Reparations For Slavery

Many years ago, I fell in love with and married a young "white" woman who claimed to be 1/8 Cherokee and 1/8 Blackfoot, making her 1/4 what many Americans call an "American Indian." We subsequently had four children who, as a consequence of having a "lily white" European-derived father (me), together represented 4/8, or 1/2, American Indian ancestry. If we would have had two more children, our family would have counted for a whole Indian.

Other than my wife's fascination with collecting baskets and relaxing by staring into hearth fires, I don't think her Indian ancestry had anything to do with anything. I don't recall her ever castigating my ancestors for supposedly stealing her ancestors' land. (Actually, none of my ancestors did steal her ancestors' land, but that's another discussion.)

I was reminded of this when I saw a couple of TV newscasts recently of people of various colors talking about "reparations for slavery." The darker people seemed to be for them and the lighter people didn't. None of the speakers appeared to have defined what they were talking about. This includes Senate Majority Leader and stereotypical elderly "white" Republican male Mitch McConnell. He expressed the opinion that it wasn't worth talking about because it had to do with something that ended 150 years ago and has no application to anyone living today. The darker people, including Senator Cory Booker and notorious racist journalist and author Ta-Nihisi Coates, um, disagreed. They seemed to think it is The Right Thing To Do.

The consensus seemed to be that the subject, whatever it is, is important enough that it should at least be discussed. This is me doing that. Feel free do add to the discussion, pro or con, by e-mailing me.

When discussing something, I think it helps for everybody involved in the discussion to know what the subject of the discussion actually is. Since nobody told me otherwise, I'm going to confine what follows to the subject of compensating people for the oppression of their slave ancestors who are, or believe themselves to be, biological descendants of one or more individuals who were slaves by law in the United States of America.

This definition excludes from further discussion whatever compensation may or may not be, or have been, justly due to slave owners. They and their heirs and assigns lost investment and inheritance, without compensation, when their slaves purchased in good faith became free as the result of the Emancipation Proclamation or the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It also excludes from discussion compensation, for whatever purpose, of anyone whose ancestors were legal chattels only before July 4, 1776 and/or outside the United States or its possessions, during the entire time of their servitude. Those people would have been slaves of colonial powers, not the United States. Let the British or others handle that!

Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of opportunity for confusion.

For example, it is not clear what is meant by "slavery" itself, including the precise definition of "slave." An individual who is captured, detained against his will, and sold as property to another for compensation is probably a slave (and will be assumed so for this discussion). But when did that individual become a slave? Was it when the sale actually took place? Was it when the individual was offered for sale? Did one become a slave at the slave market, or on the ship, or in the holding area waiting for the ship to arrive, or when he or she was captured or taken prisoner, or when the person just had the feeling that somebody was oppressing him or her?

What about individuals who were sold as infants or small children (by anyone, anywhere at any time)? How about people who volunteered for indentured servitude in return for food, money, trinkets, transportation or something else that they valued more than personal freedom? These are questions that need to be addressed before determining which ancestors could logically be considered as slaves.

Senator McConnell mentioned the possibility of reparations to people who can "prove" that they are descendants of slaves, but even given an agreement on who was a slave, how would one go about proving that? I suspect that bills of sale of individual slaves historically were not prepared until payment for them actually changed hands. Even then, it would be difficult to associate a receipt for, say, "one middle aged male Negro slave" with a particular person, even at the time of the sale. There would be no photographs, no fingerprints, no DNA record. Plus, even if there were records, where are they now? The slaves didn't keep them. Most of them couldn't read or write, and they probably didn't have paper, pens, ink, record books, vaults or safety deposit boxes to put them in, either.

Assuming the slaves were all named on bills of sale, from where might the name come and who would have determined it, and when? In "Roots," Kunta Kinte maintained that name in spite of being known as "Guinea Man" until he arrived at the plantation where he was forced to answer to the name "Toby." Surnames or family names could be informative, but, as Malcolm Little, AKA "Malcolm X," made civil rights partisans aware, African family names were "stolen" as some of the first victims of slavery. Modern attempts to give "black" children names that recall their African ancestry have not been effective in resolving this disparity.

