Reparations how? Mayor Johnson’s task force is beside the point on what’s needed to fix Chicago

For the past 250 years, the question of granting reparations to Black Americans for the racial injustices they’ve suffered has been one of the nation’s most complex — and polarizing — issues. The Quakers gave up trading and owning enslaved Black people in the 1700s. But they argued those still in the horrendous trade should pay reparations to any enslaved person who managed to get their freedom. Since then, there have been scores of national proposals to compensate the once-enslaved, or their descendants, and, as time passed, those who suffered under 20th century Jim Crow laws in the South. Now Mayor Brandon Johnson has decided to wade into these complicated waters, announcing on Monday that he signed an executive order establishing a Chicago reparations task force with $500,000 for the panel to do its work. “The legacy of slavery — the aftermath, still echoes today,” Johnson told a crowd at a Juneteenth flag raising ceremony at Daley Plaza. “We saw it when previous administrations sold off public assets. We saw the harm when previous administrations closed Black schools, and they shut down public housing. When they raided the pensions. These anti-Black, anti-business endeavors … have caused tremendous harm and pain.”...