The cost of making things right - reparations for African Americans

At times in its past, the United States of America has found money to make restitution for things gone wrong. For example, 9/11

"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, created by Congress, distributed $7 billion to survivors and victims' families. There have been 2,983 families of those who died and received an average of just over $2 million tax-free per claim, according to Kenneth Feinberg, former pro bono administrator of the fund." ABC news

The 9/11 memorial in NYC? "The foundation that runs the memorial estimates that once the roughly $700 million project is complete, it will cost $60 million a year to operate." NBC news

Americans are paying for this, not Saudi Arabia where the 9/11 bombers came from. But America wants to "never forget."

When the US violated the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans on the west coast after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entrance to the 2nd World War, it recognized the wrong and President Reagan signed into law a modest redress of $20,000 per survivor. NPR news.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, source

Enslaved African Americans were brought to America with the first anglos in the 1600s. They were not freed until 1865. Even after freedom they were robbed of their wages and labor by sharecropping land owners. They were not given their promised 40 acres and a mule. They were lynched daily, 4400 between 1877 and 1950, across the country and a national anti-lynching act first offered in 1935 still cannot be passed. They were forced into separate and unequal conditions such as housing and transportation and loans and education which continues to this day. But white americans can still not open their hearts to reparations owed to African Americans. They hide behind excuses such as "I didn't own any slaves," or "I'm not a racist," or "we already had a black president," or "black athletes make so much money already"...

But since those same people do not say about the 9/11 memorial, "This is terrible, I didn't own any stocks, ... why do we have to remember the bad times?....or bin Laden is dead now, can't we move on?" I'm lead to conclude the real reason white americans do not want to pay our fellow citizens reparations is we are white supremacists and paying for that philosophy is too much on the nose. 

Instead of looking at the total cost of reparations, start with the justice of it and let's work from there.