Randall Robinson's The Debt: What America Owes to is a passionate dispute that argues the U.S. government must pay economic reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans and their African-American ancestors. Reconstruction-era Radical Republicans first provoked the discussion of reparations with their proposal to award freed men with property, to help give them a stake in a country steeped in white supremacy. But throughout most of the 20th century, the issue withered on the …showed first 75 words of 967 total…

…showed last 75 words of 967 total…that I've described here. To some extent, I suspect their involvement stems from an old reflex of attempting to locate a progressive kernel in the nationalist sensibility. It certainly is an expression of a generally admirable commitment to go where people seem to be moving. But we must ask: What people? And where can this motion go? And we must be prepared to recognize what can be only a political dead end -- or worse.