Ryan Lizza did a classic "horserace" article dealing with the policy of reparations for slavery, The 2020 Democrats' Reparations Debate May Tear the Field Apart Esquire 05/11/2019.
It's classic, because Lizza writes about various ways the issue might affect the Democratic candidates. But he manages to avoid explaining what such a policy would actually look like. The closest he comes is, "the idea that African Americans should be compensated monetarily for the destructive legacy of enslavement and Jim Crow."
A line like that might get a reader not familiar with the concept as far as thinking, well, we could give some kind of monetary compensation to former slaves. But there aren't any former US slave still alive. Unless we count people who were held in some kind of illegal slavery. And that would mean ... etc., etc. And how would we go about calculating the cost of Jim Crow segregation, and how would we define Jim Crow for that purpose, and, and ...
In other words, it is a complicated issue. And Lizza's piece leaves the reader only knowing that it's a significant issue in the Democratic Presidential horserace. But without any understanding of what "it" is.
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