Reparations Yes/No Author:Bill Fletcher, Adolph Reed Two leading thinkers in American racial politics debate reparations for slavery. A perennial hot-button issue in the African American community, the debate over reparations for slavery is now garnering attention across wider political and social circles. Pointing to the compensation of Japanese internees in the Second World War and survivors ... more »of the Nazi Holocaust, supporters have argued that the moral debt incurred by American society in its embrace of slavery has an economic dimension that can and should be redressed. Yet troubling issues remain: How can compensation be calculated and paid out fairly for crimes that were so pervasive, committed so long ago, and have been so poorly recorded? Will the compensation campaign help to build unity or open up old resentments? Reparations? Yes/No encapsulates the vibrancy of a rapid-fire exchange as Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Adolph Reed, Jr., two preeminent and eloquent thinkers, engage back and forth on the issue, anchored by their deep grounding in American racial politics. Together, in a short book that is both accessible and compelling, they capture the nuances and vitality of the exchange on reparations.« less