Thoughts on white people having to pay slavery reparations?

Today, the average white family has roughly 10 times the amount of wealth as the average Black family. White college graduates have over seven times more wealth than Black college graduates.

Native Americans have received land and billions of dollars for various benefits and programs for being forcibly exiled from their native lands. For Japanese Americans, $1.5 billion was paid to those who were interned during World War II. Additionally, the United States, via the Marshall Plan, helped to ensure that Jews received reparations for the Holocaust, including making various investments over time. In 1952, West Germany agreed to pay 3.45 billion Deutsche Marks to Holocaust survivors.

Black Americans are the only group that has not received reparations for state-sanctioned racial discrimination, while slavery afforded some white families the ability to accrue tremendous wealth. And, we must note that American slavery was particularly brutal.

Had the original contract with emancipated slaves been honored, this conversation wouldn’t exist today. But it wasn’t. No land, no mule, and land reverted back to slave owners. No one is saying hand over cash to black people. What is being weighed is the creation and fostering of programs meant to close the gap between the races. Never before has this been seen as a moral struggle or ‘entitlement,’ which should promote us all the more to look at why reparations haven’t been offered up ‘til now.

[i](stat source: brookings)[/i]