While researching this article, I noted, for anyone interested, the names of the top executives of the governments of current African nations in a vain attempt to determine if famous African names, 124 of which are listed below, match "black" American names. There does not appear to be any obvious correspondence. Genuine African names have not been maintained or revived by names given by "black" American parents to their children. To be sure, there are people with names that almost certainly identify them as "black," but such names are no more African than Yiddish or Chinese names are. To many people, names like "Shaquan" and "Fedarius" mean, "I am different. I am strange. Your expectations of me are probably wrong!" Why would any parent do that to his kid?

Author Alex Haley traced his ancestry back to Kunta Kinte only by ten years of painstaking work and strokes of good fortune along the way. These included finding the "breeding record" that recorded his great aunt Liz, whom he had known personally. Few descendants of slaves today would have the time or resources to undertake such a daunting task. Even if they did so, compensating only those who could prove slave ancestors seems grossly unfair to me. I think that individuals who felt themselves cheated by such a policy would be expected to express their displeasure in some socially disruptive way, as they are doing recently about other things they don't like, to their great and lasting misfortune.

For these reasons, I suspect that "descendants of slaves" are far from easy to identify to anyone's complete satisfaction!

A way around this was suggested to me many years ago by a young soldier who was trying to convince me that I "owed" him to not court martial him for an assault with a deadly weapon of which I was an eyewitness because, he claimed, my ancestors enslaved his ancestors. His reasoning was that I was "white" and he was "black", which was proof enough for him that justice demanded that I overlook his, um, "indiscretion."

It didn't work. I pointed out that: (1) his personal felonious act had nothing to do with anybody's ancestors; (2) my ancestors had nothing to do with slavery because none of them were in the United States before the passage of the 13th Amendment which made the slaves free; (3) his "black" ancestors may not have been here then, either; (4) his ancestors may never have been slaves in any case, and (5) he didn't look like any Africans I had ever seen in person or on film or TV because he undoubtedly had "white" slave owning ancestors as well; (6) not unlike Chicken George in "Roots," whose father was white slave owner Tom Moore. "There is undoubtedly somebody in this office whose ancestors were slave owners," I concluded, "but it isn't me!"

He was unconvinced. He eventually was dismissed from the Army with a bad conduct discharge for being a criminal, not a descendant of slaves, his protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Truth is, he wasn't any better at soldiering than he was at being "black." We'll get back to the subject of slave owners later.

Providing some benefit to people because of the color of their skin, even on the theory that their ancestors might have been slaves, seems pretty close to discriminating on the basis of "race." That is against all sorts of laws that derive from the 14th Amendment, passed to prevent precisely that. Assuming for the moment that one could get around that prohibition, how "black" does one have to be before he qualifies as "black" enough to have been the progeny of one or more slaves? My wife was 1/4 American Indian, and she didn't look any more non-European than I do.

It seems germane at this point to note that the city council of Evanston, Illinois, recently voted 8-1 to set aside $400,000 acquired from taxes on the sale of marijuana to provide "reparations to black residents" for what it describes as "harm caused by discriminatory housing policies and practices and inaction on the city's part." The payments were made to sixteen "qualifying households" of "black/African-American residents" of $25,000 each for home down payment or improvement. Recipients were chosen at random from more than 600 applications. This was regarded by some as basically "reparations for slavery" that could serve as a model for other communities, but so far slave ancestors are not required. Controversy has already arisen about whether the amounts, purposes, and recipients of these payments are "fair."

Having actually visited Evanston, my feeling is that $25,000 is far too small a compensation for living there now, especially for someone who suffered the additional misfortune of having been mistreated anywhere in the past. I note that it may have the effect of at least partly sprucing up some of Evanston's most dilapidated residential property and keeping at least some black residents from moving elsewhere as well. Whether the courts will get involved on 14th Amendment objections, or what the outcome will be, are interesting considerations. Watch this space!

