Reparations for slavery were paid a long time ago.

They were paid in blood, perhaps the only suitable currency for such a payment. As Lincoln put it, “…every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…”.

In context, that was an unwanted possibility rather than a threat or a promise; but by the time he spoke those words in his Second Inaugural speech it likely had already happened. I’m not going to attempt a calculation of drops of blood (or gallons or metric tons of it) – I’ll leave that to those who are braver about making up numbers – but the Civil War was the most lethal of any war this country has fought, counted in absolute numbers of people killed. Since the population has increased greatly since then, in percentage killed it towers even higher over subsequent wars. And it was white men who bore the brunt of the fighting.

Everything that is talked about as possible “reparations” these days is puny in comparison.