingent on ancestry. It never expires and it can’t be paid off. For all these reasons, Bill H.R. 40 is a moral and political mistake.”

H.R. 40 was introduced into the House of Representatives in January, but has had no other actions taken beyond Wednesday’s hearing.

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