Bravo for stepping up. I think it is clear enough that maintaining one's economic and social power tends to magnify tribal protection. In America, the dominant tribe has evolved and morphed, and tends, insofar as we are talking about white people with power, to favor white people.

A couple of important points- reparations envisioned as cash paid out to the aggrieved, will never succeed in resolving the debt.

Effective reparations would be to repair the society and its economic ladders; our principle is that they work for all citizens, rather than for ethnic clans,

It is not just Blacks that are owed- Native Americans were essentially subject to genocide and wealth theft on an unimaginable scale. THe few left alive were imprisoned in guaranteed poverty.

For more than a century our government has pretended to decry illegal immigration while carefully allowing politically connected citizens to exploit immigrant labor, legal or not.

The Japanese interned in the west during WWII were never compensated for the theft of their property. They managed to recover. Witnessing their forgiveness is one of my most impactful experiences.

The list of the aggrieved is very long. The history and the details can never be tracked forward, nor can any logical framework correctly assign compensation. Not that we could pay it if we could figure it out. THe sums are astronomical.

But there is a lot we can do to remove barriers, and that doesn't cost anything.

I am 70, and wealthy. I worked hard and made good choices and was very disciplined. All of that, But it is my inherited wealth that made the critical difference between having just enough and having more than I need.

All my hardworking qualities basically meant that I didn't squander inherited wealth- hence it has grown. And there is no better use for it than to help correct the inequities that were unresolved at the founding of America and have persisted, pervaded, and poisoned our society.