A year ago, Germany agreed to pay Namibia for what the European country agreed was colonial genocide. The amount involved was pitifully small (1.1 billion euros, spread over 30 years, to be spent on developmental projects), and the word “reparations” was avoided. The result of this compromise was strong opposition within Namibia, and a stalled agreement. Separately, the American city of Evanston in Illinois state began last year to pay an eventual total of $10 million in slavery reparations to a select few of its 12,000-strong African-American population, money that would help with housing as compensation for discriminatory housing policies
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