I should read The Case For Reparations by TA-NEHISI COATES, and I will. But preemptively...

I do not believe in reparations. On principal I think looking to the past and trying to right the wrongs committed by past generations is focusing energy in the opposite direction of where our efforts should be placed. Even if one tried to craft a strategy, imagine a dispassionate mathematician sitting down to begin to model an algorithm that would fairly represent the entirety of the outcomes of slavery, and somehow formularize a monetary response to each individual. She would need to take all factors into account. Along with all the horror on one side of the balance sheet she would also have to ask, “What is the value of a single generation of US citizenship? Multiple generations? What factor could represent the benefit of increased opportunity for subsequent generations of one forcefully relocated? What kind of value was left in the homeland? If someone from the aristocracy was enslaved and forced to leave behind all family possessions, how does that compare to someone who was captured from a dirt-poor existence?” Immigrants sacrifice a great deal, sometimes losing a generation of educated people to menial labor, in order to gain the benefits of relocating to America and eventual citizenship.  To make a truthful model of the results of the enslavement of Africans and the impact on those long dead and the generations of offspring still living, you would have to take it all into account. I wouldn’t try. The present and the future is where we can make a difference in the lives of those living and yet to be born.