Reasons Change for Reparations

Re “But Save Reparations for Jim Crow,” Commentary, Aug. 29: Eric Rauchway and Clarence Walker repeat the demands made by blacks in regard to reparations. Now the reasons for reparations have changed. Now reparations are demanded for the years of segregation blacks have suffered instead of for the slavery their forebears were forced into.

The writers very cleverly demand reparations not from the rest of us but from some disembodied entity called “the U.S. government.” My, my. This should certainly enlist the aid of the rest of us since it will be the U.S. government paying these billions of dollars and not the rest of us.

After all, it was the U.S. government that did all this segregation, not the rest of us. So all of the good-hearted rest of us should punish the U.S. government for this terrible deed. How very clever. Let’s send a message to the U.S. government and punish it for this incident.

Titus J. Santelli

Van Nuys

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Why stop at reparations for those of African descent? For hundreds of years the Romans enslaved most of what is now Western Europe and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. Don’t their descendants, including most U.S residents of European extraction, deserve compensation from the Italian government? Unfortunately, the Romans never made it to Ireland, so I will miss out on this bonanza.

Joseph McEvoy

San Clemente