Regarding who is or is not "black," some people who are 1/4 "black," sometimes referred to as "quadroons" are indistinguishable from darker Europeans or Asians who have not a single drop of African blood, slave or otherwise. Those with 1/8 "black" heritage, "octoroons," frequently pass as "white." Would we extend payment of reparations for slavery to dark-skinned Italians, Greeks, Turks and Pakistanis? How would we discriminate between them and people who attempt to pass as "black," like Rachel Dolezal, for example, or those who are considered "black" only because they have a dark parent, such as Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex?. What about people like Vice President Kamala Harris, whose ancestors were from India and Jamaica with not a drop of American slave blood. They, like mine, arrived in the United States long after slavery was illegal. Unlike mine, some of them were reported by her father to have been slave owners! Should she get reparations for descendants of slaves in America just because she looks like them? Is the "legitimacy of her blackness" at risk here? How does this even make sense?

Being "black" is not as simple as some people think it is!

Nowadays, we can use DNA analysis to provide an indication of African ancestry, doing that on the assumption that only persons from Africa were ever slaves. Even so, Africa is an awfully big place, and it is likely that slaves were preferentially kidnapped from locations where they could be quickly loaded aboard ship and taken away, such as The Republic of The Gambia. I read somewhere that lots of slaves came from there, including Kunta Kinte. If so, likely locations for slave origins may be what are now the Atlantic Ocean border countries of Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia*, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Pointe-Noire, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Togo. I don't know if DNA analysis makes it possible to determine if somebody's ancestors were from any of those places, or when, or whether knowing that would qualify their progeny for reparations for slavery. Food for thought and discussion, there, I think.

* Incidentally, the Republic of Liberia was established by The (mostly white) American Colonization Society in 1822 as a refuge for escaped slaves who were in danger of being recaptured if they found their way back to where that happened in the first place. It has a flag and constitution very much like that of the United States, and its capital is Monrovia, named after President James Monroe. Its first and seventh president was Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a free-born (non-slave) "black" man from Virginia. Would Liberians qualify as slave ancestors if they were born there before the passage of the 13th Amendment? Who gets to decide?

Of course, not all people who came here from Africa, even from the aforementioned locations, were slaves. Some of them were sailors who jumped ship. Some of them were traders who liked it here and stayed. Some of them were tourists who met a native and fell in love. Some were explorers who died here. Some of the were Arabs or other than "black" nationalities. Are their progeny entitled to compensation? Again, who gets to decide?

On the other hand, let's say that I can prove absolutely, by notarized documentary evidence, that every single one of my ancestors who came to the New World did so as slaves on a ship whose master paid for them with a notarized bill of sale, 100 percent African Mandinka. Let's further suppose that since then, all of my American ancestors were people of similar ancestry, without any "white" contamination whatever. Surely, if someone is providing reparations for slavery, those of my ancestors who were slaves are entitled to their fair share.

Unfortunately, they're all dead! Some died as slaves. Some were freed by their former owners and died free. Some were freed by the 13th Amendment or the Emancipation Proclamation. Some escaped to free states and were freed by court order. Some escaped back to Africa, maybe Liberia. But they were all "black" Africans, and they were all, at one time, slaves. All of their descendants are, by definition, descendants of slaves.

Of course, they were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones never had children; maybe they died before they were old enough to do that.

Question: To what share of this reparation is each of us entitled? Do people who were born free and then enslaved or born as slaves and then emancipated get more or less than people who were born and died as slaves? How about those born free, enslaved, and somehow managed to die as free people somewhere? Do they all get equal shares? Who gets to decide?

Since my supposed ancestors who were slaves are now dead, and, for the sake of discussion, I am one of the "descendants of slaves" we're talking about, what is my share? My grandmother is 100% a descendant of slaves, too, but fewer of her ancestors were free than mine were. Does she get more or less than I do? What if she dies? Do my parents get her share? Do I? What if I marry somebody with ancestry like mine, all immigrant slaves. Do my children get the same share as I and my wife do? More? Less?

Does my citizenship have anything to do with it? What if my family left and then came back here after I was born? What if I'm in the USA illegally, a convicted felon, or possibly a prison escapee?

What if I marry a pure blood European, or an Asian, or an Indian (either kind), or maybe somebody whose ancestors never left Africa? What share do my kids receive then? What if I didn't marry their mother, that she was just a one night stand whose names neither of us knows because we were both drunk or stoned at the time? Whatever else they are, the kids are definitely "black." What share do they get, or their kids? How do we determine that, and who does it?

