Don’t cuss at me. That is exactly my point: that documentation is gone or never existed in the first place. It’s not like record keeping for slaves was very good.
No one is handing out free money without documentation. So that route won’t work.
It’s a tax break not free money. There are plenty of ways off the top of my head immigration records would record immigrated from Africa but not those that came in the slave trade. Plus I can show my family has been here for generations on top of that likely certain markers in DNA would show being African American vs being from Africa.
Before I continue, I’m not against people being paid off for the crimes against their people.
That said, DNA doesn’t mean a person was actually related to a slave. Not everyone from Africa gets to have a tax break in the USA.
Additionally, not every black person from Africa who was here during slavery was actually a slave.
Proving a relationship to a slave beyond a reasonable doubt is next to impossible for most people to do, and proving a hardship now because of that slavery isn’t possible for anyone.
However, there are lots of other things reparations could apply to other than slavery. It’s not like you’d have to try very hard to find an instance where black people were treated poorly by the government.
Does all this come down to a tax break for individuals today? That’s the difficult argument to make. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be made, I’m just saying it’s a hard sell to become an action.
An easier sell would be large cash donations (perhaps ongoing, or over several decades) to various government run programs that are focused on providing services to minorities, and at risk groups of people.
I don’t really see the political landscape being receptive to that at the moment. There’s a lot of shit going on and next year is gonna be a political nightmare. The last thing any politician is going to do is pitch reparations, a generally unpopular topic—regardless of its merit.
