A number of candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination have voiced their support for an increasingly mainstream position among Democrats: paying reparations to black Americans. Today, let’s talk about how the United States was built on the backs of slaves, how the Founding Fathers embedded the inequality of black people in the Constitution, and how the federal government built up the wealth of the white middle class during the New Deal, promoting redlining and other modes of racial segregation. Let’s talk about police killings of unarmed black people and mass incarceration. Let’s talk about reparations.