When do the children get their share, whatever it is? If at birth, who actually gets it? If it is put in trust, who administers that? Do the kids get it at some future time, such as at age 18 or 21? If the parent(s) get to hold it for the children, who makes sure it gets paid at the appropriate time? What if the kid dies? Do the parents have to pay it back? Does somebody else get the late kid's share? Who? How? Why?

And more importantly, if new children get them, at what point in time do reparations stop? Do they ever stop, for that matter? When? Under what circumstances? Should we just pay people to be black because slaves were? How black to they have to be to get a share? Are we doing that now?

And finally, would reparations be paid equally to rich people who don't really need them as well as to those who have no other source of income? Would Oprah get as much as a homeless "black" orphan? Would that decision be affected by income or net worth, or both? What if a rich recipient goes bankrupt or is convicted and sentenced for a crime? What if a poor one wins the lottery? What if a recipient lied or made a mistake on an application? Would he or she have to pay the reparations back? Would they be paid all at once or a little at a time? Would the amount of such reparations change? How? Why?

These are not trivial questions, and all of them will have to be addressed, in one form or another, before reparations can begin reasonably to be disbursed to those who deserve them.

Before considering the precise amounts and methods by which reparations for slavery, if any, would be fair, it might be appropriate to give some thought to their proposed source. From the discussions I heard and observed, it appeared to me that the foregone conclusion was that "the government" should pay for them, since "the government" was responsible for slavery in the first place, and "the government" has lots of money.

I question both of those assumptions. First of all, slavery was a recognized institution when the United States of America was founded, one of many that we inherited, some say reluctantly, from the British. "The government" is no more responsible for slavery than it is for the fact that English is the predominant language in the United States, or that most United States residents are not black. Second, while the Constitution recognizes slavery, it does not establish or create it. Congress and the states wrestled with the "problems of slavery" from the very outset.

During and immediately following the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states by "all white" legislatures. All of them had abolished slavery (but had not freed all slaves) by 1805, when the United States Constitution was 16 years old! To be sure, the Southern states, dependent as they were on labor-intensive cotton farming, opposed the abolition of slavery, but an "all white" Congress prohibited the importation of slaves in 1808. It also sponsored the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which abolished the institution of slavery in the United States. It was ratified on December 6, 1865. But the "problems of slavery," as indicated by this very discussion, have yet effectively to be resolved, in spite of the fact that slavery in the united States was illegal long before anyone here was even born. The people most affected by them don't seem to be helping much.

The abolition of slavery was partly brought about by the United States Civil War, in which about 2.4 percent of the entire United States population died. Congress authorized and paid for that, at least on the Union side. The effect of the war, and the price paid by its participants and victims is not at all affected by the reasons for which it was declared and fought, where are perhaps topics for a different discussion.

The assertion that "the government has lots of money" is also fallacious. Although Congress has the authority and ability to appropriate and spend money without essential limitation, the United States as an institution has a current national debt of over 27 trillion dollars, currently increasing at the rate of $4.48 per day since the beginning of time! Check it out for yourself!

Of course, neither of these arguments prevents "the government" from simply increasing the national debt to cover the cost of reparations. What this cost to each American taxpayer would be is one of the "problems of slavery." What amount of money is a just and equitable reparation for the deprivation of freedom of over four million human beings?

I happen to agree with Senator McConnell that slavery has to do with something that ended 150 years ago and has no application to anyone living today. Yet I think it is naive to suggest that the "problems of slavery" are gone forever. "Persons of color" are disproportionately represented in the cages, shackles and chains of prison populations, the hopelessness of government welfare and the tragedy of broken homes. They are also more frequently victims of the degradation of drug addiction and prostitution, the misery of poverty and the restrictions of menial, minimum wage jobs. The one thing most of these miserable people have in common is that they are probably the descendants of slaves (and of slave owners as well).

"For them, life is not good. They are divided into a community that is just downright mean. They are guided by fear. They have become a society of cynics, sloths, and complacents, a population of struggling folks who are barely making it every day. They're just jammed up, and it's gotten worse over their own lifetime."

