I agree wholeheartedly with all of Bobert's historical analysis. It is undeniable that slave labor, as well as the underpaid labor of emancipated blacks (and also, perhaps to a lesser extent, that of various similarly exploited immigrant groups), created much of the USA's infrastructure.

On the other hand, I can't go along with any reparations proposal that I've yet seen, or any such proposal that I can imagine:

1) WHO PAYS:

If there were a way to make it work, perhaps it would be fair to collect from those white folks who (a) are wealthy, and (b) whose personal wealth can be more-or-less-directly attributed to exploitation of black folks. But really, how could that possibly work?

Please don't look at me ~ I'm not in desperate poverty, but I'm living from paycheck to paycheck, as did my parents, and none of my grandparents were born in the US and therefore were not here until well after the abolition of slavery. None of their families ever profited from the slave trade, either, by the way: all of 'em were simple peasant farmers before they sailed across the sea ~ sharecroppers, basically.

Three of the four grandparents, in fact, came from a country colonized by Britain, where many generations of their ancestors were forbidden to learn to read, to own property, to decide which crops they might grow to feed themselves, or to practice their religion. Not at all unlike African slaves in America, when you think about it ~ except that, while they had the supposed "dignity" of freedom from literal enslavement, they also had to face the reality that no one controlling the means of survival cared if they lived or died, since they were not the bosses' "property." And this is not ancient history; these conditions prevailed well into the mid-19th century, just about as long as slavery existed in the American South.

2) WHO GETS PAID?

In real-life practical terms, I'm very skeptical that fully equal shares of any "reparations" fund would ever find their way to the folks most in need and most deserving. The usual crowd of hustlers and politically connected hotshots would immediately be filing papers to prove that they're 1/32 African (or whatever the crtierion might be), lining up to "administer" the program (i.e., rake a nice hefty percentage off the top), and/or dreaming up their own original scams to exploit the guilt and good intentions of others.

Back in the 1960s, I was naive enough to think that when black folks began to vote and to put some of their own people into elective office, the new officeholders would be as virtuous and idealistic as Dr. Martin Luther King. Boy, was I ever wrong! Here in Louisiana, anyway, the new breed of African-American politicians are every bit as corrupt as their white predecessors, from whom they learned whole bagsful of dirty tricks.

I'm not saying today's black politicians are any worse than whites ~ quite the contrary: one bunch of crooks is just as bad as the other. (Of course, there are also a variety of good and half-decent ones, of any and all races.) Indeed, I think that the fact that those attracted to public life are equally likely to yield to temptation proves that all people are basically the same, regardless of "race."

Oh yeah, one more thing about Bobert: I heartily endorse (and enjoy) his written diction, and absolutely believe him when he tells us that it's pretty much the way he speaks in person. I speak in a similar manner myself, mixing colloquial and even deliberately incorrect "folksy" usage with an occasional highfalutin' big word when no other word will serve. I just write in a much more formal manner than I speak ~ probably just because I write technical manuals for a living.