Life in general is a competition for resources.  Reparations, for example, aren't really about punishing white people for the imagined sin of slavery.  It's about getting control of resources without any danger of physical injury.  As Sun Tzu observed, the best way to win is to get your opponent to surrender without a battle.

Reparations are a form of tribute, a jizya based on race rather than religion.  Tribute is paid by fearful losers to strong conquerors.  Whites are asked to yield their assets to the weaker adversaries because of some unfairness perceived in the unequal distribution of resources.  This, in turn, is blamed on past evil deeds done by ourselves or our ancestors.  The utter illogic of holding anyone responsible for the putative activities of previous generations seems to make no difference to the endeavor.

How can it be construed as punishment when there has been no crime?  No, it's simply an effort to abuse white people and guilt them into paying tribute.  The activists demanding reparations leverage white cultural concepts of honor to lure us to a specious moral high ground.  They are unable to defeat us in fair battle, so they attempt to trick us into defeating ourselves.

Dishonestly, some pretend that acquiescence will lead to forgiveness.  Acquiescence will only lead to more blacks who, even if unconvinced at the moment, will come to believe we must be guilty after all.  If we are innocent of the charge, we are expected to fight for our exoneration.  And if you think the reparations tax will be small, and worth paying if it heals racial divisions, you need to realize that it will do no such thing.  White people will continue to be accused of intrinsic evil that is built into their DNA.  No amount of payment or self-abasement will be enough.  Abuse will escalate until there are only very dark black people left.

Because if white is evil, light is evil, too.  "Not as evil" won't be a consideration for long.  Maybe the tax will start out small, but it will keep increasing.  Physical abuse will increase as well.  If skin color is allowed to matter, only one color will be tolerated.  For white supremacists, the ideal is the palest skin, blue eyes, and white-blond hair.  Freckles become a flaw.  For black supremacists, eventually, it will be stark black skin, brown eyes, and tightly curled black hair.

Life under a racial supremacist government will be like life in a total theocracy, but without any opportunity to convert and be part of the ruling class.  In Islamic theocracies, Christians and others are taxed, physically abused, and eventually killed.

Reparations are just the foot in the door of getting the current dominant group to self-destruct.  This must not be allowed to proceed.  Based on deaths of all perpetrators and victims since slavery was eliminated, the natural statute of limitations has run its course.  The United States is a far better place than it was with slavery, which was never required by law.  Slaveholding was an individual choice, a legal one, but hardly a national crime that resulted in a moral national debt to the slaves involved.