"" He makes it very clear that he wants reparation from the government, and not from individual citizens. Discrimination is the number one unfinished problem in America. Examining what happened and having the government acknowledge the faults of the past is the key to the healing of the race problem.
But the idea of reparations to African-Americans, or lack of, goes farther back than 1989, it starts with President Lincoln, who actually wanted to compensate slave owners for their loss of property. Also, President Lincoln's successor, President Andrew Johnson, had vetoed legislation that would have provided compensation to ex-slaves. Under the Southern Homestead act ex-slaves had a six-month period in which they could purchase land at low rates without competition from whites. This act was a joke though, assuming ex-slaves even had any real money to purchase land at any "low- price. For the few that could purchase land, most could only afford land in Florida, which had soil that could not be farmed. In 1915, Cornelius J. Jones sued the U.S. Treasury, claming that the U.S. Government had benefited from the slave labor of African Americans. The ruling was that the United States could not be sued without its consent and dismissed the case. So to this very day, no compensation has been given to African-Americans since the end of slavery. .
Descendents of African-American Slaves deserve compensation for the injustices that have been done to them. America today as we know it was built off the free, skilled labor of African American Slaves. Mr. Randall Robinson said it best, "The great-great-great-great-grand-children of slaves are owed not just for their forebears' labor, or for the humiliation of performing it, but for every devastating failure since, engendered by their government on the basis of race."" .
Some might think that there's something wrong with African-American culture, that they have had 120 years to get their act together.