Imho, we seem to have a problem of not being able to accept individually any responsibility for what the collectives we are members of, does, or did. I don't know if skin color has anything to do with that, but we don't have to look far to see which countries are rich, and which are poor, despite them originally having more resources because they are sitiuated in the parts of the world where this sun is most concentrated, therefore creating the most natural resources.
This is similar to wealthy older folk today not accepting their/our own part in the problem of the challenges faced by younger folk, because we took all the wealth that younger folk should have some entitlement to, we grabbed it all and you can't have any. Not many of us boomers are ready to individually admit that, so we are unlikely to ever agree we should just hand over a pile of "Our" money to younger folks who might not even have enough to live. Again we can't seem to accept any individual responsibility for what a collective that applies to us does.
Until we are able to understand that we have built up an energy deficit with our planet, and are continuing to build it up, by continuing profit driven business, which systemically shifts energy (and wealth) and the part we each individually play in that, we won't fix things like racism, because we can't see any harm in what we do individually.
On what reparations would do, it would go some way towards shifting some of the energy resources tied up in money, back towards the countries it came from in the first place.
If you know what I normally write about, the global energy problem, and how to fix it by monetising solar product, this would automatically address the problem of reparations, evening out some of the imbalance, because logically, the countries in the sunnier parts fo the world, which have been most exploited by colonialism, would be better equipped to put back what was taken out, using the same energy that created it in the first place, the sun, by using some of the money donated to build up their own solar hydrogen infrastructure, for example, if they were educated enough to do that
