If they're successful in receiving some kind of reparations, it certainly will help in the present or future.
If you can establish a legal precedent where somebody is owed money because of what happened to their ancestors way in the distant past, what do you think the repercussions of that might be for other groups?
The fact is evil as it was, slavery was legal, and legally no slave was owed any money by the government after the abolition of slavery.
But evil things have happened to the ancestors of many millions of people. Can we go back in time and check everybody's history to see if some foreign gov. oppressed them? Certainly, many millions of Americans of all colors and ethnicities had ancestors in Europe who were oppressed by the gov.
For instance, many American Jews had family/relations murdered by the Nazis. Many American Irish are descendants of the Irish oppressed by the British and lucky to escape the potato famine and other bad situations with the clothes on their backs.
Are they owed money by those foreign govs. ? If not, why not? Where does it end?
And Jews and Catholics were discriminated against by the Protestant majority in America for many decades. Are they owed money for that discrimination
Another inarguable fact is that American blacks are far wealthier than blacks in Africa or elsewhere in the Americas. Although liberals and even many conservatives blanch at the idea that American blacks are lucky that their ancestors were enslaved, the facts are virtually none of them, American blacks, want to go back to Africa. In general blacks live far better in America than in Africa or any other country slaves were sent.
Trillions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on welfare over the last fifty years. Millions of black families have been on welfare for multiple generations. Doesn't that count as reparations?
Why don't American blacks quit complaining and be grateful to live in a country that gives them more opportunity than any other place in the world?