"Booker, a Democrat and one of just three African Americans in the U.S. Senate... is a prime sponsor of the reparations bill introduced in that chamber. It would, among other things, “address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery in the United States” and “establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations.” ...The fact that there has been such an outcry already sort of makes Booker’s point about the need for the bill. The rush to condemn it is part of “the silence” Booker spoke of on Wednesday, part of a nation’s refusal to own up to its violent, racist past, or to its unjust present. No, I don’t know how any sort of “reparations program” would work, and neither does anyone else. I don’t know, for instance, whether I, a descendant of slave owners, would be moved to the front of the line to write a check. But that’s not really the point. The point is the reckoning, the recognition, on this 400th anniversary of the arrival of African slaves at the Jamestown colony in Virginia, that remnants of slavery continue to haunt our nation today. The injustices that still exist among our black population today, from health care disparity to inadequate schools to higher rates of unemployment, all date to our original sin of slavery. No doubt, there will be more to come on the reparations issue, more voices speaking loudly and rudely against even having the conversation. Booker is right, though: We must have the conversation."