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The ancestors of black Americans were not taken from some Eden, and there is no Eden for black Americans to return to today. If compensation were to be paid for the difference between where they are and where their ancestors came from, they would owe money, not receive money.

This is typical apologist rhetoric. I know that Thomas Sowell is a well-respected academic, but again I don't get what he is driving at. I am not in favor of reparations, but not because of how the "numbers" would come out on some theoretical "balance sheet". I am opposed to reparations because the people responsible for the institution of slavery are all dead, and because I believe in 1861-1865, America paid its debt in blood.

But the question of whether Americans are better off than they would have been is not the question. The point that I think the Roots series made was the suffering inflicted on slaves by their masters. It was an obvious cruelty. If I go to your house, and take your child, and bring it to my mansion, and put the child in a better school, and feed him better food. Is he better off?

The point that I think the Roots series made was the suffering inflicted on slaves by their masters. That is your perception, your understanding of the series. You have to acknowledge the fact, however, that most other people have not viewed it as such. You may be projecting your own wisdom and level of education onto others. Were The Roots been an isolated phenomenon viewed by people as just one author's perception of slavery --- would we be discussing this and would Sowell bother to write about some rerun of an odd old series?

If most people perceived The Roots as you do, I would agree with your characterization.

If I go to your house, and take your child, and bring it to my mansion, and put the child in a better school, and feed him better food. Is he better off?

No, he is not. As you put this correctly, this act is an absolute cruelty for anyone going through the experience --- the parents and the child. Note, however, that this is NOT the issue: none of the people involved is alive. The grand-grand-children of the kidnap victim are better off. It sounds harsh, but there is no cruelty inflicted on them: most people do not have any personal experiences with great-great-grandfathers anyway.

It is these people, descendants of the slaves, that Sowell and we discuss.