The "R" word is ON the table

It doesn't take any great leap of the imagination to figure out that a President Obama would support the concept of paying reparations for slavery: http://starbulletin.com/2008/07/28/news/story05.html. I wasn't born here, and I'm not African American. I can't pretend to understand the racism that any of them may have experienced. I will ask this, though. What will reparations achieve? Can ANYONE answer that question?