In June 2025, the New Jersey Reparations Council released its 244-page report, “For Such a Time as This,” calling on the state to provide “repair” for a claimed $643,000 per-family racial wealth gap and endorsing sweeping reparations-related policies. Since then, several New Jersey reparations advocacy groups have again invoked Juneteenth to renew calls for lawmakers in Trenton to take up the Council’s recommendations.

I will leave ethicists to debate the fairness of coercing one generation that committed no sin to compensate people against whom no sin was committed. Instead, I pose a simpler question: Who are the payors and payees?