Should the US provide reparations for slavery and Jim Crow?

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9. Reparations would be a bargain if we consider the stolen wages and compounding

No checks being cut to individuals, no monetary handouts, but funds for inner-city job training, small business training and grants, upgrading and modernization of neighborhood schools, computer literacy training, college funding for eligible students, community youth facilities, and something needs to be done about racist cops so how about sensitivity training and requirements that a good percentage of cops live in the areas they patrol?

How would it be decided who would benefit from these and other sensible programs that are not coming to mind right now? There is a precedent, the Dawes Rolls established lineage and proof of being Native American back in the day. The same kind of research can be done to establish descendency from the enslaved, unpaid millions in the country's shameful past.

Now back to the point of my article title: If the stolen wages of hundreds of years of dawn-to-dust, uncompensated labor done by millions of people was tallied, even at minimum wage levels, with the principle of compounding factored in, if that figure came due, it would bust the US treasury (and that's just the slavery era, not even going into the decades of Jim Crow racism, the lynchings, the job and housing discrimination, and on and on and on). We couldn't come up with that amount of trillions so the programs I listed above would be a huge bargain.

Hell, just a small percentage shifted from our humongous, on-steroids military budget could easily cover the costs. I'm talking no tax increases and nothing out of anyone's pocket.

It needs to be done. The country needs to deal with this issue that it has been shamefully sweeping under the rug for years.

It's just. Germany compensated holocaust victims and descendants, as did our own country compensate the unjustly interned Japanese-Americans during WWll.

We have to get past the mindset of many that other ethnic groups deserve compensation for historical injustices but African Americans, forget it.