"WHAT IF?" (USA Slavery Restitution)

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What if: next year "the government of the USA" decided to pay "slavery restitution"?
(Not "what if NOT", just "what if" and "only if".)
THEN How do you think it should be done?

Of course I don't like the idea but here are some example "how" ideas:

1)Only descendants of slaveowners pay only descendants of slaves.
2)Only historical slave-owning states would pay taxes for this purpose.
3)Only states that existed before the civil war would pay taxes for this purpose.
4)Only former confederate states would pay taxes for this purpose
5)Only people whose families immigrated before the civil war would pay
6)Only White People would pay
7)Only white people would pay, but with many exceptions
Union states would pay less than confederate states
9)EVERYONE WOULD PAY including states that didn't even exist during the civil war
SUCH AS:
California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada... and also territories such as Puerto Rico.

It would have to be Number 9, because there is no "fair" way to do it. If this were to pass, it would be impossible to accurately say who should be "blamed" for slavery. In reality, no one alive today is to blame... we are not our ancestors, and we are not responsible for the actions of our ancestors... only OUR OWN actions.

Well, the value of being an American citizen rather than a citizen of Darfur or Sudan or wherever their ancestors would have stayed if not for slavery would have to be deducted from any restitution. There are many people from Africa who risk much to come to America; being here rather than there must be valuable to them.

Then there would have to be deductions for the probability that the current recipients' ancestors would have lost the money during the Great Depression like most people did, or lost it at some other time, say from bad investments or from spending it or from being scammed. I don't know how those adjustments would be calculated, but I assume there must be a way. The assumption that the restitution would have not been spent or lost or mismanaged is the foundation for the demands for large sums in restitution now, in my opinion. There is no reason to believe the restitution would still be sitting around, untouched by all the generations between the sufferers and the current descendants, in a bank somewhere.

I also understand the former slaves were offered restitution, but many of them refused it because it consisted of 40 acres and a mule in disputed Indian Territory, where there was a war going on. The US Government wanted to settle as many Non-Native People in the Territory as possible to bolster their claim on the land, and saw the former slaves as likely candidates - still looking to use these people. Still, if the actual victims refused restitution, their descendants who did not suffer slavery shouldn't be able to claim that restitution for themselves now.

It's very complicated. I as someone whose ancestors never owned slaves would not want to pay restitution for slavery that other people's ancestors committed.

Also, the descendants of slave holders' are assumed to be rich due to the labor of the slaves, when in fact many Southerners lost much of what they owned when the Civil War rolled through their states, or during the Depression. Many may be poor themselves, and therefore judgement-proof.

By the way, I have Native American ancestry - where is MY restitution? There were black soldiers in the post-Civil War army, Native Americans called them "Buffalo Soldiers" - do their descendants owe ME restitution?

Definitions of 'buffalo soldier'
The American Heritage® Dictionary- (1 definition)

[Translation of a Kiowa term, from the perceived similarity between the soldiers' hair and the hair on a buffalo's head.]

(noun)
A member of one of the African-American regiments within the U.S. Army after the Civil War, serving primarily in the Indian wars of the late 1860s.

Stupid idea; descendants paying for their ancestors mistakes, simply because of the colour of their skin? What about white people with black ancestors? Black people with white ancestors?
That would be the sort of idiocy to increase American racial tensions.
Everybody involved in that slavery idiocy is long dead; why resurrect something without meaning? By that same logic; all European nations should overnight erupt into warfare based on what their ancestors have done to one another.
Can I demand money from the English for what they did to Wales and Ireland?

We already have that... it's called welfare, and everyone pays for it via income taxes...

It's kind of hard to say "black" and "white" when most US most citizens are a hodge-podge of various races. Perfect example is Obama. He's only 6% black if you break down his racial heritage.

What about Portugal? The merchants from that country were the chief slave traders. How about Spain, England, and France? Why is this just a question for Just the US? How about Denmark? There were several countries that engaged in the slave trade in the New World long before the US was even a country! Why are they off the hook? To be honest, most of the countries that engaged in the greatest genocide in human history (some 200 million "natives" of the americas were killed) also traded in African slaves long before 1776! (or 1783 if you are fussy about dates!) What about the decendants of the Africans that sold other Africans in to slavery? Don't they have to pay too? How about the companies that engaged in the slave trade? The whole thing was much bigger than just the US, it was a world problem, shouldn't the world pay for it?

Slavery can not be reinstated due to the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Also it is most likely that it will not repealed due to every member of the House and Senate down to the states/commonwealths (VA, MA, PA, and KY) legislature know that it will wrong to repealed and restarted a cruel and harsh chapter of American History once again.

Paying restitution for something that happened over 200 years ago is probably a bad idea ... who would pay? who would be paid?

In Africa itself, the most common slavers were Africans. It was common practice that when two tribes went to war, anyone captures as what we would now consider a PoW, or a captured civilian, would be enslaved.
The Portuguese, British, Spanish, Dutch and Americans (and many others, including many Arabs, and ...) would buy the slaves from the various warring tribes and ship them back home, or to the new world
They would be sold again, and again.

Slavery is/was/and always will be wrong ... but trying to identify one group (white americans?) and forcing them to pay restitution to another group (black americans? black africans in africa?) does not make sense ... it was never that simple an issue to start with; and now 200 years later, it's even more complicated.

I think you're all missing a point.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_for_slavery