Yes, the history of racial discrimination in the United States casts a long shadow. At the same time, the notion of reparations is completely insane. There are several simple reasons for this that I think show why this is clear:

1. It would set a terrible precedent. Yes, slavery was terrible and yes, the civil rights of ex-slaves and their descendants were infringed in a wholesale way for a long time. However, if blacks are eligible for reparations on that basis, then how much would we have to pay to the remnants of the American Indian tribes that we not only mistreated, but actually slaughtered and drove to miserable deaths on reservations? We killed them, let them die, gave them diseases, stole their land and obliterated their entire way of life. We can argue over how many people would be alive today if we didn't ever come to the New World, but the fact is that a lot of misery and suffering happened. Do they become eligible for reparations now, too? And what about the Chinese who were brought in as de facto (if not de jure) slave labor to build the railroads in the West? We discriminated against them heavily and even denied them citizenship at a time when blacks at least on paper had full and equal rights. The laws that excluded them from the US and limited their rights only ended around World War II. Should they get reparations? Once we start down the slippery slope, we have to ask about how to treat other groups that were subject to discrimination, like the Irish, Italians and Jews.

2. The wrong people would get money, the wrong people would pay. The other problem is that we would have to figure out who got money, and how much, if we were to just ignore the dangerous precedent that reparations would set. Clearly, ex-slaves were supposed to get 40 acres and a mule for each household ("And a mule? Gee..." as the ex-slaves in Gone with the Wind put it), but that policy was reversed and the land went back to its original owners. The proper way to set reparations would therefore be to calculate the median value of 40 acres and a mule and assign that value to each ex-slave household. However, not all blacks in the US are the descendants of ex-slaves. You can't give reparations to a Haitian immigrant, or someone whose parents immigrated from Senegal in 1980, because they did not suffer from slavery, or Jim Crow laws, or having water hoses trained on them during a civil rights march. Our President shouldn't qualify by that standard, incidentally. He also brings up a second issue: assuming his father were an American black and descendant of slaves, does Obama then get half a share because he is only half-black? Do we impose a pigment-based scale along the lines of the racist classifications of the past, where "high yellow" gets less money than "dark brown"? Do the descendants of southern blacks get more than people whose parents lived in the North even before the Civil War because they were only the victims of racism but not slavery per se? However, this gets to a new problem: why should taxpayers who played no part in the institution and maintenance of slavery or even segregation be saddled with an obligation to pay for something that happened to people dead and buried to the descendants of such people? What about all the indigent immigrants who flooded through Ellis Island and settled in largely white areas in the North and never did anything, whose children went South as Freedom Riders or to march with King? Why would they have to pay reparations as well? And ultimately, given the state of the economy, why would we let all our grandchildren incur massive unsustainable debt to China just so that we can help approximately 10% of our population feel that we really, truly are sorry?

3. It could only be made after being discounted for assistance. Clearly, Affirmative Action has had an intangible value, as have many other programs designed to give assistance to minority groups in the US. Any reparations that anyone would receive would have to be discounted to take into account those benefits. By that scale, if you or your ancestors were assisted by government programs, your reparations share would need to be lowered. Ironically, of course, this would mean that the people who need the money the least would likely get the most, but to fail to account for that would be to assume that no actions taken to help minorities were done as a form of reparations - i.e., "making things right".

4. It would be a disaster. Chappelle's comedy sketch may be a bit extreme, but giving money to people in poverty with little experience managing money is almost a cruel thing to do. It would create cottage industries of scammers and con artists in inner-city areas. In this hypothetical, again, the people who need the money the least would benefit the most.