George W. Bush’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Was a Slave Trader

[starroute]

106. If that's your model of reparations, it's clearly misplaced

The Japanese had careers, businesses, property that were all forfeited by the internments. That's something you can calculate and compensate with money.

The only kidnap victim story I can find that even vaguely matches your description is one about a proposed bill in Ohio to compensate the three women held prisoner by Ariel Castro at the rate of $25,000 per year in captivity for each of them. But I don't see any followup stories, so it apparently never went anywhere.

But the situation with people of color is very different from either of these. Are you proposing to appropriate $45 billion and give each black person in America a check for $1000 each? Or appropriate $450 billion and give them each $10,000? And in either case, how much difference will that make to the life of a poor inner-city resident with no education and no marketable skills? Or even to the life of a middle-class black family which is working their butts off but has no accumulated property or investments because they started from nothing and are still paying off student loans.

This is not only unfeasible but also pointless. Once again, the only answer is to change the fucking system.