Black Americans have never been fully independent from racially-based socioeconomic discrimination in the United States. You've also conveniently ignored GP's additional condition: racial discrimination.
The Prison Industrial Complex and the War on Drugs systematically dismantled the nuclear black family across the United States - this is not a new take. Take it from Lee Atwater, Reagan strategist and co-architect of the Southern Strategy:
>Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-----, n-----, n-----". By 1968 you can't say "n-----*"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-----, n-----". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.
A black man around Nathan's age would have been born in the middle of the Clinton-era when the government was going "tough on crime." They would have been born in the wake of the Central Park Five case, for perspective, and grown up in the shadow of Superpredator Theory. This before even unpacking the financial and social disenfranchisement of the Jim Crow era and the systematic and brutal dissolution of black wealth ala the Tulsa Race Massacre.
I’m sorry maybe I’m missing the forest for the trees here, did you answer the question of when black Americans will be responsible for themselves? I am all for reparations to be clear, I think the impact of slavery has put them at a severe disadvantage (perhaps stifling their ability to ever climb out of socioeconomic situations) but to fully support the idea I need to know what the plan is. At what point is everyone’s potential considered equal? If the answer is “never” then obviously reparations is not a valid solution and could even be considered harmful (if we look at “potential” as “acceleration” then at some point increasing that value will cause the “velocity” to become so great that we end up right back where we started with some demographic far beyond the rest)
The Prison Industrial Complex and the War on Drugs systematically dismantled the nuclear black family across the United States - this is not a new take. Take it from Lee Atwater, Reagan strategist and co-architect of the Southern Strategy:
>Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-----, n-----, n-----". By 1968 you can't say "n-----*"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-----, n-----". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.
A black man around Nathan's age would have been born in the middle of the Clinton-era when the government was going "tough on crime." They would have been born in the wake of the Central Park Five case, for perspective, and grown up in the shadow of Superpredator Theory. This before even unpacking the financial and social disenfranchisement of the Jim Crow era and the systematic and brutal dissolution of black wealth ala the Tulsa Race Massacre.