Reparation for a wrong include acknowledgement of what happened and the harm it caused, changes to prevent future injustice, and material compensation to victims.
Acknowledgement
Acknowledgement is the easy part, and sometimes even that is not easy for some people. However, some public and formal acknowledgement has already happened: President Ronald Reagan apologized in 1988 for the Japanese internment camps of World War II, President Bill Clinton apologized in 1997 for the Tuskegee Syphilis Study of 1932 to 1972, the US Congress apologized in 2000 for the discrimination, curfews, forced relocations, and internment of German and Italian Americans in World War II, the US House of Representatives apologized in 2008 for slavery, the US Congress enacted a joint resolution with an apology to Native American tribes for violence, land seizure, and forced relocation, President Barack Obama apologized in 2010 for the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and President Joe Biden apologized in 2024 for the Native American boarding schools that forcibly removed thousands of children from their families and abused them.
Change
Some changes to prevent or repair future injustice have already happened, including the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1957, 1964, and 1968. Other changes are proposed in the forums on this site, including many proposals for rights and better government, and I hope that they are eventually adopted.
But even with the changes made so far, there has been significant progress. While there are still wrongs being committed to this day, including social discrimination, prejudice, and micro-aggressions, the situation today is different than it was in the past.
First is institutions. The wrongs of long ago were institutional, meaning the federal government either directly harmed people or did not act to protect them and justice was not possible, whereas now the federal law demands equality and our institutions provide mechanisms to seek justice against individual offenses and against systemic offenses. There are still incidents involving the government, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Alabama from 1932 to 1972, the MOVE bombing in Pennsylvania in 1985, the false accusation of sexual assault by five teenage boys in New York in 1989 which resulted in their imprisonment until eventually the true criminal confessed and their convictions were overturned, the beating of Rodney King in 1991, and the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The modern incidents are prosecuted, demonstrating institutional change.
Second is the severity of wrongs. The wrongs of long ago included forced migration, murder, slavery, and discrimination, whereas now these either do not occur or, when they do, are unlawful and there is an opportunity to seek justice. Examples include the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama in 1963, the murder of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in Tennessee in 1968, the murder of Michael Griffith in New York in 1986, the murder of James Byrd Jr in Texas in 1998, and the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina in 2015. Human trafficking, murder, slavery, and discrimination still occur but they are prosecuted by the government when discovered.
Third is frequency. The wrongs of long ago were commonplace, whereas today they are rare in comparison. That doesn’t mean the continued hate crimes are acceptable, it’s just a recognition that some progress has been made. There were hundreds of lynchings every year in the 1800’s, and these decreased over time to under 100 per year in the early 1900’s and then to single digits by the mid 1900’s and now they are extremely rare (Source). The Department of Justice tracks hate crimes and reports that of hate crimes reported in 2024, only 53% were due to race, ethnicity, or ancestry (Source), and of these about a third were directed at Black people, and of these the vast majority involved intimidation and vandalism, followed by simple or aggravated assault, followed by a very small fraction that involved murder. Racially motivated murders still happen but are a small percentage of all hate crimes. The number of offenders in hate crime statistics reported by the Department of Justice for 2024 represent less than one percent of one percent of the total population, while the number of victims represents less than one percent of the Native American and Black populations.
Reparation
Should there be material compensation for past wrongs for Native American people and Black people and other oppressed minorities? And if so, what would that look like? And if any component of reparations involves money, who should pay for it?
Let’s set aside individual crimes prosecuted under the modern system because people convicted of hate crimes are punished and either they or the organization they work for pay damages. Generally, for modern crimes, reparation is already happening. The reparations under discussion here are for crimes that happened long ago, where the perpetrators and the victims are no longer alive.
What kind of material compensation can be made, and who should receive it, and who should pay for it?
Compensation in the form of a cash payment must be ruled out due to a number of issues.
1. There’s no rational way to decide how much money to pay for either a specific criminal act or for the total oppression that was inflicted on an individual or a community. Not all Black people were enslaved, even when slavery was common. Would descendants of slaves receive more than descendants of free folk?
