RAMONA BURTON, a 77-year-old resident of Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, remembers the first time she encountered blunt(直率的，直白的) racism. When she was six or seven years old she visited her uncle in St Louis. The family were turned away from a restaurant because black people were not allowed to sit indoors. Before then, Ms Burton says, “I didn’t really know what prejudice(偏见) was, because I had black and white friends.” Afterwards, she began to notice it. At school teachers treated black children differently, she says. Black families in Evanston lived in a more crowded, run-down(破旧的，衰败的) neighbourhood. “Something’s wrong here,” she remembers thinking.
拉蒙娜·伯顿，77岁，芝加哥郊区埃文斯顿的居民，记得她第一次遭遇赤裸裸的种族歧视。当时她六七岁，去圣路易斯看望叔叔，一家人被餐厅拒之门外，因为黑人不允许在室内就餐。在此之前，伯顿女士说：“我不太知道偏见是什么，因为我有黑人和白人朋友。”之后，她开始注意到它。她说，在学校里老师对待黑人孩子不一样。埃文斯顿的黑人家庭居住在一个更拥挤、破旧的社区。“这里有些不对劲，”她记得自己当时这样想。
In 2022 Ms Burton was among the first beneficiaries of a scheme set up by the city in 2019 to pay “reparations” to victims of racism. She received $25,000, which she spent renovating her home. The money was exciting, she says. “I felt good that I could fix my house up.” But, she goes on, it is hardly full recompense(补偿，赔偿) for what people of her race have suffered in America over the centuries. “I looked at it like this isn’t 40 acres and a mule(① 详细背景：1865年1月，联邦将领威...)”—a promise made to freed slaves by William Sherman, a Union general, towards the end of the civil war.
2022年，伯顿女士成为该市于2019年设立的向种族主义受害者支付“赔偿金”计划的首批受益者之一。她获得了25,000美元，用于翻修自己的房屋。她说这笔钱令人兴奋，“感觉很好，我能把房子修好。”但她接着说，这很难完全补偿她所属种族在美国几个世纪以来所遭受的苦难。“我认为这并非40英亩和一头骡子”——这是内战末期联邦将军威廉·舍曼向获得自由的黑奴做出的承诺。
Since 1989 three different black representatives in Congress have introduced HR40, a bill to create a commission to explore a federal reparations programme. Five states and some cities have also launched their own commissions. Yet the scheme in Evanston, a multicultural and deeply liberal spot that is the home of Northwestern University, is the only one to have actually paid out money. Its proponent(支持者，倡导者)s hope it will inspire something bigger. With Donald Trump attacking DEI and the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, that seems decidedly quixotic(不切实际的，空想的).
自1989年以来，国会中三位不同的黑人民主党人提出了HR40法案，旨在成立一个委员会来探讨联邦赔偿计划。五个州和一些城市也成立了各自的委员会。然而，埃文斯顿——一个多元文化、高度自由、西北大学所在地——的计划是唯一实际支付了金钱的。其支持者希望它能激励更宏伟的事业。但随着唐纳德·特朗普攻击多元化、公平与包容（DEI），最高法院削弱《投票权法案》，这一目标似乎相当不切实际。