On reparations

While I understand the appeal of some blanket solution in the form of compensation, the fact of the matter is that just like love, money cannot buy forgiveness. It is the demographic and institutional makeup in the US today that perpetuates the situation for black Americans which has been outlined so well by my classmates.

Nobody is arguing that slavery was fair, or that something shouldn't be done to mitigate its lasting effects. The problem is one of practicality. To punish me in the form of my tax dollars being transferred to reparations payments is not explicitly fair, since no members of my family came to America before 1900. (my actual willingness to see this happen is incidental to the question) So who can be held responsible? Can you extract some wealth from the south, generated several generations ago, for allocation to some kind of reparations? By now those fortunes raised on the labor of slaves generations ago would be lost or too difficult to trace.

Again, as a matter of practicality, I see perhaps the only possible solution as this: since it wouldn't be fair to take my money today, (The role of my family is immaterial) and it isn't practical to try to punish those who directly benefited, (money would be lost or untracable)
why not punish the only entity which is both responsible, and whose money is accessible? I am talking, of course, about the US government. This makes sense for several reasons in addition to the two already laid out. The government bears the responsibility for creating the system whereby slavery was possible, and their benefit from it is relatively easily quantifiable. Take whatever higher dollar amount of taxes the government collected as a result of its practice of legalizing slavery, adjust it to the present, and force the government to spend that much on entitlement programs and community investment today.

Admittedly this was sort of off the cuff, but it seems simple... right?