It's not because they're "black." The human race began as black people in Africa. All of us, every single one, have "black" ancestors. Many modern "black" citizens have joyfully jumped into the melting pot that is our uniquely diverse American culture. As fellow Americans and inheritors of the American Dream, they have succeeded and prospered. They have become wage earners, home owners, doctors, teachers, lawyers, entertainers, politicians, scientists, inventors, scholars, business executives, happy and successful contemporary taxpayers in all walks of American life. Many of them became multimillionaires. A few of them became members of Congress. One of them became President of the United States. His wife is the author of the foregoing paragraph.

So the "problems of slavery" are still very real and very really impact most grievously on those millions of people whose ancestors were slaves. Somebody ought to do something about it, if not out of justice and charity, then because the victims involved represent a diminution in their potential productive manpower not shared by others not so disadvantaged. They are also a disproportionate drain on community resources they consume as a result of their situation.

The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee, created in 2020 under the city's human rights commission, has submitted a novel 60-page proposal that includes dozens of recommendations related to financial reparations, housing, job creation, education, the school-to-prison pipeline, health and local policy. The committee suggested that a one-time lump sum payment of $5,000,000 for each black adult person in San francisco would be about right.

To be eligible for reparations, San Francisco residents must:
Be 18 years or older (so more and more people become eligible, without end, as time goes on);
Have been identified as Black or African American on public documents for at least 10 years, (i. e. from age 8);
And meet at least two of eight additional criteria:
1) Have been born or migrated to the city between 1940 and 1996;
2) Show proof of at least 13 years of residency (presumably in San Francisco);
3) Have been incarcerated "by the failed War on Drugs" or;
4) Be a direct descendant of someone who was;
5) Be a descendant of someone who was enslaved through US chattel slavery before 1865 (presumably with appropriate proof);
6) Have been displaced between 1954 and 1973 or
7) Be a descendant of someone who did;
8) Be (demonstrably) part of a marginalized group who experienced lending discrimination in the city between 1937 and 1968 or in "formerly redlined" communities within the city between 1968 and 2008.

According to the committee, the one-time, lump sum payment of $5 million "would compensate the affected population for the decades of harms that they have experienced and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy."

For a sense of perspective, I did some research and came up with a rough estimate of what each "over 18" recipient could buy with $5,000,000:"

50 kilos of crack cocaine
100 Years salary for full-time school security guards
241 Four Year California college tuitions and fees
333 New Cadillac Escalade-V's
956 Firearm safety training classes
1,429 Walk-through school metal detectors
4,352 256 GB iPhone X's
4,545 Economy air line tickets, San Francisco to Monrovia, Liberia,
6,895 AK-47 Rifles
8,157 Column inches of advertising in the San Francisco Chronicle
8,346 AR-15 Rifles
9,089 M1911-style .45 caliber automatic pistols
11,898 Self-powered keypad combination school door locks
33,076 Motion sensor school door chimes
33,333 Hand held metal detectors
63,613 Electric emergency sirens with strobe lights
83,346 New X-box games
106,746 Pairs of Guess women's power skinny jeans
166,666 Memberships in the National Rifle Association
988,143 Big Macs
8,333,333 "Forever" postage stamps for letters to Congress
90,000,000 Miles (from here to the sun) of travel somewhere in a Prius hybrid sedan.

The committee also recommended that the city supplement the income of lower-income households to match the area's median income, currently $97,000, for at least 250 years, 12.5 generations, 2.8 times as long as slavery existed in the United States, as a way to address the racial wealth gap in San Francisco.

After a little reflection, the committee decided $5,000,000 per black San Franciscan wasn't nearly enough. They decided that a more appropriate payment for what suppsedly happened to long dead ancestors they never knew and can't even name would be $200,000,000 per recipient! Given that the black population of San Francisco, is more than 50,000, that represents at least $10,000,000,000,000 (ten trillion dollars), 37% of the US Gross National Product, and 3.35 times that of all of Africa! With that amount of money, the black people of San Francisco would never have to work or go to school - ever. They could pay all the student loan in the United States five times over, or buy $7,051 worth of food or other necessities for each and every one of the 1.418 billion people living in Africa!

