I think you're both right and wrong. As always when talking about race, there's the duality of trying to get everyone to think about 'us' as a collective on the one hand, and then the reinforcement of 'black' and 'white' on the other hand. It's a bizarre dichotomy... I don't think we can get over racism when both racists and anti-racists continually centre race. That's by the by.

This is what I wanted to address.... I don't see how reparations can be paid and the fabric of US society remain intact. This would be an astronomical number and incredibly complicated.... where, for example, would you put a Haitian immigrant? Descended from slaves or not? Would there be an upper cap on earnings? Are you prepared to fire money at multi-millionaire singers and actors - they may be a minority of course, but that won't play well with impoverished other people.

Reparations have been paid but only when they are limited in scope. There were 120,000 Japanese interred, this is a large number but it is not obscenely large, 3000 ish died on 9/11. By comparison there are around 40 million Black folks in the US.... would you include mixed-race people in your reparations? There are approximately 33 million people who identify as multi-racial. Would you open up payments for Afro-Mexicans... or perhaps people who now live outside of the US because their ancestors fled to places like the UK (where I'm from).

It may be a debt owed to your people - but the best way to pay the debt (in my opinion) is to tax profits on corporations and wealthy individuals and pay into specific focussed schemes aimed at the betterment of struggling communities (regardless of race). Socialism I'd call it. That's got slightly more chance of happening than demanding an unpayable debt be settled, but not by much. :o)