Discussion of “reparations” will have to begin with the peoples of eastern Africa whose ancestors captured and sold other blacks, often from other tribes, to the Europeans. If it does not start there it is a sham.
The slave trade began with the Portuguese selling firearms to the various costal African tribes. The muslims continued the practice later on of selling firearms, but in exchange for slaves who were then resold to waiting slave transports - most of the salves went to Brazil with only a retaliative few coming to America to be sold into hereditary chattel slavery, a muslim invention condoned by the koran
Slavery got started everywhere there was warfare and a winning side [either the attacking side or the defending side] that decided killing everyone who surrendered was not the best solution to deal with the problem of captives. Early societies didn’t have the resources to maintain useless captives and if released, the captives could potentially return again as attackers. So something had to be done and the choice was between killing every enemy even if they begged for mercy, or to put them to work to support their upkeep, or sell them to a far off people so they could never attack you again. For some tribes it was an act of mercy to avoid the dishonor of killing a defeated foe, and eventually some of those slaves could even be adopted; for others it was profitable, so much so that they would go to war to obtain more to use themselves and to sell. And some rulers got the idea of consolidating their own power by selling their potential rivals , even brothers, early and often.
At first the far off buyers enabled a lot of lives to be saved that otherwise would have been snuffed out due to fear and inconvenience of keeping prisoners. But when the demand for slave labor grew larger than the usual territorial skirmish or two could provide, there was an incentive to routinely raid weaker tribes just to get captives.
Go and collect it from the muslims.
Their slave trade made America pale in comparison.
AND they are still at it today in Africa and other places.