Chicago Tribune

Eric Zorn: How the term 'reparations' is getting in the way of historical justice

The best way to begin to repair the damage wrought by our nation's troubled racial history is to dump the politically toxic word "reparations."

Even casual students of history know that black Americans were first legally then systemically disadvantaged by slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination and segregation, and that those disadvantages resulted in a national wound that has yet to heal and seems unlikely to heal on its own.

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