The nearly 300-year history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade is one of the most shameful episodes in Western history. Yet it has taken centuries for those responsible for this operation to acknowledge and apologize for their roles.Recently, London Mayor Ken Livingstone tearfully apologized for the role London played in the slave trade. Both former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair and Livingstone have admitted how deeply sorrowed they are about this aspect of their country’s history at events prior to Livingstone’s recent remarks, but without official apologies.

Their public regrets about the slave trade fended off the inevitable debate about reparations for a few months, but that issue is being raised once again. It’s an issue that has been dodged for a good 200 years, so what are a few more months?

Unfortunately for Livingstone, the praise for his comments was short-lived because U.S. and European reparations pressure groups used his apology as a call for action. Luckily for Livingstone, the debate for slave reparations is not happening just in Britain. Aug. 23 marked the United Nations International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, which sparked comments and remarks from all parts of the globe.

In the U.S., the Rev. Jesse Jackson, president and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a grassroots organization focusing on civil rights, praised Livingstone’s remarks but said they should lead to reparations.

In the past, Jackson and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan have been at the center of reparations demands on Capitol Hill. Farrakhan has called for “millions of acres of land to be given to African Americans.”

And here lies the fundamental difference between U.S. and European reparations groups.

Americans are hell-bent on getting the “40 acres and a mule” each promised to slaves by Union Army Gen. William Sherman after the Civil War. European reparations groups are looking to use reparations as a way to end African debt.

A loftier goal? More righteous than trying to get millions of acres of land for blacks, who may or may not be descendants of enslaved Africans?

Maybe realistic is the word. Despite the obvious problem of having no sure way to confirm genealogy records from every African American in the U.S., the American reparations movement has a few other kinks.

Who would pay for the reparations? If the answer is the U.S. government, then that means tax dollars. If that’s the case, then wouldn’t blacks be paying for their own reparations? Unless that is, whites and blacks start paying separate taxes, and wouldn’t that be the “separate but equal” argument all over again?

And where exactly would this land be and, more importantly, what would we do with it? The U.S. doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to allocating useful land. Consider the Native Americans.

I can’t exactly see the Colin Powells, Denzel Washingtons and Condoleezza Rices picking up everything and giving up their ability to impact the country in positive ways just so they can move to a designated space for blacks.

What bothers me about reparations is the feeling that, in essence, I would be getting paid off. If you give me an individual settlement for my ancestors’ lives as slaves, does that take away my ability to complain of racism?

Two centuries after the fact makes it seem a little like a mob boss paying me for my future silence on race relations. The “justice” of the settlement becomes tainted because it took this long.

However, if companies and industries profited from the slave trade invest in the future, then the goal of reparations – the idea of giving newly freed slaves a way of making a better living after slavery ended – will have been accomplished.

Erasing the debt of developing African countries will help reduce their dependence on industrialized nations.

Domestically, you don’t have to give me my “40-acres-and-a-mule,” just so long as race relations improve. I want my votes counted (no hanging chads), I want to walk down the street without fearing being stopped by the police and I want an equal chance to succeed in my education.

All of this is doable – soon. In retrospect, much progress has happened since the Civil War, but there is still much to be done.

International human rights legislation calls for due compensation for crimes against humanity. But that compensation could come in many forms.

Assuring a promising future is one of them. But do we, collectively, have the will to make that happen?

Jenighi Powell is a junior international relations major from Austin.