Slavery was the darkest chapter in American history. No reasonable person thinks otherwise. I wish we could undo it so it never existed, but that’s not possible. It happened.

But it’s also been gone for more than 150 years.

So why is Maxine Waters talking about reparations?

“If we want to get to the point where we can get reparations, we’ve got to have the power to do that, number one, by having a supportive president would be wonderful, but taking back the House would be absolutely wonderful,” Waters said at an event in Selma, Alabama, home to one of the most contentious civil rights battles of the 1960s.

No one alive today in the United States has “legally” owned another human being here. Because of that, there’s no one to actually pay reparations. Not a single living person is responsible for the sins of that era. No living person can be forced to pay for the sins of that era without violating his or her rights.

There aren’t any living victims of slavery who are owed reparations. The last living person who lived as a slave in the United States died a long time ago. Sylvester Magee claimed the title of last living former slave, and he died in 1971, though it’s probable that he was lying about his status.

There’s no one who can be legally forced to pay and no one who can legally claim damages. So what is she talking about? Race-baiters like Maxine Waters seem to think that people are owed money they didn’t earn for sins no one alive committed and that no one alive experienced.

This is the same woman who claimed a joke about her intelligence was racist. Yet she sees nothing racist with demanding innocent people pay non-victims based upon the melanin content of their skin.

All Waters did in Selma was stoke a fire that should have burned out long ago. She fosters hatred, not love.