2. There would have to be a decision on who will receive the money. Would the millions of Black people who immigrated to the United States in the second half of the 20th century, or their descendants, receive any compensation for oppression that happened before they arrived? Would wealthy Black people receive compensation? Would former President Barack Obama or his family receive any compensation?
3. How would compensation be distributed? There are more than 50 million Black people in the United States in 2025, compared to approximately 2 million enslaved Black people in 1825. If there’s a family of five, would each of them receive the same amount, or would the entire household receive an amount to share, or would each of the three children receive a different amount than each of the two parents of an older generation? If someone declines to receive the compensation payment, would that amount of compensation be forfeited or redistributed among other eligible recipients?
4. Would it be a proactive payment such as an amount paid with tax returns, or would it be a claim system where people who believe they are owed something file a claim and the government would have to process each application separately? Would it be a single cash payment or a series of payments?
5. How would we identify eligible recipients and prevent payment on fraudulent claims like the kind that have plagued other government-run social payment or disaster relief programs? How would we identify people who declined to state their race or ethnicity on government forms?
6. What would be the impact of the compensation? Would it be enough to help with cost of living, or trade school or college tuition, or investing in a small business? Would the IRS treat it as income and require recipients to pay income tax on it the following year?
7. Who would pay? Would it be all White people? Or all non-Black people? Both options would be racist. Millions of immigrants of a variety of races have entered the United States in the 20th century and now, together with their descendants, there are millions more. If they didn’t have anything to do with the oppression that happened before they arrived, should they be required to contribute in cash? Would poor non-Black people be required to pay compensation that ends up being paid to Black people who are wealthier than them? Would poor Black people be required to pay compensation that ends up being paid to Native American tribes who are wealthy from casinos on their reservations?
Compensation in the form of building monuments or community centers must also be ruled out.
1. How would we decide in which cities to build? How would that compensate people who live in other cities?
2. How would we award the construction contracts? Would they be awarded to only companies owned by the minority group who was oppressed? Or would the contracts be open for all companies to bid?
3. How would we decide who benefits from the community centers? Would they be open to the general public?
It’s possible to come up with answers for these questions, but it seems unlikely that a majority of people would agree on what those answers should be.
Material compensation from people who did not commit the crimes to people who are not the victims of the crimes in exchange for some kind of forgiveness is not going to work. Not only will there be people who disagree with one or more aspects of it in the present, but future generations will also be dissatisfied with it.
We celebrate Independence Day every year on the 4th of July because some people decided to work together to secure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We celebrate because after they won the war, the founders did not take a payout and let things to back to the way they were. They decided to continue working together and make a more perfect union, and that effort resulted in the Constitution and the system of government we have today.
A proposal
Reparations should not be a one-time event where we the people say here is some money now let’s wash our hands of it and pretend everything is fine. That feels hollow and is unlikely to have a lasting impact.
Reparations should not be racist or discriminatory. It would be a tragic irony to compensate some people but not others based on their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
We should embrace reparations as a long-term social project of achieving a universal respect for human dignity, equal opportunity, and correcting past mistakes.
All children need a quality education to have their equal opportunities for success and for participation in civics.
All immigrants need an effective integration program to learn English, to understand how to find what they need, to learn the laws, how things work, and how to participate — and critically, to know their neighbors and to let their neighbors know them. It doesn’t mean they have to give up their identities, but to live here means to be American first and to adopt the shared values that make America great.
All homeless people need a place where they are allowed to sleep. It doesn’t need to be in town, it can be on designated state or federal campgrounds. But they need a place where they can legally be and from which they can get transportation to town if they need it.
All unemployed people need an opportunity to take paid work so they can survive and which leaves enough free time for them to be with their families or to study or train for more preferable work.
All law enforcement officers need to be trained in the appropriate use of force, to intervene when another officer is violating someone’s rights, and to report incidents of excessive use of force or abuses of power. The emphasis needs to be on becoming the most effective and trusted law enforcement team, and not on shifting blame or punishing whistleblowers.