I do understand that the thought of reparations offers a warm fuzzy to your members but you all need to get a bit closer to reality. There are some important truths that you need to recognize. First, if you are stating that the government pay reparations out of "guilt" as an emotion, that would be impossible. Guilt is a human emotion, governments are not human, therefore they cannot feel guilt. That means that only citizens of that government could feel "guilt" and they would only have to pay voluntarily as not all of them would feel that "guilt". How many voluntary payments have you received? How many of your members have paid their share of reparations? I dare say none! Second, If you are to use the world "guilt" in the context of being responsible for a crime being committed, that is also impossible because no one in this country has ever owned a slave. According you our legal framework only a person suspected of being "guilty" may be tried and punished. To my knowledge no slave was ever owned by the United States of America so by law the government can be held responsible at all. You can not ask any business to pay reparations because all the monies that make up that company are from stock holders who are citizens and taxpayers. You are right back where we started with the citizens feeling guilty or not. I think that even you can see that by definition there can be no payments. I do understand your frustration and hate. When one hates his country with such passion it is very easy to grab onto ideas that are (in the words of my students) "bogus bigtime". Keep trying guys................... You might get someone to buy into this. One last thought, really a question. What is an African American? I have asked at least 50 on my black students and not one can tell me what that means. It is really a stupid term. How can you be born in two countries at once? It seems to me that you have to be an American or an African! I am just a lowly teacher so I guess some of you "smart" guys will have to enlighten me. UNKNOWN