I wonder if those things are what the committee had in mind?

I also wonder how the disadvantaged black people of other cities would react?

The committee did not address the question of where all this money was going to come from! The current $400,000 reparations program in Evanston, Illinois, was supposedly paid for by taxes on the sale of marijuana, but San Francisco is going to have to at least become the marijuana capital of the entire world to even approach the income envisioned. I suspect that San Franciscans as a voting group will react negatively to supporting a massive marijuana industry to pay people for who they thought their ancestors were or what happened to them. There ought to be a better source of revenue.

I submit that it ought to be the slave owners!

If anyone is entitled to reparations for slavery because of their slave ancestry, it seems to me that those whose ancestors were slave owners ought to be accountable to the same degree. The same considerations regarding rights of descendants of slaves surely apply to culpability of the descendants of their owners, also. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to determine who they are!

The argument that all, or most, "white" people have slave-owning ancestors, just doesn't hold up. The population of the United States before the Civil War was about 31,000,000 free ("white") persons and 4,450,000 slaves. It is unlikely to the point of absurdity that an average of seven "white" people owned each slave! It was only comparatively recently that it was socially and legally acceptable for descendants of the two to marry and have children, so the overwhelmingly likely source of any "black" person's "white" ancestors were slave owners. It was common practice for "white" slave owners to father slave children, like Chicken George, by "black" slave women to obtain additional skilled slaves without having to buy and train them. If an individual looks partly African, it is safe to assume that he is at least reasonably likely to have slave ancestors. But if he doesn't look completely African, it can be equally assumed that he had slave owner ancestors as well. A quick DNA test could reliably tell what percentage his ancestors were black and white!

The argument against their involvement, that the slaves didn't choose their ancestors, applies to ancestors of both colors. Whether or not the "white" slave male owners raped the slave women is irrelevant. Ancestry is ancestry, after all. "Black" men have been known to rape "white" women upon occasion, and the "white" women most at risk before 1866 were most likely those close by, that is, members of slave-owning families. Of course, it isn't necessary that anybody raped anybody. The couples could have involved payment for services (prostitution), or they could simply have been in love!

Records and DNA evidence identifying slave owning ancestors of current descendants of slaves appear to provide some insight regarding the likely source of mixed heritage. Historical records would also be helpful in this regard, since they are more likely to exist for the heritage and transactions of "white" families than "black" ones. Family names might be of more value for identifying "white" ancestors as well.

To add to the confusion, not all slave owners were European. Most of them certainly were, but ex-slaves were known to become slave owners as well, and Native Americans (Indians) were also known to own African slaves.

I think, though, that finding descendants of slave owners is likely to be at least as futile as proving descendants of slaves. Someone of proven mixed ancestry may end up owing more money than he is supposed to receive, depending on the proof either way. The progeny of slave owners without a drop of "black" blood may be unable to pay their full share. There were probably a lot more slaves than slave owners, so there would be more people receiving reparations than paying them. Would the total amount of paid reparations depend on what all the identified slave owner descendants were able (be forced) to pay? How is that fair? Should it be fair? Who gets to decide?

Maybe the average recipient would get a percentage of a full "slave" share based on the percent of his ancestry that were slaves and pay a percentage of the slave owner share depending on his percentage of slave owner ancestors. For example, Oprah (89% sub-Saharan African, 8-11% Native American) would receive 89% of a full share of reparations less 8 to 11% what a full slave owner would be required to pay, which may come out negative, in which case Oprah could wind up paying for the indescretions of her ancestors. A court hearing to determine how much she should actually receive (or pay) might be at least as popular as the OJ Simpson trials!

Given the difficulty of determining who would be eligible for receipt or payment of reparations for slavery, considering the likelihood of violation of the 14th Amendment, ancestry, color, race, ethnicity or previous condition of servitude may not be lawful considerations. For this reason, it may be more prudent to focus not on past ancestry, but on resolving the current effects of slavery, such as discrimination, racism, and poverty. People like Oprah and Michelle Obama might be eligible for reparations for the slavery of their ancestors, but they certainly don't need them. One has to wonder what their situation would be today if all their slave ancestors had just stayed in Africa.

