Okay - one more point....I, personally, believe repairations are not a viable answer. I believe that it is much more vital to inform the public of the impact of slavery on our society. That is not a "you don't/can't understand" statement, either. Until I really started studying historic era archaeology, I had no idea, either. But I am hard-pressed to come up with anything in our current society whose roots do not stem from our colonial and antebellum era activities. Whether "good" or "bad", to not understand it is the real crime, in my eyes. So take a moment and think about what is being said, rather than assuming.
Just wanted to address this point, since I'm mostly in agreement (with a few very minor exceptions) with the previous. I agree that much of what we do is based indeed upon these precedents. I'm one of the few native Southerners who seem to be active at this site. I have lived, live, and will continue to live with a legacy that is very complex. Some people mistakenly paint Southerners with the broad paint that resembles Original Sin Doctrine in regards to racism. My native culture indeed has much that is faulty, but more and more the people there, regardless of color or social background (one common mistake many non-Southerners make is to assume that discrimination in the South is based solely on race. That's a major part of it, but it just fits into a larger whole of a semi-caste system of who is related to whom to what degree..."breeding" in other terms), are confronting that legacy and progress has been made.
I agree with Alana here that dialogue must continue for continued redressment of past and present actions. While "reparations" to those who never experienced slavery directly is unfeasible, we do have a duty to act as a sort of brother's keeper in regards to human affairs. To ignore past hurts is never good. Best to just make peace with the past by acknowledging and confronting those ghosts rather than just trying to hush up and act like everything is alright with the world when it isn't. Anyways, that's my opinion on the matter.
Dylanfanatic 
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
