The Logistics of Reparations

[Rev. Rye]

First, you're conveniently leaving out that the original 40 Acres and a Mule plan was actually focused on land that had been captured by the Union Army in the Civil War, and which probably would have been more palatable to the freed slaves, at least until Andrew Johnson decided to give the land back to the rebels they had stolen them from.

Second, giving up on the whole reparations project solely because the side with all the power wouldn't give the others favorable terms 150 years ago shouldn't mean the idea is a dead option, especially when they've come up with other options than what amounts to a voluntary ethnic cleansing (why, yes, I know it's a contradiction in terms and this example explains why).

Third, "two (sic) many were adopted and integrated into white families"? Frankly, paternalistic White Man's Burden implications of the whole idea aside, this sounds like the sort of thing that should have been happening more often, if only to try and normalise relations between freedmen and white people.

Finally, I can't help but find it strange that you, as a half-Asian-half-white man, seems to think the default solution to a problem where race is a component is to get non-white people to go away, not even necessarily killed or forced from their homes, just something like this, except applied to an entire aggregate of people:



(And, of course, examples like you are why I reject the power+prejudice paradigm as it applies to individuals.)