Ever since the United States government’s unfulfilled promise of giving every newly freed Black American “40 acres and a mule” after the Civil War, descendants of the enslaved have repeatedly proposed the idea of redistributing land to redress the nation’s legacies of slavery.
Land-based reparations are also a form of redress for the territorial theft of colonialism.
Around the world, politicians tend to dismiss calls for such initiatives as wishful thinking at best and discrimination at worst. Or else, they are swatted away as too complex to implement, legally and practically.
