When FDR sent thousands of Americans to internment camps because their ancestors were Japanese, that was an ugly stain on America. Japanese Americans who suffered that fate deserved every cent of reparation, and frankly more for Roosevelt’s illegal and unconstitutional order. They were direct victims. Many are still alive today. They suffered the injury. Their great-grandchildren are not demanding their own reparations. Calling for reparations for Americans who are, in many cases, four or five or six generations removed from ancestors who were held in bondage is impractical, at best. Even its proponents like Ta-Nehisi Coates have admitted as much. I am all in for reparation for anyone held as a slave. None exist. //

I’m all in for Blacks who suffered a direct injury during Jim Crow suing for damages and bankrupting those responsible. Direct injury. Direct reparations.

Blaming all living Americans (with a large percentage having no antebellum connection to America) for the sins of long-dead ancestors makes no more sense than me demanding payment for Robert Thompson’s multiple years of torture at the hands of Confederates. The confederates who ruined his body are long since dust in the wind. I never met Robert Thompson. His bones are dust as well. My only “memory” of him is preserved in a shadow box. The box contains the flag cord he carried through Andersonville, his photo later in life, and the envelope on which he penned what happened 159 years ago.