Your recent editorial ("The moral case for reparations is easy; now is the hard part," June 19) does not succeed in presenting a convincing argument. Yes, every thinking person will agree that slavery was a terrible institution in the first four and a half score years of our country's history, and the founders should have found a solution for slavery.
But our country is founded on the principle of individual "unalienable" rights for every person, individual rights. We have no group rights. As far as I know, there are no living persons who suffered as slaves, just as there are no living persons who owned slaves. These facts argue that there is probably no ethical or politically acceptable way of providing reparations. There are no current victims or perpetrators.
Has the country been perfect in recognizing universal rights for every citizen? No. Has the country made progress in this area over the past 150 years? Yes. The paying of reparations to a group that contains no individual slavery victims by a group that contains no individual slave holders seems on careful consideration to be nonsensical.
Money will not and cannot assuage the shame of slavery or make the descendants of slaves "whole" in any obvious way.
David Griggs, Columbia