R: Enact Reparations for Slavery

The tide is high for a renewed debate over equality and liberty in America. The conflicting concerns of both are borne out in our history and have left us with myriad issues to choose from. But at the center of this is the continued march toward finally being able to proclaim as one, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!"

The legacy of slavery in America is one that lives on beyond the history textbooks, as new focuses on "white privilege" and micro-aggression sweep through the media and raise questions as to how much discrimination really does exist below the surface of civil society. At the height of this are the plights of minority communities in income, employment, incarceration rates, and more. Are these problems at least partially attributable to implicit forms of discrimination? Is this issue, so often couched in terms of equality, really one of liberation? If so, the degree of societal recompense must be established and paid. Freedom must be given. Yet, the debate will rage on as to who has responsibility to whom, if not themselves, and who determines how much is owed by whom.