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by subharmonicon 1257 days ago
Here’s one example: The Unlikely Story Behind Japanese Americans' Campaign For Reparations

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/03/24/820181127...

“… 40 years after the internment camps closed—President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which offered a formal apology and paid $20,000 to each survivor.”

1 comments

The key difference here, is that Japanese-Americans were imprisoned, and as such there were records about who, when, where and how long people were imprisoned.

That makes reparations very easy - if you were imprisoned unfairly, you were entitled to payment.

Where's the difference?

As https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34391669 quoted from https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-01/HRC%20Reparations... , the list of requirements for this proposed reparation depends on records.

You can easily read "identified as ‘Black/African American’ on public documents", "proof of residency", "Record of attendance", and other things which require evidentiary records.

Even "Descendant of someone enslaved through US chattel slavery before" requires records.

I sense a market for DNA tests to prove that people are descended from slaves.
Ooh I bet cops would pay so much money for access to that DNA database