Randall Robinson

The word “reparations” triggers strong, visceral reactions in many Americans. This is entirely normal in light of the four centuries of misunderstanding, misinformation, and essential distrust that have, with individual exceptions of course, bedeviled relations between black and white America.

The U.S. educational system has ensured that very few Americans – black or white – know very much about either the 247 years of American slavery or the 100 years of government-enshrined, devastating anti-black laws that followed. What everyone CAN see, however, without having a clue as to the underlying causes, are the dramatic and glaring human costs of this 347-year reality.

We are, nonetheless, the United States of America. In an increasingly globalized world, a world of rapid ascendency on the part of many formerly “non-dominant” nations, it behooves all Americans, if we wish to live in an internally strong and stable nation, to find a way, as President Lyndon Johnson urged, to “bind up our wounds . . . heal our history . . . and make this nation whole.”

The first step along this path must be truth – delivered without rancor, received without rage. The second step should be reason – entered into as sentient, humane beings. And the third would be action – mutually agreed upon out of a respect for self, for the other, for the nation.

On many levels, our nation is in need of healing. And a calm discussion of the basis and meaning of reparations can help in our quest to, at last, create a more perfect union.