re: #266 sagehen

My feeling about reparations is that it should be limited to 20th-century offenses.

Red-lining and other kinds of state-sanctioned housing discrimination, stable middle-class black neighborhoods being bulldozed to make room for a highway that serves whites-only suburbs, massive resistance to school desegregation, the way WWII GI-Bill benefits elevated an entire generation of white men & their families while black men & their families were excluded…

These were recent enough that there’s a great many living witnesses, living perpetrators, living victims, and substantial documentation proving that it was a deliberate federal and/or state policy.

The easy part is supporting education and services for the population as a whole. The sticky part is what to do about the wealth gap that is the result of the policies you listed.

I have grave doubts about just writing checks to people (regardless of race, religion, or national origin) who have no experience with handling large sums of money. I’ve seen too many people blow the money grandma left them. (See also: lottery winners) And yet, there is no question that they’ve been denied money that has been available to whites for generations.
But, we probably won’t do either.