Clarence Page: Reparations program, meant to attack discrimination, accused of being discriminatory

News that a conservative nonprofit legal group is challenging the Evanston, Illinois, groundbreaking reparations program got me thinking about the many attempts to redress the wrongs of systemic racism through monetary compensation. Americans have a long tradition of offering reparations for slavery, only to see them clawed back. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Emancipation Act bill on April 16, 1862, which freed enslaved people in the nation’s capital and paid their former owners who were loyal to the Union up to $300 in compensation for every individual freed. But little was offered to the freed individuals except their freedom, which was no small matter. Lincoln’s bill signing continues to be celebrated with an annual holiday and parades in Washington, D.C., on April 16. The issue of reparations for slavery endures, especially among African Americans, with such questions as, what happened to our “40 acres and a mule?” That’s a phrase that grew out of Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s order to reserve tillable land seized from the Confederates and give it to the formerly enslaved. But Lincoln was assassinated before that was implemented, and Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, worked to reverse the initiative....