[NYCVirago]

It is clear that those we think of as African-Americans (not Kenyan-Hawaiians, such as Barack Obama) have been dealt a bad hand from the beginning and have still never been incentivized out of the harm dealt their subculture. Considering ways to correct this is hardly insane.

Conservatives believe in individual responsiblity, not collective guilt. Reparations are the antithesis of everything conservatives stand for. Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey won't have to pay taxes under Keyes' plan, but lower-income white Americans will. White people whose ancestors may not have even been in America until after slavery was ended will have to pay the taxes for black people whose ancestors may not have even been slaves. And you actually defend this proposal?

[unspun]

I don't defend it. I say he's talking it up and he's very, very worth living with. I also don't say it's a matter of guilt, for Keyes, but empowerment.

[Aquinasfan]

Conservatives believe in individual responsiblity, not collective guilt.

Reparations doesn't necessarily represent collective guilt. As unspun mentioned above, consider our relationship to the American indians. We, as a society, have consigned them to lives of misery by our de facto policy of segregation. A debate regarding our government's treatment of the American indians is worth having.