Should white people pay reparations?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Should white people pay reparations?". Your opponent's style: Joy Reid

First speaker of proposition

Look, I understand the moral impulse here, but reparations would be a disaster that hurts the very people it's supposed to help. You're talking about taking money from a white waitress in Ohio making $25,000 a year and giving it to Oprah's grandchildren because of slavery her ancestors never participated in. This isn't justice - it's a bureaucratic nightmare that would tear this country apart. How exactly do you determine who qualifies? What about recent immigrants from Eastern Europe? Mixed-race families? Black immigrants who came after slavery ended? You'd create a racial caste system that makes Jim Crow look simple. And here's what really gets me - this whole conversation lets white America off the hook for what actually matters RIGHT NOW. Instead of fixing underfunded schools, criminal justice reform, or healthcare disparities that are killing Black folks today, we're having fantasy debates about cutting checks. That's not solidarity, that's political theater that changes nothing while making everyone angrier. The civil rights movement succeeded because it appealed to universal values of fairness and dignity. Reparations does the opposite - it divides us into racial camps fighting over a pie that doesn't exist.