Call me a sucker for grand causes, but I am genuinely cheering for the Slave Reparation Movement. Any issue which can bring together great and diverse leaders like Johnnie Cochran, Maxine Waters, and KeeWaaazy Mfume commands my attention.
Of course, we'd have to pay off the damaged survivors in a rational and appropriate fashion. None of that hosing money around shit like some of the wastrels in Washington are proposing. This is an important matter, and it demands a serious solution.
The first task would be to separate qualified blacks from the merely dusky members of our population. Those who cannot claim even a drop of direct slave lineage would immediately be cut from the running.
The next step would be to filter the truly needy from those with shakier claims. Much has been made of the vile habits of racist slaveholders who relentlessly wenched through their chattel, so many of our chocolate brethren are also part Oppressor. Obviously, those less than 100% Afro-Downtrodden should receive a smaller slice of the payout.
To put it in Rainbow Coalition chant form:
Of course, we're a long way past 1865. Enough time has passed that it would probably be close to impossible for all of the deserving to nail down their winning percentages, and even the "eighths" test mentioned above would obviously be too crude a measurement for the generations which have passed and the resulting complex combinations created through unregulated boinking. The only rational way I can see to handle it is through genetic testing.
Hopefuls would allow blood to be drawn under tightly-controlled conditions. Samples would be sent to government laboratories. Vast databases would be constructed. And when the results are finally ready, goodies would be ladled out with the requisite hoopla.
Individual payoffs would be hand delivered by flashily-dressed couriers in bright golden vans, honking to alert everyone in the neighborhood, and come in the form of one great big check. Not only in amount, but physically outsized, like those the Clearinghouse guys like to tote. With sparkles and fancy writing.
In exchange recipients would only have to submit to a minor inconvenience, getting a tattoo on their left wrist which would immediately identify them as "100% Reparated", since they would no longer qualify for any further special race-based treatment, scholarships, or set-asides. And to prevent duplicate payments on the same bloodline, all of their progeny would receive the same stamp immediately after birth, at least until the program finally sunsets after a predetermined number of years.
Of course, if Momma immediately scrambles-ass down to Bung Choi's Check Cashing and Malt Liquor Emporium ("Reparation Special! Quick Bucks! Only 30% Off Top!") and then rapidly blows the remainder of the wad in an unbroken orgy of dubious Rent-To-Own acquisitions and day-long chats with various Psychic Friends, her kids, grandkids, and so on would get permanently marked up in exchange for basically nothing, financially. But they'd undoubtedly take great comfort in the knowledge that the scales of justice had finally been balanced.