For those who are worse off, reparations could legitimately be accomplished by allocating public funds, regardless of the color, race or ethnicity of the recipient, and limiting the amount to what American taxpayers are willing to pay.

For a ballpark figure, one could consider a threshold as an income as a percentage of the federal poverty level, currently $25,750 for a family of four. To prevent abuse of the system, recipients could be required to provide evidence of actual poverty and minimal net worth, and inability to improve their income by means such as working or progress in school to keep receiving certain benefits. To encourage employment and advancement, some of the reparation benefits may be made available through deductions from or credits to the recipient's income tax, or after the recipient had achieved some socially desirable goal.

Such a program should certainly be crafted to prevent it becoming a means to "pay people to be poor."

The tacit assumption in all the discussions I have heard is that reparations would preferably be in the form of lump sum or monthly payments to eligible individuals or families, as implemented in Evenstan, Illinois and recommended by the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee. Perhaps a portion would appropriately be in this form, but it may be more useful in some cases for reparations to be for specific purposes that are most needed by the disadvantaged, such as medical payments. Children of needy families could receive reparations in the form of school supplies, hospital care, medical supplies and tests, and preventive care, such as eye exams, dental care, and regular check-ups.

An especially attractive form of reparations seems to be subsidies for food, especially for the disabled, nursing mothers, and school children. To help encourage education, some of this assistance could be provided through school lunch programs. Some of it coould be made available as an incentive for students to stay in school and get good grades, especially at the vocational school, college, and graduate levels. Paying people just to go to school, by grants or loan forgiveness, could be restricted if it simply kept them from learning and/or working.

Other sources of assistance may be provided for the special needs of the aged, blind, and disabled, to pay for food, clothing, and shelter. This could include assistance for rented homes and maintenance, energy and weatherization costs. Reparations might be appropriate as loans to encourage small businesses, vocational training and job placement expenses.

In the final analysis, my feeling is that regardless of what form reparations for slavery could take, there would be people who believe that they are not receiving their fair share, no matter what it is. They will never be satisfied with attempts to undo the disadvantages of events long past for which nobody today is actually responsible. The idea of slavery of their ancestors colors everything they think about, say, and do, and virtually everything in American society reminds them of that idea. Their extreme anti-white bias makes them incapable of any rational thought or discussion about the matter. In addition, they don't want to be here, don't like it here, don't get along here, and long for they days when all their ancestors lived in Africa. For these, I suggest going back and starting over, as if slavery had never, ever, happened.

Perhaps the most effective reparation for slavery for these people would be institute a program of making available free transportation, in the form of a business class airline ticket, from anywhere in the United States to anywhere in Africa they want to go and that would accept them, no questions asked. Eligibility would include any adult US citizen, his or her consenting spouse, and their dependent minor children, without regard to race, creed, color, gender, national origin, disability, veteran status, poverty level, sexual orientation, gender identification, ancestry, or previous condition of servitude. To prevent using this program as a means of free vacation travel, a mandatory requirement could be that all such recipients would be required to relinquish their United States citizenship, and the rights and privileges pertaining thereto, forever, certified by the US Secretary of State. Non-US citizens could simply be deported, have their residence privileges permanently revoked and be prevented ever from entering the United States again.

Returning these people to their what they consider their rightful homeland, from which their forebears were believed to have been so cruelly torn, would be the most direct and effective way to erase, once and for all, the terrible effects of the degrading and dishonorable institution of slavery to which they feel subjected.

Perhaps their multimillionaire and billionaire cousins, whose unexpected blessings resulted from the enslavement of their ancestors and the wrongful death of their progeny, could consider volunteering to pay for it.

And once we resolve the problem of compensating African Americans whose cotton farming ancestors were slaves, we can tackle that of Chinese Americans whose ancestors died of neglect building our first national transportation infrastructure, or the juvenile American Americans who never got to be ancestors in the first place because they died as children in the brutal child labor working conditions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...

...Or the slain relatives of the Native Americans who became ancestors of my wife and my children who died as a result of abuse, theft of their land and forced relocation by armed European invaders who were ancestors of virtually everybody in Mexico.

John Lindorfer