Reparations

Obama was elected on the idea that black Americans would finally "get theirs". Why is this asanine extortion payment even being considered?

It is a well-established point of American law that if you purchase stolen goods from the person who stole them, they remain stolen goods. It doesn't matter how many times the goods change hands, they remain stolen goods. But in this case, whether you land purhcase made you the owner of your own land or the possessor of someone else's stolen goods is neither here nor there. It's also well-established that the debts and assets of a legal entity such as a corporation or a nation don't vanish simply because the stockholders change hands. Rather, an incoming stockholder assumes the share of the entity's liabilities and assets of the outgoing stockholder. In the case of the US, these lawsuits are two such liabilities, and as a citizen you are partially responsible for paying the costs of your government. Additionally, even if we accept arguendo that your land purchase made you the owner of your own land rather than the possessor of someone else's stolen property, the discrimination that occasions this lawsuit paved the way for your being able to purchase the land by shifting wealth away from blacks who would otherwise have been in a position to make competitive offers for that land. So aside from direct liability for your government's debts, you are paying for a benefit you have received. Nor does your family not owning a slave change the fact that your family, then and now, benefited directly and indirectly from being part of an economy based largely on slave labor.

These are two separate lawsuits, only one of which makes a claim going back to 1887. That would be the claim by American Indian plaintiffs that the Interior Department mismanaged trust funds that collected royalties for grazing rights and the extraction of minerals, oil and natural gas from tribal lands. I would assume that these agreements date back to 1887 and are still in effect today. The black farmers' lawsuit alleges discrimination by the Agriculture Department’s lending programs. Under a negotiated settlement announced in February, qualified farmers can collect as much as $50,000, plus debt relief. Others may collect monetary damages up to $250,000. This one sounds fairly current to me. Both of these lawsuits have nothing whatsoever to do with slaves and I doubt they'll have any impact on the issue of reparations...but I'm sure there will be those who will try to create a connection.