Reparations: Should They Be Given?

Slavery Reparations Are Wrong- Ladies and gentlemen; I don't believe that anyone in this chamber would move to disagree with the idea that slavery was an atrocity, committed from the depths of the darkest parts of the human sole. Africans were seized from their native land, and sold into lives of servitude into a foreign land. Indeed, it was a tragedy on such a scale that cannot be measured nor quantified. And it is this very notion of unquantifiable tragedy which speaks to the matter of reparations for slavery. To be quite blunt, reparations, even if they may be deserved, are not feasible under any system or economic tangent - indeed such an undertaking would only not remedy the situation, but it would sink Africa and her people deeper into the cycle of poverty and oppression that they have so struggled to free themselves. While the arguments against reparations may seem shallow or self-serving to advocates of such a system, upon examination, the logistics of what to give, and whom to distribute it to, preclude any potential benefits of such a system of indemnity and requite. …