The reparations campaign has a mechanism problem at its heart that its advocates consistently sidestep. Who, specifically, would pay?
The question sounds simple but it is devastating when answered honestly. Every possible answer creates a serious problem.
If reparations come from general British taxation, then descendants of enslaved people who are British citizens contribute to payments being sent to governments claiming to represent their ancestors’ interests. They fund their own reparations. The money goes in, gets administered by government, and a fraction comes back to the people it was meant to help, minus whatever CARICOM member state governments take along the way. This is not justice. It is an administrative absurdity.
The only alternative is a levy that exempts people of colour from paying. But a tax from which you are exempt based on your skin colour is, by any definition, a racially discriminatory tax. It is illegal under the Equality Act 2010. It would violate the Human Rights Act. It is the kind of racial classification that the entire framework of modern equality law was built to prevent.
This section examines the mechanism problem in detail and shows why there is no version of the reparations proposal that resolves it.
