Universality fails—[???]

However, Warren goes on to acknowledge the limitations of the universality of basic income when understood as reparations. He points out that all too often, nominally universal policies exclude minorities, for instance by excluding formerly incarcerated populations. Yet even if a universal basic income were to be designed to be truly universal, Warren wonders if a UBI is simultaneously too broad and too narrow to address issues of racial injustice in a post-slavery society. It might be too broad in its universality — its net beneficiaries would be anyone below a set income level,8 which would include those that might be economically disadvantaged, but do not face racial discrimination and the injustices of living in a post-slavery society. Warren also worries that a universal basic income would allow the US to evade the question of direct investment in Black communities. In many ways, this point mirrors the feminist debates around basic income. While some feminist UBI advocates argue that a UBI would disproportionately benefit women and those engaged in unpaid care, others point out that it would also support men who chose to ignore or evade care work responsibilities, and make the case that there should be either special or additional support for carers.9

At the same time, Warren argues that a UBI's benefits could be too narrow because of its typical focus on citizenship rights. As he points out, many UBI models propose that the income goes to all of a country's citizens. However, what happens to immigrants who are not citizens, including immigrants who face racial discrimination? And what about incarcerated populations, who are frequently deprived of some citizenship benefits (such as voting rights)? Yet while Warren is correct that many UBI proposals have traditionally focused on citizens, this has recently shifted. James Ferguson's work on rightful shares has made the case that a universal payment should be disbursed not on the basis of citizenship, but rather on presence (or, to put it more practically, residence) within a nation state (Ferguson, 2021).

However, the issue of targeting on the basis of race in order to repair the damage done by slavery and post-slavery racial discrimination still remains. Warren's proposed solution is to establish what he terms U+BI (universal plus basic income). This is a form of targeted universalism, where a basic income is both universal, and there is an additional top up which is targeted towards racial minorities, and explicitly framed as reparations for slavery and racism. Warren's proposal for a U+BI as reparations, and his explicit tying together of UBI and reparations, raises a number of questions. Why adopt an explicitly universal policy such as UBI as part of the case for reparations, which are meant to explicitly target communities damaged by specific historical occurrences? Warren never directly addresses this question, but perhaps the inclusion (with modifications) of UBI within the Movement for Black Lives agenda points to unstated support for other advantages of a universal rightful share, in particular the justice-based arguments for universal ownership of collective wealth (see for instance Birnbaum, 2016; Sloman, 2018; Van Parijs, 1992). The proposal of U+BI also raises the question of whether this would be a true UBI, and if the ‘plus’ would undermine some of the advantages of universalism. In particular, if historically benefits targeted at disadvantaged groups have frequently been inferior to universal benefits and enjoyed lower levels of support, a U+BI might have the same disadvantage, which a UBI would avoid. Ultimately, this case asks: can a distributory policy framed as a rightful share be both reparative and universal at the same time?