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Debra Dickerson and Erroll McDonald

Entry 6:

One needs a touch of class in this reparations discussion. Who precisely would be the black people who would be apportioned money? Everybody with "Negroid" features born in America? Should Vernon Jordan get the same as Jesse Jackson? Should Earl Graves, the publisher of Black Enterprise, get as much as a black single mother with four children and barely making ends meet? There are class distinctions, too, among black people, it has to be allowed. This in and of itself opens up a disgusting can of worms? And what do we do with people of mixed descent? Should everyone with a trace of black blood be entitled to get on the reparations train? I don't think so. Discipline must be maintained.

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Debra Dickerson is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a columnist for Beliefnet.com. Her memoir, An American Story, will be published this month (clickhereto buy it). Erroll McDonald is an editor at Pantheon Books.