To many Americans, “reparations” is a dirty word when applied to African Americans. Numerous obstacles are thrown up when it comes to discussing reparations for losses suffered by African Americans due to slavery, segregation and institutional racism. For years, policies have been designed to keep Black people from the enjoyment of life made possible by economic progress. Arguments against reparations for African Americans are often made by white people with such hubris and self-assured righteousness, that it is hard not to believe those arguments are born out of notions of white supremacy.

Black Americans are the only group that has not received reparations for state-sanctioned racial discrimination, while slavery afforded some white families the ability to accrue tremendous wealth. And, we must note that American slavery was particularly brutal. About 15 percent of the enslaved people shipped from Western Africa died during transport. The enslaved were regularly beaten and lynched for frivolous infractions. Slavery also disrupted families, as one in three marriages were split up and one in five children were separated from their parents. The case for reparations can be made on economic, social, and moral grounds. The United States had multiple opportunities to atone for slavery — each a missed chance to make the American Dream a reality — but has as yet to undertake significant action.

A brief survey of the history of reparations easily exposes the weakness of those arguments. Four of the arguments raised against reparations are:

1. They are logistically impossible.
2. They would worsen the national debt.
3. Reparations for slavery would not help the Black community.
4. Slavery did not benefit white America financially very much.

While objections have been raised against Black reparations, Native Americans and Japanese Americans have received reparations for their losses. According to the Brookings Institution, after World War II “the Marshall Plan helped to ensure that Jews received reparations for the Holocaust, including making various investments over time.”

And then there are those who say, “It is too difficult to provide reparations to the enslaved.” However, it was not too difficult for England to provide reparations to British subjects who were slave owners. Four years after Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, Great Britain’s Slave Compensation Act was signed into law in 1837. This act authorized the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt to compensate slave owners for the loss of their slaves in its colonies in the Caribbean as well as in Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope. The sum of money granted to more than 40,000 slave owners was so great that some of the payments were converted into 3.5 percent government annuities that lasted until 2015. But not one penny was ever paid to the formerly enslaved.

Reparations is not a dirty word. It is a process that has been used for centuries and can be an effective tool for social justice. Addressing a broad range of injustices impacting a broad range of individuals and groups of people should be the focus of reparations. It should not just be a matter of addressing chattel slavery. The many injustices suffered by people of color are carved deeply into American history. We only need to design ways to provide compensation for those injustices and to permanently address them in ways that will be equitable and just going forward.

We need well-thought-out calls for reasoned and inclusive reparations that can withstand the attacks of any fallacious arguments of ambiguity and impossibility. Too many people are due reparations to not have our best minds applied to realistic solutions. Various descendant communities and constituent communities are due reparations for various reasons, and different methods of compensation can be fashioned into fair and equitable solutions to begin the healing from America’s unjust past. This is something we all should be thinking about and acting on.