The following paragraphs will attempt to explain my opposition to reparations to the descendants of slaves. Feel free, if you wish to, to reply with any refutations.
Paying the descendants of slaves is futile, impractical, immoral and expensive. Three arguments can be made against reparations, each with several compelling reasons to oppose reparations: the moral argument, the economic/fiscal/monetary argument, and the practicality/enforcement argument.
First of all, all the government will do through reparations is give a cheque and wash their hands clean of the issue. Except they can't, and no paycheque will compensate the sick horror of slavery. Nothing, no money or privledge, can make up the horrors suffered by slaves in America. I doubt that, given a choice between freedom and their descendants getting one paycheque as an apology for the atrocities suffered by their ancestors, slaves would choose to remain enslaved. And former slaves themselves certainly deserve large, generous paycheques, and much more, to even begin to compensate the pain, horror and suffering they underwent (of course, all former slaves are long dead). Their descendants, however, do not necessarily deserve the same. Because by that same logic, the descendants of slaveholders, no matter how anti-racist or antislavery they may be, should be punished for what their ancestors did. (Why should ordinary taxpayers bear the financial burden of compensating all former slaves? They themselves weren't responsible for slavery.) They don't deserve reparations or punishment for what their ancestors suffered. One should not be judged by the behaviour of their ancestors - but by their own conduct.
In any case, if the descendants of slaves do deserve reparations, how much? They either deserve nothing (based on the argument that it is their ancestors who deserve it) or such a large amount of money that the government cannot feasibly pay it (based on the argument that they deserve the same reparations due to their ancestors). The government wants to settle on some middle amount. Let's say the government settles on...$30,000 (ignore the unlikelihood of this scenario for a moment). That sum satisfies no one, and is a waste altogether - it's a massive increase to the already large sum of money the government owes, and no one is happy: Pro-reparation people will argue $30,000 doesn't compensate slavery (and they'd be right - it doesn't, and nor should it - one person's entire freedom and life taken away is certainly not worth just $30,000), while the anti-reparation group will point to the massive cost.
Then follows the question of practicality (aside from the already discussed massive cost): How to identify descendants of slaves? Some of the morally upright here have laid the responsibilty to figure this out at the feet of 'experts'. It would be extremely painstaking to even figure out who all is a descendant of a slave. Tests may have to be run. And on whom all? Anyone who identifies as black? Well, some descendants of slaves may be white in race. So, test everyone in America - an expensive, time-consuming and highly impractical process. In addition to that, many may have moved away from America. How will they be paid? There comes no answer - because there is none. There are only half-baked and insensible solutions. A so-called solution is to 'reparate' all who identify as black - which in itself is racist, because it makes reparating the descendants of slaves reparating people who identify as black. Many people whose ancestors were never slaves have migrated from Africa, Asia, South America, and other places, and now identify as black. On the other end of the scale, as I already mentioned, some slave descendants may be white in skin - and they won't be reparated.
If America was genuinely interested in reparating slavery, they should have done so right after the Civil War, when many former slaves were still alive, and it may have been somewhat easier to do - not 160 years later to clear their conscience.
