Are you white? Then you benefitted.
I'll explain it one more time. Read carefully.
After slavery, Reconstruction failed, leaving the black community basically as destitute as it had been before, but without the safety net of being provided for by a master. While in terms of liberty they were better off, they were actually less economically viable than they had been as slaves. This poverty fed on itself. Those with greater opportunity were able to get educations, while poor blacks were unable to do so. Blacks who had gained positions of power saw their numbers dwindle rapidly. By the Roaring Twenties, blacks were stuck in a cycle of poverty, wherein poverty guaranteed poor education, and poor education guaranteed poor employment, and poor employment guaranteed poverty, which guaranteed poor education for children, which guaranteed poor employment, which guaranteed poverty, which guaranteed poor education for children.
Desegregation took a step in the right direction, but it was incomplete. It meant blacks technically had equal opportunity, but they still didn't have a level playing field because the institution was still stacked against them, and they were no better off financially. The CIA's introduction of crack into the ghettos didn't help matters.
This brings us to today, where we find a destitute black community and a few lucky black individuals who benefit from affirmative action by virtue of being less poor than the rest. Their children, in turn, are less poor than the rest of the black community, so the same families benefit from affirmative action while the black community at large gets nothing.
Reparations would solve for that cycle of poverty by introducing money. Education provided by affirmative action would then ensure wise expenditures of the money, as would a structured reparations plan.
Do you get it yet?
Good job SHH!
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