The deepest contradiction in the reparations campaign’s approach to the payment mechanism is that it requires using racial classification, the very thing equality law was built to prevent, in order to deliver racial justice.
The campaign argues that racial injustice requires a race-conscious remedy. But the remedy it points toward, a levy that distinguishes between people based on their race, is itself a form of racial discrimination. You cannot address one racial wrong by committing another. The moral framework that makes slavery wrong, that people should not be treated differently based on their race, is the same framework that makes a race-based tax wrong. The campaign cannot have it both ways.
